We took yesterday off, so we'll belatedly highlight the lead editorial appearing in yesterday's Standard-Examiner, which addresses State Senator Jon Greiner's 2008 “Prohibited Activities of Gang Members” bill, which the Ogden senator reportedly plans to reintroduce during the upcoming 2009 legislative session.
We had a fairly robust reader discussion of the pro and con arguments under our article of November 26, with the polar opposite law enforcement pragmatic and civil libertarian idealistic views well articulated and argued.
We welcome the Std-Ex's firm editorial stance on this issue, which comes out foursquare on the side of jealous protection of individual liberties protections contained in the U.S. Constitution. We incorporate the editorial's gist from these key paragraphs:
The bill fails a constitutional smell test. You cannot deny people the right to assemble peacefully, nor can you deny freedom of speech, which is also affected by denying the right to assemble. When a government body does that, it clashes with the First Amendment.Tempting though it may be for some of us to succumb to the reasoning that's it's OK to fudge on the civil rights of suspected gang members in the name of expediency, we also must recognize that a dilution of individual constitutional liberties for some unfavored citizens inevitably results in a diminution of individual liberty for all citizens.
Another concern we have with Greiner’s bill is that it will involve profiling. Greiner promises that Ogden officers will be adequately trained to avoid racial profiling and discrimination. We have no doubt they will try, but we share the concerns of the American Civil Liberties Association that symbols, such as tattoos and hiphop clothing, will be incorrectly used by law enforcement to try to ID gang members.[...]
We hope Sen. Greiner and other leaders will engage in many brainstorming discussions with civil liberties groups and constitutional experts so a tough bill that passes muster can be enacted. We need a bill that will both curb gang crime and pass court review.
The burden of proof must be high for law enforcement to arrest or punish an individual. That’s a right that the Constitution must protect. We must not tolerate government power that violates the fundamental rights of all of us — including those people we don’t often approve of.
We thus join with the Standard-Examiner in expressing our opposition to Senator Greiner's bill as written. Hopefully the good senator will expend the necessary effort to modify the language of this bill, and come up with a version which will be more acceptable to those constitutional idealists among us. It's a slippery slope. Once the individual liberty of one suspect group is successfully targeted under the law, who's to predict which other group may be targeted next?
Americans have been far too lax over the past few years, in our opinion, regarding the protection of those liberties which are our constitutional legacy, gifted by the Founding Fathers of this nation. It's time for the pendulum to swing back. It's time for citizens and legislators alike, we think, to become more zealous regarding the liberties enumerated within the U.S. Constitution. Contrary to the views of some folks in this country, we believe the Constitution is much more than "just a goddamned piece of paper."
And what say our gentle readers about all this?
