NEW TACTIC BY POLICE QUESTIONED

In response to Mark Stephens' "City's McSting McStinks," June 1, we as a
group of students at Florida Gulf Coast University completely agree with
Mr. Stephens. We believe it is unethical for police officers to be used as
undercover officers working at McDonald's drive-in windows.

At the heart of this issue are private property rights, and we believe this
new police tactic to be unconstitutional and a violation of the private
property rights that we as Americans have.

The opposition to our argument would say that when you are in your vehicle
whatever is within plain view is not a violation of privacy. This is simply
not true, we contend that without reasonable suspicion, police should not
be able to inspect the contents of your vehicle.

Whenever a police officer pulls over a moving vehicle, first he must have a
reason to pull you over, and second he must have reasonable suspicion to
check your car for illegal substances. The same is true when the police
want to search a person's house, they must follow the proper process and
get a warrant by proving that there is a good possibility of something
illegal taking place.

We agree with Mr. Stephens' idea that McDonald's employees should call in
to the police any illegal activity, and should use license plate tags as a
means of identification. As far as using police officers to do this we
completely disagree, and think that their time could be better used to
provide safety and security to the public. In addition to real McDonald's
employees reporting crime, we would like to suggest the use of ground-level
cameras that could be used to capture the license plate numbers more
accurately.

As concerned young adults we do not agree with these new police tactics. We
see these tactics to be in violation of personal privacy, private property
rights, and the Constitution. The only real solution to this problem would
be to put this idea aside and think of a new and better one.

Letter by Brennan Courtwright, Kristi Williams, Six Acevedo, Ron Duquette
and Ken Pahler.