This is a landmark case in the United States at it was brought changes to the constitution and law. The decision brought changes to the Fourth Amendment. This amendment prohibits unreasonable searches or seizures by the police. A compromise was made on this law. The court ruled that if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that a person is committing a crime or is about to do so, then the officer has the right to stop and frisk the person even without probable cause (McAffee, 2011) . This has come to be known as a Terry stop.
In order to maintain order, the court developed the stop and frisk procedure that the police were to follow when implementing the Terry frisk (Meares, 2015) . This was done in order to protect the law and at the same time protect civilians. The officer is expected to have reasonable suspicion before stopping a person for the Terry frisk. For instance, if one hangs out within an area for too long doing nothing and has a machete-like looking equipment tucked under his trousers, then this raises the officer’s suspicion. The next step is the frisk procedure. During this, the officer is asked to pat the suspect on top of the clothes. The search should be done in a way that does not violate the privacy of the suspect. For instance, it is wrong for an officer to search inside the pockets or inside the bags of the suspect. The frisking should also be fast and short-lived. The terry frisk later came to be extended to vehicles to form what is now known as the traffic frisk which is a stop and frisk procedure done on vehicles.
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References
McAffee, T. B. (2011). Setting us up for disaster: The Supreme Court's decision in Terry v. Ohio. Nev. LJ , 12 , 609.
Meares, T. L. (2015). Programming errors: Understanding the constitutionality of stop-and-frisk as a program, not an incident. U. Chi. L. Rev. , 82 , 159.
