Watch this and weep for what once was and is now gone.
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Cry, cry AmericaAugust 17th, 2009 |
 55 comments to Cry, cry America |
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Well, that post would seem to be a tad melodramatic. Dry your eyes, poor boy. Here’s a hanky for you.
Nothing like making a one-sided YouTube vid of something to give it an entirely undeserved credibility.
Two apparently stupid girls/women (not even fully able to articulate themselves correctly using their mother tongue – the English language), whose deliberate behaviors would appear to have raised them up as likely targets for inspection. What a surprise (NOT) that they were so rigorously searched.
I would suggest that, in hindsight, these two may be able to understand that literally provoking the probably already overworked and harried border guards is not a good way to cross the border.
Rather than weep, I’d maybe say thank goodness for America that those guards are there and doing their job. It must be a dirty, potentially dangerous and certainly thankless job, checking for felons and low life moving across the border with drugs or felonious intent. Someone’s gotta do it, and those border guards are doing it. Let them get on with their job, and stop messing them about.
I rather seriously disagree. That sort of treatment of American citizens does not belong in our country. The ones who act as if the Constitution does not exist should be shipped out to some place where their ilk would be appreciated… say North Korea would be more to their liking and would appreciate their skills more than any true American.
I don’t give them a pass. I’d like to see them unemployed.
I might personally add that the only weeping is due to a bit of a meme hack. My personal response was rage, anger and a desire to see these miscreants imprisoned or at least publicly humiliated and fired.
I am still shaking as I type this. I want these bastards punished.
Dale,
I’m almost speechless.
ChristianMan’sView,
You sound like Beria. Congratulations. You really are an ace bastard.
Is there a summary somewhere? My video player is not playing nice today.
I have to agree with the first commenter. A LOT was left out of the YouTube video, but all I can be sure of is that they tried to enter the USA by car without passports. Maybe the ICE folks were not as nice as the girls would have liked. But at least one of them is spot-on a profile of a drug smuggler, and no fixed address… talk about waving the red flag in front of the bull!
I have had US Customs/Immigration folks start to give me the third degree, as well. Twice. Good identification and quiet, respectful answers (and whatever they have on their computer screens) turned them around.
Those ICE folks were partly right — you have few rights at the border. An American Citizen can not be denied entry, but without passports they couldn’t prove their citizenship. At that point, your answers to their questions become very important.
I’m sorry. That is just not the sort of country I grew up in. I really do not give a good god damn whether they catch drug smugglers or not. I do care that US citizens are treated with the proper respect they deserve by their *servants*. I have First Amendment rights; I have rights against illegal search and seizure; I’ve even got Second Amendment rights that say I could cross that damn border with an open carry firearm if I damn well wanted to.
And if they do not like, then they can move to North Korea where they belong.
Dale, I don’t know when you had your childhood, but my family visited the US in 1976, and in Buffalo, we found a spot out of the wind. Then a police car came by, and just quizzed us for no reason that we could see. Whilst they were not rude, their interrogation seemed totally unnecessary, and soured us on that city forever! (The winds also helped!)
Buffalo is a border city, so maybe American cops have always been aggressive in such places, and you never noticed. Or maybe they just don’t like foreigners.
In 1979/1980 I drove across the border near Niagara on a whim with my girlfriend after we’d dropped off friends who were canoeing from the headwaters of the Allegheny back to Pittsburgh.
I hardly remember more than a friendly wave on the Canadian side and waving my PA Drivers license on the way back. Guys were smiling and courteous on both sides, more of “Have a nice day” than “Up against the wall m*f*r” of today.
So, yes, this is something new and very, very ugly.
That’s true, this is relatively new. I remember walking over the border from San Diego for a night in Tijuana. On the way back the border patrol guy asked us what our citizenship was and waved us through. Never even looked at ID. That was about fifteen years ago.
Pournelle used to say the purpose of the TSA was to get people used to being treated like subjects instead of citizens. Maybe he’s right.
“Rather than weep, I’d maybe say thank goodness for America that those guards are there and doing their job.”
Hey listen there fucko – the prevalence of views like yours in the United States today is precisely why I cannot abide the very thought of visiting the damn place. And get this: had the girls been armed and actually shot those fuckers one they moved to cuff them, the girls would have been putting into action nothing but the very essence of what it is to be an American.
You deserve nothing but a right kick in the bollocks, you utter cunt.
Dale, has these girls’ testimony been corroborated anywhere? I haven’t watched the entire clip – is there any additional info at the end?
