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PLAYBOY and dnd €T* wooly -Britishers shrink PFE A ean rene ete thy “ONL '$.BPdOOD £0 MOISIAIO © BIA YMSOND “UvDMENIW AINIOP Never. You can tell by the Red Toe Stripe.® It’s the mark of the un- shrinkables—Jockey Thorobred® English Wool Hose. The patented English process (a Jockey exclusive) makes them so machine washable and vs 7 taasndryable~you get this guarantee: atiew pair free if they shrink out of size. In anklet and over-the- calf styles. $2. A gentleman's hosiery. Pree UMENS Did Wellington shrink at the heat of Waterloo? aN used this power to embarrass or harass the innocent—of whatever race—there would be such an outcry that the law would be repealed. Yet in the case of People ws. Rivera just last year. the New York Court of Appeals uplicld the va- lidity of the stop-and-frisk statute with only one dissent, and the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review that decision. This combination of court rulings puts the stop-and-frisk law on very solid ground. BELU: I wouldn’t say that. The stop-and- frisk law is clearly unconstitutional, in my opinion, and I predict that it will be struck down when next it’s tested by the Supreme Court. : PLAYBOY: Another police-backed local statute that’s come under fire from the ACLU and other civil liberties groups is the so-called “no-knock-and-enter" law, which empowers law-enforcement officers —again, on “reasonable suspicion” —to burst into and search a suspect's home or place of business without either knocking or announcing themselves as policemen. Do you feel that this law is unconstitu- tional, too, Mr. Belli? Bett: Absolutely. And I predict exactly the same fate for it. PEMBERTON: Both of these laws danger. ously weaken the barrier between us and unlimited, arbitrary authority. They practically beg for unscrupulous police- meén to abuse their power and—Profes- sor Inbau's reassurances notwithstanding —to harass citizens they don't happen to like. We abandoned a_ historic safe- guard of our liberties when we accepted those laws. INBAU: Remember that the police are em- powered to stop and frisk or to break in only after going through the full pro- cedure of establishing probable cause, and in the case of the no-knock-and- enter law, of obtaining a search warrant as well. Thus the innocent public is protected from brusque, unwarranted intrusion by the police. As for the stop- ant-frisk law, don't you think. in all fairness, that a policeman should have the right to search for dangerous weapons before exposing himself to possible crim- inal actack?, PEMBERTON: That argument is just as specious as the one given for the passage of the no-knock law: to permit a forcible unannounced entrance “where danger to the life or limb of the officer or another may result” from a properly announced search. But violence is far more likely to occur when police kick down a door with- out announcing themselves. In fact, kick- ing a door down is pretty violent to begin with and invites violence in return. RUSTIN: OF course it does. A frightened : . Vrevewodretelee cet ee dt tees criminals and might open fire on them— with every justification, TURNER: Especially in New York, where the newspapers specialize in lurid ac- counts of “crime waves,” there is a hysteria that could easily prompt an in- nocent houscholder to shoot first. and investigate later. And the police are by no means always innocent of this kind of freewheeling violence at a house arrest— even if they don't actually kick down a door. When I was still a special agent, the FBI got a tip from a motel owner that one of his guests looked like one of the “Fen Most Wanted” criminals, Thev surrounded the place and banged on the door. When the guest cracked it open slightly, one of the agents shoved his cre- denuials forward, but it was pitch dark. “FBI, open up!" he barked. When the poor, frightened guest didn’t instandy fling the door open to invite this armed mob inside, they shot him in the face. It turned out later, of course, that he was perfectly innocent. The agents‘ respon- sible were severely disciplined, but thev didn’t go to jail. This incident shows what kind of tragic injustice can result from the use of excessive force in serving an arrest warrant. Cook: This resort to violence by the police is a bad sign of declining profes- sionalism. One of the best cops I ever knew was a New York detective named Johnny Cordes. He piled up a fantastic record of arrests. but he developed the theory that he was a better cop if he “never carried a gun, and for years he prac- ticed his profession completely unarmed, He's still alive, retired with many hon- ors. Contrast him with the FBI agents who were trailing a pair of kidnapers in the Thirties: The local police were cooperating and knew where one of the principal suspects wes.-hiding out, bur + I et is they wanted to catch the other one, too. when he visited his. pal. The FBI had been advised that the police were staked out watching the hide-out, but they goc impatient and at midnight Hoover him- self led a fire fight. They got their man, Wl right, but not the second kidnaper: the local police found out later that he had indeed come to pay a visit that nighe —and had watched the whole -battle as part of the crowd. The cop who depends on muscle and gunplay is always inferior to the one who relies on brains. BELLE Too many policemen are nothing more than overgrown kids still playing cops and robbers—only for keeps. But there's too damned much gunplav around on both sides of the hadge, Everybody's playing with guns as though they were toys. We don’t have bears prowling the streets anymore: there are no Indians climbing through the win- dows. The so-called constitutional righ ene ek |