Reasonable suspicion is a standard that was established in a case in 1968 that took place in the Supreme Court. The standard rules that a police officer is allowed to intervene and stop or even briefly put an individual under detention. All this is based on the officer’s training and experience because a suspicion arose and made him or her believe that the individual engaged in criminal activity. In this instance, the police officer is then given an opportunity to freeze the individual’s action and allow further investigations to be conducted 1 . On the other hand, probable cause is that standard that gives a police officer the right to make an arrest, obtain an arrest warrant, and search either the property or person. Also, probable cause is used by a grand jury as a standard showing that they believe a certain crime has been committed.
Both reasonable suspicion and probable cause do involve the assessment of probable guilt for a suspect. For most rational people, their assessment is based on evidential. In most instances, reasonable suspicion gives basis to a reasonable police officer’s standard. As for the probable cause, it uses reasonable standards of a given individual 2 . In essence, both reasonable suspicion and probable cause are important because they decide in the appropriateness of a police officer to make an arrest, search for any evidence, and even stop a police officer from questioning the arrested individual. Compared to probable cause, reasonable suspicion does not justify an officer to conduct a full search. However, when suspicion arises, then it means that a crime may really have been committed and through this is when the situation escalates to it being a probable cause.
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Probable cause has managed to balance two interests that of the society regarding crime control and that of an individual’s right about their locomotion ability. Here, an individual is given the freedom to leave freely at the police station during the questioning time. In essence, we can say that probable cause looks at ‘balancing governmental interests against an individual’s private rights 3 .
References List
Del Carmen, Rolando V. and Hemmens Craig. Criminal Procedure: Law and Practice . Cengage Learning, 2016.
Stevens Dennis J. An Introduction to American Policing . Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2017
