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from the forget-whatever-you-thought-you-knew dept.
I didn't realize that the 4th Amendment coffin could take any more nails, but the Supreme Court has ruled that "A police officer can stop a car based on a mistaken understanding of the law without violating the Fourth Amendment." http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/us/politics/justices-find-no-rights-violation-in-officers-misreading-of-law.html?_r=0 The vote wasn't even close, 8-1. Only Sotomayor dissented. Link to the actual opinion: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-604_ec8f.pdf
From the NYT article:
Chief Justice Roberts conceded that the court’s decision at first blush ran afoul of the maxim that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
On reflection, he said, the maxim holds the government and its citizens to the same standard where it counts.
“Just as an individual generally cannot escape criminal liability based on a mistaken understanding of the law,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “so too the government cannot impose criminal liability based on a mistaken understanding of the law.”
Huh? Either I'm going crazy or words have lost all meaning, because what he just ruled is that cops who don't know the law, make valid arrests because they are mistaken about the law while if in the same circumstance, the cop knew the action was not consistent with law, the arrest would not be valid -- thus ignorance of the law benefits the cops immensely, a real person has been subjected to criminal liability because of this ignorance, and now the law can mean whatever the dude with the badge and gun says.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday December 18 2014, @05:16AM
I tell ya what, you put on a BPV and I'll draw from the hip and blaze a clip at ya...how about that? A BPV isn't an iron man suit, just as many cops in the ground from getting popped despite the BPV as there are above ground from wearing it. And ya might want to look at the video, its a car not a tank. It seems like the left wing don't like cops driving around in tanks, so maybe you should be posting a petition in support of military vehicles for cops if you really feel this way?
Of course the easiest thing to do would be to teach kids not to pull the orange caps off their air guns and tell them they shouldn't go around pointing them at people and NEVER whip one out at a cop. Naaaah, that would make too much sense, can't have that, that would involve personal responsibility, the horror! BTW hope you are for private gun ownership because if you think anybody would take the cop's job with your conditions attached? You'd have better chance winning the powerball than calling 911 and having a cop show up. But you go right ahead and think they should have to take a bullet in the of chance mister criminal is using a fake weapon, after all with rules like that why they'll never have a problem getting cops to work in the ghetto, nope I bet they'll be lining up to get 30k a year to take a bullet, yessirree boy!
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.