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Queens Man Says He Was Stopped For A Bag Search Three Times In One Day
NY1 ^
| July 27, 2005
| Solana Pyne
Posted on 07/28/2005 3:57:53 AM PDT by csvset
Queens Man Says He Was Stopped For A Bag Search Three Times In One Day
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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. NY1s 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 |
TOPICS: Government; US: New York; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: aclu; idp; justdamn; nonprofile; nysda; profile; profiling; upj; whiningwahabbists
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I'm interning at the Immigrant Defense ProjectImmigrant Defense Project
IDP sounds like a criminal legal defense project. All sorts of No-Do-Gooders, helped by leftists.
1
posted on
07/28/2005 3:57:53 AM PDT
by
csvset
To: csvset
2
posted on
07/28/2005 4:00:11 AM PDT
by
Skooz
(Political Correctness will eventually destroy America)
To: Skooz
"War is hell."
Right. He would have hated WWII. Talk about attacks on freedom!
3
posted on
07/28/2005 4:01:25 AM PDT
by
Arthur Wildfire! March
("McCainiac and Senator Flimsy 'Grahamma For Terrorists' Rights")
To: csvset
Life is cruel, just not fair at all.
4
posted on
07/28/2005 4:02:01 AM PDT
by
JusPasenThru
(http://giinthesky.blogspot.com)
To: csvset
Stop whinning. Here in Isreal, everyone is checked prior to entering any public place by guards outside. You have to remove all metal objects, declare any weapons (lots of people are carrying guns) and then they wave the "Majic Wand" across your body, sometimes patting you down. Repeat, every public place you go to!!!
Americans may some day soon see this very practice enacted everywhere they go!
5
posted on
07/28/2005 4:02:05 AM PDT
by
Jumper
To: csvset
Boo-Hoo, Boo-Hoo. Here's a quarter, call someone who cares.
6
posted on
07/28/2005 4:02:24 AM PDT
by
txnativegop
(God Bless America! (NRA-Endowment))
To: csvset
So did they find anything?
To: csvset
Go to law school in Camel Land, I hear its much more tolerant.
To: csvset
There's a certain amount of stigma with these searches.
Oh pahleeze. boo hoo hoo indeed.
To: csvset
No sympathy - he'd be the first one whining about a lack of security if there is another attack.
10
posted on
07/28/2005 4:11:58 AM PDT
by
mombonn
(¡Viva Bush/Cheney!)
To: csvset
Riiiiight...
Okay, Solana, How much did the ACLU pay you to lie about this to the newstation
11
posted on
07/28/2005 4:13:10 AM PDT
by
CarlEOlsoniii
(McCarthy goes after Communists with a shotgun; I go after them with a rifle -Nixon)
To: csvset
"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 studen"
GET OVER IT! (yes, I AM yelling!)
I have zero tolerance for people who whine about being inconvenienced because of heightened security.
These are the buttbeads that, the first a bombing occurs on our mass transit, will scream that the government didn't do enough to protect them!
12
posted on
07/28/2005 4:14:03 AM PDT
by
Zacs Mom
(Proud wife of a Marine! ... and purveyor of "rampant, unedited dialogue")
To: csvset
I was on my way to Brooklyn. I'm interning at the Immigrant Defense Project, and I started off here in Flushing, he saysFrom this profile, stopping him and seaching him 3 times a day is not enough.
13
posted on
07/28/2005 4:22:04 AM PDT
by
Balding_Eagle
(God has blessed Republicans with really stupid enemies.)
To: csvset
14
posted on
07/28/2005 4:22:34 AM PDT
by
tx_eggman
(Does it hurt when they shear your wool off?)
To: csvset
Hopefully his complaint is true ... it would mean there is a certain amount of sensible profiling going on.
To: csvset
My wife observed this when she was getting on the bus at the Port Authority Bus Terminal last night. There was a police officer standing by, not doing much of anything. The woman in front of her had one of those big, wheeled carry-on type bags. The officer made no move to search her bag until just before the bus rolled up and a man whom my wife described as "Middle Eastern-looking" hurried up to the bus stop carrying a large camera bag.
The Officer then sprang into action and held up the entire line of passengers. He started by doing a desultory search of the woman's large carry-on and glanced in everybody's briefcase. Finally he took apart the late arriver's camera bag, checking each item, disassembling the camera and staring through all the lenses.
Now, if you look at the numbers, the Middle Eastern man was one of only twenty "searched". But not all searches are of equal intensity. If he had not turned up late, perhaps nobody would have been searched at all.
As far as my wife is concerned, she is not the least bit concerned that this fellow was put through the ringer. But, as you can imagine, things are a little tense at the Port Authority these days...
16
posted on
07/28/2005 4:23:51 AM PDT
by
gridlock
(ELIMINATE PERVERSE INCENTIVES)
To: csvset
What a bummer. This is just the price you have to pay.
17
posted on
07/28/2005 4:23:51 AM PDT
by
Preachin'
(Georgia finally saw the light in 2000.)
To: csvset
I was on my way to Brooklyn. I'm interning at the Immigrant Defense Project, and I started off here in Flushing....he's a third-year law student, So we don't have enough "civil rights" lawyers, now we have to import them??
To: csvset
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. Too bad! I'm disappointed that he wasn't searched EVERY time he went into the subway.
So long as it's predominantly young south Asian men committing acts of mass murder, we should be searching every one of them every chance we get. We should station volunteers outside the homes of every Muslim and specifically empower them to search the members of that household and report the findings to authorities.
We should be searching them every time they go from the living room to the kitchen and back.
And if they have a big problem with that then maybe they should do what they can to change the view of their community. They can start by showing at least as much outrage at the mass murders as they do about an alleged koran being defiled.
I'm afraid that we won't have the political will to do what is necessary in this struggle until we lose a major city in a nuclear attack.
19
posted on
07/28/2005 4:25:12 AM PDT
by
tcostell
To: csvset; All
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. An NYPD Sergeant called Michael Savage last week and said that "officially" they oppose profiling, but that cops on the beat are ignoring that and sensibly targeting the people who need to be targeted. I can only hope this is true.
Surely the cops understand that it is the type of traitorous liberalism which led to 9/11 in the first place and that racial profiling is the only way to protect New Yorkers against terrorists.
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