That’s already been covered. When someone says he’s a legal alien.
Do you really not know how trivially easy it is to concoct such a situation if you want to? :rolleyes:How many more “broken taillights” are going to appear on Hispanics’ cars, for instance? Or are you simply trying to avoid the realization of how horribly wrong you’ve been about this all along?
Who is the “someone” and who is the “he” in this phrase, and why would you ask for their papers when the claim is that they are a “legal alien?”
Okay please quote the relevant section of the law, that would prevent that or some other bogus claim, such as gang activity involving a generic description of Mestizos.
Or harassment of Hispanic motorists, maybe something like:
Finally Stratocaster as long as I’ve got your ear. Let’s say in compliance with this law a legal immigrant has their paperwork with them in their wallet. Well their wallet is lost or stolen, does this person deserve to be under constant threat of arrest while they sort out the international red tape to replace their papers? Should crime victims be punished? Who hasn’t lost their wallet?
Reasonable suspicion is required. It’s stated in the law. The fact that a cop may ignore that exists with or without this law. A cop who wants to pull someone over because they appear to be Mexican is running afoul of the law, and that’s serious. But that possibility already exists. The law specifically requires reasonable suspicion. Hysterical reactions like Elvis’s are silly, since they would invalidate ANY law. If we can dispense with any law if there’s a possibility that a cop will abuse it or manufacture “facts,” then let’s get rid of all of them.
They are under the same legal requirement they were prior to the law, to have their green cards with them. The same administrative headaches exist if they lose it that previously did, presumably. The law doesn’t change that.
Probably not, because if broken English is enough to cast suspicion Yahoo Answers would have been raided long ago.
And if someone’s accent and English fluency is enough to cast suspicion then there are lots of Americans who would fall under suspicion just because of how they were raised.
Someone pulled over for a traffic infraction, for example. And you would ask for their papers because existing law requires that they carry them.
No, you’re misunderstanding. The question wasn’t whether this created reasonable suspicion. It doesn’t. The question is why you might ask someone if they’re a citizen. A cop can ask if someone’s a citizen. He can ask anything he likes–are there drugs in the car, have you been drinking, etc. But he can’t act on a hunch to detain or arrest someone. Reasonable suspicion in not required to ask a question (though the answer could damn well create reasonable suspicion).
So all laws regardless of if they encourage abuse, or none? How about instead not designing laws that encourage police abuse, such as this one?
But this new law does now open up “reasonable suspicion”, including arrest until things can be sorted out, with a threat of a lawsuit if cops fail to do so.
So answer the question. Does the victim of wallet theft deserve to be punished? Does the cop who doesn’t feel so deserve to bring down a lawsuit on his/her head?
So it’s fair to interrupt someone’s business with police additional or initial questioning solely because of their accent?
This is begging the question. What about this law–what specifics, since you asked me for the same–encourages abuse? Really, don’t just assert it again, since there’s no lack of such statements in this thread already.
Why in the world would you assume this encourages abuse when it specifically sets a well-known standard such as reasonable suspicion?
This law does NOT create some new standard for reasonable suspicion, nor did it create the requirement that legal aliens must carry their papers. It’s the same headache for losing one’s papers that it was prior to the law. The law says you have to carry your green card, and it doesn’t give exceptions for if you say you lost your wallet, I assume, otherwise it’s a pretty toothless law. What do you think happened previously? You think cops gave people a free pass if they say they had their wallet stolen?
C’mon Bricker, you’ve been around the block. You’re willing to strain at gnats while swallowing camels to defend a law that is at least inviting of abuse, if not actually crafted with abuse as its goal. The whole “reasonable suspicion” drivel is merely a dodge, creating a plausible excuse.
“See those guys over there? They seem to be passing something from one to another. Looks like a drug buy!” creates the reason for a lawful stop. So do the scenarios that DMC offers in post 416. So do the ordinances cited upthread relating to merely being present in some defined area (a ‘pick-up location’ for day labor) or making some undefined hand signal (as in offering oneself as a laborer). We all know there are a million ways law enforcement can initiate an interaction, and most of them can be construed to include at least suspicion of some illegal activity other than an immigration crime. As long as the initial reason for the law enforcement interaction has plausibility as possibly related to criminal activity, even if no actual evidence of a crime is uncovered, the officer has satisfied the legal requirement.
