Well if you see C4 being passed around the car by three scraggly guys, it’s very reasonable indeed to think that some kind of crime has either already happened (theft), is happening (improper transport of explosives?), or is about to happen.
But here’s my beef. From the link above:
“the Court further held that a driver, once outside the stopped vehicle, may be patted down for weapons if the officer reasonably concludes that the driver “might be armed and presently dangerous.”...Wilson held that the Mimms rule applied to passengers as well as to drivers.”
This says to me that it didn’t matter whether the officer saw the scanner in the pocket, or the blue bandanna, or that the guy came from a town where there was a Crips gang. (If I live in L.A., am I also automatically considered armed and dangerous because I come from a city where there is a Crips gang?) You can get the driver out of the car and frisk him, because any driver might be violent, per the passage I quoted in my earlier post, and hey what the heck, it applies to the passengers too. No observation or thought is necessary, which is the mark of a police state.
We are at war with the gangs. Dress like a combatant, get treated like a combatant.
However, that is not the rubric teh Court applied, is it? For the sake of the few places of war, they impaired in rights of all in times and places (which are most places) of peace.