Miles's blog

If you have any questions about the position of law enforcement in society, a couple of articles in today’s New York Times might answer them for you.  The mayor of New York had to publicly defend his police department for monitoring public websites of Muslim collegestudent organizations.  College officials have their boxers in a bunch citing some sort of privacy or perhaps religious freedom violation.  They assert the police are unfairly targeting members of a specific religion.  I am not sure where they get this from because the articles did not say they only look at these student organizations.  Maybe they spend just as much time on the Young Democrats, ROTC, and Santorum for President student organizations pages.

While I do not support racial or religious discrimination against any individual or group, law enforcement would be derelict in their duties to not investigate sources of crime, wherever they may be found.  It is obvious to anyone who keeps up with the news that radical Muslims have sworn to destroy America, have already caused great loss of life and continue to plot to cause more.  Just days ago the FBI prevented an attack on the US Capitol by a lone wolf terrorist whose motive seemed to be his perception that America’s war on terrorism is really a war on Muslims.  Obviously not all Muslims are terrorists, but examining public postings by Muslims seems a reasonable way to monitor activities of those in America who are actively plotting violence.  The same can be said of extremists with other beliefs, for example members of “militias” who want to overthrow the government, like Timothy McVeigh.  

If you think perhaps this is an overreaction by law enforcement, take a look at how virulently many Muslims defend their faith.  They are rioting in Afghanistan because some Americans mistakenly destroy some old copies of the Koran.  Not treasured manuscripts, just some books which were being used in a detainee facility, I think supplied by the American government.  The United States apologized profusely but that is not enough. From the New York Times:

So do you think it is outrageous for the police to monitor public information put out by Muslim groups in America?

Meanwhile, candidates for NYC  mayor and others are decrying the increased use of “stop and frisk” by the police as disproportionately targeting racial minorities.  It is important to note that not a single person was claiming these stops violated the constitutional rights of those searched or were not supported by the reasonable suspicion required by law, but merely that the sheer numbers of searches showed some sort of impropriety.

Apparently we have no reached the point where large numbers of people think crime is so low that hobbling the police will not impact public safety.  They choose to criticize legitimate police practices not as illegal, unethical, immoral, wasteful, or even unproductive, but just that they violate some vague sense of the police’s proper role.  They seem to forget that the reason private security companies make millions is not the fear that a police officer will kick in your door in the middle of the night and arrest you, but that each and every one of us lives with a constant vigilance against the evil-doers who we know live in our cities.  I doubt they would complain if the stop and frisk discovered a guy with a crowbar standing outside their garage.

While I do not support racial profiling, and condemn the targeting anyone because of his or her race, I fail to see how telling the police they should not make a legal and constitutional stop of a suspect advances public safety or the protection of constitutional rights.  If the police are engaging in racial profiling that sounds like they do not possess the requisite reasonable suspicion to make a stop.  This practice should be eliminated.  However, if the police do have sufficient grounds to stop and search someone, regardless of their race, allowing them to do so can only enhance public safety.

These articles reminded me of the statute passed in Colorado a few years ago requiring the police to give an advisement to people when asking for consent to search.  Somehow the message has gotten across that police overreaching is a bigger problem than the crimes which they uncover.  The end product of such a trend is a return to the era of high crime.