Posted on 12/08/2005 8:55:00 AM PST by JTN
Federal prosecutors have dropped charges against Deborah Davis, the 53-year-old Arvada woman who refused to show her identification to federal police officers on an RTD bus traveling through the Federal Center in Lakewood.
Davis' supporters, at first jubilant to learn Wednesday morning that she will not be prosecuted, were dismayed to learn hours later that officers of the Federal Protective Service still will ask passengers on the public bus to show their identification. The policy applies to all passengers, including those, as in Davis' case, who are traveling through the Federal Center and not getting off the bus there.
Federal officials said the Davis case was closed because of a technicality involving a problem with a sign at the Federal Center at the time Davis was ticketed. The sign was supposed to inform people that their IDs would be checked.
"The policy hasn't changed," said Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, of which the Federal Protective Service is a part. "There are no plans to change our procedures."
Davis' lawyers said the battle is likely to continue.
"We're very pleased that they dropped charges against Ms. Davis," said Davis' volunteer lawyer, Gail Johnson, of the Denver law firm Haddon, Morgan, Mueller, Jordan, Mackey & Foreman. "But sign or no sign, she and other Colorado citizens continue to have the constitutional right to travel by public bus without being forced to show identification to federal agents."
"I think if the government is going to insist on continuing to violate the constitutional rights of our citizens, then they're going to find themselves back in court on this one," Johnson said. "We're not interested in the Deborah Davis exception."
Johnson said lawyers from outside Colorado had volunteered to help represent Davis following nationwide publicity about the controversy, and that other bus passengers who refuse to show identification likely could find legal representation as well.
"There are plenty of lawyers in Denver who would be happy to help people," she said.
Davis had been scheduled to appear for arraignment before a U.S. magistrate judge in Denver on Friday. She could not be reached Wednesday for comment.
Bill Scannell, a spokesman for Davis and an activist who has helped publicize other challenges to government identification requests, said a rally outside the courthouse, at 19th and Champa streets, will occur at 8:30 a.m. Friday as planned.
He said Davis will speak during the rally and she and her supporters will ride through the Federal Center on the Regional Transportation District's Bus 100 - the one from which Davis was removed for not showing her ID.
Scannell called it "a victory ride," even after he learned that the policy has not changed.
"My anticipation is that the victory riders will be fully exercising their constitutional rights to travel freely in their own country on a public bus," he said.
Asked if some or all of the riders might refuse to show their IDs to Federal Center police, he said, "I think that's a fair assumption."
Zuieback, the spokeswoman for ICE in Washington, D.C., declined to discuss how federal officers would respond to any such refusals.
"We never speculate about what our response is going to be to a specific situation," she said.
She said the dispute isn't about the bus or its passengers, but about the security of a federal facility.
"It's not a city bus on a city road," Zuieback said. "It is entering a federal facility."
Two RTD buses, the 3 and the 100, pass through the Federal Center several times a day. Thousands of people work at the Federal Center, and thousands more visit some of its agencies, including a popular map sales office and a heavily used depository for genealogical information.
In addition, the road through the Federal Center leads from South Kipling Street on the east side of the facility to the Cold Spring park-n-ride at the Federal Center's northwest corner, a major connecting point for buses bound elsewhere.
RTD officials have said some passengers have complained in the past about the federal police ID checks, which began after the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City. The bus routes through the Federal Center had existed for many years before that.
"It's clearly not an ideal situation for RTD or our passengers, but it is controlled wholly by the federal police at that site," RTD spokesman Scott Reed said Wednesday.
"We hope there will be some resolution of this, and we are doing the best we can to comply with their regulations while providing a long- standing service to our passengers," he said.
Davis, who routinely rode RTD's 100 bus through the Federal Center to get to her job at a small business in Lakewood, said she first showed her ID to federal police who boarded the bus and asked to see all passengers' identification, but it bothered her.
She then spent several days telling the officers she didn't have her ID with her and wasn't getting off the bus in the Federal Center anyway. Officers eventually told her she had to bring her ID or she couldn't ride the bus.
Finally, Davis refused on Sept. 26 to show her ID and was removed from the bus, handcuffed, placed in the back of a patrol car and taken to a police station in the Federal Center. She was later released after officers issued her petty offense tickets.
