# Thin Blue Lies: How Pretextual Stops Undermine Police Legitimacy **URL:** **By** Jonathan Blanks, Aaron Ross Powell, Trevor Burrus **Published:** September 23, 2016 --- Jonathan Blanks joins us for a discussion about police stops and the Fourth Amendment. Is there a war on cops? What's a pretextual police stop? When do police need your consent to a search, and are these searches unconstitutional? Jonathan Blanks joins us this week to share his findings on how police searches disproportionately affect minorities. **Show Notes and Further Reading** Jonathan Blanks's "[Thin Blue Lies: How Pretextual Stops Undermine Police Legitimacy](http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/blanks-cwrlr-v66n4.pdf)" appears in Volume 66, Issue 4 of the _Case Western Reserve Law Review_. Here's a previous Free Thoughts episode with [Blanks on police misconduct](https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/free-thoughts/the-problem-of-police-misconduct). Listeners may also be interested in this Free Thoughts episode with Adam Bates and Matthew Feeney on [how new technologies are changing law enforcement](https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/free-thoughts/how-new-technology-is-changing-law-enforcement). Blanks mentions this article by [George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson in the March 1982 issue of _The Atlantic_](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/) , which originated the "broken windows" theory of policing. Aaron mentions watching [the 1971 Don Siegel film _Dirty Harry_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066999/) , starring Clint Eastwood.