I just got off the phone with the office of the NYC Council Speaker, Christine Quinn, as well as with the NYCLU office, to express my concern about going through a random bag search as I attempted to take the NYC subway to work. Going through an experience like this got me thinking about the inherent flaws of this policy, and of what an invasion of privacy that this is.
Interestingly, when I contacted these two offices, I got starkedly different responses. From the NYCLU office, I was told about the Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit against the City. The press release for this suit includes the following:
The lawsuit filed today in federal court argues that the NYPD is violating the Fourth Amendment rights of commuters by adopting and enforcing a policy of randomly searching possessions of those seeking to enter the subway system. Since the police adopted this policy two weeks ago, officers have searched the purses, handbags, briefcases and backpacks of thousands of people, all without any suspicion of wrongdoing.
The NYCLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of five New Yorkers who are deeply concerned about the civil liberties and safety implications of the bag search policy:
· Brendan MacWade survived the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11. He was recently searched by the NYPD at the Chambers Street station.
· Partha Banerjee is concerned that if he is searched some of the political materials he carries in his bag might prompt retaliation, and he also worries that his skin color might cause police to single him out for searches.
· Joseph Gehring, an attorney, a lifelong Republican, and son of a police officer, is concerned that a search of the papers he keeps in his bag might violate the confidential privilege he shares with his clients.
· Norman Murphy goes out of his way to avoid being searched by police because he considers it a violation of his civil liberties
· Andrew Schonebaum's bag was searched recently, prompting him to join the lawsuit to express his concerns.
From a very polite but ill informed staffer of Christine Quinn, centrist Democrat and president of the City Council of NYC, I got, instead, a lame rationalization about how this is in response to 911 and also no different than going through airport security; I quickly replied that airport security does not entail random searches of select passengers chosen by potentially biased police officers. I also reminded the staffer, in vivid detail, of the NYPD's blatant abuse of their authority in 2004, during the GOP convention in the city.
(Incidentally, Christine Quinn is a committed Hillary Clinton supporter - surprise, surprise! She also is enabling the NYPD to act like a gestapo against the city's population of schoolkids.)
Anyway, while I know that these bag searches are meant to search for weapons, and while the cop who searched me yesterday didn't look through my bag (which contained a newspaper, some books, some pens, student papers to be graded, and a fruit cup) with a lot of scrutiny, I could not help but wonder, what, exactly, were they looking for? And why should I trust them, given how they have abused civil liberties, along with other police agencies, in Bush's America (enabled in part of spineless Democrats like Christine Quinn, Nancy Pelosi, and the Clintons) and by a nation of poorlly informed, easily frightened sheeple.