http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld ... ld-big-pix

Police to begin checking bags on subways

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

July 21, 2005, 2:48 PM EDT

Police will begin conducting random searches of packages and backpacks carried by people entering city subways, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Thursday after a new series of bomb attacks in London.

Authorities said the system for the checks is still being developed, but the plan is for passengers carrying bags to be selected at random before they have passed through turnstiles.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly promised that officers would not engage in racial profiling, and that passengers will be free to "turn around and leave" rather than consent to a search.

Officials wouldn't immediately say how frequently the checks would occur. The checks are scheduled to be in place by rush hour on Friday morning.

"We just live in a world where, sadly, these kinds of security measures are necessary," Bloomberg said. "Are they intrusive? Yes, a little bit. But we are trying to find that right balance." Authorities said there is also a possibility that checks will be conducted of some bus and train passengers.

Searching the bags of more than a token number of straphangers may be impossible.

New York's subways carry about 4.5 million passengers on the average weekday, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

There are 468 subway stations in the system, most of which have multiple entrances, and during rush hours, the flood of humanity in and out of key stations can be overwhelming.

Asked whether the searches might create a bottleneck at subway entrances, Kelly suggested the searches would be of a small enough sampling of passengers that only individuals, rather than whole crowds, would be delayed.

"We are going to do it in a reasonable common sense way," he said.

Similar types of random searches of subway passengers have prompted complaints from civil liberties groups in other cities, and in some cases have been challenged in court.

Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the searches in New York could be problematic, if not conducted properly.

"The department can and should be actively and aggressively investigating anyone they suspect of bringing explosives into the subway, but police searches of people without any individualized suspicion is contrary to our most basic constitutional values," he said.

It was not immediately clear what would happen if an officer looking for explosives found some other form of contraband. Passengers who are approached for a random search and refuse will be barred from entering the station, Kelly said.

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Well, at least you are still FREE to NOT ride the subways and walk 100 blocks to work!

I hope they do the same for buses too!

And Ben Harper concerts. Oh yeah that took an extra 4.3 seconds out of my life Tuesday night.

I don't buy the whole "you can turn around" business. Shouldn't you be more concerned about the guy that doesn't want to be searched?

Don't forget to take off your Doc Marten's before entering the airport passenger area, or you will be the one randomly brought over to the side to be searched before being able to get onto the plain.....and if they are steel toed, have them off before going threw the first detectors....

If you have a laptop and you carry it in something that is not a standard issue computer bag, you might actually get through even extra, without opening it though. Wassup with that....

c-

Yeah, that part struck me as being strange as well. What's to stop him from hopping on a bus, or doing something as simple as walking into the middle of a (very crowded) Times Square?

I wouldn't feel like my rights are being violated. You never know what someone might be carrying around in their bag. You might not be able to tell by looking, but any given person could be a really sick fuck.

Well you don't have to go to a Ben Harper concert if you don't want to.

this is such bullshit.Ok I'm rushing to go to work and cops with guns stop me checking my bags and looking at my personal shit (condoms,my cd's,my magazines,my journal,etc).Invasion of privacy.Its easy for people who dont ride the subway to be for it.But why would anyone want some strangers with guns looking at their shit like he/she is a common criminal?

and do you actually think Arabs are not gonna be stopped first?Or black teenagers?

So, it's essentially time for everyone to fill their bags with feminine hygiene products, contraceptives, and very large and colorful assorted sex paraphernalia items then, right?

How do you propose New York deals with the very real possibility of an attack on NYC's mass transit systems?

its not going to happen.Do you think terrorists are so stupid as to attack
something so obvious to most people?They didnt crash the planes in London like NYC.

And if you don't want to be searched you don't have to take a bag on a train, bus, or plane.

Yesterday I took the bus to work and guess what? They have a camera on the bus. Ohhhhhh.

Honestly I think alot of the people who are against this, just don't want the cops to find their pot.

I'm not sure if you have been on a plane lately, but they have these doors on the cockpits now and the pilots are allowed to carry guns. So getting into the cockpit to fly a plane is much more difficult post 9/11.

Exactly.


And if you have nothing to hide, then you wouldn't be too worried about it, other than it taking some extra time.

Obvious or not, what's stopping them right now? Sure, when I walk into Penn Station I see the occasional bomb-sniffing dog (which, in my experience, seem to be there infrequently) and, of course, a few cops & men in military attire, but I really see very little preventing someone from igniting some kind of explosive in NYC.

I really hope you're smart enough to be able to see the difference between choosing to go to a concert and "choosing" to take public transportation to work, especially in a city like New York where you really have no choice. Especially if you're actually planning to run for public office someday.


How about you don't give in to fear? Every New Yorker has lived with the very real possibilty of this for the past four years, and I don't know a single regular subway rider who wants to be searched or even significantly slowed down in their commute so that the police can NOT FIND TERRORISTS. Zutballs is right. The only people who are going to be deterred are people with pot in their bags. A suicide bomber will take his chances that he won't be among the .01% of people who get randomly searched. It's an invasion of privacy AND it won't work.


That's not a good argument. Subways and buses are soft targets, easy to hit. That's why the terrorists in London and Madrid hit them. 9/11 and the airplanes was a one-time gig, made for shock value. They knew when they planned it that they'd never be able to pull it off again.

It's a very real threat that the subways will be hit. But it's not something that is going to be stopped by random searches. If the police want to concentrate on suspicious looking people, I'm all for that. Call it racial profiling or whatever, fuck it, at least it has a chance of making a difference. This is just stupid. And you know that the cops are going to go out of their way at the beginning to NOT make it look like they're targetting Arabs and blacks. The first time a millionaire business man gets stopped and has his briefcase searched, this shit is going to hit the mayor's fan.

The "nothing to hide" argument is the best argument that fascism ever had going for it. I have no respect for that rationale whatsoever.

You've obviously never riden the NYC subway at rush hour. There's often not even enough room to pull someone aside in the driving mass of humanity. You have no concept of the kind of "delay" this sort of thing will cause. And all for nothing.

You know, it's rather easy to sit there and tell people not to "give in to fear" while actually doing it is not so simple. Maybe it's just anxiety, but I know that every time I'm on a subway/train in New York I get kind of nervous, especially in the wake of the London bombings.

I'm curious -- if you consider this to be an invasion of privacy, how do you feel about baggage scans in the airports?

you spelled the title wrong, its Peeps, not ME


and everyone already covered the bases that i would have

boo hoo...i have been searched to make sure im not carrying any bombs that could kill a few people, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

id much rather pay with a minor inconvienence such as this, then for a cop to show up at my parents door explaining they have bad news