The American Civil Liberties Union stepped up its opposition to Metro’s random bag searches on Thursday, starting a campaign against the new policy and beginning to fish for potential plaintiffs to challenge it in a lawsuit. The local branches of the activist group said they are taking such steps because they were ignored when they asked to meet with Metro in December.
| Bag searches |
| • Metro has declined to say how many searches police have been conducted, but media and rider reports indicate the agency has done them at as many as five Metrorail stations. |
| • New York police began searches on the city’s buses and subways in 2005 after the London bombings. A spokeswoman for New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority said they continue to do them. |
| • Boston’s Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority conducted them for a limited time before and during the Democratic National Convention in 2004, then resumed them in 2006. |
Metro “is on a collision course with the ACLU and its partners,” said Johnny Barnes, executive director of the D.C. chapter, as he stood in front of the transit agency’s downtown D.C. headquarters. “And it could have been avoided.”
Metro officials responded to the ACLU on Thursday and said they would participate in a meeting, according to agency spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein.
Barnes told The Washington Examiner that he was delighted the agency changed its mind after the news conference. But he said the change of position doesn’t affect the ACLU’s efforts.
“If they say they’ll end the searches, that changes everything,” he said.
The campaign will include education fliers, a petition and plans for two symposia. Barnes invited those who have been searched to contact the group.
“If they’re interested in legal recourse, we’ll give consideration to their legal merits,” Barnes said.
Metro started the bag searches in December. But as soon as the agency announced the new policy, some riders and civil liberties groups denounced it, saying it violated riders’ constitutional rights and would amount to little more than “security theater” rather than make the system safer.
The transit agency has said that riders who do not want to be searched can choose not to ride. They also say similar searches have been used in New York and Boston.
But the ACLU cited those reasons as why the policy is what Barnes called “misguided and misplaced and constitutionally suspect.”
He said the New York and Boston transit systems set up their searches after the Madrid and London train bombings that occurred in 2004 and 2005.
Metro officials, however, said their policy was not in response to a specific threat. Barnes said the courts are loathe to allow violations of the Fourth Amendment with suspiciousless searches unless there is a special need. “We don’t believe a special need has been met here.”
University of the District of Columbia law school student Aisha Ching said Metro Transit Police Chief Michael Taborn told riders in a public forum that those who refuse to be searched will be observed, which amounted to being followed for exercising one’s right to refuse.
She also said having signs about the searches gives riders — and potential terrorists — the option to find another entrance or station, making the searches ineffective.