Now all the officer needs do is decide that the individual’s immigration status is in doubt, and s/he can demand proof of legal residency or citizenship. His/her actions are lawful as long as s/he can articulate a “reasonable suspicion” of that status. It is simple enough for the officer to articulate suspicion by declaring that the individual is “furtive” or that s/he “is not forthright with answers” or “seems to be trying to conceal his appearance” or dozens of other cover-ups for “looked or sounded Mexican”. After all, it isn’t necessary to document this suspicion through an arrest, trial, and conviction for someone who is actually completely legal. It is enough to articulate it and include it in the detention or arrest report for whoever doesn’t “show papers”.
As others have pointed out, this is forecast to be a problem for citizens and legal aliens who invite reasonable suspicion by virtue of their appearance or their command of language. They expect to be, perhaps repeatedly depending on local circumstances, at least hassled if not detained unless they “carry papers”. In truth, they probably also expect to be released from custody, or detention, or suspicion, as soon as they make proof. And I’m sure they will be.
Bricker, you are surely right that the citizens and legal aliens who fail to carry documentation when caught up in such a street scenario will not be deported. Nor will their detentions be sustained, although they might actually be arrested and forced to spend a night or two in jail. And for such, we hope few, who may be further inconvenienced, even falsely prosecuted, I am confident that the other protections of law will indeed “work” for them. Eventually. Thereby satisfying your unbounded faith in the legal system.
But not satisfying my belief that our society should not require, or make necessary in effect if not directly by requirement, any lawful citizen to have to prove lawful status. For all of our history, this has been the default. To reverse this, to default to “prove yourself!”, is to me unconscionable.
Yes, why not? Cops already ask whatever questions they want, for example, during a traffic stop. Why in the world would this be out of bounds? Should they not be allowed to ask if you’ve been drinking either?
CannyDan, since you’re so convinced of the existence of this army of rogue cops, bent on harassing Mexicans, what stopped them prior to this law? What new power do you believe this law imparts? And don’t just assert it–what about this law encourages abuse?
And I’ll repeat, if the possibility for police abuse means a law is invalid, let’s scrap them all.
How do you get to this? Are you arguing that each and every time that society asks someone to prove lawful status that that person MUST be here unlawfully? That makes no sense at all. You make zero allowance for any suspicion of illegality, and that illegality to be shown to be incorrect after questioning.
How does this law “encourage” abuse? How does it “encourage” abuse any more than any other law?
Easy – it mandates racial harrassment.
Because, while not all cops racially profile, there are enough that do to harass people like DMC. This law makes those same cops responsible for investigating people’s legality.
How’s reasonable suspicion working out for DMC?
Would they risk being sued if they didn’t arrest a wallet theft victim before?
If they’re asking if you’ve been drinking because of your accent then yes they shouldn’t be allowed to. Assuming people are drunk because of their ethnicity really is a bigoted thing to do.
If they’re asking for some other reason then that has fuckall to do with this.
Now, you’re just doing a Der Trihs imitation. You may want to rethink that course.
I’m surprised the defenders of the law are trying to argue that it won’t lead to racial profiling, at least in the form of whose citizenship gets questioned. Even Bricker’s scenario of an interaction that complied with the Fourth Amendment to produce reasonable suspicion presupposes that cops are asking certain individuals about their immigration status, does it not? Who will they be asking this question of, in the imaginations of the law’s defenders? Everyone they encounter? I guess we’ll see. I’ll be shocked if the next time my lily ass is in Arizona I’m asked about my citizenship status.
The fact is, when you authorize ordinary police officers to attempt to identify people who engaged in conduct that usually occurred months if not years before any interaction with the officer, and the nature of the conduct in question in most cases leaves no evidence except inside the memory of the perpretrator, then the only way a cop will suspect the conduct occurred is by improper profiling based on the kind of person that commits the conduct.