New York State Deploys National Guard to NYC Subways to Fight Crime (Bloomberg) | Hacker News Reader

New York State Deploys National Guard to NYC Subways to Fight Crime (Bloomberg)

bloomberg.com

10 pointsaraes24 comments

> The National Guard members will conduct random bag checks on passengers

I'm not asking this out of disbelief, but just out of genuine curiosity: What is the legal foundation that allows them to randomly search people who are simply going about their day? What happens whenever people say "no, you can't search my bag." ?

I am not a lawyer, but I agree, this seems to be on questionable legal footing...

Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This only applies to the gov't

If you do some reading, I believe you will find that the National Guard is part of the government.

They might as well quarter the Soldiers in people’s houses since we’re ignoring so much of the rest of the Bill of Rights at this point.

What happens is they deny you access to the subway.

From an NYT article about court decision in 2006, at https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/12/nyregion/12search.html

> Passengers can refuse to open their bags and walk away, but they cannot go through the turnstile to the trains with bags they did not allow the police to search.

Possibly this:

https://www.nyclu.org/en/cases/macwade-v-kelly-challenging-n...

> This case involves the NYPD's practice of stopping and searching subway goers without just cause. On July 21, 2005, the NYPD announced that it would begin a new program of searching the belongings of those seeking to enter the subway system. Since the program was implemented, the NYPD has searched tens of thousands of people without any suspicion of wrongdoing. On Aug. 4, 2005, the NYCLU filed a complaint in the District Court on behalf of five individuals. The complaint alleges that the NYPD program violates the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments...

> On Dec. 7, 2005, the District Court ruled in favor of the defendants and refused the plaintiffs’ request for a permanent injunction. The decision stated that the random subway search program was not “impermissibly intrusive” and was constitutional. The NYCLU appealed to the United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. On Aug. 11, 2006, the Second Circuit upheld the District Court decision, stating that the program constitutes the “special need” exception to the Fourth Amendment.

I think that legal argument is that they’re protecting a transportation system and it’s users against violent attacks.

This is a guess, but authorities are allowed to search you on airplane. This might be a mass transit exception.

Where in the Constitution is this exemption?

I don’t think it exists in the plain text of the Constitution.

The same one that lets them search you at airports. You can say no, but then you cannot board the train.

they stop and frisk people on the street in NY too

You can say no, but then you shouldn't walk on the streets.

I smell sarcasm! :) But seriously, riding the subway is not a right. They make rules for the subway and enforce them at their own leisure. But it's 100% legal to turn someone away if they don't comply with rules they make up themselves. MTA is a private entity.

Legally speaking they need "reasonable cause" to stop and frisk people on the streets (how that works in practice is a whole different discussion). At the subway entrance they can search all the bags they want for any or no reason.

You're talking about getting onto an enclosed, protected space. You have the Constitutional right as an American to not be unreasonably searched, but that doesn't mean you have the right of free movement to any and all places not owned by you personally without restrictions imposed by whoever controls that space, even when it's the government. If you're trying to get into a courthouse, the white house, an airplane, a train, they can search you first.

What happens if you refuse a search is you leave the platform and get back onto the street where you're allowed to move about freely without being subject to search.

The sister comment describes a court ruling that bag searches are permissible for anti-terrorism purposes. However this new deployment is being challenged by the ACLU because the bag searches are being done for general law-enforcement reasons. I guess we'll see what the courts rule.

It's interesting to see how the pushback to this is a lot more muted than when Bloomberg implemented stop & frisk for largely the same reasons.

You can't refuse stop and frisk, here you can say no and just not board

It’d be great if we were mature enough as a society to have a nice chat about why there is so much suffering and crime in American cities but alas.

Is there really that much? NYC murder rates are down 80% from their peak in 1990. We're roughly at 1950s rates.

Maybe true but NYC didn’t need this level of policing in the subways in the 1950s.

We could ask why this happens in NYC and other US cities but not in Tokyo, Singapore, Bangkok, or Paris. In years of using mass transit in Asia I have not once witnessed the kind of conflict I’ve seen in NYC and SF every day.

> Hochul said she chose to use state resources rather than pay for NYPD overtime to beef up transit patrols.

> “I’m going to be responding to many, many needs of the mayor and the city of New York in our budget,” Hochul said. “And so I said, ‘I can do something more immediate than a budget request, I can give you bodies right now.’ And I think that actually puts us ahead of the game.”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com