Public Safety and Privacy Analysis
Introduction
Public safety refers to issues and policies that relate to the general protection and prevention of events that could possibly put the general public’s safety at risk. The protection and prevention is done to avert harm/injury, danger or damage that may result from crimes or disasters-both man-made and natural. On the other hand, privacy is an ability conferred on a person or group of people that allows them to reveal themselves selectively. This allows them to selectively seclude information about them or themselves. Social policy is part of public policy that deals with issues of a social nature. This policy includes interventions and guidelines used in the creation, maintenance and changing of human welfare and living conditions to a conducive status. Thus, social policy is practice and public policy in the fields of criminal justice, human services, health care, inequality and labor.There are numerous laws and rights that are existent in United States America (U.S) to protect people by keeping them safe and free.
The rights that individuals are entitled to are granted so that they can enjoy freedom which grants people security and happy living. However, at times individuals can take advantage and abuse their freedom and rights. As a result, there is public order put in place by law and law enforcers to avoid such abuse. The rights of individuals as stated in the constitution prevent the citizens from mistreatment by individuals or the government. A large percentage of these rights in the constitution are meant to protect citizens from mistreatment by the law enforcement and justice systems.The U.S bill of rights protects the rights of the American people and immigrants. The NationalConstitutionCenter (2008) states that, about two thirds of the bill of rights is meant to safeguard the rights of accused individuals or crime suspects. A majority of these rights are entrenched in the eighth, sixth, fourth, fifth, first and seventh amendments of the U.S constitution. The amendments confer the rights to a fair trial, due process of law, freedom of expression and speech and freedom from cruel punishment and self-incrimination. All these rights make people live freely, happily and makes them feel appreciated as citizens because they get fair treatment (N.C.C, 2008).
Abstract
Public order restrains individuals from taking advantage of their rights to infringe upon the rights of other people in society. Additionally, public order gives advantage that pertains to a group of people as a whole but, not to individuals on a personal basis. Public order contains laws that define conduct in society that is meant to uphold public safety while considering privacy and other rights entitled to the involved people.The civil liberty concept at times runs counter to public safety and defense of the nation. The American constitution grants rights to many freedoms amongst which lie privacy and freedom of speech. However, these rights are guaranteed on a conditional basis that ensures the rights are in place as long as they do not infringe on the interests of the country and the safety and rights of others. This scenario is exemplified by the Bourgeois versus Peters (October 2004) in the U.S court of appeal. The case shows the supremacy of the constitution and its conferred rights over public safety policies that infringe on peoples rights.
The Bourgeois versus Peters Case in the U.S court of appeal
According to Kahn (2004) the Bourgeois versus Peters case was heard in the U.S court of appeal on October 2004. The case’s plaintiff was reverend Roy Bourgeois and his founded organization named ‘School of the America’s Watch’ (SAW). The group annually engages in peaceful protests to pressure the federal government to cut funding to ‘School of the Americas’ under the U.S army based in Georgia. This is because it funds military training for foreign army members who are to be involved in counter insurgency operations that includes training on human torture. The city of Columbus instituted a mandatory submission to a magnetometer (metal detector) screening before entry of protestors at the protest site. This would be followed by a mandatory body and property search if any metallic material was detected on any protestor. This was done pursuant to the laws that dictate about the entry of civilians upon any military confines or vicinity. The policy was also meant to take care of the safety of the public. The city’s decision was based on past observed lawless nature of protestors and the elevated homeland security threat assessment. As a result SAW sought a restraining order and injunction for the searches because SAW believed that the searches violated the protestors rights entrenched in the fourth and first amendments of the U.S constitution.
