Your papers... zey are not... in order.
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.
Your papers... zey are not... in order.
It's worth bearing in mind that out-of-control governments have killed over 100 million people in the last 100 years.
Asking your ID is unreasonably instrusive? Ill ask you the same thing I asked another poster, is that ID yours or is it theirs?
Yes they had valid ID's buit but visas were another story. You just made a good case for making sure that databases are tied together, You just made a case for a national ID.
I would offer to you that it is settled law that asking you for ID is not unreasonable. I concur with that finding.
Not at all, you can still refuse under your 5th. Pleading the fifth doesnt stop you from being arrested. ;)
You make attempt to pin this on the 4th and then the 5th when indeed it is inbetween.
I notice you still offer no alternative, why is that?
I would not disagree with your post. But i do not subscribe to the idea that our founding fathers wanted a society where a peace officer could not even ask a person who they are. I do not think a good case can be made that did. I also do not think a case can be made that they would find simply asking for your ID ,and detaining you until such time it can be determined, would qualify as unreasonable.
OK you wnt HITLER....so tell me what was the PURPOSE of hitlers requirement and what was to be done with the information.
Next what is the purpose of us doing it now and what will be done with the information?
your comparison belongs at moveon.org. As the premise is blatantly flawed.
Oh man, are you ever naive. They were founded to protect communists. Now they use cases like this to pay their light bills.
"The makers of the Constitution conferred the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by all civilized men—the right to be let alone."
-JUSTICE LOUIS D. BRANDEIS
According to Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, one of the "repeated injuries and usurpations" committed against the American people by the King of England was the erecting of "a multitude of New Offices, and . . . swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance."
The purpose of Hitler's requirement was to identify and apprehend threats to his authoritarian power.
I have no doubt that the officials who are pursuing these policies are doing so for the most noble and beneficient of reasons. But as Washington said, government is like fire - it is a dangerous servant and a terrible master. That's why they set up the Constitution in the way that they did, so that usurpations such as these would be challenged.
I offer no alternative because it's not my job to come up with ways to apprehend terrorists and criminals that do not shred the Constitution. They're the ones who swore an oath to support and defend it.
""but why these ass clowns (ACLU)get involved EVERY single time is beyond me.""
It's just like jesse and al.. They make a living off of doing this and get paid by taxpayer money to do it. Comes from your pocket. Imagine waking up everyday and your job is to find people to sue because it is what you do for a living....
Here, do something about it:
www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/ACLU
I am not an expert, but I am inclined to go with the bus rider here. Check ID getting off the bus in the center, maybe, but just passing through? No.
The event took place on Sept. 26. When does the article come out? Today, the day the President visits Denver. A large article, complete with large photo of the poor woman. The Denver Post is a lib rag. Just another attention mongering lib, wake up.
Connect the dots.
You're new here, aren't you?
The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News are the same paper, by the way.
Karen Abbott is a lib loon, google her, and check her articles.
This is a set-up.
The Fed center leases unused office space to private companies to save taxpayer money, that's why the bus goes in there.
The Feds are selling off 224 acres of the 645 acre site. when that sale is complete, separate entrances and gates will do away with this problem.
ACLU will be along soon to take this case. Great.
Meanwhile, we catch and release Mexicans and anyone else that wants to trapse across our southern border.
And? Is she wrong? Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and even the ACLU does something right now and then despite their best efforts.
Is this a setup like the Texas sodomy case? I wonder if the cops were provoked.
If I had to vote, I'd vote on the side of privacy. Yet, if asked to show my ID to the cops, I'd have no problem with that, unless maybe they were acting belligerantly.
Yes, she's wrong. I go there all the time. I am happy to show my ID, and reassure the security personnel who are protecting me, the facility, and everyone who goes there. The ID is not the issue. Security personnel are trained to notice nervousness in people when they are asked for ID. IDs can be faked, asking for the ID is a trigger for a nervous person. She should have the courtesy to show the ID and get on with her life.
People must accept responsibility for the consequences of their choices and/or actions.
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