searches and seizures Archives - Where Is The Outrage?

Stop and Frisk

This is what I’m talking about –

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Stop and frisk was a stupid policy. Randomly stopping people on the streets is ridiculous. It’s a huge waste of time by the police. It would be different if 25% or 50% of people on the street were causing crime. There would then be a high likelihood of finding somebody by randomly stopping people. Instead, crime is committed by a very small group of people. Basically, you’re looking for a needle in a haystack. We’ve got no evidence that randomly stopping people decreases crime. So, what’s the real purpose?

From NYTimes:

The use of police stops has been widely cited by city officials as a linchpin of New York’s success story in seeing murders and major crimes fall to historic lows. The police say the practice has saved the lives of thousands of young black and Hispanic men by removing thousands of guns from the streets.

But the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, found that the Police Department resorted to a “policy of indirect racial profiling” as it increased the number of stops in minority communities. That has led to officers’ routinely stopping “blacks and Hispanics who would not have been stopped if they were white.” (more…)

By ecthompsonmd|2013-08-19T21:05:51-04:00August 18th, 2013|Civil Rights|Comments Off

Cheney argued for the troops in the US

The more I hear about the Bush White House, the more I am aware that I really, really don’t like them.

From NYT:

Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.

Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.

Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force.

A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests would be nearly unprecedented in American history, as both the Constitution and subsequent laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.

The Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity. (more… )

By ecthompsonmd|2009-07-24T22:44:18-04:00July 24th, 2009|Al Qaeda, Bush Administration, Legal|Comments Off

This is not tyranny — you just lost an election

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show has an excellent segment in which he points out a lot of the craziness, hyperbole, hyper-inflated rhetoric and lies that have been emanating from the Right. I’ve talked about this almost exclusively over the last several days. I continue to be amazed that anyone believes that Michelle Bachmann is not the most irresponsible congresswoman in America.

Thom Hartmann made an extremely interesting comment yesterday. He was verbally excoriating the Obama administration for their seeming disregard for the Fourth Amendment (“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”) Thom Hartmann, like Glenn Greenwald, saw the filing by the Justice Department (late last week) as an expansion of the Bush administration’s state secrets and, according to Glenn, “a brand new ‘sovereign immunity’ claim of breathtaking scope — never before advanced, even by the Bush administration, — that the Patriot Act bars any lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance unless there is “willful disclosure” of the illegally intercepted communications.” (It seems like I’m getting hopelessly off the point but I’m not.) Thom Hartmann said that this is something that the Right should be legitimately upset about. For some reason, the talking heads on the right seem to be fixated on the Second Amendment and completely ignoring the Fourth. This is something where there are genuine facts. There is a brief but has been filed by Obama’s Justice Department. Yet, this is barely been covered on Fox News (to the best of my knowledge).

So, we have a legitimate issue which the Right should be completely outraged over and they’re not. On the other hand, we have an issue that is completely made up (Obama is going to take your gun) and the Right are completely losing their minds.

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