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  • 2016-08-30 (xsd:date)
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  • Massachusetts Passes Law Allowing Black Men to Run from Police Due to Racial Profiling? (en)
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  • In what later became a viral (and frequently misinterpreted) ruling, in September 2016 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court cited a pattern of racial profiling of black [men] in the city of Boston as reason in part not to view one defendant's avoidance of a police encounter as inherent justification for a stop and seizure. As described in news accounts, Jimmy Warren was arrested on 18 December 2011 by police who were investigating a break-in in Roxbury: A motion to suppress in Commonwealth vs. Jimmy Warren was originally denied in an appeal to the Boston Municipal Court, Roxbury Division. A pretrial motion filed by Warren's counsel sought to suppress the entering into evidence of the firearm found on Warren by police. Lower court appellate judges initially disagreed as to whether Warren's running away was by itself a reasonable suspicion justifying the officer's stop of the defendant. The Municipal Court's decision noted that Warren was not charged with the breaking and entering that precipitated [the recovery of a firearm]. In short, Warren's subsequent involvement with the court was based on the seizure of a firearm in a police encounter of questionable justification. Warren's motion to suppress the gun was denied, he appealed, a majority of the appellate court judges affirmed that the motion to suppress was properly denied: Boston news station WBUR reported that a higher court disagreed, finding that police didn't have the right to stop Warren in the first place, and the fact that he ran away shouldn’t be used against him. The latter point was buttressed by the court's noting that a pattern of racial profiling of black males in the city of Boston should be taken into account: In a 20 September 2016 decision [PDF], the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (not a judge) held with respect to Warren's arrest that, at a baseline, citizens were not obligated to respond to a police officer's inquiry: The ruling went on to cite recent data provided by the Boston Police Department suggesting black men were disproportionately targeted by police and might reasonably attempt to avoid contact with police in order to to avoid the recurring indignity of being racially profiled, and those who avoided police contact could not necessarily be presumed to possess consciousness of guilt: American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Massachusetts legal director Matthew Segal described the ruling as powerful: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court unanimously ruled that in the case of Commonwealth v. Warren, defendant Jimmy Warren (approached by police due to a concurrent report of a break-in) did not behave in an inherently suspicious manner by attempting to evade that interaction. Moreover, the judges cited data documenting a pattern of racial profiling of black males in the city of Boston per a then-recent audit conducted by the Boston Police Department. The ruling stood as legal precedent with potential to influence future decisions, but it in no way established a law making it legal for all black men to run from police. The court simply ruled in part that black men in Boston might just as easily be motivated by the desire to avoid the recurring indignity of being racially profiled as by the desire to hide criminal activity. (en)
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