Keevan_Colton wrote:RedImperator wrote:Keevan_Colton wrote:I pointed out how retarded the american reaction to the notion of stop and search powers are.
Yes, of course, it's completely retarded to react badly to the notion of the cops being able to stop and search anyone they want, anytime they want, for any reason they want.
What's wrong with law enforcement being able to search people in order to enforce the law?
Nothing, so long as they have cause to do so--American law does
not require a warrant to search someone acting suspiciously. What I object to giving police the power to randomly stop whomever they like on a whim.
It's not like they'd disproportionately target racial minorities or members of the political opposition or anything.
So the police is uniformly racist and corrupt then?
What kind of retarded argument is this? The police have the potential to be racist and corrupt, it's documented historical fact that many police officers (and some entire departments) have been racist and corrupt, there are cases in court
right now charging that racist and corrupt cops abused their powers. The fact that not all of them, or even a majority of them, are racist and corrupt is irrelevant. Enough of them are that giving them the power to conduct searches anytime they like is guaranteeing that the rights of citizens will be abused. Christ, they don't even have the power to do it and they're abusing it anyway--the New Jersey State Police got their asses sued off a few years ago because they were randomly pulling over black motorists on the New Jersey Turnpike and not white ones.
Never mind the invasion of privacy or the massive potential waste of police time and resources.
So it's all just a cost saving measure really...
Yes, it's all about cost saving, which is why this is my primary point instead of my secondary....oh wait.
...again this might be a cultural thing, but over here there is the notion that you do not have an expectation of privacy in a public place. Isnt this the same shit that goes along with anti-CCTV nonsense?
Your expectation of privacy is more limited in public, but you still have one. Cameras don't violate your privacy because you certainly don't have the right not to be seen, but that's a far cry from someone frisking you or forcing you to turn out your pockets.
What the hell good is a warrant requirement if evidence that could not have been acquired had the police not conducted an illegal search was still admissible?
Damn good question, and if you stop to think about it one that doesnt need to exist.
Since I'm leaving to see Jon Stewart in about ten minutes, why don't you do my thinking for me and explain why the question doesn't need to exist.
So which is it? Are we retarded for restricting search powers, or are we corrupt troglodytes who aren't civilized enough to create a police force we can trust? Your argument seems to vacillate back and forth depending on whatever the previous response happens to be.
There isnt a perfect system for anything, but a system which allows criminals to escape based not upon a lack of evidence but due to a lack of paperwork leading up to the discovery of evidence is fucking retarded. We're not talking about tainted evidence, or evidence with no chain to show it is not faked, but instead stuff that the police werent allowed to find...how the fuck does the idea of evidence you're not meant to be allowed to have seem sane to you?
It's a better idea than giving cops
de facto carte blanche to conduct warrantless searches, or conduct fishing expeditions with limited warrants. Yes, sometimes the guilty get away with shit because a cop made an innocent mistake. The guilty aren't the point. Warrant requirements are in place to protect the innocent from harassment and invasion of privacy.
And in case you have any weird ideas about what constitutes admissible evidence in court, not every search requires a warrant. If a cop pulls you over for speeding and smells marijuana, he has reasonable cause to search your car and you can go to jail if he finds any. If you're skulking around a street corner with a gun-shaped lump in your coat, he can search you, and if he finds drugs or an illegal gun, you're going to jail for that, too.
At any rate, since the US has by far the highest rate of imprisonment in the entire industrialized world, obviously we're not having problems convicting people.
You'll notice it's americans that are all going on about how you cant trust the US to do shit without massive corruption, racism etc...you've said so yourself.
And interstingly enough they've also got no problem with applying a different standard to the rest of the world...but hey, that's par for the course isnt it?
Setting aside arguments about privacy, necessity, or Constitutional protections for US citizens for now, the mere fact that the individual being spied upon is in another country adds a layer of protection that doesn't exist for US citizens. For an American law enforcement agency to (legally) do anything to a foreign national overseas, that individual's government must cooperate. Domestic law enforcement is another matter; I'm far less likely to be arrested or harassed or embarrassed by the Mossad than I am the FBI, and
very far less likely to be arrested or harassed or embarrassed by the Mossad than I am the local cops. At any rate, since this argument is about stop-search, I don't really know what ECHELON has to do with it anyway; is the Philadelphia Police Department frisking people in Hyde Park now?
