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.
IT'S NOT EVERYDAY THAT YOU GET FOLKS AT FR AGREEING WITH THE VILLAGE VOICE.
Please repost that to SandyInSeattle, who made that claim.
You and I disagree on free(unfair) trade but we sure do agree on this issue.
Pathetic.
Stopped Clock.
Absolutely dead on. Half the people on this thread are ready to surrender the entire BOR as long as it makes us "safer".
Uh. Maybe this is one of the reasons that the President should have asked Congress for a declaration of war.
When they started the manditory govt searches (long before 9/11) to get on air planes, I suggested that the same logic would allow them to search everyone who want to ride the subway. And next it will be your home. I suggest that probable cause is still necessary, like being an unshaven, 15-35 year-old, foreign looking male.
ML/NJ
This is what I get -- there are about 1,000 different ways to inflict a terrorist attack on the U.S. or NYC that don't involve subways.
You are severely kidding yourself if you think searches at subway stations make us any safer.
I think there is if it is public transportation, paid by you ... the public.
A private taxi is another matter, but I think you do have a consitutional right to get on a subway.
I appreciate your risking life and limb to protect our Consitutional rights. I'm sorry it offends you so much when we exercise them.
Best to leave that illegal stuff at home if you are going to ride the NY subway.
It makes us marginally safer. It's one thing out of probably a couple of thousand things that I bet on every day that I go out and about.
Well, not to mention that any terrorist group with half a brain is busy recruiting caucasians & women to carry out their evil deeds.
"If you have done nothing wrong, comrade, then you have nothing to fear."
- Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria (1899 - 1953), chief of the Soviet Secret Police (NKVD) under Stalin.
Lavrenti Beria was one of the cruelest leaders in a regime known for its brutality. He first reached a position of power by working his way up the police organization in the Soviet republic of Georgia. In 1938, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin summoned him to Moscow to work as the deputy to the chief of the Soviet secret police (NKVD). Within months the chief had disappeared and Beria had replaced him. During the purges of the 1930s, many Soviet leaders issued lists of people they wanted arrested and shot, but Beria may have been the only one who personally got involved in torturing his victims. It is said that he invented the saying "Comrade, if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear," a line spoken with heavy irony by NKVD officers as they took political prisoners into custody during Stalin's purges.
Quote: I've seen plenty of your posts on this forum. You're smarter than this. I'm beginning to wonder if somebody from the DUmpster has hijacked your account.
Agree. What up Kellyna? You and I are always on the same page.
Now there's a substantive argument...
Just taking a stab at this, but NYPD cops may view the random search as fruitless. Little old women and babies are not terrorist bombers - searching them means nothing. Profiling is a tool that is not being used in NY - although it is used effectively in many other law enforcement capacities.
I may be wrong, but I know cops don't like to waste their time.
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