Checkpoint Chico and the Man

The Miami Police Force is going after the 9/11 Terrorists now. Talk about timing...the plan is to descend on an area -- say, a big hotel complex -- and cordon it off, checking ID cards and handing out leaflets on terrorism.

Years ago, I was in a car with some buddies in Anniston Alabama. We were headed toward the laundramat to do our clothes -- we were down at Fort McClellan for a course, and they had us staying 20 miles off post in a Ramada Inn. The driver was a great soldier named Mozett Petway, a black Staff Sergeant. The other three of us were white, and we were in Mozett's brand new Olds 98. We came upon a County Sheriff's checkpoint, manned by three cops and a comically dressed fellow in a sheet with a pointy hat. Petway freaked; I told him to calm down and as one of the cops and the guy in the sheet came toward us, I rolled my window down. Holding out my Army ID, smiling and in my best New England drawl asked, "How can we help you?" They looked in, said "Guess y'all ain't from here..." with which I agreed and they left us alone, smiled and waived us through. It was a recruiting drive for the Klan. Yup, serving and protecting had odd meanings in Alabama in the early 80s.

I wouldn't have blamed Petway if he left the next day for home. Hell, I considered it.

Here's the problem -- the cops probably mean well. They have this idea of deterring the terrorists by using shock and awe, by being in their face. That works well against street crime, but if I'm a terrorist and I see some cops, I go somewhere else where the cops are not -- or the cops become my target. As for being in their face being a deterrent, check out the majority of the over 2000 young men and women wasted in Iraq by being the mechanism of shock and awe and getting in the face of the insurgents, err, terrorists, err Iraqis.

So, if this is not going to deter terrorists, and the purse snatchers are under control, what's it going to do? It's going to be a way to piss off the minority communities in Miami; it's going to be a way to intimidate anyone who gets nervous around cops in riot gear; it has some serious 4th Amendment issues -- they're going to check ID based on the probable cause that you're there? -- and to make it really special, the freaking ACLU in South Florida thinks it's fine. So, the hobbits have taken over one of the bastions against government sucking the well of freedom dry...

Comments

[mr fun]

"Here's the problem - the cops really mean well."

that right there made my day. I picture a scene in the squad room from Police Academy.

of course, I don't have any better ideas, but I know that this is a bad one, and their intention, if true, in a southern florida kind of intent, which scares me further, for which I have no real recent experience with, is so utterly gay and Mayberry I can't even continue to begin the process to fathom what good they see coming from this.

well intentioned? where, in TV Land on Nick at Night?

oye.

"yesum bossman, we gotsus some terrists overderr inda super 8. of course, tha only thing they dropped when we asked them to raise their handswas the laundry, and one baby, that died from the shock and awe from being dropped."

[blogenfreude]

It could be worse ... here in NYC we're lucky if we get away without a nightstick up our asses.

[the quitter]

yeah, and if it DID deter terrorists then what? you know what else would deter terrorists.. if people had to show ID and "papers" every time they went ANYwhere.

where, pray-tell, does it end?

[comandante agi t. prop]

Or maybe the cops will just harrass the Cuban-Americans in Miami. They deserve a good shakedown after putting us through that horrid Elian Gonzalez saga a few years ago.

[Crusader AXE of the Lost Causes]

I seem to recall that Cubans are the majority in Miami...

[Herr "Ausweiss, bitte"]

Whoa... cordon off areas in American cities and do random searches for terrorists. SOunds like what we are doing in Iraq and also.. I must say.. a somewhat tamed down version of what the German's did in occupied countries during WWII.

What a great idea. I'm surprised it took them so long to come up with it.