New York’s stop and frisk law, which allowed police to go up to just about anyone for any reason and pat them down, was struck down earlier this year by a New York judge. (Floyd v. City of NY). Police in NYC frisked minorities 84% of the time, even though minorities make up roughly half of NYC’s population. And 88% of the time, the persons frisked were not committing a crime and were not arrested. They just had to put up with the stress, humiliation and physical intrusion of a stop and frisk. You do not have to be a left wing liberal to see that police getting to walk up to law abiding minorities and conduct a search for no reason is overreaching and should have been stopped long ago. But it persisted until this past August, when a judge shut it down.
However, all the reforms the judge ordered have now been placed on hold by an appeals court and the judge has been kicked off the case…bizarre. Here is a link to an NY Times story about it: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/opinion/the-next-step-in-stop-and-frisk.html?_r=0 By the way, when police greatly reduced the number of frisks over the past year, the crime rate did not increase. The whole saga has been well chronicled in the New Yorker by Jeffrey Toobin. You can find all his posts at @jeffreytoobin on Twitter. He is a good follow if you are interested in legal topics.
In Delaware, we actually have stronger constitutional protections that the ones guaranteed by our federal constitution, especially when it comes to unreasonable searches and seizures. Yes, an officer is allowed to approach an individual and ask them some questions, and even pat them down for weapons…but only if they have a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. Delaware has a statute, called the two hour detention law, which allows the police to detain a person without arresting him or her for up to two hours while they investigate the suspicious activity…then they have to arrest the person or let them go. Fair enough.
Often police do everything exactly by the book. Other times, they overstep. In situations where our client’s right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures have been violated, we try to restore that right by filing and arguing a motion to suppress the illegally obtained evidence. After a court hearing, the judge rules whether the police conduct was acceptable under the constitution. If it was not, then here in Delaware, we have what is called the exclusionary rule. That means that all evidence flowing from the illegal police conduct is excluded at trial.
Feel free to contact our office for more information.