Arab on the A Train
The NYPD has started searching subway passengers. We sent our most dogged reporter to get the scoop.
by Gersh Kuntzman gersh.kuntzman at verizon.net
7/28/05
When New York City police began "randomly" searching subway passengers last week in the wake of the London bombings, a question leapt to your humble reporter's mind: Would the cops target people who look Arab, or would they target people for no reason whatsoever? In other words, is the policy racist or unconstitutional? And isn't there some way it can be both?
Other reporters might be content to merely ask these questions politely. Or, more likely, to not ask them - and then open their bags for inspection and offer the mayor a shoe shine - but not this reporter. I was going to put the NYPD to the test. I would spend the day riding the subways dressed as a Saudi sheik. Fortunately, I just happen to be starring in a new play called SUV: The Musical! (Tickets on sale now at www.suvthemusical.com) that features a shady Arab sheik, so I pulled my costar aside and told him, "I'm gonna need your costume and 50 bucks." Ten minutes later I left with the costume. True, not all Saudi sheiks are terrorists. Some only fund them. But I needed to know whether wearing an Arab headdress on the subway would lead to me being ignored, searched, or shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder - or vice versa. If racially profiled, I could always say, "But officer! I'm just on my way to rehearsal for SUV: The Musical! Tickets on sale now at www.suvthemusical.com!"
I was driven to this experiment not simply because I am a Fourth (and, now that you mention it, 21st) Amendment absolutist; I'm also concerned that random searches seem a bit useless. The NYPD is searching at only 50 of the subway system's 469 stations. If they don't have the manpower to search every single person at every single station, there's really no point, given that access to any station gives a would-be terrorist access to the entire system. No doubt some terrorists are dumb, but others have subway maps.
Then there's the fact that, in its futile attempt to skate just this side of constitutionality, the city is promising that no one can be arrested for refusing to open his bag; he'll only be asked to leave the subway station. But this leaves a number of unanswered questions, or, as I like to call them, bombertunities. Could a person who refused a bag check return to the subway system after going upstairs and having a cup of coffee, or is his banishment meant to last all day? Could he reenter the station at an unguarded entrance or walk to the next station on the line and enter there? Could he, you know, go back up to street level and blow up a crowd of pedestrians instead? I had to find out.
My forehead dampening under my authentic-style headdress, I descended into a crowded station. I pulled out my Metrocard. I took two steps toward the turnstile. I took two more steps. Now I was at the turnstile. I swiped my card. I took two steps past the turnstile. I took two more steps. I headed for the stairs. Then things turned bad. Not for me, for readers of this column: nothing happened. Not only was I not asked to open my explosives-free bag, no one was. The potential terrorists all around me were free to roam throughout the system. On one platform I was briefly shadowed by two cops - and then I wasn't anymore. Apparently they decided that even in post 9/11/7/7 New York, an Arab headdress reveals nothing about the wearer except a possible aversion to pork. On the other hand, several passengers did move into neighboring cars after I sat down and rummaged through my bulging backpack. ("But officer! I'm carrying six copies of the script!")
Free to roam, I did just that. And the more sandal leather I wore out, the more troubled I became by the policy's absurdity. For example, a team of five officers showed up at the downtown side of the 86th Street 6 train station - not too surprising as this is the station where our subway-riding mayor himself boards the train to get to work. But it was 3 p.m., and all the traffic was coming out of that station. At least fewer people would be inconvenienced, I guess.
At two other stations police attempted to mitigate the burden of the searches - and perhaps elicit cooperation - by allowing riders who submitted to the search to ride for free. Is this incentive really enough to get a suicide bomber to open his bags? Maybe Al Qaeda's financial network isn't as vast as we'd feared. Equally ridiculous were all those feel-good news stories about how many New Yorkers are so eager to help the police catch terrorists that they have been volunteering to be searched. But how does that help, as a real terrorist would no more open his bag voluntarily than, well, wear an Arab headdress onto the subway? In a last-ditch effort to get searched, I walked directly past one of the police search tables, sweating profusely and groaning under the weight of my script-filled backpack. No one motioned me over.
Determined to get answers to my questions about what passengers are technically permitted to do after they decline to be searched, I doffed my headdress, put on my reporter costume, and called the city Law Department. A spokeswoman there told me that because my questions were about "implementation" rather than "policy," I would need to call the NYPD press office. Even on good days the NYPD press office answers direct questions about as readily as a Supreme Court nominee - and these aren't good days. I got no answers, and as a result New Yorkers are in the position of having to follow new rules without being allowed to know what those rules are. Paging Mr. Kafka! (Or is it Mr. Heller? This reporter ain't got time to read.)
So what have we learned? 1) That NYPD officers aren't knee-jerk racists. 2) That a sweaty man in an Arab headdress and carrying a very heavy backpack has unlimited access to the New York City subway system. 3) That tickets for SUV: The Musical! are on sale now at www.suvthemusical.com.
I feel safer, don't you? _______________________________________________ DEBATE mailing list DEBATE at lists.kabissa.org http://lists.kabissa.org/mailman/listinfo/debate