Objective Reasonableness

You know, if you come into law enforcement, there's lots of these terms du jour.

And if you're a cop or a detective or a sheriff's deputy or an FBI special agent, you just kind of throw them out there and you know what they are.

But really, unless you're watching police procedurals and you're reading into the law books, you kind of don't know.

But they're terms that will sound familiar to you.

Reasonable doubt.

Probable cause.

articulable, reasonable suspicion.

One of them is called objective reasonableness.

Now, you don't have to know that much about it, but just for a historical context, that's about using force.

The landmark case that gets referenced with all things objectively reasonable is Graham v. Conner.

And what went on there was actually a pretty unfortunate incident where this guy, Graham, he was a diabetic and he realized that his blood sugar was dropping.

So he asked his buddy, hey, can you drive me down to the store? I need to go get some orange juice so I can get my levels back up.

So his friend drives him to the store.

He hops out of the car, runs into the store real quick, sees that there's a really long line.

And he says, all right, it's going to take too long.

I'm going to go into shock.

I'm going to try another store.

And he jumps out and hops back in his friend's car and they drive off again.

At that exact moment, there was a police officer who happened to see Mr. Graham run into the store and leave very quickly.

Now, cop doesn't know who Graham is.

He doesn't know the circumstances.

He has training.

He has experience.

And he presumes that that's pretty suspicious.

He doesn't think health emergency.