ChristianMan: the girls don’t sound stupid at all, and their command of the English language is quite satisfactory. But I do see your point: the guards may have not liked them, and so obviously they have a god-given right to arrest and mistreat people they don’t like, not to mention people that may look like DRUG SMUGGLERS (what do they look like, BTW?). Indeed, someone’s gotta do it. Someone has to be there to make my husband, me and our third-grader take our shoes off before they let us (!) on the plane. Overworked? You bet.
That sort of treatment of American citizens does not belong in our country.
Non-citizens should not be treated any differently, generally either. (Dale, I realise that you were not saying that they should be – I’m just making a tangential point). Border officials do have the power to exclude them, yes, but beyond that everyone should be treated with courtesy and respect, and should also be entitled to ask questions of officials and not be handcuffed without good reason. It is a mark of decency when you come to the border of a country and find everyone being treated decently and more or less equally. It is not always like that.
LOOK: When the members of Congress, Reps and Senators alike, who have taken a specific oath, disregard and debilitate the Constituition, how can we expect better of any other public agents?
Dale, are you also against the kind of security measures that we now have at airports?
You will find that bureaucrats of every stripe will have among their number the ham-fisted lot–it’s the human condition. Could the border agents have been more “nuanced?” Certainly. But their boorish behavior does not necessarily make the entire border control edifice ipso facto inherently evil–not yet, anyway. My father used to tell me: “Just remember son, the world is run by “C” students.” How very true and while my father’s reminder was, one the one hand a simple statement about the statistical fact of reality–a rephrasing of the blindingly obvious, if you will–one would be amazed at the number of people for whom these facts are the equivalent of divine revelation–that indeed most people’s children are NOT, as they say about the children of the famed mythical town of Lake Woebegone of the radio show “Prairie Home Companion”–ALL “above average.”
So—can and should border guards be better trained, more polite, etc? Of course, but so not expect the equivalent of Nirvana from govt bureaucrats in this or any other lifetime. Such things are to be constantly aspired to and striven for via continual improvement, and training etc., but be not deceived–the traits and extent of malleability of the human human psyche are pretty much genetically hard-wired and thus not amenable to social change to an unlimited degree, i.e., people born assholes pretty much stay assholes all their lives. Sad but true. Life is an experience to be gotten thru, NOT “solved.”
on a general principle, I dislike law enforcement entities since I live in a safe community and all I ever manage to see is soccer moms pulled over for going 45 in a 34 mph zone. however, I do have friends in law enforcement, and know they try to do a good, fair, just job. they are good people.
I think the real problem here is the bogus, fubar ‘war on drugs’.
I lived in Mexico City as a child for half a year. Crossing the border then (40+ years ago) included a very thorough check of our car. My parents told us, sotto voce, to be polite and just do what we were told. It was no joke, even that long ago.
And as a 12 year old child I was incensed at the intrusion.
Everybody should read Bruce Schneier, allatime.
This episode points out perfectly a point he makes all the time, in various ways.
The ladies were detained and inconvenienced for one reason only – they stood out from the crowd. They were an anomaly. (The fact that they deliberately made themselves to be that anomaly is neither here nor there).
Whether it was the flashy car, or the lack of passports, or the NFA, or who knows what it was – they drew attention to themselves.
Border security and enforcement is not like normal police work – yet the mouthbreathers who run ICE and the Border Patrol still believe it is.
In normal law enforcement work, if you see an anomaly in progress – there’a a very high likelihood that something wrong is going on. Bar fight, driving too fast, high electric bill, do the math.
By contrast, if an border or customs agent sees an anomaly – person without passport, two cute chicks in convertible (what a stereotype) – the chances are that that person has no ill intent. Because anyone trying to sneak into the country illegally, or smuggle a bomb over the border – is going to go to extraordinary lengths to appear to be as ordinary as possible. Their papers will certainly be in perfect order.
As Schneier says, about security matters – you shouldn’t worry about what’s reported in screaming headlines because, by definition, those are vanishingly-rare events. You should worry about what’s unreported – the normal, the banal, the unremarkable.
ICE/BP have watched too many Bruce Willis movies, where the bad guys all have terrible foreign accents, all sorts of bizarre personality quirks, and they get into the pool at the condo clubhouse by machine-gunning the towel boys. Real bad guys – the ones they should be looking for – have American Express Gold cards, impeccable cover stories and backgrounds, they pay their bills on time and they always have their papers in order.
