Regulating Around the Fourth AmendmentBy Radley BalkoReason Jan. 30, 2007 |
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![]() One of the interesting implications of the Manassas Park pool hall case I've been following is that the initial police raid on the bar was conducting under the auspices of a state alcohol inspection. The raid was clearly part of a criminal investigation, but bringing the police in under the formality of an ABC inspection negating the need for a search warrant. This to me is the most troubling part of the recent federal circuit court ruling dismissing the civil rights suit filed by David Ruttenberg, the owner of the bar. The judge found that bringing 70+ police officers , some in ski-masks and pumping shot guns as they entered the bar, turning a business upside down, and handcuffing many of its customers -- all for the alleged purpose of checking to make sure the bar was complying with Virginia's alcohol regulations -- was not so unreasonable as to violate the Fourth Amendment. The message to local law enforcement seems clear: If you want to search a business but can't get a search warrant, just pretend you're doing a regulatory inspection, and search the place anyway. Manassas Park isn't the only place this is happening. The city of Buffalo, New York, for example, has been using a program called "Operation Clean Sweep," in which the city sends officials to bad neighborhoods on alleged good will missions -- to hand out smoke alarms, and check for fire and building code violations. In a recent op-ed for the Buffalo News NYCLU director John A. Curr III explained why the program is less a community service program than an end-around the Fourth Amendment: Although the City of Buffalo maintains that the Clean Sweep initiative is directed toward cracking down on quality-of-life problems and improving troubled neighborhoods, we find its tactics questionable at best, and disingenuous at worst.Earlier this year, I wrote a piece for reason about some related overly-aggressive endeavors undertaken by the Buffalo police department. |