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Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143:173]********

re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

Nope. I don't support it one bit because it's unconstitutional.

That's not true.

Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court which held that the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures is not violated when a police officer stops a suspect on the street and frisks him or her without probable cause to arrest, if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime and has a reasonable belief that the person "may be armed and presently dangerous."[1]
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

Terry Stop is the Stop and Frisk.

I'm coming from the place that we simply MUST clean up our inner cities and make them safer.

Is there any narrow enforcement that you could support?

For instance..no prosecution, just confiscation of all illegal weapons and drugs. Nothing else. No arrest? Using it only in statistically high crime areas?

The left keeps calling these stops profiling. But if we are "profiling" a high crime area, is that REALLY profiling by race?

thoughts?

The inner cities have been getting better for many years. I think continuing with what has worked would make more sense than harassing people not breaking any laws.
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

That's not true.

Well I guess the practice in itself is not unconstitutional (athough it really should be IMO), but when it comes to New York City’s stop-and-frisk program, it was found to have violated the U.S. Constitution in how it was being applied.

I wouldn't support the program anywhere else either, for that matter.
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

I'd rather see to my own safety than live in a police state. No thanks.
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

I'd rather see to my own safety than live in a police state. No thanks.

Some areas need some serious law enforcement. Once the thugs are taken off the street, those places can relax again and LEO can go back to community policing. But, to get there, some serious action is required.

My neighborhood is not riddled with gun fire and a homicide per day. In fact, we have not had a murder here for nearly 10 years. And, guess what? We are not a police state neighborhood, just a law abiding one, for the most part.
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

Some areas need some serious law enforcement. Once the thugs are taken off the street, those places can relax again and LEO can go back to community policing. But, to get there, some serious action is required.


I can't support 'stop and frisk' for mere suspicion. Period.


We're too close to a police state already.


LE can't clean up a neighborhood. Only the neighborhood can do that. The police can HELP but they can't (and shouldn't) do it all themselves.
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

Terry v. Ohio was decided in 1968, so the kind of investigatory detention you're talking about has been recognized as constitutionally valid for going on fifty years. The Court has further defined the boundaries of these detentions in a series of cases after Terry, so the law on them is pretty clear. The jihadist cur who was eliminated in Milan recently got his comeuppance because of just this sort of stop. They are a valuable law enforcement tool, and of course I support them.

"lhre papiere bitte?"...
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

The inner cities have been getting better for many years. I think continuing with what has worked would make more sense than harassing people not breaking any laws.


Some have. Some haven't. (e.g. Chicago)

Believe the "Ferguson effect" is real. And it has contributed to some of the lost ground in stabilizing major cities.
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

Terry Stop is the Stop and Frisk.

I'm coming from the place that we simply MUST clean up our inner cities and make them safer.

Is there any narrow enforcement that you could support?

For instance..no prosecution, just confiscation of all illegal weapons and drugs. Nothing else. No arrest? Using it only in statistically high crime areas?

The left keeps calling these stops profiling. But if we are "profiling" a high crime area, is that REALLY profiling by race?

thoughts?

I'll Godwin the tread. :2razz:

6e13eb60d50222517959ed67578cb44a.jpg
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

I can't support 'stop and frisk' for mere suspicion. Period.


We're too close to a police state already.


LE can't clean up a neighborhood. Only the neighborhood can do that. The police can HELP but they can't (and shouldn't) do it all themselves.

THe neighborhood is under siege. No one can leave their homes because of the bullets flying. Drastic conditions require drastic measures.
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

Some have. Some haven't. (e.g. Chicago)

Believe the "Ferguson effect" is real. And it has contributed to some of the lost ground in stabilizing major cities.

Outside of a recent spike, crime has been trending down in Chicago.
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

Outside of a recent spike, crime has been trending down in Chicago.


The "current spike" of the last year and a half?

Although it is a little misleading to broad brush the entire Chicago metro area. The vast bulk of the violent crime occurs in the south/west sides. Gang spurred.


The less violent "crime" of city sanctioned theft by "parking ticket/propertyTax/metroTickets" is much more wide spread....





//
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

It's a self-reinforcing method.

Blacks and Whites use illegal drugs at approximately the same rate.

1) If you go to an area predominated by minorities, stop 100 people and find illegal drugs on 7 of them then the crime statistics go up by "7".
2) If you go to an area predominated by Whites, stop 100 people and find illegal drugs on 7 of them then the crime stats increase by "7".

In such a scenario the crime reported has increased. However we know that #2 doesn't happen because those areas are not patrolled with the same vigor. Thus a "high crime areas" are artificially created by police simply because the police have a higher engagement rate with the community. This is before you even take into account the possibility of bias. If the police are looking for crime eventually they're going to find it.

