College students suffer from an unfortunate lack of privacy rights in many situations. The university owns the dorm, so school officials can often search rooms at their own discretion. College students still have 4th Amendment rights that apply in other situations...
The sad fact is that most people believe that they are under some kind of obligation to acquiesce when an officer contacts them and asks permission to search them or their belongings. The truth is exactly the opposite...
No. The courts have made it clear that police officers do not have to tell people that they can refuse to consent to a warrantless search. Also, contrary to the belief perpetuated by popular police television shows, a person will not be read their rights subsequent to being taken into custody. A person only needs to be Mirandized when...
Videotaping or photographing police in public places is usually legal, so long as you don't interfere with their activities. Nonetheless, doing so will often get you arrested...
Everyone should be trained to assert their constitutional rights under the 4th Amendment in order to avoid the hassle and humiliation of police misconduct and illegal searches. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics report on citizen-police contacts...
No. We believe that most police officers are good, hardworking people who are doing a tough job. We need police to safeguard the life, liberty, and property of all people. To do this best, police officers should...
In addition to compromising your safety and the safety of others, driving drunk is one of the stupidest things you can do, and one of the easiest ways to create overwhelming legal problems for yourself. DUI laws vary from state to state, and they have become increasingly harsh over the years...
Simply put, the number of arrests an officer makes is a major factor used to determine his job performance. Police officers know that the easiest way to make arrests is to find people in possession of illegal drugs, so they want to search everyone they can find...
Yes. Police can, will, and often do lie; especially if it helps them make arrests. The rules regarding entrapment usually tip in favor of law-enforcement, so police won't hesitate to trick you into incriminating yourself or others...
Unfortunately, many people get fooled by some version of this commonly used police officer's line: "Everything will be easier if you just cooperate". That's true to some extent -- it will make things much easier for the police officer who's trying to arrest you! -- but when it comes to you consenting to searches and answering incriminating questions, it couldn't be further from the truth...
This is a tricky issue. The simple answer is that citizens who are minding their own business are not obligated to "show their papers" to police. In fact, there is no law requiring citizens to carry identification of any kind. Once you get passed the surface, however, things get much more complicated...
Be aware that private security personnel outnumber police officers in the United States by three to one. As a result, you may be more likely to be confronted by a security guard than by a police officer. You must also be aware of the following places where security personnel (governmental or otherwise) are permitted to search you without a warrant...
No. We teach people that they have rights, and that these rights are secured by the principal documents that guarantee our civil liberties -- the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. An informed individual who invokes his constitutional protections is doing exactly what our nation's founders intended. They created these documents to...
Unfortunately, police may sometimes search you even if you refuse consent. If they find anything illegal, you'll have to get a lawyer and fight it out in court, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the search will hold up...
The strangest thing happened to me the other day. I was sitting on a park bench with my girlfriend enjoying some marijuana. While I knew she disapproved, I went ahead and smoked a joint anyway.
Next thing I knew, a flying saucer descended from the sky and we were visited by a space alien! Not wanting to seem ungracious, I offered our new friend a puff of my joint. He declined.
My girlfriend, sick of my pot smoking and enamored by the alien's courage, immediately fell in love with our new little green friend. Before I knew it, she was boarding his flying saucer to fly away together to a far away galaxy where they would live happily ever after, leaving me heartbroken with only my joint to console me...
Does this scenario sound ridiculous to you? Believe it or not, this is an actual an advertisement designed by our government to keep young people from smoking marijuana!
Since 1998 the federal government has spent over $1.5 billion on anti-drug ads targeted at youth that are nothing more than mindless propaganda, mocked by young people as this generation's version of Reefer Madness. Independent studies conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Westat, and Texas State University have all found that these ads actually cause more drug use among teens who view them!
President Obama has pledged to cut wasteful government spending by eliminating programs that are ineffective, and the Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign is an ineffective as government programs get.
While the program will receive $70 million this year, the administration is already developing its spending priorities for 2010. Please join me in sending a letter to Congress, telling them to "Just Say No" to wasteful and counterproductive propaganda: http://www.ssdp.org/justsayno
Thanks to lobbying efforts by SSDP, our friends at the Marijuana Policy Project and Drug Policy Alliance, and you, the ad campaign budget has been cut by 66% since 2002. With your help, we can eliminate the program altogether next year!
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