Aguila Blanca
Staff
Well then, I guess we shouldn't be surprised that so many police officers don't understand the concept. The acronym "RAS" does not convey the substance of the SCOTUS principle. "RAS" is an acronym for "Reasonable Articulable Suspicion." But it is not the suspicion that must be articulable, it is the facts that support the suspicion and make the suspicion reasonable. And the facts must not simply be "articulable" -- that would encompass a hunch. They must be "clearly" articulable. The acronym "RAS" does not include any reference that would cause one to think about either facts or clearly.Tom Servo said:RAS is an informal name for a doctrine police departments adopted. The general outline is in the Terry majority opinion:
And in justifying the particular intrusion the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion.
The fact that some police departments may have adopted "RAS" as a shorthand for the actual guidelines laid down in Terry v. Ohio does not make the acronym effective.
Anecdotal evidence of my point? Pennsylvania. Outside of Philadelphia city limits, open carry is legal withOUT a permit. (Within Philadelphia open carry is legal with a permit.) On the PA Firearms Owners Association forum I often see references to "RAS," so I guess the acronym is in common use in PA. And on the PAFOA forum I also see numerous reports of people being hassled, detained, interrogated, and even arrested for engaging in open carry -- even though they were 100 percent within the law.
So if the police academies are using "RAS" to teach the concepts of Terry, I respectfully suggest they need to find a better acronym.
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