That's the problem NYC citizens faced. Police were literally looking for crime: jumping over turnstiles, jaywalking, spitting on the floor, putting your feet up on the train, and playing loud music. Now think about the pettiness of these misdemeanors. If you have a constant police presence in "high crime" areas eventually you're going to get all these charges because that's inevitable. These petty misdemeanors do not happen at a higher frequency than anywhere else but "high crime" areas will often report higher citations because there are more police patrolling.

This is why I utterly reject the notion of "high crime areas" because once a location gets such a designation crime will literally never decrease.

Exactly.
Thus begins the circle. And it is not really minority areas, it's poor neighborhoods. Now a greater percentage have records and are in the system, are harder to employ, etc. A joint in your pocket becomes life changing in one area and is ignored in another due to nothing more than your address or the color of your skin. Apply the law equally.
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

Right. We know the text. The question centers on the word "unreasonable." The Supreme Court has made clear that these temporary stops, as long as the police conducting them respect the boundaries it has specified, do not violate the Fourth Amendment.
And therein lies the problem.
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

If a cop has not witnessed a crime, he has no probable cause to harass you. But that is only in a free country and we ceased being a free country a long time ago.
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

No, stop 'n frisk is clearly unconstitutional. Just do some good ole fashioned police work fer cryin' out loud.

Good call.
I came in here sure that everyone with 'conservative' in their lean would support this.
I guess not all conservatives are authoritarians.
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

Good call.
I came in here sure that everyone with 'conservative' in their lean would support this.
I guess not all conservatives are authoritarians.

Not at all, a great many of us are for liberty. :)
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

Not at all, a great many of us are for liberty. :)

Careful. You might be a closet liberal. Next thing you know you'll be against pot prohibition.
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

I could, but I have not made my mind up on if I do or not, I keep changing it.

My current thinking it that it depends on the crime rate.

If a lot of my fellow citizens are criminals then OK.

We need to collective to he effectively policed.

When times get tough I need to suck it up.

Fixes are very often not nice.

But we have to have them.
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

Yes, and it's quite unreasonable to stop a person for being black, or looking "suspicious". Police can, and do, abuse this.

Define, "reasonable suspicion that he may be involved in criminal activity". Please be specific.

The Court has pretty thoroughly defined reasonable suspicion as regards investigatory detentions, both in Terry v. Ohio and in its later decisions on this subject.
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

Probable cause, reasonable suspicion, both are essentially the same.

No, they certainly are not the same. The Court has defined both reasonable suspicion and probable cause in several of its decisions, and it has explained the differences between them.

What is being talked about in the OP does not involve either one.

What? This thread is about so-called "Terry stops," formally known as investigatory detentions and sometimes called "stop and frisks." In Terry v. Ohio, the Court discussed at length this sort of detention short of arrest and the various forms it may take.

Stop and Frisk is about stopping random people in order to check to see if they have anything illegal on them. It is not based on reasonable suspicion or probable cause.

This thread is about Terry stops. Of course this subject involves reasonable suspicion, because that is the applicable standard in those stops.

It is simply "Oh lets stop that person!"

That may be how you choose to define it, but that is not the usual definition. The Court discussed the phrase "stop and frisk" and what it implies at length in Terry, and I recommend reading its discussion.

And stop and frisk has been ruled unconstitutional.

Again, that depends on how you define that phrase. The Supreme Court did not say anything like that, either in Terry, or in its later decisions on investigatory detentions by police. It confuses the issue to toss around terms like "stop and frisk," "Terry stop," etc. without specifying what you mean by those things. I think it would help for a better informed discussion if everyone commenting here had at least read Terry v. Ohio.
 
re: Could you ever support the Terry Stop?[W:143]

And therein lies the problem.

What problem, exactly? I'll say it again. There is a line of cases, starting with Terry v. Ohio, in which the Supreme Court has pretty thoroughly interpreted this corner of Fourth Amendment law. Here is an accurate, if abbreviated, restatement of that law:

Police do not violate the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures by briefly detaining a person for investigative purposes, even if they lack the probable cause needed for an arrest, provided they have reasonable suspicion supported by articulable facts of criminal activity or involvement in a completed crime. If the police also have reasonable suspicion that the person detained is armed and dangerous, they may also carry out a frisk--a limited search--to ensure that the person has no weapons.

I don't feel like getting into all the details of how far a frisk may go, what factors determine if the suspicion is reasonable, the maximum time for an investigatory detention, how information obtained during the detention may provide the probable cause needed to arrest the detainee, etc., etc., but anyone can inform himself about all these things and more just by reading the cases.
 
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