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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   23702 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 2026

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Stealing this from @ToaKraka in the FF thread:

A 911 call is made regarding a robbery perpetrated at gunpoint by three juvenile males in black clothing. One mile away from the location of the reported robbery, the responding officers find two juvenile males—one in all black, and another, KC, wearing a black shirt and mask and gray pants. The officers pull over alongside the juveniles and start walking toward them while shining a flashlight at them. KC starts walking away. An officer steps in front of KC, blocking his path, and asks him what's in his waistband. KC discards the object in his waistband (a gun) and runs away, but is quickly apprehended. He is charged with various delinquencies.

The trial judge grants KC's motion to suppress the evidence. The officers fully detained him, rather than casually speaking with him, when they shined a flashlight on him and blocked his path; and they did not have reasonable suspicion to detain him, since the description given in the 911 call was vague and KC didn't even match it. (The caller didn't even provide a direction in which the assailants fled. Did the officers have the power to detain all juvenile males wearing a single article of black clothing within a one-mile radius of the robbery? No.)

Our own BJ Campbell wrote that this is one of the important differences between the US and Western Europe. A German or British police officer would have the power to detain all juvenile males wearing a single article of black clothing within a one-mile radius of the robbery and physical evidence wouldn't be suppressed even if obtained without following the proper trail of investigation.

Is the USA shooting itself in the foot there? What will it lose if it changes its legal norms to lower the bar on probable cause and evidence suppression?

In the same vein, we have this comedy skit.

[Two Philadelphia police officers] were traveling… in a marked patrol car when they observed Appellant standing on the sidewalk with the handle of a firearm “printing through his T-shirt”. Officer Heeney stopped the car and Officer Moore asked Appellant “if he had a permit to carry”. Appellant responded, “Carry what?” Officer Moore replied, “What’s in the front?” Appellant began to reach in his left pocket and stated, “My keys.” Officer Moore asked again, “No, what’s in the front?” Appellant said, “I don’t want no trouble, I’m sorry, officer.” Officer Moore questioned Appellant, “Do you have a permit or not?” Appellant replied, “I’m not carrying anything.” Officer Moore exited the vehicle, and Appellant began to walk away and put his left arm in front of his body. Officer Moore commanded Appellant not to run, approached him, and grabbed a firearm out of Appellant’s front waistband. Officer Moore again asked Appellant if he had a permit to carry. Appellant told Officer Moore that he had it in his vehicle, and that it was not on his person. Officer Moore conducted a National Crime Information Center (“NCIC”) search and learned that Appellant did not have a license to carry a firearm. Officer Moore arrested Appellant and charged Appellant with Firearms Not to be Carried Without a License and Carrying Firearms on Public Streets in Philadelphia.

Officer Moore testified that he has been a police officer for seven years on the same assignment in the 22nd District, he has made over 150 arrests, he has made at least five firearms arrests in a two-block span of the area where he arrested Appellant, he has made a few dozen arrests in the same area, and the area is violent with numerous shootings and has a police car assigned there around the clock due to gun violence. Officer Moore further testified that since he has been a Philadelphia police officer he has encountered “more than 50, maybe more than 100” individuals who have lawfully carried firearms and has “never had somebody that lawfully carried a gun tell me that he wasn’t carrying anything when I asked them if they had a permit when I could clearly see he had a gun”. Officer Moore explained that he has encountered “at least 20” people who have said that they’re not carrying anything when they are clearly carrying a firearm “and they all ended in arrests” because they did not have a license to carry.

Under state precedent (concurrences: 1 2), following federal precedent, the mere presence of a concealed gun does not give rise to reasonable suspicion that a law is being broken. If upon seeing the gun the officer had immediately performed an investigative detention, then the evidence would have been suppressed. However, in this case the officer started with a "mere encounter", and the man's blatant lies in response to the officer's questions, in addition to the man's abortive flight and the officer's personal knowledge of the area's high crime rate, then gave rise to reasonable suspicion under which the officer could conduct an "investigative detention" (telling the man to stop and pulling the gun out of the man's waistband).

(I wanted to post this in the next Friday Fun Thread. But it's too relevant to this culture-war-thread top-level post for me to post it there. Alas…)

oWo what's this? Do you have a permit to carry or are you just happy to see me?

The US is more interested in 'freedom theater' than actually running the country.

The US has 5x the violent crime rate of Europe. Bipartisan policy on crime should be priority #1. But, narrow fixations on founding myths and the its original sin leads to weird stances on racist-optics of policing, the 2nd amendment, the jury system and more.

I call it theater because the high crime rate is a leading contributor to violence faced by black people. Reducing it, even by racist means, will reduce the suffering of black people. Hobbyist gun-owners face gun-abolition threats from Dems precisely because 2nd amendment nuts oppose sensible limitations on mentally ill and untrained gun-owners. The judicial system of life-time justice appointments and social-media-blinded juries is held up as sacred, all while it was clearly designed for a bygone era.

With that I wade in the main question-

A German or British police officer would have the power to detain all juvenile males wearing a single article of black clothing within a one-mile radius of the robbery and physical evidence wouldn't be suppressed even if obtained without following the proper trail of investigation.

Is the USA shooting itself in the foot there? What will it lose if it changes its legal norms to lower the bar on probable cause and evidence suppression?

That's because of the precedent set by European police officers. They don't have a reputation for suicide-by-cop. They don't have a reputation for turning off body-cams at suspicious times. They don't have a reputation for shady protection schemes for rotten-apple police-officers. If American police want the right to stop random strangers, they must establish accountability and through it, build public trust.

It's funny. My favorite quote of the last 10 years comes from Kamala Harris of all people. "You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you".

That's all it is. The legal norms were established in a different era with different assumptions. You cannot ask a question about the suitable legal norms for today without discussing why we got here in the first place.

It is unfashionably 'woke' to weigh history & context over material facts. But the pendulum has swung too far. Legal norms don't exist in isolation. A discussion on the powers owed to law enforcement must start with the local relationship of the people with their local law-enforcement. To change the norms, one must change their hostile relationship with the populace first. Law enforcement must make the first people offering because 1. they have monopoly over violence and 2. they are an organized entity unlike the populace which isn't a single entity.

So, I am going to do the annoying thing and counter a question with a question.

What concessions can law enforcement offer to civilians that would convince them to give up valuable protections. Protections that maintain the current balance of power in court ?

Hobbyist gun-owners face gun-abolition threats from Dems precisely because 2nd amendment nuts oppose sensible limitations on mentally ill and untrained gun-owners.

Name a sensible limitation on mentally-ill and untrained owners.

That's because of the precedent set by European police officers. They don't have a reputation for suicide-by-cop. They don't have a reputation for turning off body-cams at suspicious times. They don't have a reputation for shady protection schemes for rotten-apple police-officers. If American police want the right to stop random strangers, they must establish accountability and through it, build public trust.

This doesn't make any sense. Sometimes, rarely, crazy people in the US attack the police and force the police to shoot them, therefore the police need to build enough trust with the public to do basic policing work?

American police already have the right to stop random strangers. What they can and cannot do is defined by the law. It has nothing to do with public trust or accountability or context. This is also the reason why those people could be stopped in Germany or the UK - because the laws are different. Not because the public trusts the police more.

