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Posted on 02/19/2009 9:05:52 PM PST by beagleone
Jangir Sultan has had enough. The native New Yorker sued the New York Police Department Thursday, accusing police of targeting him for subway bag searches 21 times because he looks like he's from the Middle East.
The NYPD started what it said was a race-neutral bag search program in July 2005, after suicide bombings killed 52 people on London's subway and bus system.
The New York Civil Liberties Union challenged the practice in court, calling it ineffective and an intrusion on privacy, but a federal appeals court upheld the inspections' constitutionality and called them "reasonably effective."
The NYPD has said officers are supposed to select straphangers on a numerical basis - stopping every 25th person, for instance - without regard to race or ethnicity. The department did not comment yesterday, but it has said it does not target anyone by race.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
I'm sorry, you know how Rush Limbaugh says "elections have consequences"? Well, terrorism has consequences. If Jangir has any beef, it should be with Al Queda, not the NYPD. It's AQ's fault Jangir is being inconvenienced, but Jangir's inconvenience should not be lifted at the expense of everyone's safety.
good. if he looks like a suspicious terrorist with a bag, it needs searched. and that huge, thick, sleeveless orange vest that looks sssoooo gay
Want some Cheese Jangir?
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Benjamin Franklin - November 11, 1755
...and the Constitution is not a suicide pact.
-—me
I cannot believe on a conservative site there are people who agree with warrantless, causeless searches of people’s possessions on public transportation. Why not search people on the street? There’s literally no difference.
He ought to be grateful that the NYPD is so thorough. He isn’t carrying explosives and it’s nothing personal, so he has nothing to worry about. It’s not even a nuisance so he should just shut up and let them do their job.
What a drama queen.
I’m finding it hard to believe myself. Why not open the warrantless searches to everyone’s home? Where will it end all in the name of “safety”. This is almost as bad as it’s “for the children”.
> I cannot believe on a conservative site there are people who agree with warrantless, causeless searches of people’s possessions on public transportation.
Warrantless maybe. Causeless? Did you miss the fact that 9/11, London, the shoe-bomber and Madrid all happened on transportation carriers?
Ping.
I mean cause regarding that individual. The thing is, if someone wants to blow up a mall, are we going to start searching bags in the mall? Is it really going to stop someone who’s even HALFWAY clever or inventive? If someone really wanted to hijack a plane, the only reason they wouldn’t succeed now is because people would fight them and the pilots have guns. But it’s not because of the long security lines or taking your shoes off.
You cannot simply ‘search’ people randomly. It’s one argument I had that after they federalized the security workers, they became Agents of the state (the airport TSA people) and that the searches they were conducting were unconstitutional.
If someone rents a UHaul and blows up a school or terrorists take an office building and execute everyone inside and throw them off the roof—what new warrantless searches will be approved of then?
You don’t have to let them search your bag. You just can’t enter the station if you refure. Big difference.
I understand the the valid question whether any bag searching should be conducted in America.
However, if they are already searching bags, then they can’t afford to be PC about it.
You let them search you before you board a plane, don’t you?
I can’t believe you think there’s no difference between walking down the street...and being cooped up with 100 strangers on a subway train.
Translate your attitude to the airline industry. Do you believe someone has the right to search you befor you get on a plane....without a warrant?
Thought so...
> You cannot simply ‘search’ people randomly.
Don’t your cops do random breath checks for drink drivers in the US? They sure do here in NZ (they are a bloody nuisance) and they regularly catch drivers well over the legal limit.
> what new warrantless searches will be approved of then?
Whichever ones will work under the circumstances. During a time of war it is your duty as a good citizen to put up with some inconvenience so that the enemy can be fought and defeated. Sometimes this duty requires some of your rights being curbed or inconvenienced. Too bad, that’s war for you: rationing violates your property rights by limiting how much hard-to-obtain goods you can acquire at any given time. Tough luck: the war effort trumps your individual right to acquire.
Civil Libertarians have entirely lost sight of the fact that the US and the rest of the Free World is at war with terrorists. If it requires inconvenience to fight these terrorists and win that war, so be it. So long as there is a good reason, then it should happen without demur or complaint.
Moreover, anyone complaining about it is being unpatriotic and ought to be done for High Treason if complaining about it helps the enemy to win.
Censorship violates your right to freedom of speech and expression. Too bad: during war it is perfectly acceptable for these rights to be curbed and subject to the war effort. This is justifiable because nobody will have any rights at all if the Enemy wins.
