No, you’re wrong. The reason the suit was brought up was because the police were violating the probable cause requirement, at which point the Supreme Court carved out an exception.
Even if police routinely ignore the law, that doesn’t magically make their conduct legal.
The reason the suit was brought up was because the police were violating the probable cause requirement, at which point the Supreme Court carved out an exception.In 1958 the Cincinnati Police Department implemented one of the first field interrogation campaigns. … One week into the campaign, the Cincinnati branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) complained to the city manager. Jim Paradise, the branch president, criticized the “dragnet-like campaign of indiscriminate accosting and interrogation of the citizens.”
The ACLU had never heard of a program whereby the police “place an entire community under its control in this fashion,” and indeed, the constitutionality of the field interrogation was an open question.
Until that point, no court had directly addressed the legal standard governing stop-and-frisk. Police simply did it, and all the time. What shocked the ACLU was the deliberate, systematic, and coercive nature of the campaign.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/05/stop-and-frisk-dragnet-ferguson-baltimore/