Hobbyist gun-owners face gun-abolition threats from Dems precisely because 2nd amendment nuts oppose sensible limitations on mentally ill and untrained gun-owners.

The people pushing those limits are not sensible, will not restrict themselves to the mentally ill, and openly talk about how this is a wedge to eventually disarm the population entirely. Perhaps your contempt would be better directed at the controllers, to encourage them to learn literally anything about how guns work and how people use them.

He is charged with various delinquencies.

That makes it sound like he was not linked to the robbery at all, if they could make the robbery stick then "various delinquencies" would be a weird way to phrase it.

My take (which is not the position of US law, or German law) is the following: if they had found their robber, they should keep the evidence -- stopping people within a mile of a crime scene does not seem so disproportional that we want to squash the evidence to limit the invasion of privacy. If instead they had DNA tested everyone within the state, that would be different.

On the other hand, I do not want cops to go on a fishing trip any time some crime is committed somewhere. So if they got him for drug possession instead, I would be fine with suppressing the evidence. The justice system should not depend on police getting lucky and catching delinquents while having probable cause for some totally unrelated crime, it just gives cops bad incentives ("please keep your description of the suspect as vague as possible so we can stop and frisk the maximum amount of people").

My understanding is that the standard in the US is different than what I propose, either the cops had PC, in which case any evidence is admissible even if totally unrelated to the PC, or they had not, in which case the evidence is inadmissible even if it is just what they were searching for.

Is the USA shooting itself in the foot there? What will it lose if it changes its legal norms to lower the bar on probable cause and evidence suppression?

I think the strong evidence rules are a brilliant tool to align law enforcement to the law.

The natural incentives of cops is catching criminals. Nobody will celebrate a PD for not conducting illegal searches. Good luck trying to have a cop get punished through disciplinary or judicial measures for an illegal invasion like making you open the trunk of your car. Even getting fired would not be enough to deter cops from illegal behavior in sufficiently high profile cases, anyone who caught a serial killer through an illegal search and got fired for their trouble would be celebrated as a martyr and land a cushy private sector job. And securing any criminal conviction against cops typically involves them being filmed from multiple angles killing someone and subsequent race riots.

So instead, you hit them where it hurts, and let criminals go free if their procedural rights were violated. Suddenly the cop who cut procedural corners to catch a criminal is no longer the hero who worked creatively around a broken system, but the fuckwit whose inability to follow SOP ruined an investigation.

Sure, you lose a few criminal convictions, but if you want to maximize catching criminals, you do not want civil liberties in the first place.

I think you've misunderstood the motivation for the doctrine -- it's not "invasion of privacy" but here the court found (debatably, sure) that the officer violated the suspect's physical person. The key part being that the suspect was (in the eyes of the court) physically seized at the moment he was (arguably) not free to leave.

You're free to say that doesn't change your opinion on the ultimate resolution. Maybe it shouldn't, I really don't know.

Rights versus safety is despite the Ben Franklin quote, not necessarily opposed. There are two ways that I can take your freedom. The first one is the government arresting people arbitrarily and framing them for crimes. The other is allowing crime to go on and get bad enough that ordinary citizens are unable to go about their lives. The second becomes even worse if the government also limits how a citizen can protect himself from crime. When that happens, the citizens are deprived of their rights just as surely as if the government had taken them.

Sure, you lose a few criminal convictions, but if you want to maximize catching criminals, you do not want civil liberties in the first place.

I don't think maximizing catching criminals is the goal, it's minimizing the crime rate. Ideally, policies should be structured in a way that deters people from committing crimes in the first place. If the cop that cut procedural corners to catch a criminal is automatically fired, then you can both eat your cake (the crime is solved) and have it, too (other cops are deterred from doing the same, unless they think solving this specific crime is worth it).

He is charged with various delinquencies.

That makes it sound like he was not linked to the robbery at all

Correct. The opinion says that he was charged only with "firearm violations and related offenses"—presumably something like carrying without a license, carrying while underage, etc.

A German or British police officer would have the power to detain all juvenile males wearing a single article of black clothing within a one-mile radius of the robbery

I've read a lot of crime books in my life, and one of the things that's always interested me is suspect descriptions and how useful they are. I've read about cases where police failed to solve the crime because they seemed to focus on a description that wasn't very good, and others where they didn't solve the crime and dismissed good descriptions as being too vague. I've also seen authors excoriate police departments for not focusing on suspects who matched relatively vague descriptions. So during my time at the DMV I also thought about a rubric that could be used to categorize suspect descriptions.

  • A Level 1 Description would be one that eliminates 90–99% of the population. This may seem high, but anything less than that isn't really even a description. If the suspect is described as a black female, well, only 12–14% of the population is black, and about half of them are female, so that eliminates 93% of the population right there. If the suspect is described as a young, tall, white male, 40–45% of the population is white males, eliminating children and anyone too old to be reasonably described as young and you cut that in half, and cut it in half again to get rid of anyone shorter than average height, and you're down to 10%. These kinds of descriptions are of little to no use in a police investigation and are completely worthless in a trial.

  • A Level 2 Description is one that eliminates 99–99.9% of the population. These can be of some use in an investigation but are of little to no use in a trial. Suppose the man running from the scene was described as an African American teenager, short and extremely overweight. Take the 7% who are black men, teenagers being about 20% of them, divide by half again to get people shorter then average, then in half again to get anyone plausibly described as overweight (always use the larger numbers), and we're in that 0.1–1% range. But in most places there are going to be entirely too many short, black, overweight teenage boys for police to identify and question them all.

  • A Level 3 Description would eliminate 99.9–99.99% of the population, but still include between one person in a thousand and one in ten thousand. To give a few examples:

    • Caucasian male, age 50 to 55, tall, athletic, blue eyes, grey hair, driving an older model pickup.
    • Caucasian female, 20–23 years old, brown hair and eyes, about 5'7", large breasts, extremely good looking, piercing in the nose and tattoo on the lower back.
    • Hispanic female, 45 to 50, extremely short, somewhat overweight, perhaps 4'11" and 130 pounds, bushy eyebrows, wears glasses, blue painted fingernails.

    These kinds of descriptions are of value to police and may play some role in a trial, but no one could be reasonably convicted of a crime based on them. It's also worth noting here that some of the attributes are changeable, and this needs to factor into the analysis as well.

  • A Level 4 Description would eliminate 99.99–99.999% of the population, but still probably include a few people in any decent sized metro:

    • Caucasian male, 40–45 years old, between 5'2" and 5'5", thin, long, sandy-colored hair, large glasses, large square face, smokes cigarettes, looks a little like John Denver.
    • African-American male in his 20s, average height, muscular build, shaved head, several gold teeth, gold earring in left ear, prominent scar on neck. Very deep voice with trace of a Jamaican accent.

    If you match a description of this specificity you should expect the police to come to your door, but it still wouldn't be enough to convict absent other information.

