Supreme Court Sides With Law Enforcement

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It’s simply amazing that our society has come to this.  The Supreme Court needs to decide whether or not the police should be allowed to stop a vehicle pursuit by physically stopping it.  Meaning ramming the vehicle.  Isn’t this common sense?  If you tell the cops that they can no longer chase a suspect because he is driving a bit wacky then why have cops at all?  Why not just pay some folks to go write reports after the crime has occurred, traveling secreteries basically.  No pro-active police work needed.  Let the criminals roam free, do their crimes and then we will just go write about it later.

Idiocy.

Justice Scalia written opinion is great, especially this part: (Check out all the opinions here PDF)

But wait, says respondent: Couldn’t the innocent public equally have been protected, and the tragic accident entirely avoided, if the police had simply ceased their pursuit?  We think the police need not have taken that chance and hoped for the best.  Whereas Scott’s action—ramming respondent off the road—was certain to eliminate the risk that respondent posed to the public, ceasing pursuit was not.  First of all, there would have been no way to convey convincingly to respondent that the chase was off, and that he was free to go.  Had respondent looked in his rearview mirror and seen the police cars deactivate their flashing lights and turn around, he would have had no idea whether they were truly letting him get away, or simply devising a new strategy for capture.  Perhaps the police knew a shortcut he didn’t know, and would reappear down the road to intercept him; or perhaps they were setting up a roadblock in his path.  Given such uncertainty, respondent might have been just as likely to respond by continuing to drive recklessly as by slowing down and wiping his brow.

Second, we are loath to lay down a rule requiring the police to allow fleeing suspects to get away whenever they drive so recklessly that they put other people’s lives in danger.  It is obvious the perverse incentives such a rule would create: Every fleeing motorist would know that escape is within his grasp, if only he accelerates to 90 miles per hour, crosses the double-yellow line a few times,and runs a few red lights.  The Constitution assuredly does not impose this invitation to impunity earned by recklessness.  Instead, we lay down a more sensible rule: A police officer’s attempt to terminate a dangerous high-speed car chase that threatens the lives of innocent bystanders does not violate the Fourth Amendment, even when it places the fleeing motorist at risk of serious injury or death.

You would think this would be common sense.  If one criminal gets away because he crossed the double yellow line while fleeing then even those criminals who may have not been so inclined to run before will in fact run.  Common sense, but instead we get this drible from the lone dissenter, Justice Stevens:

I can only conclude that my colleagues were unduly frightened by two or three images on the tape that looked like bursts of lightning or explosions, but were in fact merely the headlights of vehicles zooming by in the opposite lane. Had they learned to drive when most high-speed driving took place on two-lane roads rather than on superhighways—when split-second judgments about the risk of passing a slowpoke in the face of oncoming traffic were routine—they might well have reacted to the videotape more dispassionately.

You whippersnappers should of learned to drive on route 66 in a Model-T, then it wouldn’t be so scary……

Un-believe-able.