"We now know — beyond any doubt — that minority drivers are targeted for humiliating, degrading roadside searches even though there is no evidence that they have broken any laws." That's how Harvey M. Grossman, Legal Director of the Illinois ACLU interprets recent stats prepared by the Northwestern University Center for Public Safety for the Illinois Department of Transportation. According to the report, in 2006, Illinois police officers asked 0.68% of white drivers for consent to search their car during traffic stops, compared to 2.04% of minority drivers. The ACLU wants to redress this balance by eliminating ALL consent searches (i.e. a police request for a search despite a lack of probable cause or reasonable suspicion of criminal activity). "State police forces in California and New Jersey have ended the practice of conducting consent searches," Grossman said. "The Illinois General Assembly should examine this data and move quickly to bar the practice in our state."
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How about people regardless of race simply exercise their rights and simply not give their consent to a search. That would solve the problem.
Raw numbers instead of percentage:
There are 9,125,471 white people and 3,058,806 non-white people in Illinois as of 2000 census. That gives us 6205320 white people and 6239964 other people searched.
In ’96 an officer requested to search the vehicle I was in after being pulled over for driving without head lights on. I don’t really see a problem with it. We could have always said no. They were really more nervous about the possibility of me hiding a weapon under my large jacket.
I know officers target cars with tinted front windows. They are illegal after all. I want to see the demographics of who owns cars with tinted windows in Illinois.
Recent story of an officer pulling over a car with tinted windows for a search.
Reference
I remember a story from a few years ago dealing with speeding on the New Jersey Turnpike. The controversy was that black drivers were getting more tickets, even though they represented a small percentage of the drivers.
Of course, the ACLU and other organizations became involved. Finally, radar cameras were put up, and it was discovered that, lo and behold, black drivers DID account for a greater percentage of speeding violations than whites, even though they were a lower percentage of the population.
As it turned out, there was NO racial profiling, at least in this case.
We aren’t talking about the number of speeding tickets here, we are talking about police who decide for whatever reason to search a car they have pulled over. The stats in the post claim that minorities that were pulled over were 3x more likely to asked to be searched without cause than whites that were pulled over. This has nothing to do with the actual number of minorities pulled over.
However, even if they get rid of the consent searches what is to stop them from searching minorities and calling it probable cause? Is having tinted front windows probable cause for a search? Even without a search it is already apparent they did something illegal, so I wonder if that kind of thing was excluded from these stats.
Policemen I know investigate only citizens requiring SPF-15 sunscreen or higher.
This offers appealing life and career benefits including escaping the clutches of media crusaders, rights zealots, unscrupulous lawyers and politicians, maintaining an unblemished service record, accelerating promotions, avoiding a personal line of duty funeral, and accruing a yummy civil service pension.
There is no downside except for crime victims, but who gives a damn about them?
“Raw numbers instead of percentage:
There are 9,125,471 white people and 3,058,806 non-white people in Illinois as of 2000 census. That gives us 6,205,320 white people and 6,239,964 other people searched.”
You lost me on this…there were really 12 million folks searched? :)
I think the overall numbers of the article are a little misleading. 3 times more likely to be searched sounds huge…but 3 times more likely at .68% isn’t really very much. If my car gets searched every 50 times I get pulled over versus every 150 times…I think I deduce that I simply need to drive better to get pulled over less.
theSane missed a couple decimal points. Divide each of his numbers by 100 to get the real number of people searched (or at least an estimate… who knows what percent of people searched were from out of state).
TexasAg03: got a reference? Googling produces a bunch of evidence for humans doing racial profiling on the NJ Turnpike, but nothing that discusses impartial radar camera results.
The first poster has it spot on. You wouldn’t believe how many dumb criminals there are out there who allow a consent search knowing they have drugs/unlicensed firearms/etc in the trunk. If you just say no to a consent search, none of this would be a problem. If the police are going to search your car anyway, saying no won’t stop them. Check the Fourth Amendment:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Consent searches are an exception. If the police improperly search your car, it will (should) come out in court. Doing an end run around this important exception to the Fourth will hamper law enforcement immeasurably.
If racial profiling is the problem, let’s deal with that separate from the issue of “abuse” of consent searches. If minorities are breaking the law at higher rates, that is not law enforcement’s problem. But if the problem is people don’t like consent searches because they are too scared to say no, maybe if people would know their Constitutional rights in the first place we wouldn’t have to change our laws for political reasons so often.
Sherman: The problem is that not everyone is equally adept at asserting their rights, and the police are trained to use a combination of persuasion along with veiled threats to get people to consent.
But just because people aren’t adept or knowledgeable about asserting their rights doesn’t mean they don’t have those rights. Searches should be done based on probable cause. Period. No PC = No search.
One reason minorities mistrust the police is that they see this kind of velvet-glove coercion go on all the time.
From personal experience, I would think that age may be even more of a factor than race…”Agial Profiling”?
Between 16-18 years old in a small city containing a city police, county sheriff, and state trooper post all within a 2 mile radius I was pulled over an average of once a month. They were very nitpicky about grey-area offenses – rolling stops, yellow lights, and noise level from car stereos – because they were all competing for the same small group of teenage violaters.
Needless to say, I was threatened with searches once in a while and would always respond that I’ll allow a search on the condition that when they finished, everything they’ve moved must be put back in exactly the way they found it.
I was never searched once.