  • A Level 5 description would exclude 99.999% of the population or more, aka 1 person in 100,000 or less. This is the point where you stop combining combinations of independent variables that belong to lots of people and zero in on very specific attributes that are themselves fairly unique: A missing finger, a particular tattoo, one green nipple, etc. At this level you're on the defensive; if you match a Level 5 Description, you're going to need an alibi.

  • A Level 6 description is a description that applies to only one person: Fingerprints, DNA, being recognized by someone who knows you. A Level 6 Description is an identification.

The above is taken from an award-winning post I did about a year ago when something similar came up. I apologize for the long quote, but I omitted the formatting to make it less annoying. Anyway, it makes the point. If 20% of the population can be reasonably described as juvenile, and another 20% is wearing at least one article of black clothing, that description describes 4% of the population, making it a Level 1 description. If the suspect had simply been described as an Asian male, about 6% of the US population is Asian, about half of them men. Would it be reasonable to round up and detain all Asian men based on this description? Remember that the statistical probability of one of these being the perp are about 25% higher than a random juvenile with an article of black clothing.

And then you have to consider the area. This isn't some rural village. It isn't even some backalley urban ghetto. The robbery took place in Chinatown in Philadelphia, which is just outside of Center City. A one mile radius from here includes an estimated 57,479 people, likely more as it includes some of the most visited parts of Philadelphia on a Saturday night. One can expect there to be approximately 2,300 people within a one-mile radius of the robbery who fit the description. In my estimation, police need to get at least to Level 3 before a court will determine that, in similar circumstances, there is reasonable suspicion sufficient to allow an investigative detention, and at least Level 4 before you can start talking about a custodial interrogation.

If 20% of the population can be reasonably described as juvenile, and another 20% is wearing at least one article of black clothing, that description describes 4% of the population, making it a Level 1 description.

What fraction are carrying a (at the time only presumed) gun in their waistband? And at that point, can the cops ditch the description altogether and detain them regardless of any connection with a reported crime?

Unless "An officer steps in front of KC, blocking his path, and asks him what's in his waistband." is hiding a substantial gap between those events, I'd call it a reasonable detention.

Ditching the gun was a serious crime. Carrying it may well not be.

I know. Things which "may well not be" crimes can A) match him to the description more exactly, or B) provide justification on their own, which is what I was pointing out.

I don't think throwing a gun away is a crime. In contrast, it definitely is illegal for a juvenile to carry a gun, and carrying without a license is another crime.

I don't think throwing a gun away is a crime.

Throwing a gun away is negligent handling of it. What if someone who's not allowed to have it (child, felon, mentally ill person) picks it up?

My cursory searching does not reveal any law saying that discarding a gun is illegal in Pennsylvania. I guess your suggestion that it might count as reckless endangerment of, or unlicensed transfer to, whoever eventually picks it up isn't totally unreasonable, but IMO it still is a pretty big stretch.

'Pulling it out of your waistband' almost certainly is a technical violation of the law around presentation or brandishing.

I fail to see how throwing a gun away counts as directly menacing or endangering anyone nearby, especially with modern safety mechanisms that prevent the gun from going off when it hits the ground. (It appears that Pennsylvania does not have a specific law against "brandishing".)

The problem is that the cop didn't notice the gun until after he initiated the detention. If the detention were initiated based on his seeing the gun, there would be reasonable suspicion to retain and there wouldn't be a problem. Hence why the state tried to argue that it wasn't a detention.

If the detention were initiated based on his seeing the gun,

That was my assumption. He didn't mention the gun until after he initiated the detention, but it reads like he noticed it after the contact but before the detention.

It seems to me the problem with law is its universality. We need hard paternalism for the bottom 10% and classic liberalism with protections for everyone else

We kind of have that with parole eh? Parolees can be searched for far less than the rest of us.

Hypothetical: you're now in the bottom 10%. How do you live differently under hard paternalism? How do you qualify to leave the bottom 10%?

I interpret "bottom 10%" as being unable to follow obvious rules like no assault or theft (without a reasonable excuse like self-defense or genuine need), especially breaking the same rule multiple times, with strong evidence. Maybe this isn't actually 10% or what the parent implied, but it's my criteria for facing the real law, like "hard paternalism".

I'm sympathetic even to these people, and feel bad arguing for their harm. But society must do something or (there's overwhelming evidence) more people will suffer. And the only way I can imagine myself in their shoes is after brain damage that would make present me want to restrain future me ahead of time (similar to how I may prefer euthanasia over decades of dementia).

How do you live differently under hard paternalism?

Some way to ensure you can't assault or steal from innocents. You could live in a confined area with others guilty of your crime (i.e. ghetto - I try not to hide under euphemisms), a confined apartment (i.e. cell, where you can be alone or with friends), or walk among official civilization with restraints that prevent your crime.

How do you qualify to leave the bottom 10%?

If you can convincingly demonstrate that something has changed so that you'll no longer assault or steal. e.g. spending enough time not attempting to, even under pressure, especially if restrictions can temporarily be kept but moved out of your perception.

You could live in a confined area with others guilty of your crime (i.e. ghetto - I try not to hide under euphemisms)

1997
New York City
Is a walled
maximum security
prison.

Breaking out
is impossible.

Breaking in
is insane.

Yes, and the way that this should be implemented is swift and sure punishment with escalation ladders.

For example, let's say you are caught shoplifting. First offense, a warning. Then 1 day in jail. Then 30. Then 1 year.

Instead the law is like "Crime carries a sentence of 5 years but they probably won't prosecute and if they do the judge will probably let you out with a warning, unless they decide not to for some reason and throw the book at you".

You get bizarre cases where a first offender is thrown in jail for a long time and the (more common) scenario where a repeat violent criminal is released dozens of times. Three strikes you're out was the right idea, we just need better refinement.

Anarcho-tyranny can defeat even that. Your white guy goes to prison the third time some cashier fails to scan everything in his cart and he doesn't catch them. His protestations that it is not his fault fall on the judge's deaf ears. People of the proper race just walking out the door with a bunch of stuff don't get prosecuted at all and the escalation ladder doesn't matter.

Draconian law-n-order stuff just makes life worse for the people the law is meant to control, without controlling the people it wasn't controlling anyway.

The store ain't calling no cops when you'll pay for the goods.

If they assume you were trying to put one over on them, they will.

Instead the law is like "Crime carries a sentence of 5 years but they probably won't prosecute and if they do the judge will probably let you out with a warning, unless they decide not to for some reason and throw the book at you".

This proposal won't prevent that. They would still not be required to prosecute (and a rule saying 'they must prosecute' is a bad idea for obvious reasons) and it just moves the discretion from the judge to the prosecuter, and the judge could declare you not guilty anyway.

This seems the way. Swift and sure punishment is how you create very safe societies with modern policing. Look at Dubai many people here insist that a society full of Arabs and Indians can be so safe and yet it is.

Especially when punishments that could seriously deter/derail the lives of the top 90% are essentially lettuce floggings to people in the bottom 10%. You can pile infinite fines on somebody who's already subsiding purely on government aid and cash jobs

The "free to leave" analysis for whether it was a detention seems awfully hard to square with Florida v. Bostick and United States v. Drayton. A state is free to have stronger protections under the state constitution than the federal one, but a judicial opinion has to make it explicit that the court is relying on the state constitution rather than the federal one per Michigan v. Long, and I don't see the court specifically relying on the Penn. state constitution in that decision (but I didn't check all the cited decisions, so perhaps those do).

