In the past
week, New York City Police have begun searching the bags of straphangers
entering the subways at key points throughout the system. Outcry has
issued from certain predictable corners – specifically, the civil
libertarians and the Daily News, two groups that don’t agree on a single
issue, but can both be relied on to object to just about everything. In
most instances, we are inclined to sympathize with civil liberitarians.
In this rare situation, it is the Daily News whose security-based
concerns are much more astute. The subway searches are very visible and
yet totally ineffective measures meant to calm a jittery public. They
do nothing to confront the true security issues that abound in the
subways. Like so much else going on these days, the searches are simply
a distraction meant to fool us into thinking that something is being
done.
In the hours
after the July 21st bombing attempts in London, when it was
first announced that police would begin random bag searches on the New
York City subway system, the immediate response of left-leaning New
Yorkers was to focus on the impact the decision would have our civil
liberties. Within hours, the NYCLU had released a
statement decrying the searches, quoting Executive Director Donna
Lieberman, who said that “We are entitled to move freely around the
city…The Fourth Amendment prohibits police from conducting searches
where there is no suspicion of criminal activity.” Other concerned
civil libertarians pointed out that, while subway riders had been
subjected to random searches before, such as during the DNC this past
year in Boston, never before had there been such an open ended invasion
of subway rider’s privacy, without any foreseeable terminus. While the
local news outlets showed New Yorkers in man-on-the-street interviews
that the searches made them feel safer, others worried about the
precedents that were being set.
These initial
concerns, while understandable, were a bit misdirected. While the
searches may be invasive, they are not compulsory, and all riders have
the right to refuse to be searched if they agree not to enter the
subway. While annoying, the searches are probably not the proverbial
first horseman of a Fourth Amendment apocalypse.
The real danger
lies in the false sense of security being deliberately fostered by the
NYPD and the MTA, while the real security issues continue to be
ignored. In the New York Subway system, these issues are in plain
view. Take, for instance, the new full body turnstile gates that the
MTA is using, in conjunction with automatic MetroCard vending machines,
to cut costs by replacing token booths and tellers around the city. The
gates, known as high entrance/exit turnstiles, or HEETs,
fully enclose the passenger who passes through them, and make
turnstile jumping impossible. At the same time, the HEETs make egress
from the system a much slower process. In the days after the London
attacks, New York City Councilmember Peter Vallone, Jr. wrote a letter
to the MTA, saying that the HEETs prejudiced rider safety, pointing out
that “If a terrorist attack, or other disaster, occurs on our subways,
our...riders will have a difficult enough time managing their way
through smoke- or gas-filled tunnels without being trapped behind gates
like lower-class citizens on the Titanic.” There are currently 529
HEETs in the subway system.
The problems
don’t stop at the subway entrances. Recent articles have pointed out a
small sampling: the woeful lack of protection received by the subway
system’s
underwater tunnels, the danger posed by the 25% of the city’s subway
cars whose doors locked at both ends.
What is most
frustrating about the entire situation is that, while millions of
dollars are being spent on overtime salary payments to allow the
ineffective searches to be carried out, opportunities to make real
advances in subway security have been wasted time and again by the MTA.
In one
instance that has gained much attention in recent weeks, MTA
officials spent 18 months in negotiations with the Army trying to work
out plans to bring in Army engineers to install hi-tech systems to
protect high risk areas of the subway system. The plan was allowed to
fall through the cracks when the point men at the MTA on the project
were fired on unrelated corruption charges, and their successor lost
interess.
It’s impossible
not to sense the tension in the subways these days, passing through
Grand Central during rush hour. Eyes dart, people stare. At work,
colleagues talk about how they’re trying not to ride the subway so much
anymore. Something must be done. Mayor Bloomberg and Police
Commissioner Raymond Kelly can be forgiven for latching onto what might
have looked for a moment like a quick fix solution. The time has come,
however, to move past such pointless distractions, and for the relevant
authorities to face the genuine security issues at hand.
Read Aaron's Response to
Josh