And this happened in Arizona?
Oh.
Well, at least it happened because state officials were trying to enforce federal law.
Oh.
So we should oppose the Arizona law, and leave immigration to the feds, because… this is how the feds handle it?
In effect, yes, it does. No, you won’t find it in the text, but you will find it where it comes to matter.
Why you won’t acknowledge the effect of the law, and its intent, as distinct from its text, as being the heart of the issue is a mystery.
Bricker, in both of those examples tho, you have the cop asking about immigration/citizenship status BEFORE he has any reasonable suspicion.
I’m asking you: what criteria would prompt the question at all? In your scenarios, the cops are themselves asking questions in order to see if they raise any suspicion, without any prompting, visual, aural, or otherwise.
But in your first 2 scenarios, the ones with the passport, you had the cop using just the sight of a passport as enough to prompt the questioning. Then when I called you on that, you changed the scenario. :rolleyes:
So now are you positing that every officer will make this a routine question in every stop? Or will they just ask the brown people if they are legal citizens, residents or visitors to the country? If the former, then everyone needs papers on them at all times they are not inside their own home. If the latter, then we have racial profiling and discrimination, and the law should be done away with on that basis, IMO.
Right. In order to be fair, and implement this law without racial overtones, the cops’ guidelines will have to be: ask everyone.
No, no – the sight of the passport was what caused the officer to ask about the passport. In that, as in every scenario, I began the encounter with the understanding that every single person, no matter their appearance, would be asked this question.
Yes. Only I’m not just saying it “now;” I have said this since the beginning of the debate, back on April 26th, and many times since then.
They’ll ask everyone. And no one needs to carry ID; they can simply respond truthfully to the officer’s question and thus prevent any reasonable suspicion from developing.
You know what we need for this discussion. Actual numbers for how many times a cop justifiably asks a person for identification and they do not have an AZ id card or driver’s license. Even better would be how many of those are illegal immigrants that havn’t got their forged papers bacause I guaranty if a large percentage of those without an AZ (or legal presence state) ID stopped by police ARE illegal immigrants than the anti-SB1070 have lost a major part of their argument.
My apologies, but I haven’t participated nor read any of the other threads about the AZ immigration law. I didn’t have any idea that was your take on this. Perhaps now you understand some of my confusion and why I kept asking you for clarification.
OR they can simply give the answers that they know will legally deter any more questioning on the subject.
But once an officer has been lied to about that, he can now claim reasonable suspicion that any future encounters under similar circumstances are also going to involve lies, can’t he? In fact, I would say that the first time ANY cop is lied to, all cops could claim reasonable suspicion, and thus there are no answers that don’t raise reasonable suspicion.
And so we are back to everyone needing their papers. In America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. :dubious:
Can somebody translate this into English?
This is the kind of thing that’s feared: Puerto Rican man handed over to immigration authorities over suspicion of illegal immigrantness after lawful contact with local law enforcement.
Granted, this was in Illinois and it’s the facts as the affected person is relating them, but still. If state/local law enforcement authorities think “Hey, this guy might be illegal”, that “hey”-level of thought might be sufficient to deprive a citizen, or legal resident, of their liberty and maybe deportation.
And as the federal immigration authorities demonstrate in the cited case, a birth certificate and state-issued ID is not evidence of citizenship, unless a Congressman gets involved.
Yep. I should have been clearer in any event; I was operating under the rather ludicrous concept that what I have written anywhere is read by everyone. The apologies, again, are mine, and indeed it is clear how, missing that piece of information, every one of the scenarios I mentioned was confusing, since it appeared the cart was before the horse in each of them.
Yes.
But you could as well say that drug-related searches will seldom occur because the suspects will give the answers that they know will legally deter any more questioning on the subject.
But in real life, that simply doesn’t happen. I absolutely guarantee you that this past weekend, almost every state will have someone, and typically more than a few someones, arrested after a consent search of his car revealed contraband, and that the consent for the search was obtained in similar manner to the following:
COP: I pulled you over, sir, because my radar unit clocked you going 48 miles per hour, and the speed limit here is thirty miles per hour. Do you have your license and vehicle registration?
