Being suspicious is not a crime

To earn your YouTube “law degree,” similar to mine, answer this common YouTube question: Is being a suspicious person a misdemeanor crime or a felony crime?

When you consider that just about everywhere we go in public, such as the bank, post office, grocery store, fast food restaurant, etc., we are on cameras because we are under suspicion as potential violators of the law. We are all considered suspicious objects.

For me, the front-page story by Julio Morales on Friday, March 16 (“Students participate in mock academy”), raises concerns about the training of future law-enforcement officers.

According to the story: “As part of the exercise … their task was to execute an ‘arrest’ of a suspicious subject.”

Being suspicious or a suspicious person is not a crime in the United States. Arresting someone for being suspicious would be an illegal arrest and detainment.

Think about it. If being suspicious was a crime, the police could arrest any one of us at any time just by claiming that the subject was suspicious.

The training should focus on arresting a subject charged with an actual law violation. Training future law enforcement officers to arrest suspicious subjects illegally is poor training and promotes the wrong idea to those being trained and to the general public that being suspicious is a crime. JOHN DANTICE El Centro