Posted on 11/29/2005 12:32:57 PM PST by CedarDave
Arvada woman said 'no' at Federal Center while on public bus
By Karen Abbott, Rocky Mountain News November 29, 2005
Federal prosecutors are reviewing whether to pursue charges against an Arvada woman who refused to show identification to federal police while riding an RTD bus through the Federal Center in Lakewood.
Deborah Davis, 50, was ticketed for two petty offenses Sept. 26 by officers who commonly board the RTD bus as it passes through the Federal Center and ask passengers for identification.
During the Thanksgiving weekend, an activist who has helped publicize other challenges to government ID requirements posted a Web site about the case, which he said had logged more than 1.5 million visitors by lunchtime Monday.
"The petty offense ticket was issued by police on the scene," Colorado U.S. attorney's spokesman Jeff Dorschner said Monday. "The status of the matter is now under review."
A decision on whether the government will pursue the case is expected in a week or two.
Davis said she commuted daily from her home in Arvada to her job at a small business in Lakewood, taking an RTD bus south on Kipling Street each morning from the recreation center in Wheat Ridge, where she left her car. She said the bus always passed through the Federal Center and some people got off there.
Guards at the Federal Center gate always boarded the bus and asked to see all passengers' identification, she said.
She said the guards just looked at the IDs and did not record them or compare them with any lists.
When she refused to show her ID, she said, officers with the Federal Protective Service removed her from the bus, handcuffed her, put her in the back of a patrol car and took her to a federal police station within the Federal Center, where she waited while officers conferred. She was subsequently given two tickets and released.
She said she arrived at work three hours late. She no longer has that job and did not identify her former employer.
The Federal Protective Service in Colorado referred inquiries to Carl Rusnok of Dallas, a spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees the federal police. Both are part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Rusnok said the federal officers in Colorado told him the policy of checking the IDs of bus passengers and others entering the Federal Center began shortly after the April 1995 terrorist bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City.
"It's one of the multiple forms of security," Rusnok said. "The identification is one means of making sure that, whoever comes on base, that you know that they are who they say they are.
"There are a variety of other means that bad people could take to circumvent that, but that's why there are multiple layers of security," he said.
Security 'high priority'
Between 7,000 and 8,000 people work at the Federal Center in Lakewood and between 2,000 and 2,500 people visit it every day, Rusnok said.
"Security to protect the employees and the visitors is a high priority," Rusnok said.
RTD spokesman Scott Reed said federal guards only check IDs of bus passengers when the Federal Center is on "heightened alert," which may not be known to the general public.
"It's periodic," Reed said.
"That is something we don't control," Reed said. "It is Federal Center property, and the federal security controls the ID-checking process. We try to cooperate as best we can and inform the public that this will occur."
Davis is to appear before a magistrate judge in Colorado U.S. District Court on Dec. 9.
"We don't believe the federal government has the legal authority to put Deborah Davis in jail, or even make her pay a fine, just because she declined the government's request for identification," said Mark Silverstein, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, which has taken up the case.
"She was commuting to her job," Silverstein said. "She wasn't doing anything wrong. She wasn't even suspected of doing anything wrong."
"Passengers aren't required to carry passports or any other identification documents in order to ride to work on a public bus," he said.
Davis also is represented by volunteer attorneys Gail Johnson and Norm Mueller of the Denver law firm Haddon, Morgan, Mueller, Jordan, Mackey & Foreman, P.C. She also has the backing of Bill Scannell, an activist who has helped publicize other challenges to government requirements that people show identification. Scannell created a Web site during the Thanksgiving weekend about Davis' case: papersplease.org/Davis.
"This is just a basic American issue of what our country's all about," Scannell said. "It has nothing really to do with politics, and everything to do with what kind of country we want to live in."
'Rosa Parks'
Some supporters have called Davis "the Rosa Parks of the Patriot Act generation," a reference to the African-American woman who became a civil rights heroine after she refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man, Scannell said.
Davis said she showed her ID when a Federal Center guard asked to see it for the first couple of days she rode the RTD bus through the center. But it bothered her.
"It's wrong," she said Monday. "It's not even security. It's just a lesson in compliance - the big guys pushing the little guys around."
For a few subsequent days, she told the guards she wasn't getting off in the Federal Center and didn't have an ID. They let her stay on the bus.
Finally, on a Friday, a guard told Davis she had to have an ID the next time. Davis said she spent part of the weekend studying her rights and e-mailing Scannell.
That Monday, when a guard asked if she had her ID with her, Davis just said, "Yes."
"And he said, 'May I see it?' " she recalled, "and I said no."
The guard told her she had to leave the bus, but she refused. Two officers with the Federal Protective Service were called.
"I boarded the bus and spoke with the individual, Deborah N. Davis . . . asking why she was refusing," wrote the first Federal Protective Service officer in an incident report posted on Scannell's Web site. The officer was not identified.
"She explained she did not have to give up her rights and present identification," the officer wrote. "I informed her she was entering a federal facility and that the regulations for entrance did require her to present identification, before being allowed access."
"She became argumentative and belligerent at this time," the officer wrote.
