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Stealing this from @ToaKraka in the FF thread:
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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