What are you doing, West Virginia? Of the three of these bills, maybe.... MAYBE..... I could deal with the road bill. I wouldn't like it, but I could live with it. You get yourself into a bind and then you have to work your way out of it even if you don't like the means to that end. But extended detainment of citizens? There are some constitutional concerns that need to be addressed before we proceed.
--House Judiciary Chairman Jon Amores (D-Kanawha)
Ya think!?!?! The bill, proposed by Sen. Evan Jenkins (D-Cabell), "would allow police to detain a person under the reasonable suspicion of committing a crime for up to six hours." Reasonable suspicion, eh? Perhaps now would be a good time to tell you the story of a very good friend of mine who was recently driving home to West Virginia from New York and her unfortunate run-in with Ohio's finest. Here's a quote from her blog:
So, I drove Mitch's car because he was way too tired to drive. Mitch fell asleep. I wasn't even speeding much...like 5 over...and a cop pulls us over. I had to hang up on Adam...poor kid.
Estimated time 11 53pm. Location- Outside of Cleveland. Mitch is awoken by the beauty of sirens. Cop takes licenses and proceeds. Cop makes Mitch get out of car. Cop questions. Cop moves toward carpet and finds some sort of substance he imagines to be "marijuana". Cop questions some more. Cop makes me get out of car. Cop places me in the back of his SUV with Mitch. WE sit. He searches the car. Takes us out of car. Asks us a million times if "we smoke". Finally, we get to get back in car. Ending time 12 34. Nice way to waste an half hour on questioning....nice. I hate cops in OHIO.
These are the people the wonderful legislators of the state of West Virginia wish to empower with an unconstitutional authority to detain anyone they damn well please for SIX HOURS! It's a high-tech, high-speed world. People get sentenced to 24 hours of jail time. Six hours is a long time. Especially considering they don't have to charge you with ANYTHING! The US Supreme Court had a hard time deciding that citizens were required to provide identification to law enforcement when they weren't driving vehicles. If this bill becomes law, I hope a cop tries to detain me for 6 hours without charging me JUST so I can get the media publicity associated with the ensuing FEDERAL LAW SUIT!
Sorry about that rant. I won't go into a rant about this last article. It needs its own post anyway, probably, and I'll leave it up to some of my friends to argue the other side here. I'm referring to the minimum wage law which was passed in West Virginia today. It's bleeding heart liberal short-sighted teary-eyed idiocy, if you ask me. And hey, look at that! You did!
Comments? Concerns? Suggestions? Over the last few months I've been hard at work developing an incredible, revolutionary new piece of software which I've now implemented in my blog. It's called "comments"! The system works thusly: You click where it says "0 comments" (or however many comments there are on any post I've written), then click "add a comment". You then record your thoughts on my post in a text field in your browser. When you're finished, you either log into blogspot or you type in your name (and your website, if you so desire) and then click "Login and publish". It's neat. Then I can read what you think and respond to it, and so can all my other readers! I dare you! I double dog dare you!
2 comments:
1) The road bill I can handle. I don't dislike it because I have a legal complaint... I just dislike it ;-) Rather, I dislike that it had to come about in the first place. Necessary evil, I suppose. It was that juxtaposed with the other two bills that turned the whole deal sour, really.
2) I'm glad you agree about minimum wage. I'll write a post about it soon.
3) The law enforcement bill.... The law already provides the opportunity for law enforcement officers to detain people suspected of committing crimes (provided reasonable suspicion is met). All they have to do is charge the suspect. Why the new law? If I get pulled over in Indiana for speeding and I am wanted for murder in California, the officers will find out by running my driver's license, which I'm required to carry. If I'm walking down the street and a cop sees me with a joint in my hand, he may reasonably suspect I've committed a crime, and he will charge me, take me into custody, and then give me a drug test. When will this new law come into play? When I get stopped walking down the street or when I'm a passenger in somebody's car and I'm young or black or rough-looking. If real reasonable suspicion of a crime exists, any reasonable law enforcement officer will charge the suspect. This leaves a paper trail. Legal detainment of a suspect on-site, as far as I know, would not require the officer to document anything beyond a brief incident report. The law is redundant if it is to be enforced as it was intended. In the worst case (which should be assumed of government by its citizens in matters of legislation), it is a prime medium for abuse of power by police officers. We're free to disagree here, thank God, but the guys in the big black robes will side with me ;-)
My friend's story isn't silly at all. The amount of time they were detained is irrelevant. Her account may not've provided enough details, though, so let me elaborate. She got pulled over because the license plate illuminator light was out on the car. These kids are two of the most moral, upstanding, anti-drug people I know. The officer pointed to a black speck on the floor of the car and said he suspected it was marijuana before grilling them about whether they smoked or not. He asked permission to search the car, and my friends, either by intimidation or by ignorance of their rights, consented. After his search returned no results, he continued pressing them to admit that they smoked marijuana. It was dark. The cop was by himself late at night on a lonely stretch of road. He had absolutely no evidence to indicate that these two citizens had broken any laws except a minor motor vehicle violation, EXCEPT that they were both college-age kids from out of state. This cop is exactly why that law should not pass. Meg and her friend are well-spoken, clean-cut kids, so the cop probably would've let them go on their way after his search found nothing. But what if they had been two backroad southern West Virginia hillbillies or two black college-age kids? With the unconstitutional and blind bill West Virginia's legislators just proposed, I'd lay 10:1 odds they would've sat in a cruiser on the side of the road or in a holding cell for 5 hours and 59 minutes without ever having been charged with anything, without any reparations or apologies made by law enforcement, and without EVER HAVING COMMITTED ANY CRIMES! No, Aunt Sharon, this bill won't fly.
I am glad that I got to be used for a point in a blog...awesome. It is like I am a celebrity or something.
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