Civil Rights are a peacetime necessity and a wartime nuisance, or at best a luxury to be rationed and ill-afforded.
Of course the scumbag lawyers will fight it tooth and nail until somebody blows up the ACLU office on Broad St.
Then they will be singing a different tune.
I had a random search when I was in Florida for a 2004 family reunion. My real name isn’t ANYTHING Middle Eastern sounding, but I got searched. Sometimes, airport security does go a bit too far.
I’ve been searched, too.
I’m not saying the system is perfect. Far from it - but I know from personal experience that searching is sometimes very necessary in terror prevention and that profiling works.
I think you are the perfect example of why random searching is not as effective as profiling.
Just being one of those English/German hybrids, I had a search before boarding a plane.
I was told to unbuckle my belt, raise my arms, an electronic probe was put all about my sleeves, privates and shoes. The search took an inordinate amount of time, and a line was forming. My Leatherman plier-tool fell to the floor from my belt but was returned to me.
The year? About 1975*.
The reason? The hijacking of US aircraft from Miami to Cuba. :-\
*Just prior, you could carry a revolver onto a commercial aircraft—no problemo. (And I may have done it, back then!)
“Civil Rights are a peacetime necessity and a wartime nuisance, or at best a luxury to be rationed and ill-afforded.”
and the folks who brought you the perpetual political campaign will have no difficulty placing us in a permanent state of war if that can be used to justify restricting citizens freedoms.
We are at war with Eastasia ... we have always been at war with Eastasia.
“You let them search you before you board a plane, don’t you?”
I don’t fly anymore. I simply got tired of the idiotic searches that were being performed. I’ve witnessed old ladies in wheelchairs being selected for “special screening” as well our military IN UNIFORM being selected for it as well. The TSA is trying to give the illusion of safety when in fact they are worse than the keystone cops.
I’m lucky. I’m centrally located and no more than a day and a half drive from most places I want to visit.
“However, if they are already searching bags, then they can’t afford to be PC about it.”
They shouldn’t be searching the bags to begin with as it violates the 4th amendment. It used to be in order to search, the officers had to have a reasonable suspicion, now it’s everyone is guilty until proven innocent instead of the correct way of innocent until proven guilty.
simple math skills are so missing from todays journalists, and much of the public also.
do the numbers:
- program operating 3-1/2 years
- stop one out of 25 citizens
- this guy claims 21 searches
in ballpark numbers, if he rode the subway 525 times, he could expect to be stopped about 21 times. 525 subway trips over 3-1/2 years equals .41 trips per day average. so basically, if this guy makes 3 subway trips per week (is that unlikely for a native NYer?) he could expect to be stopped 21 times over that period. of course, if he makes more trips than that, he should have been stopped even more often.
all that said, I have a problem with authorities stopping random citizens. the implication is either that any citizen is equally likely to be a bad guy, or that the authorities have no clue what they are looking for, so they just act to be acting.
No, I DO NOT believe anyone has the right to search me or my bags before I get on an aircraft. Warrant or not. But those of you who do, wear your chains comfortably. I bet you’re the pathetic sort of individual who would want to ensure everyone around you is disarmed so as not to cause you any mental anguish, too.
The searches are occurring on essentially private property just as supermarkets for example, reserve the right to search your packages on their property. Don’t want to be searched? Don’t use public or privately owned transportation. You do have the option of taking a taxi, riding a bike etc. Once you agree to pay the fare to travel on any form of transportation and embark from that property they have the right to search you, just as you have the right to search anyone who comes on your property.
I am so weary of being searched and questioned everywhere I go that I don't care if we suffer another terrorist attack.
I just want to be able to move around by whatever means without being accosted by a government agent of some sort.
I’m almost positive the NY transportation system is supported by tax money NOT just fares. It’s not private property, thus the rules revert to...I don’t know, walking down the street, in the forest, etc.
If the transit authority were a private organization you’d be correct. It is not.
Uh, only the airline owners and their agents should be able to search me.
And that’s how it USED TO BE, by the way. All those TSA people used to be private security, thus there was no Constitutional complaint, even if there could be practical issues.
