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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?
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.
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.
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.
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