Sunday, November 21, 2010

Can I refuse this search?

Amazing how much disruption a simple question like that can cause. Written by an ex-cop, and worth reading all the way through, but here's a nugget:


What happened to me in Albany was not the promised “pat-down.” It was a full search conducted in full public view. It was also one of the most flawed searches I have ever witnessed.

From the outset, it was very clear that the screener would have preferred to be anywhere else. She acted as if she was afraid of me, though given that I had set myself apart as apparently crazy, perhaps I cannot blame her. With rubber-gloved hands she checked my head, my arms, my legs, my buttocks (and discovered a pen that had fallen into one of my pockets) and even the bottom of my feet. Perhaps in a nod to decorum, she did not check my crotch, my armpits or either breast area.

Here was a big problem: an effective search cannot nod to decorum.


Emphasis added. That is the nub of the matter. Either we do searches that cannot be circumvented, or we maintain our freedom and our dignity. We cannot do both. We must choose.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You forget that even with the intrusive search you are no safer than without it.
So why not have our freedom AND our safety.


Also remember what you are trying to "keep safe" -> your freedom!

Ron said...

> You forget that even with the intrusive search you are no safer than without it.

Oh no, I didn't forget that. But that's another argument, and a much more difficult one to make. Most people believe that searches make you safer. It's intuitively plausible that searches make you safer. It might even be true that searches make you (marginally) safer. It's a rhetorical rabbit hole, and you don't need to go down it to make the argument that searches ought not to be done.