Eventually, one officer said, "Grab her," and the two officers took hold of her arms and removed her from the bus, Davis said.
Davis has four children, including a 21-year-old son serving in Iraq with the Army and a 28-year-old son who is a Navy veteran. She has five grandchildren.
Excellent point -- illegals get a pass (even at the voting booth!!) while law-abiding Americans pay the price (financially and otherwise).
It's interesting, but I don't think she has much of a case. The bus was on Federal property at the time. Most Federal facilities have implied consent, meaning that by entering that facility, you consent to be searched if requested. I work on a military installation, and there is a sign to that effect clearly posted as you drive onto post, just before the security checkpoint.
According to the article, checking ID was a regular part of the bus trip as the bus passed through the federal property. After her very first trip, she would have known this. If she really had heartburn over it, she should've found an alternate means of transportation. Personally, I think she's just grandstanding.
Please tell me you forgot the sarcasm tag.
First, I notice that you dodged the questions.
Now, Several of the 9 11 hijackers had overstayed their visas. If they refuse to give up their ID they can hide that fact. When they can be detained until such time they are ID'd then the visa issue would come out. (you see this is 'more' being done after 9 11 that very well could have avoided the events of that day.
A major key to security is accurate identification.
You claim individual rights that folks died for...show me where, in the constitution, it says that you have a right to withhold your identity from a law enforcment official when they directly ask you for it.
Remember now your 4th and 5th arguments have already been struck down..... How about answering to me what you WILL allow law enforment officials to do????
It occurs to me that you have opposition without alternative solution. You strike me as the type that complained that MORE should have been done, and like the ACLU, has opposed EVERY MEASURE tabled or taken since 911 to accomplish that more for the future....all the while NEVER offering up what YOU think the more should be.
A cop asking you who you are is HARDLY unreasonable! In fact, it is part of their JOB!
Put your money ( alternative) where your mouth(opposition) is.
I think you're right.
It is time that all people present ID when asked to do so.
The act of requesting ID shouldn't be the debate (imho). What should be is the context in which it is asked.
That is to say I think it is reasonable to stop you out in public and request ID where I would find it unreasonable to just knock on doors and request it. I find a clear line there.
A troublemaker huh? Let me see your papers!
I have a right to be secure in my person, papers, and effects from unreasonable search and seizure. Aside from that, rights don't come from the Constitution, they exist in a state of nature according to the philosophy of the Founders, and just governments are constituted to secure those natural rights.
America was founded on the belief that people have the right to be left alone by government, and that governments powers would be sharply limited and confined to certain specific areas of authority.
We have gone way too far afield from that, the way I see it.
What freedom is she fighting for exactly?
Apples & oranges. It's the difference between searching someone's personal belongings & demanding an ID. There's already (terrible) Supreme Court precedent that basically says people on public transportation & busses have less Fourth Amendment protection for searches.
I said it before and ill say it again, if you are asked for ID and you refuse it, you can be lawfully detained until such time as your ID can be established.
Well, you may ultimately be proven right in this case. However, you said Hiibel gave them the authority to do it. It does not.
Hiibel was if a) there's a suspicion of criminal wrongdoing and b) there's a state law authorizing such. I don't know about "b" in Colorado but "a" does not apply here.
Yes, but showing ID to vote is considered racist and improper.
is a city bus your person? Your posession? your papers? Your effects?
"Justice Anthony Kennedy said, "Asking questions is an essential part of police investigation. In the ordinary sense a police officer is free to ask a person for identification without implicating the Fourth Amendment."
You cite your rights using the consititution and then you say they do not come from the constitution.....which is it?
You have it in your head that the government is your number one ENEMY, it is you that is way out in left field.
In no way did our founders lay the groundwork for a country that outlaw any form of identification. Signing the declaration of Independence sure wasn't an attemp to conceal identity now was it?
Present your alternatives please. Or accept that you take a position of opposition without alternative solution. All i am asking here is for you to be honest with me and yourself about what your position is.
ID is issued by local state and federal authorities right?
Is it your ID or theirs? How is it that the body issuing it cannot request to see it and check its validity? What is unreasonable about that?
No, she refused to be two-legged sheep.
No, I didn't. This BLACK MAN has seen too many control freaks in his time.
People on busses make the choice to be there. Noone took rights away from them.
The ruling sure backs they are right to do so. 'Suspicion' is political speak for an officers hunch. That is why this ruling shows a clear line between probable cause and suspicion.
If you think A doesn't apply there by all means as a law abiding citizen delay police officers every chance you get. Waste their time every day if they ask you for ID. Make good and well sure that they are wasting their time on you when you could show your ID and be on your way in a couple minutes....instead make a scene.......tie them up for hours on end and hey you might actually be able to sue them for a buttload of money. Go for it.
Ask yourself this, do you want to help police do their job or do you want to hinder them at every turn? Do you want to see them CATCH bad actors or do you want to see them so hamstrung that they cannot catch them at all?
It really is that simple.
So now, you're saying that we have no right to refuse to answer those questions? That we are compelled to engage in conversations with police officers whether we want to or not, regardless of whether there's reasonable suspicion, or any suspicion at all for that matter?
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