Spend $16.99 so you can wear this to your grave
Posted on 07/22/2005 11:06:07 AM PDT by BigFinn
Reacting to the NYPD's announcement Thursday afternoon that police would randomly—but routinely—search the bags of commuters, one concerned New Yorker quickly created a way for civil libertarians to make their views black-and-white. In a few outraged moments, local immigrant rights activist Tony Lu designed t-shirts bearing the text, "i do not consent to being searched." The minimalist protest-wear can be purchased here, in various styles and sizes. (Lu will not get a cut. The shirts' manufacture, sale, and shipment, will be handled by the online retailer. Lu encourages budget-conscious New Yorkers to make their own and wear them everywhere.)
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly had announced the legally obvious—that New Yorkers are free to decline a search and "turn around and leave." But Lu, who is a lawyer at Urban Justice Center, warned that even well-intentioned cops could interpret people's natural nervousness or anger as "reasonable suspicion." The possibility of unjustified interrogation and even arrest is real, Lu said.
Although police promised they would not engage in racial profiling, Lu said that, as with all street-level policing, people of color and poor immigrants would be particularly vulnerable, especially if encounters lead to arrests.
Unless this is targeted by profiling it is nothing but a circle jerk and an utter waste of police manpower. What are they going to do in January, have everyone take off his coat? how many busses run through midtown? How many stops are there? How many taxis are there (and how many are owned and/or operated by muslims)? How many muslim owned and/or operated coffee, pretzel, hot dog carts are there in Manhattan? Each of these should be checked every day if they want to waste manpower in an area where it might actually stop something.
It would prevent bombs on subways.
I've been waiting 4 years for someone to use the term "circle jerk" on Free Republic.
Just when I was beginning to lose hope, BAM, you came though for me.
Thank you.
you could make the same argument about border security. everyday on FR, we have people who say "seal the border, stop the terrorists". I could easily make the case that the border cannot be sealed adequately to stop a small team of determined and well funded terrorists from crossing - so that logic says, why bother having any border security (immigration control aside). if random subway searches are useless because the odds of catching someone is too low to justify the civil rights intrusion, then border security isn't worth it either because ths odds of stopping a dedicated group from crossing with the 1000s of miles of borders we have, is too.
and we could run down a list of other things:
- random searches of trucks entering NYC tunnels. again, low odds of capture, so should these be eliminated?
- random boarding and searching of cargo ships entering NY harbor by the coast guard. again, low odds of capture, so should we eliminate that too?
I could go on and on - each individual security activity has "low odds" of success - should we eliminate them all?
what's left that we can do? because internment camps for muslims isn't going to happen, we both know that.
I try to use it once a month...I alternate it with cluster F***.
"Since you'll consent to ANYTHING to make yourself "safer", I can give you about 1,000 more instructions. Would you like me to post them, or freepmail them."
No, thanks. The first two tips you gave above were not clear. In fact, it's hard to discern what you're trying to say. I would imagine the rest of your "instructions" to be also not very effective in communicating them.
This thread is about a t-shirt being sold in New York City with a message that defies the police.
Here, i'll speak slowly.
Stay .... inside .... and ... you ... will .... be .... safer .... than .... if .... you .... go .... outside.
Does anyone know sign language?
Well then it's not a random search, is it?
Of course it ain't. A target search is not a random search.
It doesn't defy police. It says they don't consent to being searchd. Not giving consent isn't "defiance".
Thanks for the personal attack.
Your paper's are in order?
PS, DingDong sez hi.
"That's amazing. It sure looked like you were disagreeing with me at first, but now it seems we're in agreement."
To tell you the truth, I was a bit confused at what my pupils were reading at first, but then realized we were in agreement and wanted to say so, but still not sure.
You've clarified that we are in agreement.
Not an attack. Just calling a spade a spade.
Next time grasp the substance of a comment the first time around and there will be no need to talk down to you.
HAHA. You must mean my neighbor. I haven't gotten around to building one yet!
