Up Close & Cultural Cecilia Brown

Learn how to protect yourself from illegal searches and seizures of your person or home. Your 4th amendment right is to be free from unreasonable search and seizure unless a warrant is issued upon probable cause. This means if the police want to search your home they need one of three things: a valid warrant, your consent, or exigent circumstance. 

We also see the police commit illegal searches and even justify murdering black and brown people during traffic stops under one pretext, fear for their safety. This standard was created in Terry v. Ohio, where Mr. Terry and two other men were observed by a plain clothes policeman and where  believed to be "casing a job, a stick-up." The officer stopped and frisked the three men, and found weapons on two of them. Mr. Terry was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon and sentenced to three years in jail.  This case has been expanded to traffic stops—you know where black and brown people are 8x more likely to be pulled over than white people. However, the police have to have articulable facts that state why they are frisking you or your vehicle--Let me tell you how to use the law to leverage your life and liberty!