110
Thomas, J., dissenting
and "reasonable suspicion," so we must trust them to determine whether a group of loiterers contains individuals (in this case members of criminal street gangs) whom the city has determined threaten the public peace. See Ornelas v. United States, 517 U. S. 690, 695, 700 (1996) ("Articulating precisely what 'reasonable suspicion' and 'probable cause' mean is not possible. They are commonsense, nontechnical conceptions that deal with the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men, not legal technicians, act. . . . [O]ur cases have recognized that a police officer may draw inferences based on his own experience in deciding whether probable cause exists" (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)). In sum, the Court's conclusion that the ordinance is impermissibly vague because it " 'necessarily entrusts lawmaking to the moment-to-moment judgment of the policeman on his beat,' " ante, at 60, cannot be reconciled with common sense, longstanding police practice, or this Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.
The illogic of the Court's position becomes apparent when it opines that the ordinance's dispersal provision "would no doubt be sufficient if the ordinance only applied to loitering that had an apparently harmful purpose or effect, or possibly if it only applied to loitering by persons reasonably believed to be criminal gang members." Ante, at 62 (footnote omitted). See also ante, at 67 (O'Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (endorsing Court's proposal). With respect, if the Court believes that the ordinance is vague as written, this suggestion would not cure the vagueness problem. First, although the Court has suggested that a scienter requirement may mitigate a vagueness problem "with respect to the adequacy of notice to the complainant that his conduct is proscribed," Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U. S. 489, 499 (1982) (footnote omitted), the alternative proposal does not incorporate a sci-enter requirement. If the ordinance's prohibition were lim-
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