John Whitehead's Commentary
The Supreme Court Grants Police Too Much Power
On an early spring day four years ago, Gail Atwater, a mother of two, was driving her pick-up truck through a neighborhood in Lago Vista, Texas. Her 3-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter were with her in the front seat. The only thing unusual about the scene was that Mrs. Atwater was breaking the law--specifically, she had failed to buckle up herself and her two children, although she was driving at a speed of less than 20 miles per hour.
A police officer spotted the violation and signaled for Mrs. Atwater to pull over. When he pointed out her omission, she apologized immediately--but that wasn't enough. The officer began yelling at her, saying, "You're going to jail." As her terrified, weeping children cowered in their seats, Mrs. Atwater asked if she could first take them to a neighbor's house. But the officer refused, telling her, "You're not going anywhere!"
True to his word, the officer handcuffed Mrs. Atwater, stuffed her in his squad car and whisked her away to the local police station (a vigilant neighbor came out to baby-sit her children). There, officers told Mrs. Atwater to remove her shoes, eyeglasses and jewelry and empty her pockets. Then they took her mug shot and locked her in a jail cell.
It only took an hour for Mrs. Atwater to get a hearing before a magistrate. She was released on a $310 bond, and her fine for the seatbelt violation totaled a mere $50. But the humiliation lasted much longer--and the emotional cost to Mrs. Atwater and her children was immeasurable (her 3-year-old had to make regular visits to a child psychologist to deal with his trauma). So she and her family went looking for justice, a search that took them all the way to the Supreme Court. Yet in a bitter conclusion to the sordid affair, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision ruled that the police officer had not violated her constitutional rights--and in the process issued to police broad powers over the freedom of citizens like Gail Atwater.
The crux of Mrs. Atwater's argument was that the arrest violated her Fourth Amendment rights because it was an unreasonable seizure. Basically, police can only arrest citizens if the arrest is "reasonable"--a legal term that essentially balances the individual's privacy interests against the government's interests in keeping a safe and orderly society.
If ever there was a case of an unreasonable arrest, this situation appeared to be it. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor pointed out in her dissent, Mrs. Atwater clearly did not pose a danger to anyone--in fact, she had only one previous citation, issued ten years earlier, for failure to signal when changing lanes. Further, the "crime" she was arrested for was only a misdemeanor punishable by a small fine.
But the majority of justices on the Court refused to vindicate Mrs. Atwater's quest for justice, instead burying her claim in a blizzard of ambiguous historical references and overblown concerns about every arrest becoming a case of constitutional concern. In the process, they opened the door for further police abuse.
Consider the implications of the Court's decision not to extend Fourth Amendment protection to minor misdemeanor offenses: anyone found violating any statute, no matter how trivial, may be arrested--which means they could then be subjected to further searches without violating the Constitution. Justice O'Connor offers the example of the litterbug: a person could be handcuffed, subjected to an intrusive personal search and locked up in jail for dropping a candy wrapper on a public sidewalk.
The majority of the Court tried to downplay this fear by pointing out that many states already have statutes prohibiting arrests for minor offenses. Yet the fact that so many states view such arrests as unreasonable is more evidence of a conflict with the Fourth Amendment--not less.
Finally, the Court's decision appears to pave the way for an increase in the ethnic epidemic known as "racial profiling." In Justice O'Connor's words, "As the recent debate over racial profiling demonstrates all too clearly, a relatively minor traffic infraction may often serve as an excuse for stopping and harassing an individual." And with this decision, police officers have a constitutional license to arrest minority drivers for minor infractions such as, for instance, driving without a seatbelt. They can then search them and even throw them in jail for a couple of days.
Thus, what started as a leisurely drive on a spring day in Texas has ended with the genie of unbridled police power being let out of the bottle. We can only hope that it is put back in before too many more lives like those of Mrs. Atwater and her children are tarnished and thrown into turmoil.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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