Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >   What I *am* opposing is the idea that countries should enforce their
> > laws more leniently to avoid offending people. 

> Nobody is suggesting that.  People are objecting to your assertion that 
> stopping and questioning people who look Mexican is better than stopping and 
> questioning everyone.

  Well, I suppose people have the right to think that. I'm just wondering
if that opinion comes from hard math or from political correctness. (I'm
not saying that my math is correct, mind you. I'm just saying that *if*
the math does indeed say so, then to me it would make sense to prioritize
according to the probabilities. Of course I also understand that this will
offend some people. You can't win.)

> >> Nobody is against catching the criminals.
> > 
> >   Of course they aren't against that. But at the same time they oppose
> > stricter measures which could rise the conviction rates of the criminals,
> > if doing so would offend some people. 

> It's not a matter of "offend some people."  The people you're at risk of 
> offending are the majority of the people living where the law would be enforced.

  Well, it sounds to me like offending some people.

> It's like passing a law where you are that only fair-skinned people have to 
> prove before going out on a sunny day that they have permission from a 
> doctor. As rational as it is, that's unlikely to be a popular law.

  People often take their rights to privacy and freedom very seriously.
Sometimes even when it does them more harm than good... It's not like
I don't understand that.

> >> Randomly stopping people and asking them to prove their innocence.
> > 
> >   Apparently Britain is not one of those countries?

> Apparently not.

  What I meant was if you oppose that law in Britain, and why.

> >> Consider driving. Do you want police randomly pulling you over because you 
> >> have long hair, or you're driving a red car? After all, a majority of 
> >> traffic tickets go to people in red cars.
> > 
> >   I wouldn't be surprised if the police was more likely to stop SUV's than
> > eg. trucks for random sobriety tests, purely because of statistical reasons.
> > (No, I don't know if they do, but I wouldn't be surprised if the did.)

> Not here.  It's illegal.  Why? Because people who drive SUVs didn't want to 
> get randomly stopped just because 0.1% of the people driving SUVs might be 
> intoxicated.

  Is that so? Well, then that's something I don't agree with. I'm glad if
this kind of police work reduces the risk of car accidents caused by drunken
drivers. It increases my safety alongside everybody else's.

> >   If truck drivers are statistically significantly less likely to drive
> > while drunk, that kind of selectiveness makes sense. Don't tell me it
> > doesn't.

> It doesn't, and I explained why a couple of times.

  Then we'll have to disagree on this particular example.

> >> No. You want the cop to wait until he sees you do something wrong before he 
> >> stops you, yes?
> > 
> >   Cops don't need probable cause to stop cars for a sobriety test, and
> > personally I really don't mind.

> But they don't get to profile during those stops either.

  I don't know if the police is allowed to make any kind of "profiling"
here, but regardless, to me it would make sense if they would.

  Instead of trucks, think about buses: I'm pretty sure it *is* quite
less likely for a bus driver to be drunk than a SUV driver. Additionally,
stopping a bus is a lot more inconvenient and can potentially disturb the
traffic a lot more than stopping a SUV. Hence it only makes sense that the
police skips stopping bus drivers for sobriety tests. It reduces the amount
of resources spent on statistically improbable crimes, as well as reducing
the disturbance to traffic.

> >   If SUV drivers were statistically more likely to drive while drunk,
> > I really wouldn't mind if the police concentrated their efforts more on
> > SUVs than on trucks.

> Well, it's illegal here, you see. And that's what has people annoyed. See, 
> because people don't like being arrested when no crime has been committed 
> because someone who shares some of the same properties they do did something 
> wrong.

> Basically, people here are generally against getting arrested before a cop 
> knows a crime has been committed at all.

  I'm not talking about arresting someone. I'm just talking about *checking*
the alcohol levels of drivers.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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