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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: New Bill to Allow Cops to Detain Citizens, Force Them to Explain Who They Are, What They’re Doing Kentucky — An ominous bill that is currently making its way through the Kentucky Senate aims to give police unprecedented unconstitutional powers. These new powers will allow cops to stop anyone they want and demand that person tell them who they are, where they are going, and explain their actions. Naturally, it has civil rights advocates up in arms, but it doesn’t seem to be slowing down the bill’s momentum. Police merely need to make an unsubstantiated claim that a person is involved in criminal activity which gives them free reign to stop that person, demand his name, home address and age — as well as ask to see his driver’s license, if he has one — and tell him to explain what he is presently doing “to the satisfaction of the officer.” If you invoke your constitutional right not to answer the officer’s questions, this new bill grants cops the right to detain you for two hours. Even more ominous is the fact that this detainment is not considered an arrest so you have no right to an attorney and police don’t even have to record it. This non-arrest grey area detention will undoubtedly be rife for abuse. Nevertheless, advocates for the police state tyranny say cops must have this new ability—to keep us safe. As Kentucky.com reports, Sen. Stephen Meredith, R-Leitchfield, said Grayson County law enforcement officials asked him for the bill after a number of local incidents showed the need for it. “If a man acts suspicious, then why wouldn’t you want to know what his name is?” Meredith said in an interview. “I can’t imagine any legitimate reason in the world why a person would refuse to give their name and photo identification to a police officer if they were asked.” In other words, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear…or, in other words, submit to the police state. Wrong! Well Sen. Meredith, we’d like to educate you in why a person would refuse to talk to police—because it is our right not to! Legislation like this is straight out of the playbook of every tyranny in history. Remember “Ihre Papiere, Bitte”? That phrase often brought shudders to the people who heard it in the 1930s and ’40s. It is German for “Your papers, please,” and this bill is nearly identical to that sinister Nazi policy. Critics of the bill are pointing out its obvious unconstitutional nature and note out how cops can already go after people if they suspect them of committing a crime. As Kentucky.com reports: Critics say Meredith’s bill would violate the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure and the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination. Police officers already have the right to approach people on the street and ask their names, but it’s established that citizens can refuse to respond, said Aaron Tucek, a legal fellow at the ACLU of Kentucky. If police can show reasonable suspicion that someone is carrying a deadly weapon, they can proceed to frisk that person, Tucek said. But they cannot detain people simply for not identifying themselves or explaining their activities “to the satisfaction of the officer,” Tucek said. “The whole section of the bill on detention — they can call it whatever they want, but Supreme Court case law is pretty clear that an arrest is not determined by whether you call it an arrest, it’s determined by the restraint you place on someone’s liberty,” Tucek said. “If you put someone in the back of a police car or if you take them down to the police station or if you otherwise refuse to let them go their own way, that’s an arrest, and in our country, you cannot do that without probable cause.” We agree and so does the constitution. “The idea that we can detain people because we find them to be suspicious and we think they might commit a crime, that crosses a dangerous line,” Rebecca DiLoreto, who lobbies in Frankfort for the Kentucky Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said. “Now, unfortunately, it has been known to happen. Sometimes it’s in a mostly white community where someone spots a black person walking down the street and they get suspicious and call police.” “The ‘crime’ in this case is basically that you’re here and we don’t think, from looking at you, that you should be here,” she added. “The potential for abuse in that seems obvious.” DiLoreta also pointed out the menacing nature of cops being able to essentially kidnap anyone they want for hours and keep it off the record. Nobody ever should be taken into police custody without a record being made of it, she said. “That’s starting to approach what you see in a police state or Soviet Russia,” DiLoreta said Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 22.
#10. To: Mr. and Mrs. Grundy (#0)
I am so glad to see this discussed. People's English is so sloppy anymore. Yeah, I deliberately use the word 'anymore' because English needs a word for "unlike formerly", and see nothing wrong with working to standardize that one ;-) Similarly, I accept the use of the word 'forthcoming' to the effect of 'forthright' now. It brought cringes when people started saying it about 25 years ago but I actually think it fits. It's undoubtedly on its way to an official meaning. 'Free rein' is a different story. Long may its proper spelling reign!
That usage of "anymore" to mean "nowadays" or "these days" pops up a lot in colloquial English. There's resistance to using it this way because "any more" spelled as two words is reserved as a complement to the negative as in "People's English is not so sloppy anymore." I think that it keeps popping up so often is that it bumps up against the common binary logic of standard construction and draws extra attention to the notion that the speaker is trying to get across like, "Customer service is just terrible anymore." But hey, that's the way language changes. There ain't no accounting for the way folks get their ideas across - anymore. : )
One of my favorite funny cases shows that usage is king no matter what anybody thinks of it: www.dictionary.com/browse/auger?s=t ORIGIN OF AUGER. before 900; Middle English nauger (a nauger misdivided as an auger.) :-D Then there's that other quirk about any + more. People will thoughtlessly write "Are there anymore items" or whatever, cf. 'alot' for 'a lot'. Am told the PA Dutch have a funny but useful equivalent to the French "n'est-ce pas" -- "ain't", as in "You mowed both yards, ain't?" LOL!
That's a good one. You hear Brit's doing a tag question something like that with i'nit, or however that's spelled (or spelt). As in "That the way to do it, i'nit? I hadn't heard of "nauger," but I know "an adder" re-bracketed from "a nadder," and "an apron" from "a napron." I think that if English is around 75 years from now, we'll have a hard time following it. Imagine Geo Washington watching TV today. Of course I don't think we've got a lot to worry about on that score.
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