Will We Ever Get Our Act Together?

[Guest guest]

http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_07_29_05ng.html

Gelinas

How Not to Fight Urban Terror

The mayor wants New Yorkers to use their eyes and

ears­but his fuss over last weekend’s tour-bus

kerfuffle will dissuade them. | 29 July 2005

Islamist terrorists have twice targeted London’s

Tube in the past month. Since the London attacks,

Mayor Bloomberg, the NYPD, and the state-run

Metropolitan Transportation Authority have

essentially deputized transit workers and riders

in New York to be on watch for would-be attackers

here. “If you see something, say something,” the

MTA exhorts the public. Since London’s 7/7, NYPD

officers have boarded MTA buses to instruct

drivers and riders on what to look for: a rider

wearing a heavy coat in summer, for example, or

someone who looks nervous fiddling with a large

package. The mayor himself has told New Yorkers

to call 911 or 311 to report concerns about suspicious activity.

But now the mayor is unhappy with his diligent

new deputies­and has singled a few of them out

for public scorn. On Sunday, one worker on a Gray

Line double-decker tour bus in Midtown Manhattan

observed five young passengers acting

suspiciously and, taking his duty seriously,

notified the bus driver. Accounts vary, but the

Gray Line dispatcher who called the police

reported that the tourists, of South Asian

descent, had purchased their tickets in advance

and had boarded with stuffed pockets and

backpacks. “I was definitely frightened from the

beginning,” the driver, Mohammed Stout, told the

Daily News. “That’s human nature.”

The cops came quickly, ushered the passengers off

the bus, and handcuffed the five men to search

all passengers’ bags. The search turned up

nothing. The cops determined that the five men

were British tourists, and sent the tour group,

including the detained men, on its way.

That was that. But if Gray Line’s workers

expected praise from Gotham’s mayor, they were

disappointed. The mayor unaccountably singled out

Gray Line and its workers for a public thrashing.

Bloomberg stopped just short of branding Gray

Line’s employees liars: “They didn’t even have

any knapsacks,” he said of the five British men.

“Just state the facts as you see them. . . . In

this case, clearly, it was not warranted. . . .

It turned out that these . . . people did not

present any threat.” The mayor further instructed

New Yorkers to use “common sense” in the future and to avoid racial profiling.

The detained British tourists, for their part,

seemed unruffled. “These things happen, don’t

they?” one said to the News. But just in case,

the mayor apologized to them on behalf of all New

Yorkers: “It’s a shame,” he noted.

But it’s the mayor’s response to the incident

that was shameful­and dangerous. The mayor’s

civic throttling of Gray Line’s workers will

surely cause New York’s competitive tourist

industry to second guess itself in the future. By

carelessly castigating the tour-bus workers as

exaggerators and racists, the mayor has wrapped

several layers of gauze around the eyes and ears

of tourist workers and of other watchful New Yorkers.

For a real dose of common sense, Bloomberg should

remember: New Yorkers who do pay attention to a

fellow passenger’s gender, race, age,

nationality, language, or religious emblems in

the context of other suspicious behavior aren’t

irrational: despite police rhetoric about “random

searches,” it is not Japanese students or

African-American grandmothers who have declared

war on the West. (And, with a first name like

Mohammed, it’s doubtful that Gray Line’s bus

driver is an unreconstructed white racist.) But

workers, and their bosses, now will think twice

about calling the cops to report odd behavior,

especially if a dark-skinned young male is at the root of it.

And thinking too hard and long before calling 911 could cost lives.