Quote:
Originally Posted by Aramike
The reason for the STA program is due to checkpoints not being permitted in the state. Essentially, Sheriff David Clarke (who's a Democrat sheriff, a former Republican mayoral candidate, and altogether an odd fellow and company are attempting to circumvent the restrictions on checkpoints in the state. A discussion on whether or not this was right or wrong was my goal and unfortunately some people took it as an opportunity to get personal.
Finally, like Haplo said, you're definitely a good, thoughtful addition to the GT community. Welcome aboard! |
Thats the rub, even if you had been smashed drunk and above .08 BAC, the whole stop would have been illegal and wrong if the officer did not observe some violation prior to the stop. If indeed this is the way they are operating then they are wasting a lot of time - any citations they put forward would be illegal and easily thrown out.
This kind of attempt to circumvent legal process could be entirerly wrong - but it wouldn't be hard to 'fix'. Just change the MOP to include a requirement to observe some fault (no matter how minor) prior to conducting the random traffic stop. Sadly this would deepen the inefficiency of such a policy, but it is neccessary to maintain the civil rights of the people being pulled over.
Thanks for the complement, I've been a lurker for some time and just decided to weigh in recently.
As for those that make this a personal crusade, lay off. The original question is whether or not this was a violation of civil rights, and no matter how evil or vile or dangerous an action taken is, its not an excuse to throw civil rights out the door. Regardless of whether Aramike was stone cold sober or smashing drunk, or anywhere in between, the police are required to follow the law and cannot stop him without some reason.
How Aramike determines if he is sober enough to drive or not isn't really in question - it doesn't matter for the sake of this discussion. If anything it would be tangental to the issue of the validity of arbitrary legal limits in terms of the reason we have to set such limits where they are (speaking to whether or not an average person is capable of properly determining when they are sober enough to drive). Even if he had failed to properly gauge his BAC and happened to be above .08 we still could be having this same conversation about the traffic stop.