WWW- The New York Civil Liberties Union today filed suit against the city to keep police from searching the bags of passengers entering the subway, organization lawyers said.
The suit, which filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, will claimed that the two-week old policy violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and prohibitions against unlawful searches and seizures, while doing almost nothing to shield the city from terrorism.
It argues that the measure also allows the possibility for racial profiling, even though officers are ordered to randomly screen passengers.
“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,” states the suit.
[Among five plaintiffs was Brendan MacWade, 32, of Brooklyn, who escaped the World Trade Center towers after they were struck by hijacked planes on Sept. 11, 2001.
“I want to catch terrorists as much as any politicians or officials but this policy does not work,” he said.
Another plaintiff, Joseph Gehring Jr., who identified himself as a lifelong Republican, said he was disappointed to find subway riders accepting the police inspections so docilely.
“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 the city’s random subway searches “meets all appropriate legal requirements and preserves the important balance between protecting our city and preserving individual rights.”
She added, “We believe the NYCLU is shortsighted in failing to recognize this. We are confident our position will prevail in court.”
The city is named as a defendant, along with the police department and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
Thursday, before the suit was released, Kelly said that the searches were “just one more layer, one more tool.”
The civil liberties union has criticized the searches as over-reaching since Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the measure on July 21, after terrorists targeted London’s mass transit system for the second time in two weeks. It also calls the stops ineffective because terrorists can walk through entrances where police are not screening.
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the right of law enforcement to conduct random searches, said Barry Kamins, a professor of criminal procedure at Fordham and Brooklyn law schools. But it found that those checks can be considered unlawful if their primary purpose is for law enforcement, such as searching for evidence of a crime. Rather, police must use the stops chiefly to preserve public safety, he said.
The suit comes as elected officials continue to tussled over racial profiling. Nine City Council members Thursday asked 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 young Arabs should be targeted for searches to prevent terror attacks.
Robert Lawson, a Bloomberg spokesman, said that the police already have adequate safeguards. “The mayor has repeatedly stated since the start of this policy that there would be zero tolerance for racial profiling,” Lawson added.