Profile Discrimination is agaisnt the law? Or isn't it?

S

SAM57

Inactive
Judge tosses gun evidence in motorcycle stop
This post is in reference to your above headline from Thursday, November 3, 2011 - 4:19pm, I have attached all of the needed information.
What I want to know is how can the State of Delaware* waste tax payers money?
Please refer to attachment #1 (download.pdf)
A judge at the Superior Court of Delaware heard*the case, saw the dash cam and had the officer stuttering and actually confess that he pulled over the Hells Angel because, the Hells Angel was riding in Pagan terratory, therefor he must have a gun. Which is Profile Discrimination! I must tell you that the Hells Angel has a permit to carry in Pennsylvania.
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The Superiour Judge Granted Defendant’s Motion to Suppress.
The District Attorney filed to reargue the case. The judge decided that, the State’s Motion for Reargument is DENIED.Please refer to attachment #2 (1106003662-1.pdf)
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The District Attorney then filed again for the case to be heard by a different judge on the 11 hours, of the final day ...... !!?
Shouldnt the same go for law enforcement officers? Are they above the law?
We need people to get the word out, let us know what is really on!!!
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I would love your opinoin? I would love for you to cover this issue. Make it known how that State of Delaware is wasting the tax payers hard earned money.
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Profile Discrimination is agaisnt the law.
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Attachments

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None of the attachments are accessible to readers, and we don't have a link to the original story. As such, it's hard for us to comment in any meaningful way.

Furthermore, do you mean "profiling?"
 
SAM57 said:
A judge at the Superior Court of Delaware heard*the case, saw the dash cam and had the officer stuttering and actually confess that he pulled over the Hells Angel because, the Hells Angel was riding in Pagan terratory, therefor he must have a gun. Which is Profile Discrimination!
Click to expand...
No, it is not profile discrimination. Profiling would be if he pulled over the biker because he was Hispanic, or Black, or Chinese. Pulling him over because he suspected he might have a gun is acting on a suspicion that a crime is being committed. That's not profiling.

The question then because one of whether or not the suspicion is considered "reasonable, based on clearly articulable facts." That is the criterion established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio. To be honest, unless there's a lot here that I'm not seeing, I think this stop probably would satisfy the Terry criteria, and that the State just did a lousy job at the first hearing on the motion to suppress.

I must tell you that the Hells Angel has a permit to carry in Pennsylvania.
Click to expand...
What is the significance of this statement? According to the HandgunLaw site, Delaware doesn't honor a Pennsylvania permit, so the fact the biker had a PA license to carry is of no relevance to the discussion.
 
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I agree that this has nothing to do with profiling. It's simply about needing a reasonably articulable suspicion to make a stop, and here the State wasn't able to convince the judge.
 
I will try and make this easier for you to understand.

Here is the definition:
Profiling, according to the State Legislature’s current policies,
occurs when law enforcement targets an individual exhibiting
characteristics of a class that an officer believes more likely than others to
commit a crime. The practice of targeting an individual because they are
riding a motorcycle or wearing motorcycle paraphernalia is a perfect
example of profiling. (Definition of profiling in SB 5852 passed in 2002.)

Here are a few links that describe the issue a little more in depth:

http://www.delawaretroopers.org/network-news.html?np=65

http://safeaccessnow.org/punbb/viewtopic.php?id=7499
 
SAM57 said:
I will try and make this easier for you to understand.

Here is the definition:
Profiling, according to the State Legislature’s current policies,
occurs when law enforcement targets an individual exhibiting
characteristics of a class that an officer believes more likely than others to
commit a crime....
Click to expand...
Nope, sorry. It seems that you want, for whatever reason, to make this thread into a discussion of profiling, but the Delaware case you brought up in the first post is not about profiling. Both court documents describe the suppression of evidence on the grounds that the officer was not able to satisfy the reasonably articulable suspicion test.

And the documents you link to in post 7 relate to a Washington State law and are thus irrelevant to the Delaware case.

So I'm uncertain about where you hope to go with this.

As far as your making it "easier to understand", as a lawyer with over 30 years in practice, I understand the law quite well and can read and understand a court opinion.
 
Delaware is not Washington...What you linked does not apply in Delaware.
Does Delaware have some similar law?

Edit: Frank beat me to it! :p
 
Seems to me that profiling is normally not allowed with regard to race, gender, age, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and protected status.

Seems to me that profiling is normally not prohibited with regard to affiliation with groups known to traffic in drugs, weapons, and prostitution.

I am not sure why the OP thinks the defendant has a strong case.
 
Seems to me that profiling is normally not prohibited with regard to affiliation with groups known to traffic in drugs, weapons, and prostitution.
Click to expand...