That case would be a solid loser for the defense in my state. I have, in fact, lost motions to suppress on very similar fact patterns, and I'm far from the only one (so it's not simply my incompetence).

The "feels free to leave" test comes from Michigan v. Chesternut. The cases you cited seem to ask whether the suspect would have feltn free to leave in particular circumstances that don't apply here, or free to refuse a search in circumstances that don't apply here.

Bostick was a terrible decision, though.

Courts have been making the definition of seizure or detention very expansive. I know of a couple cases in my home state of Washington.

In State v Sum they ruled that an officer waking a man sleeping in a vehicle, asking for identification, and saying he was investigating a stolen vehicle, constituted seizure. They vacated Sum's conviction for giving a false name subsequent to the seizure. They also added a racial component to the law's hypothetical reasonable observer, "an objective observer is aware that implicit, institutional, and unconscious biases."

The Washington State Supreme Court ruled in State v Meredith, relying on the racial dimension introduced by Sum, that officers asking for proof of payment from someone on a bus constituted a seizure, and that the officers lacked cause for the seizure. The decision vacated his conviction for giving a false name subsequent to the seizure. The lead opinion stated that fare enforcement has a “known, racially disproportionate impact” and later said its holding served “to mitigate the known, racially disproportionate impact of such fare enforcement practices."

In both of these cases the stakes were low. Meredith had already served the 58 day sentence that was vacated. The details of Sum's sentence aren't available, but it was also already served. Both were misdemeanors.

In both cases advocacy orgs like the ACLU pursued the cases on behalf of the defendants. Funnily enough the region's transit orgs filed amici briefs in favor of Meredith.

In both cases we had men who were already making net negative contributions to society, and who had their stupidity amplified by well funded organizations to make it even more difficult to rein in the behaviors of men like themselves. The defendants don't even have to show up for the apellate court hearings. I had ChatGPT try to find evidence that they did attend, and it was unable to find any.

Sum

As set forth in this court’s precedent, the seizure inquiry is an objective test in which the allegedly seized person has the burden to show that a seizure occurred. To aid courts in the application of this test, we now clarify that a person is seized for purposes of article I section 7 [of the state constitution] if, based on the totality of the circumstances, an objective observer could conclude that the person was not free to leave, to refuse a request, or to otherwise terminate the encounter due to law enforcement’s display of authority or use of physical force. For purposes of this analysis, an objective observer is aware that implicit, institutional, and unconscious biases, in addition to purposeful discrimination, have resulted in disproportionate police contacts, investigative seizures, and uses of force against Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) in Washington. Finally, in accordance with our precedent, if the person shows there was a seizure, then the burden shifts to the State to prove that the seizure was lawfully justified by a warrant or an applicable exception to the warrant requirement.

Based on the totality of the circumstances presented in this case, we hold that petitioner Palla Sum was seized when a sheriff’s deputy requested Sum’s identification while implying that Sum was under investigation for car theft. As the State properly concedes, at that time, the deputy did not have a warrant, reasonable suspicion, or any other lawful authority to seize Sum. As a result, Sum was unlawfully seized, and the false name and birth date he gave to the deputy must be suppressed. We therefore reverse the Court of Appeals and remand to the trial court for further proceedings.

Meredith

Finally, we consider whether the disturbance of Meredith’s private affairs in this case exceeded what was “reasonably necessary to further substantial governmental interests”. To make this determination, we consider “‘reasonableness…’ along with history, precedent, and common sense”. As a matter of both reasonableness and common sense, unless mass transit is offered for free, transit operators must be able to charge and collect fares from passengers. Therefore, as history and this court have long recognized, passengers using mass transit must pay their fares or they “may be ejected”. We do not question that premise.

However, in this case, Meredith was asked for proof of payment by law enforcement officers, who then identified and arrested him using resources that no civilian conducting fare enforcement could have accessed. Although we are not asked to opine on the constitutionality of these later actions, they could not have occurred without the initial seizure.

Moreover, as detailed above, the risk of such escalation would be acutely felt by reasonable transit passengers, who are more likely to be members of “historically marginalized groups”, including Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color. Members of such groups are already known to be “‘disproportionate victims’” of “police encounters without reasonable suspicion”. If allowed to continue, the high level of intrusion that occurred here would only exacerbate these disparities. The State has not shown such an outcome is reasonably necessary to further the governmental interest in fare enforcement on public transit.

To be fair, it appears that this ruling forbids only fare enforcement by police officers, not fare enforcement by transit employees who are backed up by police officers if they find a noncompliant passenger.

Yet, “[o]n this particular day [the officers] didn’t have any [transit employees] to work for [them,] so [the police officers] worked as a team of two deputies riding the bus fully outfitted in [their] patrol uniforms and then one deputy in a chase car in case [they] dealt with anybody.”

if, based on the totality of the circumstances, an objective observer could conclude that the person was not free to leave, to refuse a request, or to otherwise terminate the encounter due to law enforcement’s display of authority or use of physical force. For purposes of this analysis, an objective observer is aware that implicit, institutional, and unconscious biases, in addition to purposeful discrimination, have resulted in disproportionate police contacts, investigative seizures, and uses of force against Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) in Washington.

I mean this basically would include most encounters with the police that the party didn’t initiate themselves. An armed policeman with a gun is by nature a show of authority. His uniform is his authority, and most people would be properly intimidated by a person authorized to use force, in the uniform that symbolizes his ability to use force, walking up and asking questions about my activities. As such, especially if you throw in the race angle, most police encounters are seizures simply because a person knows better than to walk away from a guy with arresting authority and carrying a weapon.

The Washington State Supreme Court is very blackpilling. They essentially rule like kings, vetoing citizens initiatives, and rubber stamping acts of the state government which are obviously against any clear reading of the state constitution.

The state is controlled by an interlocking grid of far left institutions. Merely replacing one won't help. The whole rat's nest has to be slowly unwound which would take decades. Change is essentially impossible.

I get the sense that this is how it must be in Europe, even more so with the supranational EU and European courts that exist far removed from any democratic control.

Democracy is essentially dead in a lot of places.

Democracy works.

Washington residents voted for this.

Washington residents have voted for a lot of things, and then the WA supreme court overturns them arbitrarily, whilst letting their favored laws stand. My favorite recent example is their ruling that a capital gains tax is not an income tax under the state constitution. This is despite the state itself directly reporting said revue in their own accounting as an income tax.

Democracy only works in an area where consent of the governed is equally geographically distributed.

In Washington, it is not.

They also voted for 35 dollar car tabs.

What the hell is a car tab?

Registration renewal

Thanks

And the Supreme Court that overturned them. And they never punish those Supreme Court justices. The last justice to lose a reelection bid was Richard B Sanders in 2010, and he was replaced by Charlie Wiggins. Sanders was conservative, Wiggins a liberal. Wiggins was on the majority opinion in the court's 9-0 decision that held that the death penalty was unconstitutional becuase of disparate racial impact.

