“Police in Plano, Texas, dropped charges against a Black teenager after he was arrested last week while walking home amid a winter storm,” The Hill reported on Tuesday, Februaryh 23, 2021 (read story here).
The situation “escalated after Reese refused to stop to talk to officers,” The Hill said. Reese later said, “A young Black man like me, we scared of the police because they kill and arrest us. That’s why I didn’t want to answer a question.”
This is something a lot of white people don’t understand about Black people: They’re scared to death of cops. That’s why they run from cops, and an Black person who resists arrest may believe he’s fighting for his life.
As for whether cops can question a pedestrian absent evidence a crime has been committed, an Ohio law firm’s website describes how the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure works in this situation:
” … [G]enerally, if an officer walks up to you on the street without any reason to believe you have been involved in a crime, you are not required to answer his questions.”
Actually, you have a Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer cops’ questions even if you have committed a crime.
In all cases, in order to detain someone short of an arrest (i.e., a so-called “Terry stop”), the police must have a “reasonable suspicion … that a person has committed or is about to commit a crime.” To arrest someone, the standard is higher: The police must believe a crime has been committed and that the person they stopped committed it. That is, they need “probable cause,” and the belief must be in good faith, not contrived or a pretext.
In this case, the cops were making a “welfare check.” In general, to ascertain a person’s mental state (as opposed to investigating suspected criminal activity), the Fourth Amendment requires the officer to have probable cause to believe the person is dangerous either to himself or to others. Walking in a snowstorm wearing only a t-shirt probably doesn’t satisfy that standard. We may find out if Mr. Reese sues the Plano police for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment (he was held overnight in jail).
It’s this kind of stuff the Black community is fed up with.