A conversation on privacy
Grady gives presentation to Unitarian Fellowship
What are the rules to be followed, for law enforcement and the public, when interacting with police?
Former Iowa Assistant Attorney General Pete Grady spoke to the Unitarian Fellowship of Marshalltown Sunday morning on how the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution affects police-community interactions.
“I want to talk about the interface between civil liberties, the rights of citizens, and the authority of the police, and what that interface is all about,” Grady said. “The Fourth Amendment… touches all of our lives, it is almost always involved in police-community relations.”
He said he was giving the presentation not as a state attorney general’s office spokesperson, but as a person who worked for 20 years with law enforcement, prosecutors and citizens.
“What we have is a society that’s predicated upon personal freedom,” Grady said. “We also have a recognized need for civil order.”
He called the Fourth Amendment perhaps, from a law enforcement perspective “the most significant part of the constitution.”
Grady explained that a private citizen always has the right to ask an officer why he or she gave a command or used their authority to interfere with their actions.
“The way I explain it to law enforcement officers is always this: citizens never have to explain anything, law enforcement officers always have to explain everything.”
He also said a private citizen must respond when a law enforcement officer gives a command or shows proof of their authority.
“At that point the law enforcement officer needs to be able to justify, or explain, why he or she has stopped… what (a private citizen) is doing,” Grady said.
Part of the presentation had to do with the history of the Fourth Amendment, especially when it comes to warrants.
“There are some interesting issues involved,” Grady said. “There is some misunderstanding out there… that law enforcement officers always have to act upon probable cause, in fact they do not. ”
He said officers may act upon “reasonable, articulable suspicion,” and that officers act on that authority without need of a warrant when pulling vehicles over in traffic for a variety of reasons.
Grady said that wrinkle to the warrant issue in the Fourth Amendment has its roots in the Prohibition Era when the production, transportation, importation and sale of alcoholic beverages was outlawed between 1920 and 1933. It was common for alcohol to be loaded into cars in Canada, for instance, and driven to cities like Detroit. Police officers often directly observed the vehicles being loaded up, Grady said.
“The court, in a case called Carroll v. United States… came up with the automobile exception to the warrant requirement,” Grady said. “It says law enforcement officers who have grounds to stop (an automobile) on grounds of reasonable suspicion or probable cause… can stop and search without a warrant.”
He said this exception is exercised whenever citizens are pulled over for things like broken tail lights, not wearing a seat-belt, speeding and other traffic violations.
Grady gave several anecdotes on the functionality of the Fourth Amendment, both historically and contemporarily during the presentation.
On another issue, Grady also also spoke about the fact that Iowa’s prisons have a disproportionately large non-white population compared to the the state’s general population.
“It does seem outrageous to me,” he said of the disproportionately high non-white prison population in the state. He added that he did not see such issues while working in Marshalltown for eight years, and that the state legislature, correctional system and governor are aware of the problem and attempting to fight it.
“This stuff is tough, this stuff is complicated,” Grady said.
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Contact Adam Sodders at (641) 753-6611 or asodders@timesrepublican.com