NYCLU sues city over subway searches
BY JOSHUA ROBIN and DAN JANISON
STAFF WRITERS
August 4, 2005
The New York Civil Liberties Union will file suit against the city Thursday to keep police from searching the bags of passengers entering the subway, organization lawyers said.
The suit, which will be filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, will claim 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, a partial copy of which was provided to Newsday.
Names of the plaintiffs -- subway riders who object to the searches -- were redacted in the copy, but are expected to be released Thursday morning.
A city Law Department spokeswoman said that since officials had not yet received the suit, she could not yet comment.
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."
"No one thinks that will be the solution, but it does give a potential terrorist something more to think about," he said.
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.
