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...I value personal freedoms extremely highly...have and will again put my life on the line to preserve them...but just as a plumber troubleshoots by looking for a little drip, and a Dr. examines looking at a little bump, and finds something much more deadly...
...it's irresponsible to expect officers to ignore the "little" violations...or not to suspect that the "insignificant" violators might need further checking out...the little violations lead naturally to discovery of much more serious violations...or they don't...and no harm done...

...if an officer stops someone for a burned out license plate light and rescues someone who's been kidnapped...he's a hero...if he writes a ticket for the violation...he's a bum...
...this law is big and important enough to uphold...this one isn't and should be ignored...

...our system can't work that way...they SHOULD do what, by LAW, they CAN do...to enforce the law...if we don't like it...our avenue is to convince the legislators to repeal all these little "unimportant" laws...and that won't happen...because most citizens realize they're important, too...

george wrote:I do not like the attitude of some in law enforcement today, where they look for minor infractions as an excuse to "check things out".

The primary intent of the judicial system, in my opinion, is not to catch bad guys. If it was, we could do away with silly things like "probable cause", warrants, jury trials, evidence, etc.

Why not just go through all of the houses in the neighborhood? I'm certain you could find some criminals.

I believe that is the reason we tolerate a low conviction rate here; because we value personal freedoms more.

It has always been a tool for law enforcement when something 'just doesn't smell right'. But, I can tell you it is not normally the big item that leads an officer to make the stop initially, but the minor infraction that the driver made. I would stop someone for that infraction anyway. Then, if there were signs that something wasn't right, I would use what tools I had to investigate.

So while there may be a few professional 'fishermen' in uniform, the majority are just using their intuition and skills to find the bigger fish when the car smells like carp.

george wrote:....more importantly, read people.

That's the trick to being a good cop and investigator. And, you can usually tell when there is something amiss. It's just some of those cool and collected pro's that can get by you pretty easily. The dumb ones would usually be as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

[/quote]Let me guess: The orange handle scissors? [/quote]

Don't make fun of the scissors. They might be a pair of pinking shears -- similar to what I keep in my kit -- used to neatly cut cleaning patches from T-shirts and worn cotton dress shirts.

...or a pocketknife...used to cut the bottom off a tshirt when squirrel hunting and "the need arose"...amazing what one can come up with if the need's great enough...