NEW YORK — Abraham Lincoln noted that “the dogmas of the quiet
past are inadequate for the stormy present.” With terrorists
blowing up trains, buses and the tallest building in the United
States, you don’t need Abraham Lincoln to tell you that things
cannot remain “business as usual.” You don’t need Abraham Lincoln
to tell you that lawyers would better serve humanity if they
continued to chase their secretaries around their desks rather than
meddle in the affairs of the real world, attempting to apply
antiquated notions of what is legal and proper to today’s chaotic
and dangerous world.
New York City’s Police Commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, has
sensibly started having police inspect parcels and the backpacks of
New York subway riders. His is no idle concern since trains in
Moscow, Madrid, and London have already been blown up by
terrorists. We have learned that subway and tunnel bombs are
particularly heinous because they create a constricted area wherein
the explosions do their deadly damage.
Predictably, the lawyers have come to the aid of the would-be
terrorists. As we speak, outraged lawyers are sharpening their
pencils and have come out of the woodwork, setting themselves up to
challenge the Police Department’s actions.
Donna Liebermann, the executive director of the New York City
Civil Liberties Union, has already begun work on a federal lawsuit
to inhibit the police. Like the sea gulls that pounce on garbage
from the tugboats in New York harbor, there will certainly be many
other lawyers assaulting rationality with lawsuits seeking the same
relief.
Surely common sense has fled the field of battle. If these
package searches are able to save only one person’s life, they will
all be worthwhile. Terrorists feed on lack of defensive
preparedness and the absence of police. If a terrorist had to
choose between a soft target that was unguarded, and one with a
heavy police presence and, additionally, subjecting the potential
terrorist to search, he or she would certainly choose the
unprotected target. Terrorists may be crazy, demonic, and filled
with hate, but they are not stupid.
The possibility that a search may reveal drugs or illegal
weapons is a plus — not a minus. People shouldn’t be walking
around our city in possession of illegal guns, drugs, etc.,
bringing them from one part of town to another. Being aware of the
risks to their delivery system by entering highly guarded venues,
they probably would have the common sense not to ride the subway —
which would create a safer environment not only for the riders but,
perhaps, for New Yorkers in general. This, of course, leads to
another conclusion.
There is no law, body of law, or constitutional authority that
gives anyone the right to ride the subway. There is no body of law
or constitutional authority mandating that a municipality is
required to provide a subway system. It is offered to the public,
and if members of the public feel that availing itself of such
transportation is not in their interest, particularly since they
might be searched, they are perfectly free to walk — preferably
away from the City.
Superimposed upon all of this is the nonsense about racial
profiling. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to know that the
bombers in the past have not been blond-haired, blue-eyed
Scandinavian transsexuals wearing snowshoes. Virtually all of the
bombings have been perpetrated by certain groups of people coming
from one particular part of the world. It would make no sense to
deny our police the right to husband their resources and direct it
toward those most likely perpetrators rather than have to waste
their time — and risk our safety — searching little old ladies.
We have the best police force in the world. Many of the police
officers are members of minorities themselves, and, as a matter of
fact, in the last graduation of police officers, the minority was
the majority of the new recruits. The police know the profiles of
potential bombers and they should be allowed to do their job. This
is not a case of profiling people because of their ethnicity, or
harassing them, or denigrating them simply because of their race or
ethnicity. This is simply a sensible protective action that
logically can be most effective when directed towards the certain
known groups of people most likely to commit the crime.
All of this is not to suggest that there will come a time,
hopefully sooner rather than later, that none of this will be
necessary, but in the interim, let us err — if err it is — on the
side of saving lives.
