Posted on 08/19/2005 9:57:00 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK (AP) - A large majority of the city's registered voters support random bag searches of bus and subway passengers, according to a poll released Friday.
In a Quinnipiac University survey of 1,601 voters, 72 percent favored the searches while 25 percent opposed them. Support was solid among blacks, whites and Hispanics.
Random searches of packages and backpacks carried by people entering city subways began last month in the wake of the bomb attacks in London subways.
The searches have raised some questions about civil liberties, and most of those polled, 55 percent to 38 percent, said government security measures should not violate basic civil rights.
The 255 who considered themselves Republicans were an exception, with 60 percent of them agreeing that the government should take "all steps necessary to prevent additional acts of terrorism in the United States even if it means your basic civil liberties would be violated."
The 854 who consider themselves Democrats were 62 percent to 32 percent against that proposition. Independents also rejected violations of civil liberties, 54-39 percent.
"Even in a city touchy about civil rights, New Yorkers pick a bag search over the threat of being blown up," said Quinnipiac polling director Maurice Carroll. "But most voters don't want to give government too much power."
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican who frequently rides the subway, said on his weekly radio show Friday that the searches are an attempt at "making sure there are things going on that are unpredictable."
The telephone poll of 1,601 registered voters in New York City was conducted during the week that ended Monday. It has a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points for the overall poll, 3.5 percentage points for the Democratic segment and 6 percentage points for the Republican segment.
A survey of subway riders or of New Yorkers in general?
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Well, that's real nice. I wonder how many of them have any idea (or even care) about what the Constitution says in regard to the matter.
Therefore, if you are a terrorist, just walk down to the subway. Chances are, you won't be searched. If they stop you, refuse the search, walk down to the next subway station, repeat process.
The searches won't stop a single terrorist attack. They will just cost money and time.
ping
New York has truly become land of the sheeple. I blame all the yuppie douchbags from California and other points west for turning it from a sinkhole into a hellhole myself.
That's because most New York voters don't care about freedom or the Constitution.
What's to stop a terrorist from setting off a bomb in the middle of the crowd that's gathered to have their bags searched?
9/11 delivered a pulse to most NYC residents who had been lacking one.
Anyone riding the NYC subway, or any other public mass transit system, has given up nit-picking about the Constitution long before agreeing to random searches. The Constitution does not authorize the confiscation of citizens' money by both state and federal government, in order to build public transit systems that are essentially a huge welfare scheme, since the fare schedules are designed to 1) not come anywhere close to covering the cost of building and operating the system, and 2) charge rates that are not based on either distance travelled or on market forces, so as to provide cheap transit to poorer people, heavily subsidized by wealthier people. As someone who is heavily subsidizing the NYC transit system, the bag searches are the least of my Constitutional concerns about it.
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