President Bush had a great quote Friday, where he said something like, “We’re not going to let anybody frighten us from our great love of freedom.”
Instead people in New York (and soon every other metropolis in the country) have just given away their freedom to take public transportation without police approval. Yippee!
Now let’s talk about the NYPD and their terrific record of respecting the civilians they’re empowered to protect. According to the Times several cops spontaneously decided to get the names and addresses of everyone getting on the subway. Yeah, they were ‘corrected’ later in the day, but that’s still an abuse of power. If you want someone to know exactly where you are at all times, go buy a car with OnStar and an EZ Pass.
Can I make another point about how useless random searches are? Let’s run through some numbers (off the top of my head, but pretty accurate).
There are 30,000 police officers in New York’s 5 boroughs. Lets’ say 1/4 of them are on the job at any given time-- that’s 7500 cops, including beat, traffic, desk duty and detectives.
There are 468 subway stations in New York. Most stations have at least two turnstile entrances, with some having more than half a dozen or stairways leading to those turnstiles.
If we assume there are 2 entrances with just 3 cops apiece, that’s 2800 cops on bag-searching duty. 1/3 of the police force pulled from their normal duties so they can conduct random searches on people entering the train, and there’s no way cops can stop everyone and pat them down. But that’s not what the police are doing. Instead they’re blanketing one subway station with a dozen cops or so-- and ignoring nearby stations. C’mon folks, this is New York, the walking city! Nothing stops a would-be bomber, or even me the guy who refuses to open my bag, from walking six blocks to another train station without any cops.
A whole lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Can I point out more gaping security holes? How about the platform-side kiosks at loads of stations. Does anyone expect police to stop and search all the boxes those vendors are lugging down to their tiny store? How simple would it be to rig a stack of newspapers with the old ‘hollow book’ trick and load the contents with 20 pounds of plastique?
Another hole is the subway exits. Many stations have half a dozen or more exits that are often chained shut with a lock less substantial than what’s on my bike. Anyone equipped with a bolt-cutter could go through them without breaking stride, thereby evading a search. And given this city, all they’d have to do to avoid notice is wear a hard hat and an orange reflective vest.
Eve would like me to come up with something better than feel-good searches in order to ensure her safety. Well, the obvious thing is to use detective work to track down would-be assassins while they’re still in the planning stages. This is, of course, harder investigative work, since you can’t rely on police having a bomber walk into their handy checkpoints. Instead, cops will have to go out and find terrorist groups and infiltrate them. But police in New York have managed to arrest a gang of goofballs who wanted to buy a missile to shoot down Gov. Pataki.
Suiced bombers are just the laziest way to set off an explosion, and something never used by the bright terrorists belonging to ETA or the IRA. If Al Qaeda or some latter-day Timothy McVeigh gets some intelligent members, slipping into the wide-open train yards and planting a bomb on a train overnight will be very simple-- and wouldn’t be stopped by turnstile bag-checking cops.
Oh, and there’s always the old standby. See a cop blocking the entrance to the number 6 train? How about throwing a grenade or three down the steps, then walking through the havoc as your train pulls up and setting off your satchel charge without any police getting in your way.