What’s a pretextual police stop? When do police need your consent to a search, and are these searches unconstitutional? 

Jonathan Blanks joins us this week to share his findings on how police searches disproportionately affect minorities.

Show Notes and Further Reading

Jonathan Blanks’s “Thin Blue Lies: How Pretextual Stops Undermine Police Legitimacy” appears in Volume 66, Issue 4 of the Case Western Reserve Law Review.

Here’s a previous Free Thoughts episode with Blanks on police misconduct. Listeners may also be interested in this Free Thoughts episode with Adam Bates and Matthew Feeney on how new technologies are changing law enforcement.

Blanks mentions this article by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson in the March 1982 issue of The Atlantic, which originated the “broken windows” theory of policing.

Aaron mentions watching the 1971 Don Siegel film Dirty Harry, starring Clint Eastwood.

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