Pretextual traffic stop

Pretextual Traffic Stop Student’s Name Institution Affiliation Course Name & Code Instructor’s Name Date Pretextual Traffic Stop This case is representing some of the legal and ethical considerations. One way to evaluate my colleague's behaviors is to assess them using the Fourth Amendment protections for drivers at traffic stops. The Fourth Amendment protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures, where the law enforcers should obtain a warrant if there is probable cause (Mordechai-Strongin, 2023). In most instances, when the drivers are at the stops, the officers must have a reasonable suspicion to stop them. Furthermore, despite the officers stopping the driver, the law enforcer should not search the driver’s car without probable cause that the driver has committed a crime. The only instance when the Fourth Amendment allows warrantless search is if the driver is a threat to the officer or will tamper with evidence. Since all the drivers do not fit this criteria, the officers do not have the right to conduct warrantless searches and seizures at traffic stops. To understand this scenario, it is also important to understand racial and criminal profiling. Racial profiling is the instance where people are being targeted only because of their race and ethnicity. This profiling is illegal since it violates the individual's Equal Protection Clause, highlighted in the Fourteenth Amendment (Hunter, 2022). On the other hand, criminal profiling refers to identifying suspects according to the specific evidence or behaviors linked to criminal activity. Criminal profiling is a legal procedure to identify suspects. In this scenario, since the officers are only targeting people because of their race, it therefore qualifies as racial profiling, which is illegal because it violates constitutional protection. Pretextual traffic stops are another common scenario in these cases. Pretextual traffic stops refer to the process where the officer stops the driver for a minor traffic violation even though the officer's motive is to investigate an entirely unrelated, more severe crime. The U.S. Supreme Court has previously made a ruling in the Whren v. United States (1996) case where the Court ruled that if the officer has a subjective justification for the stop, such as a traffic violation, the officer's subjective intent does not invalidate th...