[subscribe2]In Pennsylvania, the police can now search your vehicle whenever the spirit move them.

Pennsylvania police officers no longer need a warrant to search a citizen’s vehicle, according to a recent state Supreme Court opinion.

The high court’s opinion, released Tuesday, is being called a drastic change in citizens’ rights and police powers.

Previously, citizens could refuse an officer’s request to search a vehicle. In most cases, the officer would then need a warrant — signed by a judge — to conduct the search.

That’s no longer the case, according to the opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery.

The ruling, passed on a 4-2 vote, was made in regard to an appeal from a 2010 vehicle stop in Philadelphia.

Local police and legal professionals are calling the opinion “big news.”

“This is a significant change in long-standing Pennsylvania criminal law, and it is a good one,” Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman said Wednesday afternoon.

Under prior law, an officer who smells marijuana inside a car, for example, could only search the car with the driver’s consent — or if illegal substances were in plain view.

At the risk of sounding insensitive, this is all about stopping drug mules on the interstate. Those drug mules are almost exclusively black and hispanic. The cops don’t advertize it, but they are trained to look for young NAM males driving rented cars. This is almost always a drug courier. The drug gangs want to eliminate one reason to stop the vehicle. Using a rental means all the lights work and license is in order. They also figured out that local cops tend not to pull over out of state drivers. Cops figured this out and started looking for young NAM males driving white-bread sedans.

The problem with that is they need a reason to pull T’Q’uan over and search the car. These people are idiots so the mule is often smoking weed while driving or otherwise doing something the cops can use as an excuse. But, it will be a lot easier to run a wide-scale version of stop and frisk on the nations highway system if they no longer need a warrant. They would also like to search mobile phones without a warrant as well. That way they can get a jump on the rest of the crew once they pull T’Q’uan or Julio over in I-95. Make the stop, find the weed, search the cell, call it in and round up the rest before T’Q’uan or Julio can make their one phone call.

That sounds great until you think about the abuses that will surely follow. Cops are mostly decent people, but it is a close call. A lot of cops are sociopaths, attracted to the position because they can push people around with impunity. Many are just crooks with enough on the ball to know it is  better to be a crook with a badge than a crook without a badge. The crime rate amongst cops is not encouraging if you are looking to trust your liberty to these people.

There are a couple of things to consider in that graphic. One is cops are much whiter than the general population. Adjusted for race, the crime rate of cops will be much higher than the general population. Second, the number of robberies is most certainly an outlier. Bad data is my guess. Cops steal like mad. Everyone knows it, but it is rarely reported or prosecuted. Violent crimes are too difficult to hide so they get investigated. The old saying is a body with holes in it is hard to ignore. A perp beaten to a pulp is hard to ignore as well. Property stolen from a drug dealer on the other  hand is easy to hide.

Crime in America is mostly a NAM issue. The drug game, outside of crystal meth, is a black and hispanic activity. Plenty of whites take drugs, but the drug game is run by blacks and hipanics. Legalization of weed will further this trend. Murder is not entirely drug related, but a big part of the yearly homicides committed by young NAM males in the drug game, mostly at the street level. Controlling this population has been the focus of policing, prisons and social policy for 50+ years. The one thing the libertarians have right is that the drug war has reduced liberty greatly in the United States. What they get wrong is the cause.

The fact is, you can have diversity or liberty, but not both. Otherwise, you get a violent free-for-all of tribal warfare. The reason Continental Europe is naturally authoritarian is it is how you survive when surrounded by a bunch of people not like you. For the Dutch to have remained Dutch for 2,000 years meant defending their turf against all comers. This required a high degree of discipline. The same is true of every other group in Europe. The French were not able to expel the English until they had a strong central government that imposed discipline on the population. In a majority-minority America, the only way to keep the peace will be with lots of cops with lots of power over the lives of citizens.

I’m sure that will work out just fine.