Re: Civil Rights and Crime
A useful point; all of the rights guaranteed to the People are an inconvenience to the agents of the State. But we've had these rights for a long time, and Americans kind of like civil liberties.
The tragedy is that the ACLU is blind to this, they're willing to let gun rights go away, which is sort of like letting just half of your soap bubble burst. If they can disarm us all, then the rest of our rights aren't worth a bucket of warm spit.
The only quibble I have is with the demographics argument, which has been repeatedly used to thwart sensible actions like putting more cops in the high-crime areas, or target drivers who fit the drug mule profile, neither of which actions infringes any enumerated rights.
Re: Civil Rights and Crime
Gasp! Did you advocate profiling??? OMG
Just noticed the date....Sept 5th. Better late than never? Better get with it....
Re: Civil Rights and Crime
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bang
Gasp! Did you advocate profiling??? OMG
Just noticed the date....Sept 5th. Better late than never? Better get with it....
There's nothing in the Constitution that prohibits looking at the totality of the circumstances, and pulling over the speeders who are in larger vehicles traveling north on I95, alone. Cops have the right to pull over any speeders.
If profiling didn't work, I expect that cops wouldn't use it. And unlike warrantless searches or forced confessions or imprisonment without trial, it's not un-Constitutional.
Drug mules could avoid profile stops if they just didn't speed, but the sort of people who become drug mules aren't the kind of people who can control their behavior.
I remember the advocates who opposed profile stops of speeders, arguing something like "only 25% of those stops produce illegal drugs", which seems like a pretty good argument to continue them, since I doubt 25% of all traffic contains illegal drugs. Maybe I'm wrong.
Re: Civil Rights and Crime
Israelis have always practiced profiling as part of their overall security doctrine, their tactics are world class. Airport security, for example.
Paradoxically, I struggle with that level of government overreach, although I understand why they do it.
Re: Civil Rights and Crime
Profiling is a media buzzword on a scale with cop-killer bullets and Saturday Night Specials.
If a skunk habitually stinks up my patio, I sure as hell will accomplish nothing by chasing anything with four feet to prove I am not biased.
Facts build patterns, and patterns can be acted upon with reason. Setting the stage just to prove complete lack of profile leads to 20 years of airport detentions and searches of 90 year old grandmothers, when the problem is men of a particular persuasion that generally fit a description based on history.
Re: Civil Rights and Crime
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bang
Profiling is a media buzzword on a scale with cop-killer bullets and Saturday Night Specials.
If a skunk habitually stinks up my patio, I sure as hell will accomplish nothing by chasing anything with four feet to prove I am not biased.
Facts build patterns, and patterns can be acted upon with reason. Setting the stage just to prove complete lack of profile leads to 20 years of airport detentions and searches of 90 year old grandmothers, when the problem is men of a particular persuasion that generally fit a description based on history.
Truth, when looking for suspects. Not applicable to jury deliberations, of course; you don't want jurors ever thinking "ell, he's black, I bet he DID kill that guy . . . "
But if you see a news report that says "75 teenagers swarmed a convenience store and looted it while laughing", how do you picture that mob in your head? If you've seen the last dozen stories about similar mobs swarming stores, you're thinking the same thing that I am.
I think the saying is "Prejudice is the compliment that your brain pays to experience". It's how we decide where to have dinner, what to watch on TV even if every episode is new and we've never seen any of the choices before. It's how we know that Jen Psaki will lie to us even before her presser starts. It's how we know that the last 50% of movies featuring Jan Michael Vincent all suck, even the ones we haven't seen.
We don't wake up to a whole new world every morning (unless we have dementia). Past is prologue. If you mix some drug mules and some church choir singers in a lineup, and they're free to select their own clothes and their own body language and their own facial expressions, most of us will be able to spot who's who.
Re: Civil Rights and Crime
The problem with doing away with certain Civil Rights to catch gangbangers, murderers, etc. easier, is that sometimes law abiding people get caught up in these situations and would lose the protection that those Rights afford.
Re: Civil Rights and Crime
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Carson
The problem with doing away with certain Civil Rights to catch gangbangers, murderers, etc. easier, is that sometimes law abiding people get caught up in these situations and would lose the protection that those Rights afford.
That's true, but inapplicable to pulling over people who were in fact exceeding the posted speed limit by a significant amount.
The wokies are upset that police pull over SOME people who are speeding, and instead of a random 1 out of every 100 speeders, cops apply some criteria which have in the post strongly correlated with drug mules. Nobody even pretends that they weren't speeding.
If cops decided that when confronting armed bank robbers who posed an imminent risk of death or crippling injuries, they would start by shooting the tallest person first, would the ACLU care?
Re: Civil Rights and Crime
Quote:
The problem with doing away with certain Civil Rights to catch gangbangers, murderers, etc. easier, is that sometimes law abiding people get caught up in these situations and would lose the protection that those Rights afford.
Especially when we are all required to wear a mask.