From: matt@smoke.brl.mil (Matthew Rosenblatt)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Maryland Law Brief
Summary: Law-abiding citizens have a right to be let alone.
Keywords: racist, ageist, classist stereotype
Date: 1 Sep 92 14:04:16 GMT
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Lab, APG MD.

From _The Daily Record_, Monday, August 31:

   Calling into question the use of drug courier profiles, the
   Maryland Court of Appeals last week reversed the conviction
   of a Montgomery County man whose car was searched simply 
   because he fit the State Police's idea of the typical drug
   suspect.  In the case of _Darone Antonio Derricott v. State_,
   No. 133, Sept. Term 1990, the state's highest court ruled
   that the fact that Darone A. Derricott was a young black man,
   wearing expensive jewelry, driving a sports car and carrying
   a beeper was not enough to justify searching his vehicle
   after he was stopped for speeding.  "Without more, we are 
   not persuaded that the facts of this case give rise to a
   reasonable, articulable suspicion that Derricott was traffic-
   king in drugs and was armed and dangerous," Associate Judge
   John F. McAuliffe wrote on behalf of the court.  "Those of
   his attributes which match the drug courier profile are
   sufficiently common that allowing a search and seizure,
   however brief, on this basis alone would subject too many
   innocent travelers to the invasion of privacy that such
   police action necessarily entails."

And of course, the Court of Appeals is right.  The first principle
of government ought to be that the ordinary citizen going about his
business and breaking no laws deserves to be let alone.  Stopping
and searching people who *might* be drug dealers or couriers has no
place in a free society.  Rather, the police ought *first* to offer
to buy drugs from a suspected dealer, or to ship drugs with a suspected
courier, and then if he takes them up on the deal, that gives rise 
to a "reasonable and articulable suspicion" that he is a lawbreaker, 
and then they can search him and seize his drugs and weapons.

Better yet:  No matter how many dealers and couriers we arrest and 
jail, there will be more of them as long as there are users to buy 
drugs.  It is like the "Hydra" of Marvel Comics -- "cut off a head 
and two more will take its place.  Let the law enforcement authorities
ask arrested dealers not just who their suppliers are, but who their
customers are.  Then let undercover officers pose as pushers, and 
when a citizen buys drugs from them, let them arrest him.  The
ordinary citizen who obeys the law and never attempts to purchase
illegal drugs will in no way be harmed or even inconvenienced by
this type of operation.  The would-be lawbreaker looking to buy
some illegal dope will never be certain that the fellow offering
to sell him some is not an undercover cop who will bust him.

Say what you will about drug dealers, at least they are doing what
they do to earn a living -- part of the American tradition and the
Puritan ethic, however perverted its incarnation.  No wonder they
persevere even after several arrests, convictions, and incarcerations!
The user, on the other hand, is looking to buy drugs solely for the
sheer pleasure of using them.  He is the kind of hedonist that Mr.
Patrick Buchanan so roundly condemned at the recent Republican
clambake in Houston.  Put the fear of the law into enough would-be 
illegal users, and we won't have to worry about interfering with
highway travel by law-abiding motorists who happen to fit some 
police agency's racist, ageist, classist stereotype of a drug courier.

Congratulations to the Court of Appeals for upholding the Constitution.

					-- Matt Rosenblatt
                                        (matt@amsaa.brl.mil)

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