[Glenn E. Meyer]

Obviously, the motivations of people, good guys, bad guys, officers, etc. differ. I would just point out that some of the stops are based on a continuum of factors. Some might be due to the person being stopped and some might be due to the personality or the officer or constraints by the higher ups.

Discretion is certainly there. You are so off base thinking that I have some personal incident that makes me have a bug about this.

Not so. I speak from a basic issue of civil liberties and qualms about our drug policies. About officer motivation - most are probably upstanding and dedicated. A proportion may not be. At the last meeting of the American Society for Criminology, I attend a panel of officers discussing interrogation techniques. It was pointed out by police that some departments were notorious in clearing cases with techniques that were not legit as the clearing was more important that the truth.

Street smarts are great but one has to wonder about the base of some of those smarts - if it is simply age, race or a college sticker , being bored or just wanted to take the chance of finding some drugs - then that is not the kind of spider sense that is legitimate.

I am uncomfortable for asking for searches not based on very clear signs of bad doing and not a spider sense that may or may not be based on nonprejudical aspects.