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mr1337 wrote:

allisji wrote:Hopefully all of the strong objections won't suppress any supporters from making their supporting arguments.

I would assume that the supporting arguments would all be based on what constitutes the idea of "reasonable suspicion".

For instance, just because an officer has a feeling that a person may have bad intentions doesn't mean that the officers suspicion is reasonable. But if the person appears to be a possibly match for a suspect in the area, then that changes the situation. Should the officer stop the man, frisk him, and ask for ID was he justified as having reasonable suspicion?

My wife tells a story about when she was in HS and riding in a car or a minivan with friends. The vehicle apparently matched the model/color description of a vehicle associated with a dangerous criminal. Apparently when they were stopped by the officers, they were all roughed up a little bit, thrown to the ground, frisked, ID'd, and ultimately released. Seems a little excessive, unless one of them inside the vehicle matched the description of the suspect. The only experiences that I've had with Law Enforcement other than about 4 traffic stops in 16 years of driving have been my waving at Police cruisers as they go by.

Reasonable Suspicion (RS) is pretty well defined in the court system, and it's exactly what it sounds like. The officer needs a reason to suspect the person is involved in criminal activity. It has to be more than just a hunch. "He looked like the kind of person who would smoke weed" is not Reasonable Suspicion but "I smelled the odor of marijuana" is Reasonable Suspicion, which is the legal standard for a detainment. Whereas "I saw a roach on the seat next to him" would be Probable Cause, which is the legal standard required for an arrest.

Rudolph Giuliani: Trump is right about 'stop and frisk...Stop and frisk is constitutional and the law of the land