What’s to say it won’t, though? Are you saying that hispanics standing in front of Home Depot will not be hasseled over their citizenship once this law takes effect? I mean, they probably just won’t stand there anymore, but I’m damn confident that if they did, it would be taken as more than the reasonable suspicion this law calls for.
So I have to ignore the arguments of proponents of this bill because you say so. It seems to me that if at least one of the proponenets of this bill thinks that this bill might be interpreted to allow that sort of behaviour I am going tyo guess that some policeman somewhere in tehs tate of Arizona might interpret it similarly.
OK? Got it?
If you say this again without trying to address how you would prevent this and still enforce the law, I can only assume you are not interested addressing teh actual issue at debate here.
I don’t rule out the possibility that they might be hassled. But if they are, it will be police acting beyond any authority this law gives them. There is nothing in the law, or in any other existing law, that would sustain reasonable suspicion if the only two articulable facts are: (1) Hispanic, and (2) standing in front of Home Depot.
Now, remember: there is nothing that prevents police from walking up and asking such persons if they are citizens or legal residents. That was true in 1980, 1990, 2000, and today. That fact hasn’t been changed by the law. That is a consensual encounter. The citizen is free to disregard the police and go about his business.
Of course, if he chooses to answer, then his answer may create reasonable suspicion. Again, that’s nothing new; that’s how consensual encounters work.
So:
COP: Afternoon, gentlemen. How are things?
SUSPECT 1: Fine.
COP: Great! By the way, are you a US citizen or legal resident?
SUSPECT 1: … I am resident.
COP: Great! Say, do you have your green card with you, by chance?
SUSPECT 1: Uh… no, it’s at home.
NOW we have reasonable suspicion.
Help me out here: are you saying that there’s some nuanced legal difference, but absolutely no practical difference, between a “legit” way to achieve reasonable suspicion and just making it up?
Reminds me of probable cause to search a car. Police need it, so they ask, and if you say no it means you have something to hide. Probable cause.
Ok, what about this one:
COP: Afternoon, gentlemen. How are things?
SUSPECT 1: Si?.
COP: By the way, are you a US citizen or legal resident?
SUSPECT (Puerto Rican born and raised): Como? No hablo ingles, senor
Doe officer McDipshit have reasonable suspicion?
Or how about this one?
COP: Afternoon, gentlemen. How are things?
SUSPECT (Puerto Rican born and raised): Fine.
COP: By the way, are you a US citizen or legal resident?
SUSPECT 1: I’m not answering that.
keep in mind that Hiibel is inapposite for 2 reasons:
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This Arizona law, to my knowledge (haven’t read the statute) does not distinguish between “asking about your citizenship/immigration status after being reasonably suspected of a crime” (as was the case in the Nevada stop-and-identify statutes) and “we are going to terry stop you and ask you this question merely if the reasonable suspicion is due to your immigration status”
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I don’t think Hiibel would fairly be read to require that someone cough up their SSN - or any other potentially criminalizing information (i.e. what being forced to give an SSN would be vis-a-vis an illegal). The Nevada statute only required you to give up your name.
So what happens if he says, “I am a citizen” ?
Wait a minute, I’m missing something here. If the policeman asks if you are an American citizen, and you do not answer, but simply walk away, you’re cool. But if you answer, you put yourself at risk by complying with a policeman’s request?
So all our Hispanic friend need do is turn away from an armed policeman and simply stroll away, as casual as you please? Damn! I’m not just an American, I’m a Texan, and I’m not at all sure I’ve got the sand to do that.
Even if that is, technically, legally, the case, do you think in a million fucking years it’ll fly once?
The year I got my drivers license I had a crappy, 10 year old, $900 car. I got pulled over about 3 or 4 times a month. Maybe more. There were a couple times I got pulled over twice in the same day. Every single time they asked me if they could search my car and every single time I said no. Every single time they searched it anyway. They never found anything, and I was never ticketed for anything at all.
