We Have Become a Police State (But You already Knew That)

Exerpted from the Laissez Faire Today newsletter:

The hallmark of a police state is when citizens are stopped arbitrarily and told to show their “papers.” In a free society, citizens aren’t required to identify themselves to the police if they aren’t actively engaging in a crime. It’s none of the police officer’s business.

But oh, how the seasons change.

“On Monday,” the Wall Street Journal reports, “the Supreme Court further weakened the Fourth Amendment by making it even easier for law enforcement to evade its requirement that stops be based on reasonable suspicion. The justices ruled 5 to 3 that a police officer’s illegal stop of a man on the street did not prevent evidence obtained from a search connected to that stop to be used against him.”

Justice Clarence Thomas shrugged the whole thing off. In his words, [Mr. Edward] Striefel was merely a victim of “good-faith mistakes,” and the illegal stop was nothing more than “an isolated instance of negligence.”

Not impressed by the rhetoric, Justice Sonia Sotomayor shot back: “Do not be soothed by the opinion’s technical language. This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants -- even if you are doing nothing wrong.

“Two wrongs,” she said, “don’t make a right.”

Indeed.