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cbr600 wrote:It's also interesting to consider the men who wrote the Bill of Rights were likely well aware of the mobility of wagons and carts drawn by horses, oxen or other animals, as well as the much greater mobility of horseback riders like Paul Revere.

That's a great point.

One of the British atrocities of the 1770s that led to the revolution was searching carts and buggies and even wheelbarrows, contrary to common law. Among the things that they were looking for were weapons and ammunition that the Americans were buying from smugglers.

- Jim

I would argue that the Roman Praetorian Guard was more like the modern Secret Service, acting as bodyguards for a general or the emperor. (The Secret Service of course has never been a military force or resorted to bullying or political corruption.)

In the 18th century, the concept of paid civilian police was foreign to English and American common law. It is an important point that sheriffs and constables are elected officials directly answerable to the voters.

Prohibition was one of several ways that the federal and state governments asserted themselves into the daily lives of citizens (the federal income tax being another from the same era). Before that, a police officer would have to observe a person committing a crime, answer the hue and cry, or possibly know that there was an outstanding warrant.

srothstein wrote:I think you and I agree that this is a case where the chosen solution (warrantless search) is worse than the problem it was supposed to solve.

I certainly agree, as you know.

It would be one thing to search a vehicle for an abducted person or a corpse if probable cause existed, like the textbook blood and hair on the bumper.

Even during Prohibition they were looking for jugs and barrels of liquor.

However, at the risk of repeating myself, now they find contraband the size of a grain of sand. One of the more notorious cases involved finding illegal drugs that someone had stashed in a baby's diaper (on the baby at the time).

While I rush to add that people should not be using illegal drugs around babies or hiding drugs in their diapers, that was one clever cop.

The problem with Terry, as I see it, is that the surface justification is to enforce a law that is itself unconstitutional (carrying concealed weapons). If the officer perceives an immediate threat he does not need the justification established by Terry.

I am pretty sure you and I agree that we are on a slope towards a police state and it is getting steeper and steeper. I am a firm believer that the question is not if we will have a new revolution, but when.

It's too late.

All we can do now is maintain some fences. We have made progress in the area of the RKBA, huge progress in the cases of Heller and McDonald. Habeus corpus has been preserved. Total Information Awareness was scrapped.

- Jim

bnc wrote:Jim, I appreciate your post. I would like a police force that focuses on investigation more so than prevention since the latter is impossible without implicating innocent people in potential crimes.

Thanks.

The police do prevent crimes to some extent.

In the good old days of cops walking the beat they knew who the schlumps were and kept an eye on them. Sometimes I still see phrases like "known to the police."

The problem now is that driving is practically necessary to daily life, unless you're Amish, and driving makes you a rolling candidate for arrests and sometimes very expensive tickets, (even if you are not running illegal drugs and do not have outstanding warrants). A $500 ticket is a week's take-home pay for many people. That is the moral equivalent of a week of unpaid involuntary servitude.

The case of Atwater v. City of Lago Vista is obscene.

- Jim

Well, San Leon and Bacliff probably are in the top 10 meth cooking towns in the state, but an Accord is not exactly a cop magnet.

I often wonder why crooks drive such predictable vehicles like Eldos. If they just drove Volvos or Toyotas the cops wouldn't look at them twice.

- Jim

Which agencies were they with? They weren't all Galco Sheriffs, were they?

I can never get those bulbs replaced without a few skinned knuckles and imprecations.

- Jim

This is insane.

Is it clear, in the 18th century the concept of police had not been invented? They had sheriffs and constables who mainly investigated crimes after the fact.

The notion of police officers driving around in cars to stop other citizens driving around in cars started in the Prohibition era. They wanted to catch bootleggers. At the same time we were graced with a series of Supreme Court decisions that made warrantless searches of vehicles legal.

Since then we have gotten the Terry decision that makes warrantless searches legal on suspicion (rather than probable cause). Of course these searches, supposedly for weapons, often reveal a gram of crack or whatever.

The founders of this country and the framers of the constitution were not unimaginative men, but I doubt they imagined this kind of regimentation.

What are you driving these days, Bill? Aside from the headlamp, it sounds like you have an "arrest me" bumper sticker.

I bet the officers were running on a STEP grant, so that explains the sheer density of popo.

I don't know for a fact, but there has been quite a big of traffic enforcement funded by grants around here. The cops are all over I-45 south of Houston.

Lose the hair

Like that would be difficult.

- Jim