a rant, an update, and an air-kiss to the ACLU
Okay, it’s early (early for a day in which I don’t have to get up at all––I heart summer Fridays). But already I’m riled. It seems I am the only person (okay except for one person at work) who thinks this random searching on NYC subways is not a nice way to make us feel safe and cozy. WTF???? I’m sorry our budding militarized police state doesn’t make me want to throw a mitzvah. Random police searches? I swear there was a day––maybe three weeks ago––when New Yorkers’ outrage might have outweighed their cowed fear, and lamb-like compliancy and not, as the NYT reports today, “patiently” opened their bags as men in blue with guns hovered over them in front of the turnstiles.
Um, how about instead of “perception”-based safety as police commissioner Ray Kelly says, we have real safety like manning of all subway stations like we used to have and the elimination of those revolving floor-to-ceiling turnstiles aka deathtraps. And what happens when people start suing the city for being searched, because surely, someone will be pissed off or greedy (at least we can count on that here still) enough to sue for invasion of privacy, unwarranted searches, or whatever it is you sue for when you’re being frisked in your backyard to make the Times Square tourists from Alabama feel better here than in London?
Is that then a better use of resources? No one’s said yet how much this new little hobby will cost us.
And Kelly of course says there won’t be any profiling. Just like there isn’t any profiling every other time they say that, I’m sure. And what happens when they find other stuff in these safety-perception searches like pot and coke and firecrackers and illegally smuggled monkeys, reptiles, and baby endangered tigers? Is that evidence admissible in court? Or will we learn how to combat this like with the booklet the ACLU gave out before the RNC, teaching us phrases like “I do not give consent for you to search my person,” etc.? And does any New York cop give a shit about that? Is it really the verbal kryptonite I learned at Dead shows? Hello, writers of Law & Order, we need you.
Anyway, clearly I’m feeling better if I can work up this kind of outrage before 10 am. Though I went to sleep with it.
I know this is a blog about cancer. But my only news this week is that I got my monthly lymphoma newsletter and it depressed the fuck out of me with grim survival stats. I need to find a way to be on the few-bead end of the abacus. Because it doesn’t look good, technically, after ten years. Except when it does of course. And that’s the thing about statistics.