Good point. They may actually _resort to_ that before too long, after one or more suicide bombers blow themselves (and others) up in a public square. Do the same folks who so meekly consent to random searches in the subway, feel that random searches on the street will be needed, then, too?
I don't think the idea of "random searches" for the NYC subways and metropolitan-area commuter lines is going to work very well. They'll try to keep it up for a while, but like other things, what one tries to keep up must eventually come back down.
This goes _beyond_ the question of civil liberties and our rights under the Constitution (for the record, I _oppose_ such searches as an erosion of our liberties - what the heck are we supposed to be _fighting for_ anyway?). What's really may combine to make this unworkable are the issues of manpower, costs, and implementation.
My guess is that there are a _lot_ of posters in this forum who have absolutely NO idea of what the New York City subways and commuter lines are like during the rush hours. The hordes of people, crowding, pushing, teeming, just trying to get through the turnstiles.
Even the larger subway stations have relatively limited points of entry. That means that many, many - let me repeat that for emphasis, MANY - people must move through relatively constricted points of entry at a given speed in order to make the system workable. Clog up those entry points, and you have hundreds - THOUSANDS - who can't get into the system, every one of them trying to do their damnedest to get home after the workday.
Just how many riders can the NYC police actually corral, search, and release? One in a hundred? Two hundred? Three per hundred?
There are hundreds of subway stations in the system, many having two, three, or four access points. How much manpower is it going to take to secure the system? Are they going to secure every entry point, 24 hours a day? Who is going to pay for this? (HINT: it _ain't_ going to be the folks who live in New York City)
Let's consider the major transportation hubs, Grand Central and Penn Station. Penn Station has only about eight or nine entrance points through which must pass THOUSANDS of commuters, hurrying to make their trains. How are the police going to effectively cordon these areas so that they can scrutinize everyone? Impossible.
Or take Grand Central. Again, relatively few points of entry - and if you block those, you have hundreds of folks standing on the STREET, clogging up the outside of the station. Well, search them inside, right, at the gates of entry to the train platforms. Fine - but how about the commuter trying to make a train, who is hauled over to the side, searched, and misses his train? I wouldn't want to be the Metro-North official dealing with such folks.
Or consider the outlying commuter train lines, coming inbound. Dozens of stations, some in remote towns, high level platforms with multiple entry points. The only way to secure them is to limit the entry points so that everyone must walk through a cordoned gauntlet. Not likely. And the small towns which these stations serve don't have the financial resources to pay for local police to conduct searches on a 24-hour basis. Watch for an entire new "homeland transit security/TSA" bunch of goons, coming soon to a commuter station near you.
Strict security works for the airports because airplanes are _not_ "mass transit" machines; on the contrary, they carry limited numbers of riders, each of whom can be screened.
But trying to implement "security searches" on mass transit is going to be a nightmare. I predict it will either quickly be seen as:
1. Unworkable -or-
2. Unpalatable to the general public, who will demand that it be discontinued.
Then again, I could be wrong. Perhaps we are destined to surrender nearly every liberty we once held dear, all in the name of "feeling" safer.
In that case, I prefer the unsafe.
Cheers!
- John
Like the wermact on the western front?
Maybe so, but the critical legal point is that the cops are not permitted to "pick out people to search." For legal reasons, the search must be random or its unconstitutional.
That's what makes it stupid.
What if you are standing next to this guy in line waiting to be searched and get "blown up" when the cop wants to search him?
No offense but you are being terribly naive about "being blown up". The guys that wear bombs are neither intimidated nor deterred by random searches. If they are searched before they reach their destination, they just blow themselves up where they stand.
Additionally, the chances of the police searching the guy that is carrying the bomb is very low - insanely low. Why do you want to give up your freedoms for a futile approach?
You still don't get it.
You can't profile the conduct of a target's lifespan, as you would run into the realm of abstractions. However, profiling of indiviuals based on non-tangibles criteria helps in choosing the target to be searched.
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