The voters don't punish overturning initiatives, so the Court is free to reason to achieve its desired outcomes.

the court's 9–0 decision that held that the death penalty was unconstitutional becuase of disparate racial impact

Link

The decision does not appear to be based on disparate impact. Rather, the justices relied on a report finding, with p-values of 4.8–11.1 percent, that race was a factor in the application of the death penalty. (In a footnote, they declined to use the common p-value of 5 percent as a "mechanical bright-line rule".)

That's 'disparate racial impact' with numbers attached.

No, disparate impact would be "blacks are more likely to be death-penalty-eligible criminals, so they get the death penalty more often" or "among death-penalty-eligible criminals, blacks commit more depraved crimes with more aggravating factors, so they get the death penalty more often". The study found that, among death-penalty-eligible criminals, and controlling for differences in aggravating factors, blacks got the death penalty more often.

(The justices cite three different versions of the study, but provide convenient links only to versions 1 and 2. The version that I have provided here is version 2, the "Updated Beckett Report". I don't care enough to look for version 3, the "Commissioner's Report".)

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Have you voted in Washington state? The elections are basically like

Judge A: Leftist with a AAAA rating from the Bar Association. Certificate of honor from good girl club.

Judge B: Leftist with a AAAA rating from the Bar Association. Certificate of honor from good girl club.

They are not running on the issues like legislative candidates because of the fiction that they are merely interpreting the rules and not making them. It's a farce. Sure, change isn't impossible, but it would take a decades long march through the institutions to get there.

While the elections are nominally non-partisan, I just open the candidate's website and usually can quickly discern their party alignment. If the front page doesn't make it clear from language about equity or law and order, it's easy enough to find out who's endorsed them.

I don't recall ever lacking a conservative option, but until about 2018 I would have voted for the liberals.

There are non-leftists on the ballot for judges for a few seats every election and every time they get absolutely destroyed. Seems like a strong signal from the voters what they want.

They voted for $35 car tabs to get sent to judges, and they voted for those judges to nuke it.

I wonder what the voters really wanted. It's so mysterious.

Yeah, I'm aware that voters are retarded and will vote for a balanced budget, tax cuts, and to give every old and black person a free Cadillac. All at the same time.

Nevertheless, I don't think the voters of Washington should be allowed to vote for kings to rule over them unless they know explicitly that's what they are voting for. These justices run on platforms like "I have a highly qualified rating from the bar association" not "I'm basically Mao in a robe".

It's a farce when the kings will allow the vote to count sometimes, but not other times, depending on whether the kings like it. Feels like Calvinball, largely because it is.

You're familiar with the term "manipulation of procedural outcomes", I presume?

It’s not news that I believe the Cathedral is evil. And since it’s 2008, you’d expect evil to have not only a name, but a blog. And sure enough it does. Evil’s name is Timothy Burke, he is a professor of history (specializing in southern Africa) at Swarthmore, and his blog is Easily Distracted.

The great thing about Professor Burke is that he appears to have a conscience. Almost every post in his blog can be understood as a kind of rhetorical struggle to repress some inner pang of doubt. He is the Good German par excellence. When people of this mindset found themselves in the Third Reich, they were “moderate Nazis.” In Czechoslovakia or Poland they “worked within the system.” Professor Burke is nowhere near being a dissident, but there is a dissident inside him. He doesn’t like it, not at all. He stabs it with his steely knives. He can check out any time. But he can never leave. His position is a high one, and not easy to get.

The entire blog is characterized—indeed it could serve as a type specimen for—the quality that Nabokov called poshlost. Simply an embarrassment of riches. I am saddened by the fact that, as a new parent, I cannot devour the whole thing. But as a case study, I have selected this. The whole post is a treat, but I am especially tickled by the line:

I am drawn to procedural liberalism because I live in worlds that are highly procedural and my skills and training are adapted to manipulating procedural outcomes.

“Manipulating procedural outcomes.” My entire post—maybe even my entire blog—reduced to three words. If you want to know how you are governed, this is it: you are governed by manipulating procedural outcomes. It’s perfect. It belongs on someone’s tomb.

A German or British police officer would have the power to detain all juvenile males wearing a single article of black clothing within a one-mile radius of the robbery and physical evidence wouldn't be suppressed even if obtained without following the proper trail of investigation.

If you don't suppress such evidence, police will not bother following the proper trail of investigation; they will simply do what is expedient. This is great if you want more incidents closed by arrest (and more criminals caught if the cops are at least honest, though 'expedient' can go beyond that point), but lousy if you want to get around without being hassled by police if you have any resemblance to common criminal types (age, sex, color, clothing, etc)

Wouldn't people trying to differentiate themselves from the criminal types instead of imitating them be a good thing?

While suppression of 'thug' culture is a good thing, it probably won't work(people will just get mad about it) and a lot of fairly justifiable criminal stereotypes are not something an individual can change- young black males getting hassled can't exactly michael jackson on short notice.

  1. No, I do not want sumptuary laws enacted through some back door

  2. Some of those things are unavoidable, such as age.

Is it really back door sumptuary laws to say “maybe dont wear gang colors in a gang area”? I don’t think that’s reasonable, as really wearing gang colors and flashing gang signs in the wrong area is a good way to get pegged by a rival gang. This isn’t hard stuff either. Dont carry a colored hanky in your pocket, don’t wear a doo rag, and dont do weird signs with your hands.

That doesn’t seem like a high bar. You can still dress pretty badly

Remember than the law can't just say "don't wear gang colors" and call it a day. The law has to either define gang colors or designate some authority which will define them. I can guarantee you that there are jurisdictions who would just love to define MAGA caps as gang colors.

Is it really back door sumptuary laws to say “maybe dont wear gang colors in a gang area”?

Yes.

I mean I just don’t see it. The bar is pretty low, and most people would pass it just by chance. Things like the colored hanky are pretty rare in most places. Doo rags are maybe a bit more common, but really they come off pretty easily. And as I mentioned above, it’s already dangerous for people to walk the streets dressed like a gang member because rival gangs will shoot people who look like members of other gangs.

What I am suggesting is that it shouldn’t be considered authoritarian for a cop to recognize obvious signs of gang membership and act appropriately— which at minimum would be investigating why that person is in the area and whether or not they are armed or match the description of a suspect. I get that you need to have some caution about letting a cop detain or seize someone, but if the only way to solve a crime is for the cops to catch them in the act, there’s no reason to have the police investigating crimes.

When a cop comes over to me because of what I'm wearing and demands to know why I'm in some area open to the general public, it IS authoritarian. Neither the police nor the local gangs rightfully get to decide how I dress. Obviously the local gangs don't care about "rightfully", but the police are supposed to.

I suppose we’re going to disagree here, but I really tend to land on the point that the purpose of having a criminal response unit is to respond to and investigate crimes with a purpose of bringing the guilty to Justice and to keep the community safe by doing so.

When you make rules that suggest the police and law enforcement are not allowed to notice and act upon very obvious signs of criminality (in this case clothing highly correlated to gang membership and thus criminality), in the interest of doing the things we have police for. If there’s a gang connected shooting, I want the cops to talk to anyone in the area who looks like a gang member. I want the cops to notice an increase of gang fashions in my neighborhood, because there are zero good things that come from that, and probably a whole lot of bad things.

