The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution emphasizes the legal, investigatory stop under probable cause. Probable cause means that the police should have a search warrant to stop the suspected person and search. In other words, the amendment is designed to protect citizens from unlawful, excessive use of force by law enforcement (Obasogie & Newman, 2019). Meanwhile, the Supreme Court introduced a new common law in a landmark case, Terry vs. Ohio, in 1968 (Carbado, 2017). According to this law, if the police have a “reasonable suspicion” that an individual has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime, they can stop and search this person without a search warrant (Carbado, 2017). The police officer can also pat down and search for a weapon if they feel any danger. In other words, the standard in this case under which the police can sustain seizure should be a reason not based on merely feelings or speculation but also a cause that is not sufficient to issue a search warrant.
However, the existing scholarship contains many debates on the interpretation of “reasonable suspicion” and the consequences of its vague and subjective definition of police brutality and disproportionate harm to people of color (Carbado, 2017). One justified scenario based on “reasonable suspicion” would be if the police officer observes specific articulable facts, circumstances, and behaviors, such as an individual flight after it sees police in a high crime area. For instance, in the Terry vs. Ohio case, the police officer suspected two individuals of having weapons and planning a robbery based on their suspicious behavior.
A lawful arrest is when a police officer, based on probable cause or search warrant, believes that the individual being arrested has committed a crime. Specifically, an arrest without a search warrant is allowed if an individual is found in a suspicious place and acts under circumstances that indicate guilt. For instance, if the police officer thinks that the individual is behaving suspiciously and has a weapon that may pose a danger to life, they can search and arrest an individual based on probable cause.
References
Carbado, W. Devon (2017). From stop and frisk to shoot and kill: Terry v. Ohio’s pathway to police violence. UCLA Law Review 64, 1509-1552.
Obasogie, O. K., & Newman, Z. (2019). The futile Fourth Amendment: Understanding police excessive force doctrine through an empirical assessment of Graham v. Connor. The Cambridge Handbook of Policing in the United States 104(5), 218–238.