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.
it's obvious that YOU don't get it.
You answer you own question. What about checking and ID will stop the terrorist from detonating the bomb?
The claim that security is so important that they need to pester people with ID checks, but also so trivial that they can allow public buses to run through the grounds, is absurd sophistry.
There's no evidence that that particular threat existed the day she was checked. There's no evidence that checking an ID would stop that scenario. Palestinian bus bombers in Israel all carry ID. All other buses are equally at threat of bus bombers as well, so why don't you advocate checking ALL bus riders' ID ALL the time if that scenario is something you seriously worry about and you believe that checking ID would prevent it?
"So if someone comes on the bus without ID, do they stop the bus and make him get off"
What are the specifics of the threat? If they are looking for a 5'5" asian man wearing a black tenchcoat, and this happens to be the person they find on the bus who does not have an ID, then my answer would be yes, absolutely.
Many federal offices are in buildings that are on public streets rather than on campuses. Do you feel that all traffic passing by the buildings should be checked for IDs because any of them could potentially be a "threat"?
I appreciate your resolve, but turning the nation into a police state is not the way to go.
I was thinking the same thing!!!!!!!!!!!!
Gee, because I didn't have my ID checked passing on the street in front of the WTC on 9/11, those planes were able to hit it. If only they would have stopped me.
That's ridiculous. The WTC's were brought down by planes.
Bingo.
well, let's see. I don;t know. Maybe catching him before he does it? I haven't answered my own question. Neither have you.
"There's no evidence that that particular threat existed the day she was checked"
I never said there was, and it is possible there was and we don't know about it. There is no evidence of a lot of things. Abscence of evidence is not evidence of abscence.
How does checking an ID stop him? It doesn't. And since the presented ID's are not being recorded and used to check against watch lists, for instance, the ID check is useless.
He is still going to detonate and kill people.
And all the hijackers presumably had to show ID to board the planes.
In that case, the security checkpoint where people have to show ID is reached after the passengers disembark.
The level of bus traffic through the station is another issue -- every time security is enhanced above normal levels (e.g. last Inauguration Day), it creates a cascading bus backup (AFAIK, the bus passengers aren't checked, but vehicles are rerouted somewhat within the outer Pentagon complex). The only real solution is to reroute some of the buses to other Metrorail stops, but Metro is too hidebound (and too desirous of charging outer-NoVA commuters $3.00 for ferrying them on an "express" route to the Pentagon instead of getting only $1.35 to drop them off at the nearby stations at the southern end of the Metrorail system).
Do you think that terrorists carry IDs that say "I'm a member of Al Qaeda - I am carrying a bomb but if you arrest me within 20 seconds I will not detonate it."
A cursory look at an ID isn't going to protect anything terrorist related.
I walk by dozens of Federal buildings every day. No one asks for an ID. Buses, cabs, cars, drive by these buildings constantly. No is stopped to asked for an id. The commuter bus drives up Capitol Hill, pass the Capitol and the Library of Congress. They have only stopped the buses during certain threatcon conditions, checking the under carriage and the baggage holder, but never stepped onboard to ask for id. This is bull! They only stopped the case so the Supremes will not overturn it. They know they would lose.
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security"
--Benjamin Franlin
From you arguments, it's obvious on which side you fall.
Which means you still don't get it.
It's similar to protecting our southern border. Of course each and every single building cannot be protected, so decisions are made on how to place different layers of security at different places. At one facility, a routine ID check might be sufficient. At another, more intrusive security might be necessary. We don't go through metal detectors to get on a greyhound bus, for example, because the threat is not as great and the cost outweighs the benefits. What is frustrating here, again, as in the prior post on granny, is that there seem to be a lot of people who want to do abolutely nothing. I am the last person here who wants anything resembling a police state, but I am for reasonable precautions in a time of war...
Exactly correct. This is why I support every rider of the bus to refuse to show IDs.
No; only if they actually enter the Pentagon.
In the interests of security, Metro should reroute most of the buses so that people who are simply trying to get into the Metrorail system would do so at some other point, and only people actually traveling to the Pentagon would have any reason to take a bus that goes there. Given the crowd levels on the platform, I can't for the life of me see how the Pentagon police can spot trouble in time to forestall it without constantly disrupting the day's commute.
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