Reasonable Articulable Suspicion | Search | Seizure | Georgia

     Reasonable Articulable Suspicion is perhaps a compound oxymoron, as it is in itself not only a tongue twister, but a mildly contradictory self-defining term.  How exactly is something like a suspicion only reasonably articulable?  Doesn't that add more doubt and suspicion onto the suspicion?  At what point does that vague, generalized hatred towards your skin color or lifestyle materialize into a socially acceptable thought that can be spoken out loud with sufficient clarity and grammer such that a judge will grudgingly condone your being stopped and subsequently arrested?
     On top of that . . . which comes first . . . the suspicion or the reason to articulate it?

     Well dear reader, that is the question raised in contemplating this hazy subject matter.  Sit back, loosen up your belt, and ponder on the daily pontification that the pez dispenser pops out.

     The police are not allowed to stop your car on a mere "hunch" that is merely pretextual, arbitrary, or harrassing.  Instead, they have to find a way to invoke public safety concerns, find you violating a little known traffic law or vehicle ordinance, or get lucky and find you tipping back a cold one while driving down I-85.
     In the end, whether the stop is legal or not is a matter that a judge will decide, but during that stop, if the cop finds a stash of whatever you stash, along with a loaded handgun and a stolen baby in the trunk, you might find that the cop is nearly clairvoyant in his pre-stop articulations of reasonable suspicions to the court.  The best course of action good sir, is to stop your thieving, assaulting, baby stealing, misdemeanoring (or worse) ways; or at least hide them better in the privacy of your own sound-proof, windowless bomb shelter. 
     But, given that boys will be boys, and sometimes girl will be too, trouble may have already found you, and someone else too immediately afterwards.  The someone else may be the local Sheriffs boys (or girls), the Federales, or the GSP (alternately known as either Gods Special People, or the Georgia State Patrol)
     When that happens, you best hope is that the Man can't say the magic words if he hasn't found another way to justify the stop.  Or a good Georgia Lawyer who pops his daily pez from the dispenser.