Zuieback said the ID checks are only one part of "many layers of security." She would not discuss the other parts.
"Looking at that ID, having that initial contact with an individual, does allow us to know that that person is who they say they are," she said.
Asked how officers know a person's ID is genuine, she said, "We have trained professionals doing that work."
Who are you?
• The Federal Protective Service says its policy of checking IDs of bus riders at the Denver Federal Center has not changed. Here are the RTD bus routes that enter the center on at least some runs (some routes vary with time of day):
3 Alameda Crosstown 5x Cold Springs Express 14 West Florida 100 Kipling Crosstown G Golden/Boulder
All pass through the Cold Springs Park-n-Ride at Fourth Avenue and Union Boulevard on the northeast corner of the Federal Center.
Key word: Unreasonable.
All searches are reasonable by virtue that it is a federal agent doing the searching. If it were unreasonable he wouldn't be searching would he? /sarcasm
This thought process is similar to many countries legal systems. In those if you are brought before a judge, you are already guilty simply because the police arrested you, since the police never arrest innocent people.
How else do you finally bring public attention to a procedure? You challenge it. Maybe you wouldn't have chosen the way she did this, but, I don't think it makes it wrong.
"The officers enforcing the procedure don't have the authority to change it. They have to do their jobs."
Yeap, that argument holds a lot of water... not.
A shoe size check would accomplish the same thing. Why not require that instead? In fact, it would be better, since everyone has a shoe size, but not everyone has an ID. You could even stop a Richard Reid-type shoe bomber.
Careful answering as to why you think that checking shoe sizes would be a stupid thing to check, as I will simply cut-and-paste it back as to why I think an ID check is equally stupid after I search-and-replace "shoe size" with "ID".
Your Government is lying to you
In Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, the Supreme Court is poised to address the question of whether an individual has the right to refuse to identify himself to a law enforcement officer before arrest. This case implicates a plethora of privacy issues such as Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable government search and seizure, the right to anonymity, and law enforcement accumulation and use of personal information.
Procedural History
This case arises from the arrest of Larry Dudley Hiibel for refusing to identify himself to a law enforcement officer prior to arrest.
A Humboldt Country sheriff's deputy responded to a concerned bystander's phone call reporting that a man had struck a female passenger inside a truck. The officer arrived on the scene and was directed by the citizen to Hiibel standing next to a parked truck with his daughter inside. The officer observed skid marks which led him to believe that the truck had been pulled over "in a sudden and aggressive manner." After speaking to Hiibel and observing his behavior, the officer became suspicious that Hiibel might have been driving while intoxicated. Hiibel refused eleven times to provide identification and was subsequently arrested under Nevada Revised Statute § 171.123(3), which allows an officer to detain a person to ascertain his identity when there are circumstances reasonably indicating that person has committed a crime.
Hiibel was charged with and convicted of resisting a public officer in violation of state law, and he appealed the conviction. The Nevada District Court determined it was reasonable and necessary for the officer to ask for Hiibel's identification, and asserted that the public interest in requiring Hiibel to identify himself outweighed his right to remain silent. Hiibel filed a petition asking the Supreme Court of Nevada review the case, challenging the constitutionality of Nev. Rev. Stat. § 171.123(3).
The Nevada Supreme Court denied the petition, determining that the statute is consistent with the rights against unreasonable search and seizure protected by the Fourth Amendment because it "strikes a balance between constitutional protections of privacy and the need to protect police officers and the public."
"Careful answering as to why you think that checking shoe sizes would be a stupid thing to check, as I will simply cut-and-paste it back as to why I think an ID check is equally stupid after I search-and-replace "shoe size" with "ID"."
You have your dogma from which you will not depart. You are more interested in 'winning' an argument rather than debating points of view. Far be it from me to make you uncomfortable with something you don't want. Your telling me, in essence, no matter what I write you will counter it by cutting and pasting. What point is there in responding to you then? Sounds like a liberal spin tactic.....Sounds like 'Bush Lied' or something. A mantra repeated over and over and over in your head which drowns out all else.
thanks for educating me on that, boy. I will now live my life differently because of your valuable and unique insight.
No. Security isn't the point. The appearance of security is.
There are some on the other side who were.
The appearance is nothing. Any terrorist checking out the route will find that it is just that.