Here are some statistics from an article in a past issue of the City Journal that touches upon this subject:
Do minorities commit more of the kinds of traffic violations that police target? This is a taboo question among the racial profiling crowd; to ask it is to reveal one’s racism. No one has studied it. But some evidence suggests that it may be the case. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that blacks were 10 percent of drivers nationally, 13 percent of drivers in fatal accidents, and 16 percent of drivers in injury accidents. (Lower rates of seat-belt use may contribute to these numbers.) Random national surveys of drivers on weekend nights in 1973, 1986, and 1996 found that blacks were more likely to fail breathalyzer tests than whites. In Illinois, blacks have a higher motorist fatality rate than whites. Blacks in one New Jersey study were 23 percent of all drivers arrested at the scene of an accident for driving drunk, though only 13.5 percent of highway users. In San Diego, blacks have more accidents than their population figures would predict. Hispanics get in a disproportionate number of accidents nationally.
Martin If you waive your right you waive your rights. Police have a right to ask.
Where I work we have a federal law enforcement presence. If you were asked any questions by the law enforcement officials one had a right to ask for a union steward or a lawyer, but if you did not ask you waived that right. Thats per the supreme court.
Yeah greenb1ood I use to get pulled over all the time on routine bs when I was young, cops for whatever reason seem to do that.
greenb1ood, next time they want to search, put on your best lisp and tell them that they must search EVRYTHING and give ’em a wink.
cgraham:
greenb1ood, next time they want to search, put on your best lisp and tell them that they must search EVRYTHING and give ‘em a wink.
That could backfire. From what I’ve heard, a body cavity search isn’t that much fun. Well for most of us, anyway.
And you never know how much THEY might enjoy it. After one particularly … uh … enthusiastic patdown search at the Atlanta airport security checkpoint, I felt like I should have asked the TSA guy for a cigarette.
Carroll v. United States 267 U.S. 132 (1925). The Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment permitted federal officers to search an automobile without first obtaining a warrant.
California v. Carney 471 U.S 386 (1985) Probable cause is all that is needed to execute a search of a vehicle.
The officer may be amused by your fourth amendment reference, but the best defense may be to not provide a reason for a consent request in the first place.
I think one of the problems here is that the possible threats aren’t even that ‘veiled’. A police officer who has just pulled you over gets to decide whether or not to actually cite you. Everyone knows, or believes, that if they annoy the officer, they’re more likely to get that ticket (and the large bill). hence, they may comply with a consent search. it’s a form of coercion caused by the fact that the police have the leeway to decide your punishment.
I think this is reason enough to eliminate the consent searches. not to mention being a good argument for being a little more explicit about what is/isn’t ticketable.
@Sherman Lin: How about people regardless of race simply exercise their rights and simply not give their consent to a search. That would solve the problem.
That would require people knowing their 4th amendment rights. With the way the schools are now, that ain’t gonna happen.
@theSane: In ‘96 an officer requested to search the vehicle I was in after being pulled over for driving without head lights on. I don’t really see a problem with it.
Are you kidding? You have a right to privacy and there is no reason to let an agent of the government go poking around looking for stuff. All bets are off if you give the officer probable cause to suspect you’re doing something illegal, but an innocent civilian traveling along the highway should in no way consent to a search.
Sherman: Of course you are right but that’s beside the point. Police are trained to overcome objections, using various forms of intimidation, and implying (though not saying) that the person doesn’t really have a right to refuse.
IOW, police are allowed to take advantage of a person’s ignorance, even if they know of it. While that may not be unconstitutional, it’s certainly not good police work because it throws up a wall of mistrust between the police and the people who (remember) they are sworn to serve and protect.
SDWINFLA: You’re talking apples and oranges. Consent searches are a completely different animal from PC searches. PC searches are legal and require absolutely no consent or cooperation at all. An officer can simply state that he has PC to search. At that time, he can search. If the driver or passengers get in the way of the officers search, he can cuff them and put them in his car while he conducts the search. No consent required. If contraband is found and the driver is arrested, he can later challenge the PC in court. If the court says the officer did not have PC then the results of the search are suppressed under the exclusionary rule.
Now, put yourself in the position of a person stopped by the side of the road. The officer can imply that he has PC to search, when in fact he does not. He can tell you that if he has PC he does not need your consent, so why not just consent and let him search?
Notice the verbal sleight of hand: If the officer conducts the search and then finds evidence of a crime, the driver cannot challenge the PC of the search (which may never have been present in the first place) because the search was not done as a PC search, it was done as a consent search.
While the courts have started to crack down on this type of behavior, it’s more common than most people might think, and IMO it’s just wrong.
“Now, put yourself in the position of a person stopped by the side of the road. The officer can imply that he has PC to search, when in fact he does not. He can tell you that if he has PC he does not need your consent, so why not just consent and let him search?
Notice the verbal sleight of hand: If the officer conducts the search and then finds evidence of a crime, the driver cannot challenge the PC of the search (which may never have been present in the first place) because the search was not done as a PC search, it was done as a consent search. “
Mr. Albright, you nailed it. It’s a similar (but much more vicious) hand sleight that has led to coerced confessions in criminal matters. “Your buddy is gonna talk. Go ahead and confess, we’ll cut a deal, blah, blah, blah.”
On that note, perhaps a few cops have spent time selling folks overpriced gap insurance?