I would have to make a fine distinction between public property which is easily accessible to all and transportation facilities which for a wide variety of reasons require restricted access. It would be different if the searches were occurring in a public park or on the streets during peaceful times. I can draw an analogy to a military base, certainly that is public property and taxpayer supported, but would you argue that you have the right to go there without being searched or stopped? Are you saying that all public property should have unrestricted access by citizens? I think the courts would dispute that.
No searches of bags for getting on a plane......pay much attention to the world or do you just have a death wish?
Bye bye airline industry and global travel.
......and those illegal immigrants the private industry hired sure did a bang up job.
Your rights end when you try to get get on a sealed canister that cruises at 35,000 feet..with me on board.....or a sealed subway train.
Doesn’t fit your dangerous idealist attitude....you have the choice of walking to your destination unhindered.
Let the market decide. I would fly on an airline where I could pack my own protection, readily. If you are such a wuss that you need someone else to “protect” you, you deserve what you get.
Well, Mr. “You’re such a wuss I can protect myself from everyone on a plane that hasn’t been searched” tough guy.......a notion that is on its face...LUDICROUS.
Go ahead, tough guy, and bust out your .45 and protect yourself from an insane guy that just detonated a pound of high explosives at 35000 feet...explosives that you didn’t want to be searched for because, afterall, YOU CAN PROTECT YOURSELF....RIGHT??? Well, tough guy, you are in the back of the plane and he’s way up in first class and he just blew the cockpit section off the front.
Well.....go ahead, tough guy, and start bustin caps in people....meanwhile, the plane is already coming down from 35000 feet....in pieces....because you felt you had an insanely irrational right to not be searched...a right that does not exist and never existed.
Or are you just gonna shoot everyone before they get on board? Huh, tough guy?
Hint: “the market” would sink the entire airline industry if every idiot with a gun and a deathwish could bring ‘em on a plane.
Your faith in big government is touching... but extremely misplaced. Currently it is EXTREMELY EASY for someone to sneak weapons or explosives aboard an aircraft, as many tests have shown... DESPITE the “rigorous” checking done by TSA’s minions.
In my case, having served MANY years in the Marine Corps and much of it dealing with aircraft, I feel VERY comfortable with my capabilities in dealing with situations that might arise in-flight. Bombs in the luggage cannot be dealt with, so I don’t worry about it. And MANY even on this board have expressed preferences for CHOICE in security on flights. A whole bunch of us would opt for an airline where we all carried our own protection (with frangible ammo to prevent rounds from going through the skin of the bird). In fact, had even ONE person on any or all of the 9/11 flights been armed (as was common some years back), 9/11 would be just another date on the calendar.
So Mr/Miss LUDICROUS, KMA. Either you work for the government (likely) or you have ZERO idea of what you are talking about. In either case, you have even LESS credibility (the only case I know of where there actually IS a value less than ZERO) with anyone who has even the vaguest inkling of what it takes to keep an aircraft secure.
Leave the “your faith in big government” strawmen at the door, tough guy.
Great tactic........ignore the luggage.....don’t you DARE check for bombs, tough guy. Planes dropped out of the sky by explosives just became the #1 travel occurrance.....but hey, you got to be the “who cares about life” tough guy burning in.
OK....YOU carry a weapon with frangible ammo.........the nutcase 40 rows up is loaded with .45APC....how’s that frangible ammo workin’ out for ya when HE starts pullin’ the trigger, tough guy?
There is no airline or airline industry that would stay in business as such.....only in Absurdistan, tough guy.
In fact....your pathetic 9/11 scenario neglects the fact that they would have firearms too, tough guy. Yes, a buncha maniacs with blades would get taken out by such a tough guy as yourself with your many years of being a jarhead and your sensible frangible ammo......but why would they use blades if they knew they’d not get searched for firearms? Didn’t think it quite out as far as you should before speaking your insanity, eh tough guy? Now you’ve got a shootout on a plane between sensible maniacs with frangible ammo and....maniacs with .45 APC.....or maybe they got some AKs through your non-search.
Yeah....you know security.
Yeah yeah yeah....you think you know something about me and my BIOLOGIST life in a biotech company, tough guy. ....and, tough guy, while you were playing jarhead REMF with aircraft, I was spending many years pulling triggers and playing with explosives and having weekly hand to hand training in the infantry...and stopped working for the gubmint when I took the uniform off....but then you’d actually have to ask instead of spewing nonsense about me, eh tough guy?
Your world of 250 armed passengers having safe airline travel does not and will not ever exist, tough guy.
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