DRIVER: Here you go.
COP: Thank you. By the way, sir, do you have any drugs, guns, knives, rocket launchers in the back, there? Anything I should know about?
DRIVER: No.
COP: Great, then you won’t mind if I take a look?
DRIVER: Uhhh… I guess not.
It’s so simple! All the driver has to do is say, “I do mind,” or “I don’t give consent,” or even not say a word.
But despite years and years of informational pamphlets and videos about “Your Rights When Stopped By the Police,” there is no shortage of people that say “Yes,” despite knowing they have contraband. It happens. Anyone in law enforcement or criminal defense can attest to this.
No. He can’t claim that because a suspect on Tuesday night lied to him, the Wednesday afternoon suspect stopped in similar circumstances also lied to him. That’s an impermissible inference.
No. If nothing else, that sort of standard would eviscerate the reasonable suspicion standard. Again, the standard is that the officer must be able to point to specific, articulable facts in front of him to justify his suspicion.
Now, if he had a previous encounter with a specific individual, and encountered the same individual again, yes – he can point to his recollections about that individual, but even then, nothing so vague as, “He lied to me last time.” But if last time he was found to be a felon in possession of a firearm, the cop can use his knowledge of that person’s status as a felon to form reasonable suspicion if he sees him again in possession of a firearm. And this is true even though it’s certainly possible the guy in the meantime won reversal of his conviction on appeal, was awarded restoration of his civil rights, or is actually the original felon’s twin brother.
That exact same thing happened to me several years ago. I used to buy used industrial machinery in Houston and ship it to Mèxico. Outside of Corpus Cristi Texas I was stopped by the local cops on an Interstate highway.
The claimed I was driving at 68mph when in fact I had my cruise control set at 55.
Plus there were 3 cops. They finally admitted that it was a profile stop after they had detained me for something like 45 minutes asking all kinds of questions.
At the end one said IIRC “I’d like to call in a canine unit to check out your vehicle. Would you mind?”
And I answered “yes I would mind. Do I have a choice?”
Which pissed him off big time. He said “Yes you can say no and sign this warning ticket”
I said “Just show me where to sign”
They had absolutely no right to stop me but that isn’t a hindrance.
Land of the Free my ass
Wait, ask him if he’s a legal resident of the US first!
There are several things about that story that puzzle me.
The first is that the length of the detention must be reasonably related to the reason for the stop. So while courts have declined to draw any bright-line, “This is too long,” type rules, they have certainly recognized limits.
In US v. Place, 462 U.S. 696 (1983), the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a man who was reasonably suspected of having narcotics in his luggage. After the man refused to consent to a search of the luggage, police summoned a drug dog which alerted to the luggage. Based on that evidence, the police obtained a search warrant and found contraband.
However, ninety minutes elapsed between the seizure of the man and his luggage and the drug dog’s alert. In affirming the reversal of the conviction, the Court said:
So I have to wonder what these police were thinking – since they most likely could not have gotten a conviction after detaining you pointlessly for so long, it seems odd that they did.
Another puzzling thing was they never asked for anything on the vehicle, Mexican plated by the way.
They first asked for my driver’s license. Then they began asking me a ton of questions. Was I paying for my trip expenses with cash or credit card. Where was I going. What kind of business was I on. Why was I alone. Why hadn’t I flown instead of driving. How long would I be in the US. What type of machinery.
Then they used mirrors to check beneath the vehicle. Then they pounded on the sides of the vehicle. Then they huddled for awhile talking between themselves. Then one cop, a chicano tried to be my friend by speaking to me in terrible Spanish. During this time the other 2 were again checking the van. Then there were more questions. Why didn’t I look Mexican. They took their time between interrogating me by speaking among themselves. Maybe they thought I would try to run or something. It was getting chilly as it was near sundown and I asked if I could get my jacket they told me to “hang tight”.
