Standing Up to Unwarranted Police Power

[groovedaddy]

What’s wrong with the police kicking in the door of an apartment after they smell marijuana drifting from it, if they knock hard, announce who they are and then hear what sounds like evidence being destroyed?

Some lower courts have said the answer is pretty much everything, because the police themselves created the pretext for barging in. But the Supreme Court ruled last week that such a warrantless search does not necessarily violate the Fourth Amendment, according to a vague new standard for determining whether the police violated the protection against unreasonable search, or threatened to do so.

They sent the case back to the Kentucky Supreme Court, which is going to have a hard time understanding the new standard — and in any case never resolved whether any evidence was, in fact, destroyed.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the lone dissenter in this strange decision, wisely warned that the new rule gave the police “a way routinely to dishonor” the constitutional requirement that they obtain a warrant, by manufacturing an exception to it. There are already exceptions for “exigent circumstances,” emergencies like an imminent risk of death or a danger evidence will be destroyed. But the urgency usually exists when the police arrive at the scene. In this case, the police caused the exigent circumstances themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/opinion/25wed2.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha211

[WingDinger]

1. Four corrupt cops did it to me a year ago. This was just to codify it.

[99th_Monkey]

2. Oh that's just my marijuana incense burning, no worries officers. ~nt

[Dawson Leery]

3. Note: the "conservative" judges ruled against the Constitution.

[NikRik]

They can lie,in fact its recomended they do !

Ever watch one of those reality shows when police interview a suspect and how they can confuse and make up things to try and get the suspect to admit to something they either did not do or point the finger at someone else. It seems once the police zoom in on someone they think is guilty of the crime,instead of still lookig somewhere else. They will lie twist the facts and do whatever they can to close the case.The method of training our police must be looked at and revamped so that really trying to find out the truth is more important then just closing another case ! IMHO
NikRik

[WAFS]

5. The police are not your friend!

Their job is to gather information to assist the prosecutor in getting a conviction. Regardless of what they might want us to think, they are NOT here to "protect and serve."

[ClosureHasCome]

6. True, but if a crazy guy is shooting up the town...

People would greatly miss the presence of cops.

[NikRik]

4. sorry double post

:-)