NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT TO PLACE MOBILE SCANNERS ON THE STREETS OF NEW YORK CITY

2-1-2012

4^TH Amendment to the United States Constitution states: :The right of the people to be secure in their person, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particular describing the place to be searched, and the  person or things to be seized.

Commissioner Ray Kelly of the NYPD is in talks with the Pentagon to secure body scanners that will be used throughout the Big Apple.

According to Commission Kelly this new technology would be only used in “Reasonably suspicious circumstances”.  But what constitutes “suspicious” in the eyes of the NYPD?.

The technology that Commissioner Kelly is looking to acquire is called Terahertz Imagining Detection scanners, this high tech radiation detector will measure energy that is emitted from a person’s body. 

These scanners will allow the NYPD to conduct illegal searches by means of scanning anyone that is walking down the streets of New York .  Any object that is on your person could be privy to the eyes of the detector, and any suspicious screens can prompt the police to search someone on suspicion of having a gun, or anything else under their clothes.

So basically anyone that is walking down the street can be a subject of a search without knowing it.

Last May, the NYPD revealed that of the over 180,000 stop and frisk encounters reported %88 of them ended in neither an arrest nor a summons leading many to assume that New York Cops are already going above and beyond the law by searching seemingly anyone that they chose.

The question is then does this searches fall under the 4^th Amendment rights in regards to search and seizure.