Supreme Court Case: The Terry V. Ohio Case

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The Terry v. Ohio case set a precedent for a number of Supreme Court cases that took place in the following years. The “terry frisk” caused a multitude of problems for future people dealing with law enforcement. Every day citizens have to become more cautious when being around a cop because as long as they give the officer a reason to think they will cause harm, the officer has every right to pat down the suspect. The most common cause of the cases is people not cooperating with the police officers and the ones whom feel like their rights are being violated. The most recent case involving the “Terry frisk” was Arizona v Johnson in 2009 (Reutors, 2011). In this case it basically dealt the same concepts as Terry v. Ohio, however, this case included gang member whom were in a car driving around being suspicious. …show more content…
Many courts have held that weapons are tools of the drug trade; therefore, if an officer has reasonable suspicion that a suspect is dealing drugs, the officer still can reasonably depict that the suspect may be armed and dangerous (Batterlon, 2008). As long as the officer has a reasonable suspicion they are allowed to conduct a pat down search of the suspect. This reasonable belief can come from a variety of factors. For example, the type of crime that an officer is investigating may be seriously dangerous, such as the possible armed robbery in Terry. Therefore, if an officer had reasonable suspicion that a specific suspect is involved in a crime that involved a weapon (armed robbery, murder, assault with a deadly weapon), the officer would be entitled to frisk that suspect. It really does not matter how big the reason the officer stopped a person because they have permission to search anyone in the