Question: Is racial profiling a legal way for a cop to stop a person on the road?
Answer: Racial profiling is not a legal way for the
police to single out a person to make a traffic stop. The 4th Amendment to the
United States Constitution protects your rights to be free from unreasonable
searches.
What this means is that police must have a reasonable
suspicion that a crime is occurring before they can stop you and investigate
whether you have committed a crime. Reasonable suspicion is a common-sense judgment
on the part of the police officer that they feel a crime is being committed.
There must be something that the officer can point to, in his or her experience,
that would lead them to think criminal activity is going on.
The race of a person alone is never enough to
justify a traffic stop or an arrest.
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