Racial Profiling by Police Essay -- Stop and Frisk

The Fourth Amendment protects the right of people to be secure in their persons, ‘ houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures†¦ (108). Under the Fourth Amendment the legal constraints placed on police and the rules they must follow for â€Å"Stop and Frisk† happened as a result of the â€Å"Terry v. Ohio â€Å"case (162). The constraints are that the police cannot stopped and frisk people without reasonable suspicion probable cause or a warrant. Before 1968 the police could search a suspect only if they had probable cause. After the Terry case the police may conduct a frisk search of a suspect’s outer clothing only if there was reasonable suspicion. The U.S. Supreme Court definition of â€Å"Frisk† is: a patting down of the outer clothing of a suspect based on the reasonable suspicion, designed to protect a police officer from attack with a weapon when making an inquiry. A â€Å"Search† is an exploration for evidence. Although frisk are restricted to a search for weapons that may pose an immediate threat to the officer’s safety, the Court concluded that cases as these are decided by their own facts; generally, however, police officers who see unusual conduct that leads them to conclude that criminal activity are involved and that the persons are armed and dangerous are entitled to conduct â€Å"a carefully limited search of the outer clothing of such persons trying to discover weapons† that may be used to assault them (163) Such a frisk are reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, and any weapons seized is introduced in evidence. Reasonable suspicion is when a police officer has good reason to believe that criminal activity may be occurring as in the case of â€Å"Terry v. Ohio† (162). The police officer observed thre... ...s under O’Malley (100,000) that O’Malley won by a landslide by the number of arrest made. On the other hand Mayor Rawlings engaged the targeted approached and went after violent and repeated offenders which resulted in a decrease in homicide to fewer than 200 in 2011. Racial profiling contributes to many frivolous minor infractions that burdens the prosecutors to bring these cases to court. The court are overwhelmed with trying these cases and that takes time away from the more violent cases As a result the correctional facilities becomes overcrowded which cost the state money. Policing must not be initiated by numbers, race, ethnicity or national origin. Racial profiling violates an individual’s civil right and if being done it violates the 4th Amendment right. â€Æ' Works Cited Albanese, Jay S. Criminal Justice. Upper Saddle River : Pearson, 2013. Print.