Some rights for some?

Media types -- heck, Americans in general -- generally advocate equal rights for everybody. The Boston Globe's Brian McGrory bucked the trend in this little tatterous ribbon of stupidity.

At heart is the recent rejection of a standard police operating procedure. Let's look at the first paragraph of the original Boston Globe story:

Police officers cannot stop and frisk people on the street based solely on observing suspicious clothing, hairstyle, walk, or body posture, the state Court of Appeals ruled yesterday.

Hardly sounds revolutionary, eh?

McGrory disagrees. Because, in this instance, the guy getting frisked on the street really did have a gun:

Who's protecting the civil rights of the elderly residents who would never dare venture outside after dark? The teenagers who can't shoot baskets in area parks because they're too dangerous? The young adults who aren't ever really told that there might be a better way?

In the abstract, the state Appeals Court is absolutely right. Civil rights are critical in a society like ours, and a criminal's rights are no less important than those of the most God-fearing citizens.

Apparently, you have to be a good, honest person to have rights. The insanely stupid part of this is those very seem teenagers shooting baskets in the park ... are just as likely to be frisked on their way home.

Let's really look at this argument here. Haircuts? Dangerous streets? Most people don't move more than once a year. Most people keep a haircut for at least a month. McGrory's arguing, really arguing, that police should freely be able to frisk the same guy every night for a month, walking home on the same street with the same hair cut.

He's really incensed the case was thrown out because the guy was guilty of having a gun. OK, but what if he wasn't? What if he were the kid coming back from the basketball court getting stopped by the cops every night for a month?

This isn't to take anything away from the police officers' sense of judgment, but on the whole that same sense of judgment is imperfect at best. Heck, the same newspaper reported just that last week. Some Fark.com submitter summed it up perfectly:

Police search minorities more often than whites, even though crackers are more likely to be carrying contraband

How many more guys with guns were searched by cops tonight? How many innocent guys with a "bad guy" hairdo and a "bad guy" walk?