In this time is when the chicano told me they were working on drug interdiction and I fit the profile. I remeber telling him that harassing innocent people wasn’t a great way to catch drug runners. That is when the head guy asked to bring in the dogs.
Most likely they were hoping to find you in possession of either drugs or cash. Drugs gets them a gold star on their record, and cash they get to keep, usually.
ETA: The department would keep the cash, not the individual officers (although I wouldn’t be surprised if that has happened as well).
Undoubtedly that is what they were looking for. And I was carrying an amount of cash that most Americans don’t. I had hidden it under the carpeting inside the van. Ironically at a checkpoint here in Mèxico it was discovered by one of our anti-drug agents. He thought hiding it was a smart thing to do.
As far as I am concerned that was none of the police in Texas business and I certainly wasn’t going to tell them I had it. It was under the 10,000usd limit that they ask about when crossing the border. There was nothing illegitimate in anything I was doing. Actually the cops were the ones ignoring the law.
Cite for the proposition that cash found is “usually” kept?
Surely you’ve been closely following the Tenaha, TX case. Bricker? Surely you’ve read about how much of the forfeited cash and property was returned to it’s rightful owner?
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/chi-texas-profiling_wittmar10,0,5349218.story
I found one story about 1 person who had to go thru a lawsuit to get his money back,
and he’s the only person I found that had his [del]robbery[/del]roadside asset forfeiture overturned.
Can you show me any evidence that my statement is wrong?
Let’s not be distracted.
**CBEscapee **describes exactly what I have argued in this and perhaps the other thread. The issue is not one of evidence being eventually sustained in court. The issue is the nature of the stop itself. Police have tremendous actual power over civilians in the field. As all those “Your condensed civil rights” cards emphasize, while you shouldn’t incriminate yourself, you also are foolish to fail to cooperate. So when **CBEscapee **is stopped, and treated in a manner that even you **Bricker **will surely agree would have difficulty withstanding legal challenge (at least provided the actual facts were as represented) he had no immediate recourse. Declaring that the cops “just can’t do this!” or otherwise “demanding his rights” would be highly unlikely to have benefited him.
Similarly, once the encounter was over and he was released, what could he possibly have gained by making some kind of report to higher police authorities? He was happy that his legitimate business wasn’t even further impeded, and quite reasonably wanted to simply get on with his life.
Given the reality that cops can make any encounter a real pain for the citizen, there is no assurance that stops under this new AZ law will be handled any better than other encounters. Cops press, hoping to cause a reaction that will incriminate. How hard they press, and how long, and in exactly what way depends on many factors, almost none of which are under the control of the civilian. The detention will last as long as the cop wants it to, regardless of the lack of actual incriminating evidence. The detainee, even if engaged in fully legitimate pursuits, is most unlikely to complain to a higher authority after release. And even if a complaint was lodged, what higher authority is going to conclude that an officer kept the detainee “too long” or made unreasonable demands? It becomes he said, he said, and the cop’s word takes precedence (unless somebody has a videotape).
So in effect, if not by declaration, this law will require every citizen (or every ‘prudent’ citizen, if you prefer) to carry identifying papers at all times. The alternative is to risk being taken into custody and detained until proof of citizenship or legal presence can be provided.
Really, I, citizen, should not have to be concerned about this when I put on sweats and walk to the corner park for a pickup game. Or if I’m running around the street late at night, searching for my lost cat. A citizen of this country should not default to “carry papers”. But if I lived in AZ I’d need to.
So Bricker, do you honestly feel that if the Texas police had found my $8000 cash they wouldn’t have confiscated it? After all they lied about me speeding. Which makes them dishonest. Do you think a Mexican, although legally present in the US, would have been able to convince a judge that 3 of Corpus Cristi police were lying? The cops would have lied under oath and gotten away with it.
My guess is that if you’re right it won’t be because the law doesn’t lend itself to abuses but because it’s a law that doesn’t get enforced. Right now it’s a hot button issue, but if the economy improves I think it’ll fade into the background.