Queens Man Says He Was Stopped For A Bag Search Three Times In One Day

NY1 ^ | July 27, 2005 | Solana Pyne

[csvset]

Queens Man Says He Was Stopped For A Bag Search Three Times In One Day
	July 27, 2005 The Police Department says its subway bag searches are random, but a Queens man says he's not so sure because he claims he was stopped several times on just one day. NY1’s Solana Pyne filed this report. “I felt humiliated. You know, there's a certain anxiety level every time I walk through a subway station or walk through a security checkpoint,” says Yogi Patell, a CUNY Law student. Patell says police stopped him three times at three separate subway stations last Friday, the day they began bag searches in the subway. “I was on my way to Brooklyn. I'm interning at the Immigrant Defense Project, and I started off here in Flushing,” he says. After picking up papers at CUNY Law School, where he's a third-year law student, Patell says he went to get the No. 7 train and was searched. He made his way to Penn Station and got off the train to meet a friend. Before re-entering, he says, he was searched again. From Penn Station, Patell came down to Chambers Street, where he got off the train and delivered some documents. When he went to get back on, police were again stopping and searching bags. That, says Patell, is when he was searched for the third time. “It's hard for me to say it's anything else other than profiling,” he says. “You know, obviously I can't prove it. I can't sit here and say I noticed them doing it to every South Asian as they walked by, but it's this feeling, this eerie feeling.” The NYPD says it has no explanation for why Patell might have been stopped three times, but insists the searches are random and that people are selected by a numerical formula. They call profiling “bad policing,” and say a supervisor is there to make sure cops doing the searches follow the department's formula. But Patell questions whether searches are the best use of police resources, and said that even if they are random, “There's a certain amount of stigma with these searches.” The New York Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the searches and is considering a lawsuit challenging their legality, agrees. “It's quite understandable, indeed predictable, that the immigrant community, particularly the South Asian and Middle Eastern immigrant community would be freaked out by this policy because of the practices over the last three years of singling out Middle Eastern and South Asian men for interrogations, for FBI visits, for homeland security actions,” says the Donna Lieberman of the NYCLU. Lieberman said the NYCLU had only received a few reports of profiling since the policy started. Right now, they are sending teams out to observe the search practices and asking the Police Department to release memos outlining the formula. As for Patell, he says he hasn't taken the subway since Friday. - Solana Pyne

[TaxRelief]

The NYSDA Immigrant Defense Project is really good buddies with United for Peace and Justice.

http://meetup.radicaldesigns.org/calendar_display.php?calid=13006 **

**(Link deliberately disabled to avoid boosting Alexa rank of UPJ- just cut and paste the text into your address bar)

[TaxRelief]

Brilliant! Want a business partner?

[csvset]

What is "NY1"? Is it a New York Times / CBS wannabe?

About NY1

NY1 News is Time Warner's 24-hour newschannel in New York City. Available exclusively on Time Warner Cable...

[steve-b]

Yogi Patell

The cops were helping Ranger Smith search for a stolen pic-a-nic basket.

[absolootezer0]

gotta have those bi-lingual civil rights lawyers to defend the ones who can't speak english.

[joylyn]

RE New York 1 news channel -- It isn't exclusively a Time Warner channel. Cablevision subscribers also get it.

[cloud8]

> I am occasionally taken aside by TSA for more invasive searches.

I used to set off the alarm every time I walked through. Tired of being frisked, I empty my pockets completely into the bowl and take off my belt. They still search my bag. "Turn on that radio sir." It is tempting to say BANG! when I do so, but I know better.

[wildbill]

Does it seem strange to anyone else that an intern at the 'immigrant defense project' would be one of the very few claims of racial profiling--and that he'd be stopped not once, because of profiling, but three times?