SUBWAY SEARCHES:                                                  (Some) New Yorkers Resist Big Brother
By Bill Weinberg

The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) is suing the city on behalf of a group of subway riders to keep police from searching the bags of passengers entering the transit system. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan last August, claims the policy violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and prohibitions against unlawful searches and seizures — while doing almost nothing to protect the city from terrorism. "While concerns about terrorism of course justify — indeed, require — aggressive police tactics, those concerns cannot justify the Police Department's unprecedented policy of subjecting millions of innocent people to suspicionless searches," the suit states.
    Among the five plaintiffs is Brendan MacWade, 32, of Brooklyn, who escaped the Twin Towers after they were struck on Sept. 11, 2001. "I want to catch terrorists as much as any politicians or officials, but this policy does not work," he told the press.
    Another plaintiff, Joseph Gehring Jr., who identifies himself as a lifelong Republican, said he was disappointed to find subway riders accepting the police searches. "Here we were giving up our rights to what was obviously a publicity stunt," he said. "We are becoming accustomed to having our civil liberties taken away."
    Gail Donoghue, a city lawyer, said that the city's policy of random subway searches, instituted after July's deadly bombings on the London Underground, "meets all appropriate legal requirements and preserves the important balance between protecting our city and preserving individual rights... We are confident our position will prevail in court."
    The city is named as a defendant, along with the NYPD and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
The suit was filed as elected officials tussled over racial profiling on the subways. Nine City Council members have asked Mayor Bloomberg to direct officers to note the racial or ethnic identity of people searched. The call came after a city councilman and a state assemblyman suggested that young Arabs should be targeted for searches. "The mayor has repeatedly stated since the start of this policy that there would be zero tolerance for racial profiling," said a spokesman for Bloomberg. At an August press conference opposing the profiling were City Councilman John Liu of Queens and Sikh Coalition legal director Amardeep Singh.
    The two officials who led the call for targeting Arabs for subway searches were James Oddo of Staten Island, leader of the small Republican minority on the City Council, and Assemblyman Dov Hikind of Brooklyn, a conservative Democrat, who said: "They all look a certain way. It's all very nice to be politically correct here, but we're talking about terrorism."
    Ironically, the law-and-order hardliner Hikind traveled to Israel that same month to join infiltrators who snuck through army roadblocks into the Gaza Strip to resist Israel's disengagement from the occupied Palestinian territory. His action was in violation of Israeli law, and in defense of an occupation that violated international law. On August 14, when Hikind was in Gaza, a group of Orthodox Jews led by Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss held a press conference on the steps of City Hall to protest Hikind's call for racial profiling.
    On December 2, 2005, the first ruling in the NYCLU case came down. "The risk of a terrorist bombing of New York City's subway system is real and substantial," U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman said in a 41-page decision tossing out the lawsuit.
    Citing testimony that up to 50 percent of terrorist acts were directed at transportation systems, Judge Berman said the need to implement counterterrorism measures was "indisputable, pressing, on-going and evolving." Berman called the searches effective.
    "Common sense prevails," Commissioner Kelly said after the ruling. NYCLU Legal Director Christopher Dunn said: "We remain confident that this program is unconstitutional and we intend to appeal immediately."
    Meanwhile, increased electronic surveillance on the subways is also pushing ahead, with little media coverage. Following the July 2005 London subway bombings, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority awarded a $212 million deal to top military contractor Lockheed Martin for a new electronic security system that will add over 1,000 cameras and 3,000 sensors to stations, trains and buses throughout the metropolitan area.