Dear A-Letter Reader:
Forgive me for hyperventilating, but the announcement this week by the Miami, Florida Police Dept. that they will stage "random shows of force at hotels, banks and other public places to keep terrorists guessing" is one of the most idiotic, inane and just plain dumb ideas I have heard recently. No doubt this stupidity will boost tourism in south Florida.
The police readily admitted there was no specific terrorist threat in the area, but they argued lamely that the city has repeatedly been mentioned in intelligence reports as a potential target. They also noted that 14 of the 19 hijackers who took part in the 9-11 attacks lived in South Florida at various times and that other alleged terror cells have operated in the area.
The Miami PD claims they just want to "remind people to be vigilant" against terrorism. They intend to do so by "surrounding a bank building, checking the IDs of everyone going in and out and handing out leaflets about terror threats." Says one Miami PD official: "This is an in-your-face type of strategy. It's letting the terrorists know we are out there."
This is the same Miami PD that is the object of multiple lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union for what are called unlawful arrests and use of excessive force during a regional free trade meeting in Miami two years ago. About 300 people were arrested during the November 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in downtown Miami after police used rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray to break up largely peaceful protests by anti-globalization activists.
At the time a college student, Edward Owaki, was beaten so severely he ended up spending nine days in the hospital. Police tactics in Miami were "designed to intimidate political demonstrators, silence dissent, and criminalize protest against the government policies," ACLU Greater Miami Chapter President Terry Coble said in a statement. "If this type of police action is allowed to continue, our country will have lost one of its most basic rights, and we will be on the road to a totalitarian government."
Now the bright bulbs of the Miami PD will be shredding the US Constitution and trampling on citizens rights in yet another way, demanding citizens' IDs so that the big bad, macho police can show how anti-terrorist they are. Meanwhile, potential terrorists in Miami, if there are any, will be laughing at this Keystone Cops show of farce.
What makes this stupidity all the more disturbing is a recent US Supreme Court decision that essentially said individuals can be arrested by police for refusing to identify themselves upon police demand, even if they are not committing any crime.
In Denver recently Deborah Davis, a 50-year old mother of four, was riding the public bus to work, minding her own business, when a security guard got on the bus and demanded that every passenger show their ID. Deb, having done nothing wrong, declined. The guard called in federal cops and she was arrested and charged with federal criminal misdemeanors after refusing to show ID on demand. On Dec. 9, Deborah Davis will be arraigned in U.S. District Court in a case that will determine whether Deb and the rest of us live in a free society, or in a country where we must show "papers" whenever a cop demands them.
I often have offered the opinion that America is rapidly becoming a "police state" in the worst sense of that phrase.
While my complaints have been directed at destruction of financial privacy under the PATRIOT Act, there is a larger Bush administration drive to strip Americans of not only privacy, but of constitutionally guaranteed rights. Yes, we all support fighting 'terrorism' - but anti-terrorism, as the harebrained Miami Police idea shows, has become an all purpose excuse for 'anything goes' in expanding police powers.
And yet national polls in America show little concern about what is happening to us. At this very moment Bush operatives are working Capitol Hill in an attempt to water down new and needed curbs contained in pending legislation that extends the PATRIOT Act.
Ronald Reagan once suggested that if we "lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening." Does that
describe YOU?
That's the way it looks from here.
Bob Bauman, Editor
PS: For my report on how the PATRIOT Act impacts you,
LINK:http://www.isecureonline.com/reports/190SPATY/E190FC02/