I’ll agree to reasonable policing where cops don’t have a blank check to do anything at any time, but it has to be reasonable in the other direction. You have to have rules loose enough that the cops can notice and deal with obvious signs of potential criminality. Or to notice that someone looks suspicious and deal with it.

What I am suggesting is that it shouldn’t be considered authoritarian for a cop to recognize obvious signs of gang membership and act appropriately

The problem with this, as you know, is that there's a really, really easy proxy for this: evaluating based on the gang colors you can't take off. (Unless you're Michael Jackson, I guess.)

That's the classical liberal concern with doing this: that targeting gang colors is already accepting this should be done (and in so doing destroying the noble lie that profiling is useless), and are back to haggling over the price. Skin color-ism lives at the bottom of that slope.

What I am suggesting is that it shouldn’t be considered authoritarian for a cop to recognize obvious signs of gang membership and act appropriately

I consider it authoritarian when a progressive recognizes signs of my "gang membership" (I can't really hide being male) and acts "appropriately" [or, were I an appropriately tomboyish woman, would consider it authoritarian if a traditionalist saw "woman" and does the same], and I don't [and wouldn't] like that, so per veil of ignorance I feel I would have to consider this authoritarian too.

Whether I care about not being authoritarian is another matter given outgroup consensus is to do it to me.

I don’t see that as horrific. I think cops should be given enough leeway that noticing and responding to anything that makes a person likely to be committing a crime or likely to have committed a crime.

True, although a real blackpiller will recognize that these rules exist to help the underclass victimize you, not to protect you from illegal police searches. If they want to nail you, they still will.

All Western legal theory falls apart when the subjects of the law start viewing the enforcers of the law as just another competing tribe. Same thing happens when the enforcers of law start viewing the subjects as a competing tribe.

To that end these discussions are very quaint. No one is interfacing with reality.

All Western legal theory falls apart when the subjects of the law start viewing the enforcers of the law as just another competing tribe.

Said enforcers view THEMSELVES that way. The thin blue line, or "the biggest gang in town". Cops view themselves as a breed apart and above ordinary citizens.

I sometimes muse on the viability of an armchair utopia where most police work would function as a kind of national service that ordinary citizens are called to for a couple of years, so that the average beat or traffic cop is not someone who's made "cop" the core of their sense of self.

You know, this is the most interesting idea I've heard in weeks. I've never paid much attention to the idea of instating mandatory national service to replicate what mass conscription did for previous generations because I just couldn't think of what we could possibly do with that labor pool that outweighs the deadweight loss of corvee labor. Now. However, I see the vision: a sort of labor that by its very nature instills pro-social behavior. I can imagine even just having college age students take one or two days out of their week to serve as effectively glorified security guards in return for a small stipend/scholarship/government healthcare wouldn't be obscenely expensive while still instilling a respect for public order.

I don't think replacing career cops with sortitioned cops altogether would work (it would mean everyone would be constantly undertrained), but something like 50/50 might. Cops patrol in pairs, don't they?

Also, while "let's just put somr ordinary people in charge" tends to sound nice in theory, in reality what almost always results is a stealth takeover by whatever permanent administrative support staff you're forced to keep around. Every school board and small town city council I've ever seen has one or two firebrands, then six or seven clueless local retirees who just do whatever the professional lawyer sitting in the corner to "advise" them tells them to. Orfinary people have a pathological desire to defer to authority, even when their entire job is to act as a check on such authority.

We need professional sociopaths aligned with our interests to run things, otherwise we're just abdicating to other sociopaths we have even less control over.

Israel does this. I follow some math professor who does some part-time cop work.

I tend to feel these type of proposals run into issues on how many hours are in the day. But for 90% of the population 4 years as a cop probably teaches them more than 4 years in college. Perhaps we could do these things in a less credentialed world.

Speaking from personal experience(no, I’m not law enforcement, just to be clear here), it’s very difficult not to fall into this mode of thinking when you have access to sensitive information that the public can only be partially aware of and giving info out could get you and your organization in severe trouble.

I know I’ve slipped into calling some groups ‘civilian’ before mentally slapping myself and looking to find another term.

This sounds like woke judging for black youths. No detention took place. There is an underlying assumption here that black youth are not smart enough to talk to a police officer.

If I want to talk to someone I walk directly at them in their path. That’s a completely normal interaction. The black youth in question could have just responded to the cop “I don’t want to talk you can you get out of my way”

I would like to see the body cam to see how the cop impeded the black youth but everything in the report is just a normal human interaction. And yes a big way we catch criminals is they are not that smart. But that’s a criminals problem not a cops.

IMO if I had a bright orange t-shirt on and the officer did not think I was the criminal he was searching for but wanted to talk to me and asks “hey did you see a couple teens in black around here” the cops behavior would likely be 100% identical. This is just how you approach someone at night you want to talk to. We can’t make it illegal for cops to talk to people.

If I want to talk to someone I walk directly at them in their path.

If you're approaching them from the opposite direction then yes, that's perfectly normal. What happened here is that the officer was following K.C. from behind, got ahead of him, and turned around, blocking his path forward. If a stranger did this to you in public, it would be highly abnormal and probably raise some kind of alarm. If a cop did this to you, it would not suggest that the encounter was casual.

Yes, I 100% agree that it is not casual. The office either suspects me of a crime or thinks I may have information he wants. It’s a clear indicator he wants to talk to me. I could see a colleague doing in this in an office walking up from behind and turning to face me. They have something they urgently want to talk to me about.

But wanting to interact with me and being detained are not the same thing.

Someone above posted prior case law like Florida v Bostick. I feel comfortable saying this ruling is not in line with US constitutional law. And this court is overstepping their authority (since apparently they haven’t stated this is based on state law).

If I were this suspect: Do I think the cop suspects me of a criminal offense: yes Has he detained me: no

I commented above, and those cases don't really apply here. Michigan v. Chesternut says that it's a detention if a reasonable person would feel free to leave due to an officer's is of force or authority. Blocking someone's path so they can't proceed in the direction they were traveling is a pretty clear escalation from simply wanting to speak to someone. The officer was certainly capable of communicating that he'd like to have a chat without physically impeding the kid's progress. This wasn't even a particularly close call.

Ugh. Now we are debating body language and exact path someone walked. Like the cop walked wrong?

I think a reasonable person can asks “yo am I being detained”

Cop - no Suspect - later

I don’t think you are using a reasonable person standard but a bottom 10% idiot standard.

I have annoying save the whales people walk in front of my path all the time. I don’t call that kidnapping.

I think a reasonable person can asks “yo am I being detained”

I don't think the standard for due process rights should be knowing which magic words to use. Not unless we're going to make public policy of educating people about which spells they have in their spell slots (c.f. Miranda Rights) and force cops to proactively tell people about their detainment status or lack thereof with every interaction.

I am down with magic words. A reasonable human being is able to make conversation. That is what makes us human.

The alternative ends up being a cop looked at me wrong therefore evidence suppressed.