The courts held a hearing and later dismissed the complaint after refusing to enter an injunction. Thus, the searches were conducted as planned earlier. In real sense the suspicion less, warrant less, mass magnetometer searches go against the fourth amendment’s right to be free of unreasonable seizures and searches. This is because the protestors had to surrender their fourth amendment’s rights in order t obtain the first amendments rights (Kahn, 2004).The city’s local authority cited terror threats as one of the reasons to conduct mass searches. However, this threat cannot be used to restrict the scope of the fourth amendment in the absence of any reasonable believe of an imminent attack. It can be argued that the city would be safer for inhabitants and protestors if these searches are allowed. Similar searches would also make the country safer if policemen were to stop and search any individual that seems suspicious. However, the constitution framers put the fourth amendment in place to prevent trading privacy in exchange of extra security (Dimitrakopoulos, 2007). This act would also circumvent the fourth amendment because it would allow security threats to determine when the right would be applicable or not. Further more, the searches in this case do not deserve categorization as “a special needs” case as recognized by the Supreme Court.
Secondly, these searches violated the fourth amendment they acted as a prior restraint to assembly and free speech. This is due to the fact that individuals had to receive prior consent from law enforcement officers manning the check points. The government’s asserted interest in this case was that of the government’s quest to secure public safety and maintain law and order in the city. This conditional relinquishment of rights in order to receive a right is a classic unconstitutional condition (Dimitrakopoulos, 2007).Thus, the city had violated the fourth and first amendment extensively. As a result, the plaintiffs were entitled to an injunction against implementation on a permanent basis. The earlier judgment by the district court was vacated. Finally, the case got remanded for entry of injunctive relief (Kahn, 2004).This ruling has great implications with regard to public safety policy formulation. The judgment clearly asserts the importance of prioritizing the constitutional rights with regard to formulating social policy that relates to public safety policies. Therefore, any policy formulated to enhance public safety should take into account the rights of individuals as it tries to take care of the general, public safety. This is meant to avert a scenario such as the one in the Bourgeois versus Peters case-whereby, the search policy implemented went against the rights of the protestors. However, law enforcers still have an opportunity to enhance public security by establishing probable causes that can guarantee them warrants to conduct legal searches of this nature.
This case highlights the importance of the laws that serve to protect the rights of a citizen as entrenched in the fourth amendment. The statutes resulting from these rights require law enforcers to obtain warrants before conducting any search on an individual or his/her property. These warrants should be given after policemen establish probable causes to search individuals. Additionally, searches should be conducted on people whose names appear on the warrant. In some states the statutes further require that police should knock, announce their arrival and intent before entering the property to be searched. However, there are exclusive cases where this may not apply such as drug searches.These laws ensure that the privacy of any citizen is not infringed on with the excuse of taking care of public safety. Also closely related, are the U.S laws that govern surveillance on the life of any individuals. Surveillance in private places is prohibited because it violates the fourth amendment’s right to privacy.However, the privacy maintained in surveillance has greatly been reduced since the Congress’s enactment of the U.S.A patriotic act. The act expands government surveillance powers in record searches, secret searches, ‘trap and trace’ searches as well as intelligence searches. However, this slight breach of privacy and neglect of the fourth amendment is only restricted to the government for purposes of enhancing public security. This can be viewed as the only scenario where there is disregard of the fourth amendments rights (ACLU, 2003).
Conclusion
There always is a conflict of opinion on the formulation of public policy with regard to public security. This is mainly due to the fact that at times people’s rights have to side-stepped for the sake of enhancing the security of the general public. However, this is a compromise that has to be reached and recognized as a necessary evil because security has to be traded for with some freedom. This is best exemplified by steps taken by the U. government after September 11 to avert further disasters that threaten public security.
References
American Civil Liberties Union (A.C.L.U). (2003). Because Freedom cannot Protect Itself: Surveillance under the U.S.A patriotic act. Retrieved from, http://www.aclu.org/national-security/surveillance-under-usa-patriot-act, on 30ThMay 2010.
Dimitrakopoulos, G. I. (2007). Individual Rights and Liberties under the U.S.A Constitution: The case law of the U.S.A Supreme Court. Boston, MA: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.
Kahn, K. T. (2004). U.S.A Court of Appeal Eleventh Circuit: Bourgeois versus Peters. Retrieved from, http://home.hiwaay.net/~becraft/recentcases.htm, viewed on 30ThMay 2010.
NationalConstitutionCenter (N.C.C.), Bogle, C. J and Benedict, L. M. (2007). The NationalConstitutionCenter. New York, NY: NationalConstitutionCenter Publisher.
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