"I want national stop-and-frisk" - Geraldo Rivera

Geraldo Rivera, whom some imagine to be a libertarian, shows his true colors on his weekend TeeVee program on Fox News. He wants the First, Second and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution suspended (or eliminated, he didn't say which).

This guy wants to run as a GOPer from Joisey? His biggest hero (literally, too!) is Governor Chris Christie, who we know here as "Tubby the One-Note Tuba" (but...I killed the UUUNIONS!).

Remember when we asked it here, and Joe asked it over at his place, "What Civil Rights will this Government come after next, after they trash the Second Amendment?"

The answer is in: it's to be the First and Fourth Amendments, which have to be highly modified to allow the NYPD practice known as "stop and frisk".

What stop and frisk is:

Basically, someone draws a circle around a bad part of town, where more crime than usual (what is usual?) is happening (in real estate sales, that's called redlining, and it's prohibited by Federal Law and legal precedent). Next, the right of persons in that outlined area to be totally free of unreasonable searches and seizures is modified, from the "Terry vs. Ohio" standard to one which says that it's up to the cop alone to decide what is reasonable, based on the cop's judgement, not a more severely-defined standard that could be agreed to by a jury or a judge. All persons within the outlined area have to submit to these searches upon the demand of a police officer, and even though the searches are not of the proper quality to always support probable cause to believe that a crime has occurred or is about to occur, evidence of a crime (carrying a concealed weapon, drugs, etc) may be booked and submitted because it is within a stop and frisk area. In any other place, a search of this poor evidentiary quality could not be used to support an affadavit of probable cause.

Geraldo Rivera evidently believes in totally suppressing crime, no matter how much of the Constitution he has to destroy to do it.

This is like saying that when the Philadelphia Eagles play the New England Patriots, the game is going to be a laugher, so we'll let Philadelphia do horse-collar tackles, blindside blocks, unlimited holding on the line, and all their penalties will be no more than 5 yards. New England will have to follow all the normal rules.

What's next, Geraldo? Judge Dredd?

Hitler started this way, you know. He set out to "clean up" Germany, to restore order from the street tumult of the inter-war period. Yep, Hitler cleaned up Germany all right. Now Geraldo Rivera wants to be Senator, and he's advocating the same sort of Constitution-ignoring purges as Hitler used.

Comments

[Anthony L.]

I double fucking dare an LEO to try that shit with me. No violence, but I promise, I would make life as difficult as possible for all involved.

[Rivrsis]

I would assume a "national" stop and frisk would draw that circle around the entire nation, so that anyone in the country would be liable to such on the whim of any cop.