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That's not a mindset, that's the actual, current state of the law. Police pulling you over without cause is considered by many judges, jurists and supreme court justices to be a violation of your fourth amendment rights to privacy and your fifth amendment rights to due process. The alternative to this is stop and frisk. Yes, the law is muddied, and yes, there are many, many exceptions... most notably those as defined in Terry v Ohio (ie, Terry stops), but even with Terry stops, officers need to have a reasonable suspicion that you're either presently armed, or should be considered dangerous enough to warrant a stop. It isn't extremism to interpret the law as it is written, and as it is considered by many courts to be valid, that requires police to need at least some mandate to being pulled over (whether a traffic violation, exigent circumstances) more specific than "this guy was black", or "this guy was poor", or what have you. The problem is that with qualified immunity and deference, we allow the police to get away with a lot of stops that don't even meet the legislative standards we've set, and as we allow these things to continue, from one generation to the next, the standards for what is or isn't a valid stop gets lowered. TLDR, if a cop pulls you over just because he can, and he cannot formulate a reasonable suspicion, then he has overstepped his boundaries in the eyes of the law, even where that law seemingly has bent over backwards to accommodate arbitrary stops. |