To the editor:
First, just noting that Mr. Crean has twice (in his letters published July 9 and July 23) used an informal interpretation of the term “probable cause” in place of its actual legal definition. We can say a car was “speeding down the road,” but the legal definition of “speeding” is more specific.
From Wikipedia, citing U.S. Supreme Court case Beck v. Ohio: “Probable cause exists when ‘at the moment of arrest the facts and circumstances within the knowledge of the police, and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information, are sufficient to warrant a prudent person in believing that a suspect had committed or was committing an offense.’” So if someone is brown-skinned or speaks Spanish, those facts don’t “warrant belief” that this specific person violated immigration law, because those facts aren’t evidence of a crime. If there were a statistical correlation where people who steal their employees’ wages are more likely to be named Sam, the police can’t start arresting every Sam for “suspected wage theft.”
Second, Mr. Crean questioned whether my recent letters presented “solid information,” so in case anyone’s interested I wanted to name some of the articles that informed my writing:
CBS News: “ICE detentions of non-criminal immigrants spike; about 8 percent have violent convictions, analysis of new data shows”; Reuters: “ICE’s tactics draw criticism as it triples daily arrest targets”; The Guardian: “US citizen detained by immigration officials who dismissed his Real ID as fake”; Associated Press: “An ‘administrative error’ sent a Maryland man to an El Salvador prison, ICE says”; and NBC News: “Families and immigrant detainees allege ‘horrible’ conditions at ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’”
Also: The Guardian: “LA police filmed shooting woman point-blank with ‘less lethal’ round”; Amnesty International: “Global: Dozens killed and thousands maimed by police misuse of rubber bullets”; The Guardian: “‘Unacceptable’: outcry over police attacks on journalists covering LA protests”; Military.com: “Guard Soldiers Deployed in Trump’s LA Crackdown Aren’t Getting Paid Yet”; Migration Policy Institute: “Explainer: Immigrants and Crime in the United States”; and Pew Research Center: “What the data says about crime in the U.S.”
Rob Kipp
Presque Isle
