This morning, according to the Chicago Tribune, Metra police in Lisle, Illinois stopped an express commuter train and forced everyone to disembark and be searched for weapons after an anonymous individual called police to say that he overheard another passenger say he had a gun. Details are still sketchy, but based on what I've read this is an overreaction and a massive intrusion on personal privacy.
Stopping the train and searching everyone is going to seriously inconvenience everyone on the train; some of the people thus inconvenienced may well lose their jobs for being late to work. Some employers are not even remotely sympathetic regarding tardiness even in ordinary times, and with today's economy employers often use any excuse whatsoever to terminate employees that they view as "surplus". If all the police have is an anonymous tipster who merely overheard another person say he has a gun, there just isn't enough cause to justify searching everyone. What if the tipster mistook or misunderstood what the other person said? What if the tipster imagined the entire incident, or made it up?
I would think a more reasonable response would be to have transit police board the train and take up station, one or two in each car and observe, and take further action only if they then observed suspicious behavior. That course of action would likely be sufficient to prevent harm in the event the report were true (for even if it is true, there's no still no evidence that the person who said he has a gun meant to do anything harmful or even illegal), and would not have massively delayed or even seriously inconvenienced, not to mention forced hundreds of innocent commuters to be subjected to searches without probable cause, compromising their constitutional freedoms.
I'm hoping that as more becomes known about this incident, we'll find out more about the specificity of the report made to the police.
Update: The police are now stating that a "suspicious man" was asking "unusual questions that were security-based" at the Naperville station, and that they stopped the train to search for him. That would not explain why passengers were being searched for weapons.
Stopping the train and searching everyone is going to seriously inconvenience everyone on the train; some of the people thus inconvenienced may well lose their jobs for being late to work. Some employers are not even remotely sympathetic regarding tardiness even in ordinary times, and with today's economy employers often use any excuse whatsoever to terminate employees that they view as "surplus". If all the police have is an anonymous tipster who merely overheard another person say he has a gun, there just isn't enough cause to justify searching everyone. What if the tipster mistook or misunderstood what the other person said? What if the tipster imagined the entire incident, or made it up?
I would think a more reasonable response would be to have transit police board the train and take up station, one or two in each car and observe, and take further action only if they then observed suspicious behavior. That course of action would likely be sufficient to prevent harm in the event the report were true (for even if it is true, there's no still no evidence that the person who said he has a gun meant to do anything harmful or even illegal), and would not have massively delayed or even seriously inconvenienced, not to mention forced hundreds of innocent commuters to be subjected to searches without probable cause, compromising their constitutional freedoms.
I'm hoping that as more becomes known about this incident, we'll find out more about the specificity of the report made to the police.
Update: The police are now stating that a "suspicious man" was asking "unusual questions that were security-based" at the Naperville station, and that they stopped the train to search for him. That would not explain why passengers were being searched for weapons.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/02/family.grounded/
ReplyDeleteTo me it all comes down to common sense.
Heard it was a federal agent who had the gun to begin with. typical lisle police. nothing to do so they over react
ReplyDeleteA couple of years ago the local high schools (including my alma mater) had about 2 dozen bomb threats within the span of 1.5 months. There was a group of students in each school that found that they could get out of class for hours at a time while the bomb teams were mobilized and searched the entire building. This seems related.
ReplyDeleteI read your blog because of my ham radio interest, but I have to say this is the first time that I completely disagree with your post. I was a police officer for over 10 years. Police response to armed gunmen in public places has changed over the years. I can assure you, those officers didn't come on the train because they were bored or didn't care about people being late. They entered the train, probably fearing for their own lives, but did so anyway to prevent the horrible tragedies that we have seen with the increase in mass shootings. The first responding officers know they are putting their own lives in peril, but we have learned that in active shooter incidents, rapid response is the only way to save lives.
ReplyDeleteIllinois is only one of two states that doesn't have "concealed carry" legislation. If you've talked to the people near the DeKalb incident, many wished we had the ability to carry concealed so we could defend ourselves if the worst happened. Right now, we're sitting ducks.
Illinois legislators hate and distrust their residents. Kinda backwards, huh?
Anonymous— I don't think we need to level blame on the individual officers themselves here.
ReplyDeleteAs a police officer you are part of a system. It's possible for the officers to be intelligent, honourable, and careful yet for the system to do wrong.
Many of our modern security practices are of a highly reactionary nature but the actual security risks are not substantially reduced by these kinds of responses. Our security techniques are ineffective and cause enormous collateral damage.
It was brave of the officers to board the train and search for a possibly dangerous person. But it was an action which, if anything, *reduced* our security against attack. Our predictable overreactions allow people to exert control and any method of control can be a weapon.
The greatest challenge in security is always the balancing of tradeoffs. We could prevent all attacks if we kept the entire public locked up and in a drug induced coma. Naturally we all recognize that as a bad trade-off. That stopping a train and searching people based on an anonymous tip is less obviously a bad trade-off is only due to the fact that our media is so geared at overstating the level of risk from malicious attack.
As a matter of public policy we simply shouldn't respond in the way that we currently do. This isn't a problem with the officers out on the pavement— it's a problem that starts with our legislature, and even the public itself.
A MERE INVONCIENCE IS A SMALL TRADE-OFF FOR PERSONAL LIVES AND SAFTEY. TODAY, WITH THE TERROISM BEING SUCH A HUGE THREAT, IT IS REASONABLE TO HAVE THESE OCCURENCES. SORRY TO INVONVIENCE YOU AND THE OTHERS. MAYBE WE SHOULD ALL JUST QUIT AND HAVE MARTIAL LAW.......
ReplyDeleteUm, no. An innocent person should not be liable to search just because of an anonymous tip. This is America, not a police state. Or, at least it was. Wake up people!
ReplyDeleteNice shaare
ReplyDelete