In the 13 years since then, I’ve driven new(er), clean cars, with glossy paint jobs, and I’ve been pulled over maybe 5 times, total.
One time I was with a friend who got pulled over, and the officer asked if he could search his car. My friend said no, and the police officer just acted like he didn’t hear him and started searching anyway. When my friend reiterated that he did not consent to a search, he yelled at us to “go stand over there” (by his partner.) I told his partner that my friend did not consent to a search, and he said the other officer was using a justitification called “search to arrest,” which basically meant: if he found something worthy of arrest, that would retroactively justify the search, and if he didn’t, well then we’ll all just go our separate ways and forget about this, ok?
I’m not a cop-hater by any means. I have close friends and family members in law enforcement, and I think most cops are great people who really want to serve and protect. But these (and other) first hand experiences have made me extremely skeptical of how vague laws that rely on the opinion of police officers are going to be applied. I didn’t realize it at the time, but when I look back, I think I was harassed for driving a crappy car (those numbers tell a hell of a tale), and I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that people are going to be harassed for having brown skin under this new law.
Its kind of like a cultural difference, has elements of a cultural difference, but then not quite. Its the difference between people who have felt the helpless outrage of being hassled for no good reason by a cop, and those who have not.
And often, people in the second group just don’t quite believe it. They don’t think you are lying, just that somehow you brought it on, perhaps without knowing, and besides, its so very, very rare…
Legal question, Bricker. In the context above, does “lawful” mean, merely, “legal”? Or does it mean more “in the course of a law enforcement person’s official capacity”? I take it as to be the latter. I think some of Dio’s comments before may have been due to his taking it as the former.
It has no legal definition in Arizona law, nor is it defined in the statute.
I figured it might be a common term used in statutes and other lawyerly creations, that’s why I asked Bricker. Am I right in that you were taking the word one way and others (well, me) taking it another?
I think we are taking it different ways, but I did a lot of searching for a legal definition and couldn’t find one. Bricker did agree with me when I said that it appeared that “legal contact” could constitute nothing more than a cop saying “hello.”
How is this different than any other law on the books. If a cop has reasonable suspicion that someone is possessing marijuana, then we would both agree that he could approach and ask questions of that person.
But, if the reason he suspects is because the person is Jamaican and listening to Bob Marley music, then that would be out of bounds for this and any other law.
In other words, a cop’s reasonable suspicion must be more than a racial stereotype.
I saw that. I was watching some lawyer on TV discussing this, and the way he was using the term (it wasn’t the point he was trying to make) brought to mind your exchange and lead me to my question to Bricker.
Let me remind you what I was talking about. Here is what you said:
I replied saying that the speculation wasn’t ill-founded because of past police actions. To be clear, I was not saying that a court should find this law unconstitutional based on future speculation of police actions. However, speculation by posters that this law will be applied in a racially discriminatory manner was not ill-founded.
I never claimed I was 100% certain this law would be applied in a discriminatory way. Past and current behavior of police forces is enough evidence to make speculation that their future actions will be discriminatory well-founded. Asking for certainty in order to consider speculation well-founded is pretty disingenuous.
Well, now, got to be really, really specific about your definitions with ol’ Bricker. If you don’t define your terms, he’ll do it for you. You start out arguing about search and seizure and five pages later you’re losing an argument about goldfish and can’t for the life of you remember how you got there.
Yes… except for the part where refusal can never ever ever serve as the basis for probable cause.
Now, I absolutely admit that police deliberately create the wrong impression – they’re trained to. They don’t ask, “Sir, do you consent to waive your constitutional rights and let me search your car, even though you don’t have to?”
No, they ask, “You have anything in there I should know about? No? Great, then you don’t mind if I look, right?”
But that has nothing to do with this law. That what they do now, that’s what they did last year, and it’s what they’ll do next year. We can have a separate thread complaining about that if you like, but it has nothing to do with this law.
(link opened but not yet read) Not your address, Bricker? I would have thought address. Cops ask for it all the time.
I read a bunch of articles. I read a couple lawyers saying it will be shot down.