What's going on?
Sep. 14th, 2007 12:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chhotiiIn 2004, you will recall, the Democratic National Convention came to Boston. Boston nearly shut down for fear of terrorist attacks on the DNC. For the duration of that week, the MBTA did some random bag searches. The legality of these were challenged in court; if you consider the MBTA part of the government (which I would, given the state oversight, their natural monopoly, and the size of their subsidies from government), such searches are banned by Article 4 of the Constitution. The judge considered only the narrow question of whether these searches should be allowed during the DNC, not whether the MBTA could conduct searches in general. The judge ruled in favor of the MBTA; however, the logic of his decision was mostly based on the assumption that the DNC was in town. If I recall correctly, 2 out of the 3 pillars of reasoning in his decision fell down once the DNC was out of the picture. He didn't say so explicitly, but I thought this implied that when the DNC was gone, the MBTA had no legal leg to stand on to conduct searches. The MBTA's public reaction was "Great, we won, we can do searches whenever we want!" but I thought that they knew that that wasn't really true, because they didn't test this by actually doing any more searches after the DNC.
Until now???
This morning, 6 or 7 transit police (in really ominously fascist-looking uniforms, like MPs or riot police) were milling around in the Anderson train station. At about 8:00, after they had their Dunkin' Donuts, they set up what appeared to be a security checkpoint, in front of the stairs to the train platform. They set up a table with some kind of ruggedized computer on it (bomb sniffer, perhaps?), and they set up a stand with one of those old Transit Watch signs ("Transit watch: We have the right to search your bag or kick you off the train! Thank you for helping us FIGHT TERRORISM!" blah blah blah). The stand with the sign was strategically placed to force anyone trying to get the the stairs or the elevator to make a wide circle and go directly past the table with the computer (or whatever). Then the MPs, I mean the transit police, just milled around in front of the stairs.
I was the first to go through after they had set up the checkpoint. I wondered if they were going to try to mess with the woman wielding the toddler wielding the bagel with the dangerously large amount of butter, but no, they didn't do anything. They seemed to just hang out, at most just look at people. I couldn't see whether they intercepted anyone getting on the 8:08 train.
What's going on?????
Until now???
This morning, 6 or 7 transit police (in really ominously fascist-looking uniforms, like MPs or riot police) were milling around in the Anderson train station. At about 8:00, after they had their Dunkin' Donuts, they set up what appeared to be a security checkpoint, in front of the stairs to the train platform. They set up a table with some kind of ruggedized computer on it (bomb sniffer, perhaps?), and they set up a stand with one of those old Transit Watch signs ("Transit watch: We have the right to search your bag or kick you off the train! Thank you for helping us FIGHT TERRORISM!" blah blah blah). The stand with the sign was strategically placed to force anyone trying to get the the stairs or the elevator to make a wide circle and go directly past the table with the computer (or whatever). Then the MPs, I mean the transit police, just milled around in front of the stairs.
I was the first to go through after they had set up the checkpoint. I wondered if they were going to try to mess with the woman wielding the toddler wielding the bagel with the dangerously large amount of butter, but no, they didn't do anything. They seemed to just hang out, at most just look at people. I couldn't see whether they intercepted anyone getting on the 8:08 train.
What's going on?????
