Steve Palmer [00:00:00]:

Alright. Lawyer talk off the record, q and a slash comment style. That means I am, taking questions. If you got your own question, go to lawyertalkpodcast.com, submit it there, or leave a question in the comments. And, today is one of those days where I'm reading through the comments, and I'm I'm commenting on the comments. So we're gonna call that q and a. This one comes from conduct orm like I I don't know. What's it say? Conduct or mic three step.

Steve Palmer [00:00:29]:

Alright. So this commenter is, responding to a question that we asked in one of our shorts. It looks like, do we really have privacy understanding the court's decision? And the commenter says common sense would dictate yes if somebody is suspected of a crime, no if they aren't. Don't do anything illegal outside and nothing to worry about. I can see my neighbor's backyard from the road. You can't own the air, only the airspace, which any citizen can file for. Like so many other things, I agree and I sort of disagree and I have a different take on it. So it's there's a real black and white way of breaking this down.

Steve Palmer [00:01:05]:

I've I've had this debate with plenty of people on on all sorts of sides of this. You on one end, you could say, look. Pull my car over whenever you want. Have a checkpoint whenever you want. Come search my house. I don't care. I'm not I have nothing to hide. I don't do anything wrong, so you can look in my house whenever you want.

Steve Palmer [00:01:22]:

I had one very good dear friend of mine. I love him to death. We had this conversation on a way on a drive down to Kentucky one time, and he's like, yeah. Pull us over. You know? Whatever. Because that was on 23, and, that's a drug corridor, and there's a it's infamously for or it's infamous for police pulling people over for things like falling too closely or maybe, you know, if you if you're driving an out of state rental car or something, they'll find a way to pull you over and search your car for drugs. And, you know, on the one hand, I sort of agree. You know, it's like, look.

Steve Palmer [00:01:50]:

Let's let's stop this drug trade. Let's stop the opioid epidemic. Let's kill it in its tracks. So if I'm not doing anything wrong, please search my car. I'll prove it to you all day long every day, except you're forgetting about one potential problem or one one group of, put criminals in quotes or bad actors, and that's that's the government. Now am I saying that all cops are bad? Far from it. Am I saying that all cops are good? Far from it. I think I think our founders, when we created our constitution and later the bill of rights, they were they were operating in this zone where they had just gotten through, fighting off, the measures of old King George and and and the way he behaved, the way he put his redcoats on the streets and police the community for his own, for Britain's own good.

Steve Palmer [00:02:47]:

And, they they created these rules to protect against the government from doing that again. And over the years, I think we've lost sight of that is that these these the constitution is here to protect us us from the government, and government actors. And, you know, you can say back in the seventies, where crime is running amok and everything was crazy, out out comes in the from the from the ash heap of that comes the Dirty Harry movies where also we're gonna be tough on crime. We've got this tough cop who's gonna take, his own measures into his own hands, and that was the backlash of maybe, two permissive, policies. But the other other side is also true. You can get bad government actors who, they don't actually stay within the bounds of the law. So if you don't think that police are capable of, I'll I'll use the extreme example, planting evidence or, fabricating here and there or often we call it test aligning where they're sort of taking the truth and, you know, massaging it in their own way. You're wrong.

Steve Palmer [00:03:47]:

I mean, you're just, you know, that happens. I'm not saying it happens all the time, and I'm not saying it happens because all cops are bad. I'm saying it because all cops are human. And we have this protection in place, the Fourth Amendment, that is designed to protect us from that. And the the price we pay for that kind of protection is that our society will automatically, if these rules are applied, let certain criminals get away. And that's just part of it, because as I've said thousands of times here and other podcasts wherever, it's it's easy to get rid of all crime. The Nazis did it. They put boots on the ground, jack boots on the ground, and they ruled with an iron fist, and they were the only ones that had guns.

Steve Palmer [00:04:26]:

And they could they were control of everything. I mean, you would you would you could theoretically eliminate street crime that way except for the crimes committed by the government while they were doing it. Right? And that's the problem. So we've got this balance in our country, that is designed, maybe on its face to be imperfect yet perfect. Maybe that I don't know if that makes sense, but I think you get it. So the idea here is if if we don't protect, those who maybe the the wrongdoers with the same constitutional rights as we protect everybody else, they're not gonna be there when you need it. And and that's why, that's why we apply the Fourth Amendment across the board, board, even to innocent people. Now would I let police in my house to rummage around and search randomly if they just banged on the door? Probably not.

Steve Palmer [00:05:13]:

And I don't have anything to hide in my house. But I believe in the Fourth Amendment. I believe in my right to say no. Now I say that, and maybe if they had a good reason or maybe there's a suspect that's on at large or something, I might I might do it. But, I would think about it. I would think about it because we have a fourth amendment protection. And if we don't if we don't assert it, we stand to lose it. So, look, this is, again, not to say all cops are bad.

Steve Palmer [00:05:34]:

I support the police. I've been on podcast with police, and we have them on the show. But, and and here's here's the interesting part. Most officers would agree with me. Most officers would agree with me. So, look, I hope I hope I address the comment fairly. I think I did. If you got your own comment, your own question, your own concern, just shoot it right here at the on the YouTube or wherever else you get it or go to lawyertalkpodcast.com off the record, on the air, q and a, comment style.

Steve Palmer [00:05:57]:

Till now.