Asking these folks to police our borders is like asking the rent-a-cops at the mall to investigate the long-firm fraud that’s being carried on at the Gap outlet. They aren’t equipped to do it – their mindset is 180° out of phase with what it should be. To be fair, it’s orders-of-magnitude different to do this kind of work than it is to do the vast majority of ‘normal’ police work. But the number of actual terrorists that have been stopped at the US border by ICE/BP since 9/11 can be counted on the fingers of one hand, with plenty of fingers left over. If the threat is real (and I susupect it is) then 7 years of trying should be enough to persuade them that they are not using the right approaches. They need to take Israeli classes.
Creates a great impression, though. Provides lots of work for people who couldn’t get a job at the mall. Have you seen what the average TSA/ICE person looks like?
As to the two ladies – boo-hoo. They were sent on their way unharmed. Law enforcement at the coal face is not always pretty. They don’t serve lattes. Time stands still. The facilities smell bad and have unattractive paint jobs. The people are offhand and disinterested in your concerns. Contrary to popular belief (especially popular here) they generally do not have to answer your questions, cite you chapter-and-verse of the law that is being applied to you, or engage in constitutional debates with you. If you set out to deliberately produce a law enforcement reaction, you have little to complain about if you succeed. Take it as a life lesson that the reality of law enforcement – the people, the places, the activities – are generally not very nice to be a part of even if you are a lily-white innocent, and that these people, places and activities are best kept away from.
Sunfish – if you please?
llater,
llamas
Michael Jennings
So, it’s 1975 and a Red Army division fetches up at Tilbury. “Good day to you, Comrade Border Guard. Ve are merely tourists come for cultural learnings of your great British history”. Do you think they should have been treated with courtesy and respect?
No, chum, it’s NEVER like that.
Thaddeus,
I suspect that if a Red Army division had rolled up at Tilbury in 1975, any customs men/”border guards” that might have been there would not have been able to stop them.
Thaddeus: Oh come now. The difference between an invading army, and an individual showing up at the border applying to enter the country legally is obvious.
However, the vast majority of immigration procedures at borders everywhere consist pretty much entirely of pointless posturing in which small hitler-like bureaucrats humiliate people and make them jump through idiotic hoops because they can, and which governments use as an excuse to posture about how tough they are. The only real function of such officials is to determine whether the person attempting to enter the country is who they claim they are and whether they have permission to enter. Genuine decisions as to who is going to be permitted to enter a country are made much earlier, when it is decided who does and does not need a visa, and of those who do, who will be granted one. People who show up at borders, citizen or not, are entitled to be treated politely, should not be subject to the whims of an official with arbitrary power, and in the event of any mistreatment should have an appropriate form of due process in which to protest this and in which if necessary officials responsible for any such mistreatment can be punished. Some (few) countries have immigration systems like this, and many don’t.
It is to the considerable discredit of both the United States and the United Kingdom that neither have good recent records in this regard. Officials in both cases have been granted too much arbitrary power, and the consequence has been abuse of that power.
These girls are young and stupid and don’t realize all the probable cause they are emitting. Especially the shaggy one. If I were a guard I would have cavity searched them.
If you don’t like border guards, thank terrorists and the drug epidemic and illegal immigration.
I was detained by the Brits when I was LEAVING the country in 1987. I’ve been back once since for an important family event (2001) but the big brotherism of the surveillance and the sheepishness of the people was so creepy I doubt I’ll return again, unless it’s for another important family event. I’m willing to sponsor any of my Brit friends and rellies if they want to escape.
Hi Liz, hope you wouldn’t mind a bit of editing:
There:-P
Personally I think cavity searches should be banned. I doubt either girl could have stored much of a nuclear weapon in their orifices and I can not think of any thing else they could stuff there that would trouble me more than the actions taken against them.
Some things are simply not worth the cost. And when the cost is liberty and dignity, there had sure as hell be a very, very, very good reason.
I also fundamentally disagree with the supposition that ‘you have no rights here’. Anyone who says that should be summarily fired. Every US citizen has their full constitutional rights by birth and those rights are self evident and cannot be abrogated. I stand against anyone who believes otherwise and consider them an enemy far worse than a few terrorists or even less, drug smugglers.
Drugs are a business. They are not now and never have been worth the cost of prohibition, a cost in Liberty, privacy and an excuse for untold numbers of loathsome actions ‘for our own good’.
The whole anti-terrorism security thing is pretty much a joke in any case. It is not security, it is security theater. The only security that has accomplished much of anything real in the last 10 years has been done by hard slogging police investigation and by ordinary free citizens who have stopped terrorists in their tracks, ala the wannabe terrorist with exploding shoes.
