Isaac Baker

NEW YORK, Jul 26 2005 (IPS) — The New York Police Department’s new security policy of subjecting passengers on the city’s mass transit system to "random searches" is coming under fire from activist groups, who allege that the searches are not only unconstitutional but also unjustly target immigrants and people of colour.

The policy, which allows officers to search any bags and packages commuters bring onto the city’s subways, buses, ferries, and commuter rail system, was announced on Jul. 21, the day of the failed terrorist attack on London’s mass transit system and two weeks after the Jul. 7 attacks that killed 52 people in that city.

The debate over racial profiling by police in mass transit systems has received international attention in the wake of the killing of an innocent Brazilian man in the London Underground on Jul. 22. Scotland Yard officers shot the 27-year-old man five times, saying only that he "looked suspicious."

Activist groups here fear that the police searches and alleged racial profiling could bring about a similar tragedy in New York, especially since the NYPD has doubled the police presence in the subways since the London bombings.

"I think that this level of police presence creates a climate of fear and makes those sorts of incidents much more likely," Dustin Langley, a volunteer with the Troops Out Now Coalition, an anti-war group that staged a protest against the searches in Manhattan Tuesday, told IPS.

"A person of colour seeing a police officer yelling ‘Stop!’ has very legitimate reason to be afraid and to run. I think it’s just a matter of time before we see other incidents like this," he said.

The NYPD and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg say the new search policy is necessary to tighten the city’s security, especially in light of the recent mass transit attacks in London.

"Are they intrusive? Yes, a little bit," Bloomberg said at a press conference last week. "But we are trying to find that right balance."

City and police officials also say the searches are being conducted in a completely random manner.

But activist groups are rallying against the searches, calling them a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as well as a form of racial, ethnic and religious profiling that targets Muslim, Arab, and other immigrants and minorities.

"What we’re talking about is much more than the violation of an abstract right," Larry Holmes of the Troops Out Now Coalition said in a statement. "It is a dangerous policy of racial, ethnic, and religious profiling."

The group said its members and volunteers have witnessed police officers racially profiling subway riders since the enactment of the searches. Activists and volunteers affiliated with the coalition are currently observing the police searches in the city’s subway stations and compiling reports on who is being searched, as well as collecting video and photographic evidence.

Langley told IPS his group had no specific numbers or data on the searches compiled yet.

"What I have is anecdotal," he said. "Volunteers coming back, saying, ‘Everyone they searched was a black male.’"

Police officials at the NYPD’s Department of Public Information did not return repeated requests for comment.

However, the NYPD insists that the searches are based on numeric sampling for the sole purpose of making them random. Officials have said the police are to search, for example, every fifth or twelfth passenger, and not simply anyone an officer feels is suspicious.

The police searches are also being conducted before commuters pass through the subway turnstiles, giving passengers the option of refusing a search and not entering the subway system.

But Langley and others say a numeric sampling protocol for the searches simply cannot be carried out in a city where an estimated 4.5 million people ride the subway every weekday, according to the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

"They can’t search one in five. They can’t search one in 20," Langley told IPS. "There has to be a system of screening. It’s not the guys going down to Wall Street."

Other groups, like the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), are attacking the police searches on legal grounds, saying they are a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures."

"We are entitled to move freely around the city without being worried about being searched by police," NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said in a statement after the new searches were announced. "The NYPD can and should investigate any suspicious activity, but the Fourth Amendment prohibits police from conducting searches where there is no suspicion of criminal activity."

The NYCLU has posted a form on its website where subway riders who have been searched can report their experience and give their race or ethnicity. The group says it will study the forms and possibly bring a lawsuit against the city.

U.S. legal precedent has supported law enforcement searches only when there is an "individualised suspicion" warranting one. Even if the searches are indeed random, as police officials claim, they may hit a legal roadblock in the near future.