We expect some serious outrage over news, received from Greg Greene and George Chang that the Delaware police are collecting citizen photos for use in investigating future crimes.

"The pictures, names and addresses of the people - mostly minority men - are being used to create a database of potential suspects to investigate future crimes, Police Chief Michael Szczerba said."

Some legal experts and prosecutors say the tactic is legal. "Criminal defense attorneys, the American Civil Liberties Union and minority groups say it is not."

Let's see what you think, after reading this description of how the new policy is being conducted:

"The police units taking the photographs are known in some Wilmington neighborhoods as 'jump-out squads' because they descend on corners, burst out of marked and unmarked vehicles and make arrests in seconds. Up to 20 officers make up each squad. "

"Police routinely line the people on the corners against a wall and pat them down for weapons...."

Then the police take the men's names and addresses, snap their pictures and send them on their way.

The police justify this as a Terry stop, "...named for a 1968 Supreme Court decision, Terry vs. Ohio, that allows officers to stop, question and frisk people they think are suspicious or people in high-crime areas."

Defense attorney Joseph A. Hurley disagrees with the police. Hurley says "police have a right to photograph a citizen walking home from a grocery store or a library, but they cannot take a picture of someone they are temporarily detaining. The second they say, 'We're the police, put your hands against the wall,' the photos become wrong. They're unconstitutional. Bad idea."

The police intend to use the photos for photograph lineups in future crimes. But are the police running a risk here? Will a future defendant charged with a serious crime on the basis of a lineup consisting of these citizen photos have grounds to get his case dismissed?

Defense attorney Eugene J. Maurer Jr. thinks so. "If they're not arresting these people and [are] using the loitering laws as a subterfuge just to get these pictures, I think there are some serious constitutional problems....Absent individualized suspicion, you're not supposed to be able to detain somebody."

The ACLU does not want the police to be "intimidating people who are lawfully assembled ... on the basis of loitering laws....And the retention of photographs is intimidating."

The police chief condescendingly responds with, "These are targeted, directed sweeps in high-crime areas where police have been turned loose to attack bad people...Good little kiddies in the wrong place at the wrong time are not getting their picture taken."

The NAACP is rightly troubled because the sweeps target the poor and minorities.

We object to the practice. It has a chilling effect on the first amendment right to freedom of assembly. We think Terry stops require individualized suspicion of wrong-doing, and hanging around a street corner in a known drug area falls far short of the test. Sure, the police can take pictures of people on the streets, just like tourists do--but they cannot detain them without suspicion of wrongdoing in order to get the pictures. Rounding innocent people up and lining them against the wall to get their pictures when they haven't done anything wrong is antithetical to both our criminal justice system and the core principles of a free society.

No legal challenges have been filed to the practice yet. We expect Delaware defense lawyers will bring them when the time is right.

For the rest of us, we think protests to this kind of practice should begin now. It's just another step in the "May I see your papers, please" process. Once the practice is accepted for those considered to be the lowest among us, it will eventually spread to the rest of us, and by then it may be too late to complain.