Blame Continued from page 33 or too hard” at any bad guy without prior judicial permission. And what exactly is too long and too hard? Deputy Solicitor General Michael R. Dreeben argued on behalf of the DOJ in front of the Supreme Court. When it became obvious he was going to lose the case, he begged the court to give some type of reasonable guidance to police about what was and wasn’t considered a reasonable amount of time to monitor a suspect’s movements in public. Justice Breyer dismissed him with, “We know … there is no standard. We’ll leave it for the lower courts to work out, and we’ll review it over time.” Justice Alito recognized this would be difficult to define, but all he left us was, “We need not identify with precision the point at which the tracking of this vehicle became a search, for the line was surely crossed before the 4-week mark.” Great. No gray area in that answer. Did It To Ourselves So, who’s to blame for bringing us to the brink of unreasonable judicial oversight? I am — and every cop, like me. We got a new tool and we used it mercilessly until public opinion said, “enough.” We forgot about our liberal courts; or at least refused to think about the consequences of what would happen when intellectuals, far removed from reality, heard what was going on. When Dreeben was arguing in front of the Supreme Court, the Justices repeatedly brought up their fear of the government monitoring every US citizen 24/7. They couldn’t stop referencing “Big Brother” and George Orwell’s 1984. They even said they feared government agents monitoring them personally. They have no grasp of the fact we don’t have enough manpower to monitor the crooks we know about, let alone every citizen. In the minds of the judges we are the bad guys. We’re threat to the American people. I get it. I know a government too powerful will become corrupt and hurt the innocent. I understand their fears. Warrantless tracking is a tool, which has the potential to be greatly abused, but if they knew how many criminals walk the streets with impunity because the courts consistently tie our hands, I wonder if they’d still rule the same way? I now get a warrant every time I want the GPS location of a bad guy’s car, the same way I’ve always gotten a warrant for the location of their phone. However, I’m still monitoring my pole cameras watching public streets and I have no warrant … for now. * 36 WWW.AMERICANCOPMAGAZINE.COM • JULY2012
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