r fewer stops out of fear for their safety and society will suffer.
On the other hand, the Fourth Amendment protects Americans from the abuses of the police state. Consequently, it requires ôspecific justification for any intrusion upon protected personal security.ö The judiciary insures that protection. For example, by deterring police misconduct, the Exclusionary Rule gives force to the Fourth Amendment's ban on ôunreasonable searches and seizures.ö Civil-rights advocates argued that the Court, by lessening the requirement of ôprobable cause,ö would be abdicating its role as the watchdog of such guarantees and loosening society's control over the police.
That debate provided the framework for the question in Terry, which Warren defined as ôwhether the officer's action was justified at its inception, and whether it was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.ö The Court found that the circumstances gave rise to a reasonable suspicion, which warranted further investigation. Terry did not dispute that, but argued that McFadden's subsequent actionsùthe pat-down searchùwere invalid because the officer lacked probable cause.
The Court disagreed, finding that McFadden's pat-down search ôwas reasonably related to the circumstances that justified the interference in the first place.ö That is, McFadden suspected that these men were planning a robbery. Robbers often carry weapons. Consequently, ôthere must be a narrowly drawn authority to permit a reasonable search for weapons for the protection of the police officer, where he has reason to believe that he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual, regardless of whether he has probable cause to arrest the individual for a crime.ö
The Supreme Court revisited this issue nine years later in Pennsylvania v. Mimms. The police stopped Mimms for driving with an expired license plate. They ask...