I know that Washington state's definition of profiling ("when law enforcement targets an individual exhibiting characteristics of a class that an officer believes more likely than others to commit a crime") doesn't apply in this particular case, but I'm curious now - would a member of a motorcycle club be considered part of a "class of people", or does "class" have a particular legal definition that limits it to the characteristics you listed earlier (race, age, ethnicity, etcetera)?
 
SAM57 said:
I will try and make this easier for you to understand.
Click to expand...
I think we understand quite adequately, and there seems to be a consensus that THIS case did not involve profiling.

Here is the definition:
Profiling, according to the State Legislature’s current policies,
occurs when law enforcement targets an individual exhibiting
characteristics of a class that an officer believes more likely than others to
commit a crime. The practice of targeting an individual because they are
riding a motorcycle or wearing motorcycle paraphernalia is a perfect
example of profiling. (Definition of profiling in SB 5852 passed in 2002.)
Click to expand...
But the biker in this case was not stopped because he was riding a motorcycle or because he was wearing motorcycle paraphernalia. According to your opening post, he was stopped because he was wearing Hell's Angels paraphernalia while riding in Pagans' turf. That gave the officer a suspicion (which he considered to be reasonable -- apparently the court subsequently disagreed) that the biker was probably armed and probably did not have a DE permit to carry.

That's not profiling. That's acting on a suspicion of potential criminal activity. In Terry v. Ohio the Supreme Court made it clear that what constitutes a "reasonable suspicion based on clearly articulable facts" is not etched in granite. The same conditions encountered at noon on a Wednesday might not arouse suspicion but when encountered at 03:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning WOULD arouse suspicion.

Like others, I'm not sure where you're coming from on this. You started off saying you'd love to have our opinion. We gave it to you -- including an opinion from an experienced attorney. Now that you have the opinions you asked for, you seem to think you need to "educate" us about something.

Did you really want our opinion, or did you come here seeking an argument?
 
would a member of a motorcycle club be considered part of a "class of people", or does "class" have a particular legal definition that limits it to the characteristics you listed earlier (race, age, ethnicity, etcetera)?
Click to expand...
Generally, laws on profiling and discrimination focus on protected classes, which are the parentheticals you mentioned. "Motorcyclist" isn't a protected class.

Neither is "gun owner," for all the sturm and drang we see about that.
 
A judge at the Superior Court of Delaware heard*the case, saw the dash cam and had the officer stuttering and actually confess that he pulled over the Hells Angel because, the Hells Angel was riding in Pagan terratory, therefor he must have a gun. Which is Profile Discrimination! I must tell you that the Hells Angel has a permit to carry in Pennsylvania.
Click to expand...

Well in my parts this is reasonable suspicion. Its not discrimination if you openly display your gang propaganda and enrollement in such gang in a known rival gangs teritory. I would definately view that as a reasonable belief that a crime has or is about to happen.
 
Not sure that beig a biker or a Hells Angel would fit one into a "Class". At least not in the way that the anti-profiling laws define a class.
 
Interesting that several have mentioned stopping a person because of "a reasonable belief that a crime is about to happen."

I find that kind of troubling---in that it suggests the law enforcement official can predict behavior.

I am not sure how one would have a reasonable belief of what someone has in mind.

The fact that I go into a bank with a CCW gun does not mean that I plan to rob it. But I might.

I suppose what you guys are saying is that it gives the law enforcement official the right to check me out to see what my intention is.

But if I am planning to rob the bank and I get asked about my intentions by an officer, surely I'd deny it.
 
To greater or lesser degrees, we all try to predict behavior, LE included. For most of us, it's simply situational awareness. It's not so much a matter of "knowing what someone has in mind" as it is about knowing that behaviors X and Y are often followed by behavior Z. For example, in Terry v. Ohio, an experienced law enforcement officer testified that he had seen three men (I have to paraphrase here) go back and forth in front of a store several times with kind of a "practiced indifference," which the LEO interpreted as them casing the store for a robbery that they planned later.
 
NRA guy said:
Interesting that several have mentioned stopping a person because of "a reasonable belief that a crime is about to happen."
Click to expand...
Not a suspicion that a crime "is about to happen." A suspicion that a crime is happening.

In fact, the SCOTUS decision in Terry v. Ohio does allow for a police officer based on the totality of the circumstances to form a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed, is being committed, or is about to be committed. So the SCOTUS left the door open to that, but the Terry decision made it clear that the "reasonable" suspicion must be supported by specific, clearly articulable facts.

In the case that is the subject of this discussion, I didn't get that the officer was claiming he suspected the biker was going to commit an armed robbery, a murder, an assault or any other future crime. The officer saw a Hell's Angel from PA riding in Pagans territory in DE and arrived at the conclusions that (a) the guy probably wouldn't enter another gang's turf unarmed, AND (b) since he's not from DE he probably doesn't have a DE carry permit, therefore if he has a gun he IS COMMITTING a crime.

No future thought involved, just simple deductive logic operating entirely in the present tense.
 
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