This weeks "Wingin' It Wednesday" was the first time panelist Mike Stagg, Carol Ross, and Warren Caudle were given the opportunity to discuss the tragic Boston Marathon bombing and the following search and apprehension of the suspected bombers. Panelists  "Mornings with Ken and Bernie" to discuss the bombing as well as New York Mayor Bloomberg's controversial statements on national security.

Here's what the panel had to say:

1. Was Watertown’s Door-to-Door Search for Bombing Suspects a Violation of the Fourth Amendment? The Fourth Amendment protects against search and seizure of private property without a warrant. There is an exception which Cornell University Law School describes this as occurring “when police officers believe they have probable cause and there is no time to obtain a warrant.”

Warren Caudle started us off:

I think a lot of this stuff is more overkill than anything else. Most of these things are ended by civilian awareness, just like the man who went out there to his boat and saw blood and noticed there was a body moving around.
It's a good chance for law enforcement to flex their muscles and say they need more money for equipment.

Carol Ross added:

If they hadn't locked it down and someone else had gotten killed. In this case they were perfectly justified in what they did, and they certainly had probable cause.

Mike Stagg concluded:

Making limitations on police power is a good thing. They need to understand that they don't have carte blanche to go out and do what they want. These guys clearly were dangerous, they shot two other people in the process, so I don't think the whole lockdown thing was unreasonable.
There was deep citizen involvement and crowd sourcing going on. Citizen involvement was huge, and it wouldn't have been possible even only a few years ago. Overall I think the police did a pretty good job because the guys were caught and no further damage was done to the community.

 

Warren Caudle, Carol Ross, Mike Stagg; KPEL 965
Warren Caudle, Carol Ross, Mike Stagg; KPEL 965
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2. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, “The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry, but we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will”.   Do you agree with Mayor Bloomberg or is he greasing a “slippery slope”?

Carol commented:

Nanny Bloomberg explains it all for us:
"We're going to have a level of security greater than the old" - I think we already do.
"We live in a dangerous world" - tell us something we don't know.
"Going forward we're going to have more cameras" - we already have a lot of cameras, and the most are owned by the private sector.
The one pinheaded thing he said was our interpretation of the constitution will have to change, well maybe his interpretation   has changed already because he's trying to regulate everything we do in our personal lives that he's got no right to regulate. It's time for Nanny Bloomberg to go.

Mike responded:

Maybe he had a Big Gulp drink before he made that statement.
Ben Franklin said those who think you can trade security for freedom get neither.
We've seen an amazing concentration of power in the hands of the federal government after security was ramped up after 9/11. There is no privacy in that sense, but hopefully what you'll see will happen is that there is an awareness that things have gone to far and we need to ratchet back. The citizens have a right to a level of privacy.

Warren surmised:

The strange thing about this stuff is that the Republican party is the one who's leading the way on all this stuff.
They just voted to allow all your data on cell phones to be turned over to the CIA and other government agencies.

Click on the play button below for the complete audio.

Now it’s your turn to tell us what you think about today’s Wingin’ It Wednesday topics. Who got it right, who got it wrong, and who was way off? Let us know in the comment section.

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