Legal Issues

Search and seizures as a constitutional right is provided for in the Bill of Rights and guards individuals from what is considered as unreasonable searches and seizures by the authorities. This provision was ratified due to the abuse of writ of assistance which was a search warrant during the American Revolution. The Fourth Amendment of the United States constitution puts limitations to the police power when making arrests, searching individuals and their property, and when capturing objects and contrabands. Illegal searches usually occur when the police fail to get a warrant to conduct searches and seizures when the law requires that they should be having one (eJustice, 2009).
 The Fourth Amendment
    The Fourth Amendment to the federal constitution observes the rights of the people to feel secure and preserve their private life. The Fourth Amendment protects the individuals against the state for unwanted searches and seizures that might infringe on their rights as provided for in the constitution. However, the Amendment allows for searches and seizures when such practices are considered as being for a purpose. This implies that the law enforcement agents may have to go out of their way and ignore an individuals privacy. This can only happen when the police have gained a search warranty issued by the judge, andor based on the situation, the search is justifiable (Bergman, 2009). The warrant is used to legalize searches in a specific location, time, and in order to obtain specific evidence. The Fourth Amendment however, does not provide protection when there are no private issues of concern. There should be legitimate expectation of privacy in order for the Fourth Amendment to be effective. In 1961, the Supreme Court established the exclusionary law in which any evidence coming from an illegal search could not be used in a criminal prosecution. Another doctrine also states that, when evidence from an illegal search generates new evidence, then the generated evidence too cannot be accepted in a criminal prosecution (Collins, 2009).
Abuse of the Fourth amendment
    Unreasonable searches and seizures are on the increase in the United States of America. An inspection or examination of private property without a legal authority can be termed as an unreasonable search. These searches are mainly based on suspicions with the hope of finding drugs, illegal property, and evidence to be used against an individual in a criminal suit. The Fourth Amendment is supposed to cushion private citizens against such invasion of privacy but this is not usually the case. In 2005, the Supreme Court infamously ruled that cities could take homes from individual owners in order to put up strip malls. State governments have been notorious on confiscating automobiles disregarding the constitutional property rights. The cities have adopted a new technology to identify cars that had avoided paying the parking fees. The Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology has been implemented in many towns across the United States without a second thought on the margin of error that may occur. Many victims of the error have found their cars held for ransom by the city authorities. The amount due on many occasions does not even warrant the confiscation of ones car when you give it a value comparison (Diamond, 2005).
    The war on illicit drugs has posed a great challenge to the Fourth Amendment. A breach of the Fourth Amendment generally occur when the police conducting searches and seizures of individuals and their property on suspicion to catch drugs. These searches usually takes place on the streets or any other place, based on the suspicion of the police. Constitutional protections are slowly being eroded by the drug war considering that the tools of modern war on drugs do not pay attention to what the Fourth Amendment was meant to preserve. The habit of targeted searches inclined towards members of a particular race, nationality or ethnic group amounting to racial profiling are on the increase. It is a fact that drug use is not defined by race and yet in most instances the minority groups are the main target for the police seizures and searches. To add salt to the wound, the justice system appears to be racially inclined for the reason that the minority groups are punished with much harsher sentences compared to the majority whites (James  Valladares, 1997).
The civil asset forfeiture as a law enforcement practice also serves to violate the Fourth Amendment. This law allows for the seizures of money and property suspected of having been generated from illegal sources. Such property is usually retained by the authorities who might sell the assets and use the proceeds to finance other law enforcement efforts. The civil asset forfeiture is usually implemented without verifications of the alleged origins of such properties and neither is the suspected individual arraigned in court for trials. The civil asset forfeiture provides for a dangerous ground whereby enforcing this aspect of the law trashes the individual liberties as it allows for the seizure of private property.