Is there a legal thought or term for law enforcement arresting someone for an activity because it is associated with and used as justification to prevent or deter another activity?
Let me explain with two examples:
My city doesn’t like homeless people in the parks, but they can’t just say “we are going to get rid of homeless people in the parks” because that wouldn’t be socially acceptable. So they made drinking illegal in the parks as a way to solve the problem. I’m convinced the city wouldn’t care about ‘nice’ people having a glass of wine at a picnic, but this is an effective way to remove homeless people without having to say ‘we don’t like homeless in the park’.
California fish and game spend a lot of effort irradicating pot plots and arresting people tending the plots. But the show I’m watching, goes out of their way to emphasize the reason why they are focusing on pot growers is because of the environmental damage they do. The officers comment that the growers destroy the environment and kill wildlife as the motivation to make the arrests…not pot growing per se as the reason for the arrests.
Making arrests on pretenses, basically. There are all sorts of criminal laws that a sensible cop would never arrest Joe Timeclock for but would use as a pretense to get Harry Homeless off the street corner and away from public view.
Isn’t that essentially why there are laws again loitering? No one really cares if someone they like is loafing about, but it’s a great fallback if you need to 86 an generic undesirable.
The Speech or Debate Clausewas put in the Constitution to prevent this from happening to members of congress. In that case the presumption is that the member of congress is not about to or has not engaged in illegal activity.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” ~ Anatole France
Pretext. And it has been held nice and legal by the Supreme Court under the 4th amendment. If a protected class (race, sex, etc.) is implicated by this pretext there might by a 14th amendment suit for damages, but the criminal conviction stands.
The only way that this doesn’t apply is that if the law has such an obvious (racial, sexual) component, and there is no other rational purpose for the law as to make it invalid on its face. (e.g. We are not saying that blacks can’t be in the park. We are just saying that ALL people with a certain level of melanin in their skin cells can’t be in the park under the idea of a state interest in sunburn protection because people with high melanin levels might encourage those with low melanin levels not to wear sunblock)