Farewell to the Fourth

People who don’t like
constitutional constraints on government—especially those pesky Fourth
Amendment guarantees against unreasonable searches and seizures—are likely
smiling.

First, a Supreme Court decision
in May allows police to enter a private residence without a warrant if they
claim they smelled marijuana or some other drug and feared that evidence would
be destroyed if they didn’t break-in without a warrant.

The decision in that case was
8-1 and the majority of the justices must assume that police never lie. Perhaps
they forgot about the five officers from the 39th Precinct in
Philadelphia who were found guilty of planting evidence in the 1990s. Similar
actions routinely happen across the country, from New York to Los Angeles.

The lone dissent came from
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg who said the court has now given police an easy way
to ignore fundamental rights. The decision "arms the police with a
way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement in drug
cases," she wrote.

If local police can get away
without needing a warrant, surely FBI agents can do the same. The bureau last
weekend came out with a policy allowing agents to initiate investigations and
surveillances on anyone they choose without the need to show cause for the
action.

Judge Andrew Napolitano,
on his Freedom Watch program of June
13, said the new policy: “…would
permit [FBI] agents on their own to follow and snoop on anyone they wanted,
whether there was any suspicion of criminal activity about that person or not;
that it would sort through the garbage of anyone it chose, whether there was
any suspicious behavior on the part of whoever used the garbage or not; and
that it would search any databases it felt like searching about anyone in whom
it was interested, whether there was criminal suspicion about that person or
not.”

If those two situations weren’t bad enough, city council members in Cedar
Falls enacted an ordinance in 2004 that required lock boxes on commercial
buildings and large apartment complexes. This week, Council voted 6-1 to expand
the policy to include smaller apartment buildings. It went from a six-apartment
minimum to a three-unit minimum.

Tenants are required to place a key to the apartment or property in a
universal lock box that firefighters can access so, in case of a fire, they can
enter without breaking down the door.

One woman speaking against the expanded measure said that if her
apartment were on fire, she wouldn’t care about whether or not firefighters
broke the door.

Another rationalization for the ordinance is that if there’s an EMS
call, responders can gain access. Again, if it’s a matter of life or death, the
door doesn’t matter. Even if it did, those in single dwellings should fork up
keys, too. Don’t they deserve to be safe? Don’t their doors deserve the right
to remain hinged?

Cedar Falls Council members likely got the measure approved because it
doesn’t affect the more affluent, those in better neighborhoods with nice
houses. It focuses on the poorer in the community, those who rent.

Some people don’t care about guarantees of liberty when it comes to
people and activities they don’t like. “Druggies deserve to have their homes
raided without a warrant… gays should be prohibited from marrying… rich people
are crooks… poor people don’t matter.” Those are the attitudes that interfere
with liberty. Those attitudes are dangerous.

To paraphrase Thomas Paine,
those who fail to safeguard the rights of others whether it’s because of a
difference in income, skin color, gender or for any reason whatsoever will lose
their rights, too.

About CFLive Staff

See Contributors Page https://chaddsfordlive.com/writers/

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

Comments

comments

Leave a Reply