Word: arrests
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Unhealthy Resistance. The reasonable answer would seem to be: submit now and sue later for false arrest. It is legal to resist illegal arrest in 47 states, but the right goes back to a day when armed citizens combatted weak police to avoid harsh imprisonment. Today the equation is so changed that it rarely pays to resist...
...says that arrest is "taking a person into custody that he may be held to answer for a crime." The Fourth Amendment, which bans "unreasonable searches and seizures," sets an arrest standard of "probable cause," meaning sufficient evidence to convince a prudent man that an offense has been or is being committed. In short, arrest for mere suspicion is unconstitutional-though it is so widely practiced in crime-ridden slum areas that about 100,000 such arrests a year are openly listed in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports...
Unwittingly Unlawful. Arrest is almost always lawful when police produce a judge-signed warrant specifying the charges, which the person arrested is entitled to read. Local police, however, rarely have the opportunity to use arrest warrants. Unlike federal agents, they confront hit-run crimes that leave little time for investigation to nail down probable cause. Typically, local police arrest first, then question suspects to build cases...
...Even so, arrest without a warrant is perfectly constitutional when police reasonably believe that a felony has been committed and that the person to be arrested committed it. Police may also arrest anyone for misdemeanors that constitute a "breach of the peace" committed in their presence. (Threatening someone with a broken bottle would qualify in most courts.) But other kinds of misdemeanors generally require warrants. And because felonies may be confused with misdemeanors, police sometimes unwittingly make unlawful arrests...
Search for Balance. To bypass such complexities of arrest, some states have invented "pre-arrest detention." This device was designed to permit police to act on "reasonable suspicion" rather than the higher standard of "reasonable belief." Delaware, Rhode Island and New Hampshire have adopted the Uniform Arrest Act, which allows a policeman to stop, question, detain and frisk any person "whom he has reasonable ground to suspect" of having committed a crime. Unless there is probable cause for actual arrest, the person must be released after two hours...