And I disagree with the characterization of “am I being detained” or “get out of my way I’m walking home” as some kind of magic versus normal human conversation. It’s not some priestly class words that only a few people from a special caste know how to do.

I don’t think you should need a law degree - magical words - to interact with police. That’s not the standard I’m arguing for.

And there isn’t any downside in this specific case. The officer still can’t search the subject without establishing probably cause for detention. You can still suppress for an illegal search. In this case a subject ran because an officer talked to him.

I am down with magic words. A reasonable human being is able to make conversation. That is what makes us human.

Police like to make it unclear whether they are detaining someone, so that someone can be intimidated into responding as if he was detained, yet the officer gets the benefits of a court treating him as not detained.

That's why magic words are necessary in the first place.

And I disagree with the characterization of “am I being detained” or “get out of my way I’m walking home” as some kind of magic versus normal human conversation. It’s not some priestly class words that only a few people from a special caste know how to do.

People using normal human conversation can get some idea about whether they're detained. But without magic words, the result depends on 1) how badly the officer obfuscates whether they're being detained and 2) the court's hindsight about whether that conversation was good enough. That's a bad position to be in, even though it might work anyway.

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A reasonable human being is able to make conversation.

A reasonable human should not be obliged to make conversation with a cop. That's what the "no self incrimination" amendment is for. The government should not be able to compel ANY kind of speech.

(Yes, I know subpoenas exist. I'm not happy about them as applied to private individuals.)

And I disagree with the characterization of “am I being detained” or “get out of my way I’m walking home” as some kind of magic versus normal human conversation. It’s not some priestly class words that only a few people from a special caste know how to do.

"I am not detaining you. This is not a search." aren't magic words either. I don't see why we should put the burden on citizens, instead of the cops, to clarify the law.

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Cops on duty who approach a pedestrian are not normal human conversation. And by my estimate a regular reasonable 100 iq person who hasn't been schooled on cop interactions doesn't know the first thing about rights and laws around detainment.

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If I want to talk to someone, I walk directly at him in his path. That’s a completely normal interaction.

You aren't a police officer with the power to stop someone for questioning. Even for a normal person, intentionally blocking someone else's path is rude. For a police officer, it can rise to the level of implicit detention.

The suspect has reasonable methods to find out if they’re being detained. They can walk around the officer or just say “hello could you please get out of my way”.

You can’t make it illegal for police to talk to people. There is a difference between being rude and being detained. And I disagree it’s even rude to walk directly towards someone you want to talk to.

The suspect has reasonable methods to find out if they’re being detained. They can walk around the officer or just say “hello could you please get out of my way”.

Yes, both of these tests will work. In the sense that if you ARE being detained, you'll know it, because you'll be down on the ground with a split lip.

In reality, the police will just say no, and only beat you if you resist arrest.

You are going too far. This would be a very easy civil lawsuit to win if the police behaved as you just described.

LOL, no. The police will say whatever it takes to win, the judges support them (in court, your word is suspect and theirs is gospel), and even if they get caught doing something wrong, there's qualified immunity. When they lose cases it's because the politicians want them to lose (e.g. sympathetic minority plaintiff)

That’s not what qualified immunity is. It means you can’t sue the cop personally. You can sue the city. And you can get jury trial. And you would have video evidence.

you can sue the city for what?

"cop did something bad" isn't enough to hold a city liability for the bad behavior of one of their cops

a video of a cop protected by qualified immunity doing something bad isn't some golden ticket to find municipal liability

under Monell, it is even more difficult to find municipal liability than individual liability with a steep evidentiary burden which courts are very reluctant to allow much discovery (if any) to find (if they don't just dismiss the claim during the pleading stage for failure to present supporting evidence)

in roughly half the federal circuits, a finding of municipal liability when qualified immunity has been upheld is all but impossible because the circuits have held local governments cannot fail to train to prevent a cop from violating a constitutional right which isn't clearly established

iirc, only the 9th circuit allows an independent claim to functionally survive upheld qualified immunity but in practical terms is very hard and very rare

for all practical purposes in typical cases, an upheld finding of qualified immunity ends the lawsuit

responding to someone pointing out these cases are not "a very easy civil lawsuit" by implying these sorts of claims are difficult because the vast majority of the time qualified immunity is upheld that they don't understand this situation because municipal liability is, to be frank, ridiculous

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Yes, exactly what he said. The law is swift and brutal to you, not to underclass criminals.

The suspect has reasonable methods to find out whether he's being detained.

Forcing someone to risk being accused of acting suspiciously by evading detention sounds unreasonable.

The officers could have just not blocked his path. The opinion gives two different examples where that was permitted: 1 2

I disagree it’s even rude to walk directly towards someone you want to talk to.

I said it's rude to block someone's path, not to walk directly toward someone.

Refusing to talk to police as far as I know is not probable cause for detention.

I keep reading what you say and want to say in a less polite way “I am not a member of a low IQ demographic”.

People of my tribe are perfectly fine dealing with this situation even if we did the crime and walking away unarrested while also not having our privacy rights impeded. But yes I understand we live in a world where a significant percent of our population is constantly confused. I don’t think we need to design society so that dumbest parts of our society can do crime and get away with it.

People of my tribe are perfectly fine dealing with this situation even if we did the crime and walking away unarrested while also not having our privacy rights impeded.

No, you aren't, assuming you're a white collar white guy. If the cops decide you did it (and they may have already done so before the stop), they will arrest you. All your friends and most of your relatives will invoke just-worldism and assume you're guilty and cut ties with you. And thus the appearances are maintained. Minority cultures where the cops are treated as enemies are simply correct; a black person who gets arrested will have the support of his community, whereas a white collar white man will have to conceal his arrest to maintain his viability within his community afterwards if he is acquitted or the charges dropped. In neither case does actual innocence or guilt matter. The white people maintain the illusion that THEY will have no problem in such a situation by defining anyone who does have a problem as not one of theirs.

Wouldn’t this be reasonable suspicion, as for a traffic stop, and discarding the gun is itself probable cause?

I'm not quite sure what you're asking.

  • If you're pointing out that the standard in this case was reasonable suspicion rather than probable cause, then I clarified that here.

  • If you're saying that the officers had reasonable suspicion for a stop and the suspect's discarding of the gun upon being stopped then gave them probable cause for an arrest, then the judges found otherwise: there was no reasonable suspicion for a stop.

reasonable suspicion

Whose reasonable suspicion is it? Is it a 'reasonable man' or is it someone expert in detecting suspicious / criminal activity. It seems reasonable to me that this officer perhaps skilled in the art may notice an odd gait or posture due to carrying a wepon in a waistband that I or the judge may not as we are insufficiently skilled in the art of detection.

Whose reasonable suspicion is it? Is it a 'reasonable man' or is it someone expert in detecting suspicious / criminal activity.

The latter, according to Terry v. Ohio (the original case which established this)

In this case, the prosecutor characterized KC as "grabbing at his waistband and [blading] his body away from" the officer, but the trial judge "explicitly disagreed with this description of KC's actions after reviewing the body-camera footage".