What crime did this Federale suspect Deborah Davis of having committed?
I don't know, do you? The statute quoted does not apply to this case or necessarily to other cases. There are other circumstances that can be considered reasonable. If you are an office and instructed to go on a particular bus because there has been info received that has been determined to be credible and to stop, ID, and interrogate an individual specifically named, is this reasonable? Or would you like to make the determination for all of us that we (authorities)never under any circumstances ever question anyone or ask anyone anywhere for ID? That is an absurd point of view.
Did you ever cash a check and had to show ID? Open a bank account, take out a loan? Were you ever carded when purchasing alcohol? Ever had to show ID to get into a nightclub? I assume in all these and many more situations you refused on your stubborn principle that to ever show ID to anyone is against your religion.
Well, also I think lying to a Federal officer is a crime. According to the citation, refusing to show her ID at that particular location is a crime (?), subequently thrown out due to the odd 'lack of signage' thing. They did arrest her, didn't they? She did or said or was suspected of something then, it would follow.
What , was it your granny or something, is that why you are so in a twist?? Contribute to her website then.
The officer in question had reasonable suspicion that Hiibel had committed a crime (that's why he was called out) and the case was decided based on that presumption. Riding a public bus is not a crime.
Shoes, eh??
Maybe this will interest you:
Federal law enforcement sources tell ABC News they had been on the alert for a possible shoe bomber when a federal air marshal opened fire at the Miami International Airport today.
In today's incident, an agitated passenger claimed to have a bomb in his backpack was shot and killed by a federal air marshal, officials said. No bomb was found.
Officials say a 50-year old Egyptian man was stopped six days ago at New York's John F. Kennedy airport. Sources say he had a suspicious pair of shoes that tested positive five times for the explosive substance TATP on the interior of his shoes between the heel and sole.
Federal officials say the man's shoes are remarkably similar to those used by shoe bomber Richard Reid, who attempted to blow up an American Airlines jet over the Atlantic four years ago.
The Egyptian man's destination was Des Moines, Iowa, sources say, and he claimed he was a student at Iowa State University, in Ames.
Strangely, after holding him overnight, airport security in New York released him. The FBI was notified after he was released. Now the FBI has put out a nationwide alert.
So yes, shoes, ID's, check everything, as long as it is reasonable...
Yes, I'm claiming that an ID check is no more reasonable than a shoe-size check. If you can effectively rationalize a shoe-size check, then I will admit that you won the ID check argument because crafting a plausible argument is how you debate and win someone to your point of view. But you can't craft such an argument because checking someone's shoe size as a security measure is stupid. If you think a shoe-size check is stupid, then all you are doing is agreeing with me that an ID check in the circumstances of this case is equally stupid. The reasons for both are the same. The reason I can counter it by cutting and pasting is that both demands are equally ineffective (or equally effective if you think that way) in providing security for this situation. The arguments for and against are the same (though curiously the argument for a shoe-size check is better based on the Richard Reid incident).
What I want you to do is to think about how they are different and how checking ID actually enhances security. So far it appears to me that they are the same. The arguments given so far (checking for nervousness for example) don't seem to hold up to scrutiny.
That's reasonable. It's not reasonable to set up a roadblock and check everyone who passes on a public road in the absence of a credible threat.
see 195. Shoe check. I think it has been effectively rationalized. Go ahead.....
But not this one. You need a unanimous 12 to zero jury vote to convict and determine what is "reasonable" and in this case I wouldn't vote that way and I'm pretty sure that you couldn't find a 12-0 jury anywhere.
Well, I agree about the roadblocks, but they have been upheld many times, drug and alcohol stops. Not sure if I'm on board with it. Once about a year ago I was driving to my home, there were a couple of patrol cars, I was waved over and asked to show ID which I did. Officer took one look and I moved along. It was obvious they were looking for someone who was about to pass through there. I consider that absolutely reasonable. This is why I have said here many times about the credible threat on mass transportation scenario. I think that is reasonable. No question you can't just be stopped for no reason, well you can, but you can say nothing and continue walking. Now, in Russia you can be stopped for no reason anywhere anytime. So I understand the ramifications of this. I do not at all want that. But if the 5 seconds it takes me to produce ID is all that is needed to help, then I will...
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