Originally Posted by Peetah
Hate to break this to you bud, but years ago, I was trained to turn ordinary objects such as pencils, pens, plates, glasses, books, and what not into weapons that will maim, injure, and kill people. Should people like me be banned from the airplane? What's to prevent ordinary people from "learning" those same skills on their own?
Well,
bud (do we really have to resort to name calling? Last week, someone was referring to
Bart as "cupcake." Can't this be a civil discussion?), just about anything can be a weapon in the right hands. As I pointed out in another post, there's always going to be a tradeoff where you decide to accept some risk. There is also the difference in the psychological value of having a weapon that everyone will recognize as a weapon, as opposed to something which only you can use as a weapon. If I stand up on an airplane with a .45 and proclaim that the airplane is now the property of the Fruit of Islam, I am probably going to get more immediate respect than if you try the same thing with a Bic pen. The same premise still applies, even after each of us picks out a passenger to make an example of.
Originally Posted by Peetah
I know how you think.... you still think like a cop. You go through ordinary life like a cop. People like you treat everyone you encounter with suspicion and as though they're criminals. You say you write books and teach classes, and you probably read books on crime and criminals in your spare time so all your mind does is think like a cop and treat people like criminals. Hell, you're even here trying to defend life like a cop. So to hear statements like you're not bashful if you're searched like a criminal and that you back the TSA in the way they search ordinary citizens doesn't surprise me. You can't see the world through "ordinary" eyes so therefore you can't see why the ordinary citizen is upset.
And you say that like it's such a
bad thing.
I've had to be cognizant of how people react to police methods for almost 30 years. You should also remember that I am subject to the same procedures as you.
I don't really think like a cop anymore, because I know that no longer have a duty, or even a legal ability, to act for the government or the public interest to suppress crime. There's a lot of stuff I see where my only option is to call 911, where I would have acted myself when I was a cop.
One of my favorite authors and lecturers is Dave Grossman, a retired Army infantry officer and a trained psychologist. He categorizes people into one of three areas: sheep, sheepdogs, and predators. The sheep (the usual connotations about blind, mindless followers don't apply here) go about their business, for the most part unaware of any
potential threats around them until they become obvious enough to be an
immediate threat. The predators are the folks that offer those threats, and spend their time looking for someone to victimize. The sheepdogs are aware of the predators, and instinctively devote a portion of their consciousness to keeping an eye out for the predators. When the predators present themselves, the sheepdogs make the predators aware that these sheep aren't as ripe for the taking as they may have initially assessed. You can't train a sheepdog not to be a sheepdog. Put a sheepdog who has never seen a sheep into a crowd of anything, and he'll try to herd and protect it. It's just his nature. I'm a sheepdog. I don't think I started out that way, but I am one now, and I'll be that way until I die.
Originally Posted by Peetah
Worse, the TSA is [starting to] act[ing] just like you.
However, not everyone is like you. Most of the flying public and ordinary citizens live different lives and aren't criminals, thus they don't deserve to be treated as such.
The TSA are the designated sheepdogs. And when I'm searched, I don't feel like a criminal. Maybe it's because I've been searched so many times (trainee cops have to have someone to practice on). , but instead, I think it's because I treat the screeners with courtesy and respect, and I am treated the same. Remember, my only complaint with the searches I have experienced is that I don't think they were thorough enough.
Originally Posted by Peetah
The OP has done nothing wrong except get "selected" for "secondary screening", why should the TSA treat innocent people such as him like criminals? They have not been charged with a crime, they have not done anything that warrant criminal suspicion. However it has been written and talked many times that someone pissed in the TSA goon's Cheerios that morning, told the goon that they're not following the rules, "woke up brown", "woke up" disabled, or forgot to remove their shoes.
Once again, with the "goon" stuff. When you carelessly throw around pejorative terms like that, your agenda becomes more clear, and you are taken less seriously.
Passengers are not being searched because they are suspected of having committed crimes. They are being searched because there is some indication that they may be carrying a prohibited item, or the search was random as a deterrent.
Originally Posted by Peetah
How would you personally like to be searched in the streets, your home, or your hotel just because it was "random"? I've done my fair share of travels in places not so civilized and have been detained, searched and/or roughed up by police because:
* They didn't like the fact that I was walking on the sidewalk and not on the street
* Didn't smile at them
* Dressing like an "ugly" American
* Looking too much like a local
* Carried too many cans of beer in my shopping bag
* Had the "wrong" kind of money
* Looked too much like a poor local driving a car that only "the elite" would drive
* Photographed a bridge
* Photographed a plane
* Photographed the service entrance to a palace
* Didn't do anything except be a tourist
* Talked to a married woman who wasn't related to me
If those things happened to me, I would either (1) not remain or go back to that place, or (2) not do the things that called attention to me. When I am in someone else's country, I expect to have to comply with their rules. If I'm unwilling to do that, I don't go there.
I am reminded of the complaints I have heard from people that claim that they can't go anywhere without the police "hassling" them. No matter where they go, in a new city or state, the police are always stopping them and giving them a bad time. In contrast, I have lived in five states in the last ten years, and have visited four foreign countries (probably fewer than you), including the Middle East. I have yet to have an adversarial encounter with the police in any of these places. In the Middle East, I had several conversations with police officers, but I initiated them all, and they were quite collegial. By the way, I am of Irish descent, and about as non-Middle Eastern looking as they come.
If all those bad things happened to you in different places and at the hands of different police officers, I think you need to stop blaming the variables and start working on the constant.
Originally Posted by Peetah
I value my freedom from searches unless given a damn good reason backed with a warrant. The TSA offers none especially when I haven't tripped off the metal detector. Instead, they do things that remind me of the old Soviet Union and many questionable regimes, such as make up laws and rules on the spot, and keep those "laws" secret. Seize personal items that have no "merit" such as
car keys based on some arbitrary opinion that was made up on the spot. And sifted and dumped loved one's ashes
from an urn.
This isn't how we should treat citizens who have done no harm. This is how we should treat criminals or people living in a dictatorship.
And if we were not being constantly threatened by an irrational force that seeks to destroy us simply because we are not like them, I might agree with you. But it's a different world now, and I don't think there will be any going back.