However, I can't tell whether that disagreement is relevant here. The police officers initially stopped their car solely on the basis of the clothing worn by KC and the other juvenile, not on the basis of any suspicion of a gun. And it is unclear from the panel's summary of the officer's testimony whether the officer developed a separate suspicion that KC was carrying a gun before or after walking up and blocking his path.

I could see stopping based on description in the broadcast to make contact. Then upon approaching developing further suspicion. For blading I'd expect the officer to have to be face to face with KC to observe.

Even if I accept the officer didn’t have reasonable suspicion to detain KC, the discovery of the gun doesn't seem to be the result of a search. KC produces the gun to ditch it as he flees. Isn't it in in plain sight at that point? Is it the officer would have frisked for officer saftey and discovered the gun incident to this unreasonable detention?

Had the officers stayed in their patrol vehicle, spotlighted KC and asked if he had a gun, he ditches the gun and flees, are we looking at the same result?

I want officers out detecting criminal activity and removing guns from criminals. What should the officer have done differently in this situation to contact KC so the gun he ditches as he flees can be used as evidence?

What should the officer have done differently in this situation to contact KC so the gun he ditches as he flees can be used as evidence?

The officers could have just not blocked his path. The opinion gives two different examples where that was permitted: 1 2

Had the officers stayed in their patrol vehicle, spotlighted KC and asked if he had a gun, he ditches the gun and flees, are we looking at the same result?

This is exactly what happened in the linked examples. Example 1:

While driving eastbound on Cumberland Street, [Officer Moore] observe[d Joyner] walking in the same direction. [Joyner’s] right arm was allegedly pinned to his side as he walked with only his left arm swinging. As Officer Moore passed [Joyner], he allegedly saw what he described as a heavily weighted square object[,] which he associated with being a gun. More specifically, Officer Moore testified repeatedly during direct and cross-examination that he knew [Joyner] was concealing a firearm.

Upon seeing the officers, [Joyner] turn[ed] around and [began] to walk westbound on Cumberland Street. [Joyner] then walk[ed] onto Natrona Street[.] Officer Moore [reversed course down Cumberland Street and] pulled up to [Joyner at Natrona Steet. Officer Moore then] asked [Joyner] if he was carrying a gun. [Joyner] respond[ed] no. Officer Moore ask[ed] if [Joyner was] sure and he [said no again and began walking away]. As Officer Moore opened his door, [Joyner ran]. No lights or sirens had been activated.

Example 2:

Officer Zgleszewski testified that at approximately 7:25 p.m., he and his partner were driving westbound on Wingohocking street, approaching the intersection of Wingokocking street and 19th street. Officer Zgleszewski saw Appellee exit a corner store and begin to walk eastbound on Wingohocking street towards the officers. Officer Zgleszewski observed an “L” shaped bulge in the front of Appellee’s waistband that appeared to be a possible firearm. As the officers continued to drive forward on the street towards Appellee, Appellee quickly turned around and began walking in the opposite direction and then northbound on 9th street after he reached the intersection.

The officers did not activate their car siren but pulled up next to Appellee. Officer Zgleszewski exited the car and began to approach Appellee. Appellee continued to walk down the street and began to look back in Officer Zgleszewski’s direction. Officer Zgleszewski stated, “come here” and simultaneously, Appellee fled northbound on foot. Officer Zgleszewski pursued Appellee on foot while his partner followed in the car. During the chase, Appellee reached toward the bulge in the front of his waistband, produced a firearm in his right hand, and continued to run with the firearm in his hand. Officer Zgleszewski continued his pursuit of Appellee, while giving numerous verbal commands to “drop the gun.” As he continued to run, Appellee threw the firearm underneath a parked car. Officer Zgleszewski recovered the discarded firearm. Appellee was apprehended and arrested by Officer Zgleszewski’s partner.

These were ruled "mere encounters" rather than "investigatory detentions".

Except there the officer's suspicion is that Joyner has a gun and he flees before the officer is out of the car and seems to be the reason for the encounter.

With KC we don't seem to have a timeline when the officer developed a suspicion about a gun in KC's waistband.

I'm not clear why a reasonable youth wouldn't feel free to leave the KC detention, but would feel free to leave the Joyner encounter. After an officer sees Joyner, and Joyner starts waking in the opposite direction, the officer reverses and follows asks if he's carrying a gun, and exits the patrol vehicle.

Both still flee.

Stealing this from @ToaKraka in the FF thread:

Link to the full opinion

probable cause

Reasonable suspicion for a brief investigative stop is a lower standard than probable cause for a prolonged arrest. (The English word "detention" is a bit misleading here, as in colloquial use it implies a prolonged arrest.)

In this instance it was a detention because the officer stepped infront of the youth and shined his flashlight upon him, and a 'reasonable' youth wouldn't have felt free to leave?

It seems like the youth actually leaving would cut against that.

7:30 on an October evening, I'd want a flashlight too.

In this instance it was a detention because the officer stepped in front of the youth and shined his flashlight upon him, and a "reasonable" youth wouldn't have felt free to leave?

Yes. According to the judges: "A reasonable person, with his path impeded by a police officer, the officer asking him investigative questions while another officer stood nearby, and the questioning officer training a flashlight on him, would not have felt free to simply leave the interaction."

It seems like the youth actually leaving would cut against that.

(1) The officers stop their car next to KC, get out, and start walking toward him while shining a flashlight at him. This may or may not count as a detention.

(2) KC starts walking away. You can call this evidence against the idea that item 1, standing alone, counts as a detention.

(3) One of the officers deliberately steps into KC's path, blocking him from walking away. At this point (with both item 1 and item 3), a detention definitely has taken place, considering the totality of the circumstances (say the judges).

(4) The officer asks KC what he has in his waistband. KC discards the object (a gun) and flees. If the stop had been lawful, then this would constitute probable cause for an arrest. However, the stop was not lawful.

7:30 on an October evening, I'd want a flashlight too.

According to the judges: "The body-camera footage shows that the street was well lit by various streetlights".

The officer asks KC what he has in his waistband. KC discards the object (a gun) and flees. If the stop had been lawful, then this would constitute probable cause for an arrest. However, the stop was not lawful.

That's what my problem with the situation is. The gun was there, its existence wasn't dependent on the lawfulness of the stop. I can agree with suppressing verbal evidence obtained by unlawful questioning, but physical evidence? Mandatory prosecution of every such case using facts established by the original trial would be at least equally just if note more so.

The possibility of gaining such physical evidence incentivizes the police to do illegal stops. Allowing use of such evidence would catch a criminal in this case, but would make it harder for all the innocent people the police illegally stop because f the incentive you created.

According to the judges: "The body-camera footage shows that the street was well lit by various streetlights".

Camera footage may look appear brighter than the same scene to the eye and I'd expect a flashlight to illuminate shadows and provide better contrast. Feels very 'vibes' based.

I wouldn't have expected spotlighting to be detention adjacent unless accompanied by, "You there! Stop! Police!" I suspect the counter narrative of being charged with fleeing / obstruction after being 'detained' via spotlighting would also be dismissed.

I think I prefer the sates narrative that he ditched the gun and fled prior to detention and the his fleeing was within seconds of the officer steeping in front of him. I'd like to see the video.

Thank you, I am not that well-versed in American legal terminology.

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