Whenever I hear “Drugs!”, “Terrorists!”, “Paedofiles!”, I know our liberties are once again at risk.
Dale Amon – I agree. And if these ladies had been carrying so much as a jot of identification tending to prove that they are US citizens, you might have a point.
But their whole point was to try and enter the US without US passports or other identification documents which would tend to prove that they are US citizens.
What is ICE/BP supposed to do? They say they are US citizens, and that’s enough? Get real.
Form an immigration viewpoint – they were detained and their assertions were verified. And then they were admitted to the country sent on their way. End of story.
Now – should they have been searched and their vehicle examined? This is an interesting question.
Thye were trying to enter the US, claiming to be US citizens but without suitable identification. That’s an immigration matter. What they may or may not have had with them, or in their vehicle – that’s a customs/HSA matter. But the two have now been conflated.
I say – immigration first. Put them in a room and check their bona-fides – and do nothing else. If their claims of citizenship cannot be verified, deny them entry and send them on their way.
It seems as though what happened here is that the I part of ICE detained them, and then the C part of ICE said ‘well, since we have them detained anyway, let’s see what else we can find’. Since the agency is now unified, there’s no distinction between the two parts anymore. If they had had passports, I sincerely doubt that they would have been subject to any customs enforcement, so this part of their detention was purely opportunistic.
I share your distaste for body cavity searches, but it’s obvious you’ve never spent any time in a jail or prison. You’d be amazed what a body cavity search can turn up. Now, whether the searches of their persons and vehicle were justified or justifiable, in this case – I’m not sure. But they may well have done, or said, or had, something that gave ICE grounds to suspect that they were carrying contraband. Don’t forget that you only have their side of the story.
One thing is for sure – if they had been terrorists, or drug smugglers, they would certainly have had valid papers and been totally cooperative with the normal ICE inspection process.
llater,
llamas
llamas. We may disagree even less than you think. When I say ‘ban body caverty searches’, I was talking about the border, not about prisons. It may indeed be needed in some criminal cases, but it should be done with a court-issued warrant only, except perhaps in the prison scenarios you have mentioned.
Perhaps things could have gone easier. I cannot argue with them being politely given the choice to wait off to the side or in a reception room or come back tomorrow with the proper papers. That is not quite what happened. Handcuffs were certainly not required if the only desire was to confirm they were truly who they said they were.
There would have been no story here if an officer at the border had politely told them to please have a cup of coffee and read a magazine while we verify your papers, and then afterwards politely apologized for the delay, asked them if they enjoyed their trip and welcomed them home.
That is what I would expect of the people who are the first face representing my country to travelers.
Dale Amon wrote:
‘We may disagree even less than you think.”
Good heavens!
I agree that this incident has a little bit of the smell of ‘contempt of cop’ about it. The ICE officers love a quiet life, these two show up and start making life difficult and asking questions, so let’s give them a little dose of punishment-by-process.
A more-intelligent ICE/BP would ask itself – ‘how likely is it that these two women, who are working so hard to draw attention to themselves, are actually up to no good?’ Certainly from a customs/War on Drugs viewpoint. Drug mules work very hard to blend in, not stand out. And then it would have quickly and efficiently checked their bona-fides, and not wasted further time and resources on two women standing there hopping from one foot to the other, squealing “Look at MEEEEEE!”
In fact a really-intelligent customs activity would have taken them away in handcuffs – very visibly, very publically – and locked them in a room somewhere with a couple of Cokes and a copy of ‘People’ magazine – and then gone to looking very hard at everybody else – on the principle that these two were run in there to distract attention and resources from the REAL bad guys, who are about 30 minutes behind them in line.
For concentrated pecksniffian passive-aggressive sh*thead Immigration officers, the ones at Heathrow can be hard to beat.
But the coppers there are smart. I once went to Fist City with somebody in the Arrivals area of Terminal 4 – he had my checked bag off the belt and was fixin’ to get into it. Fingers swung at me, missed, I swung at him, didn’t miss, he went down and then had it away on his toes. Two burly officers with MP5’s appeared literally out-of-nowhere – they had me sorted and the incident closed in about 1 minute flat. It was obvious that they figured that anyone who taps someone else in front of about a thousand witnesses, fifty armed coppers, two Alsatians and the tea lady – probably isn’t trying to hide anything.
I never heard any more about what happened – I guess they called it Thiefrow for a reason.
ICE/BP massively over-concentrates on who people ARE, on the basis that identity somehow maps to intent. This creates a single level of security – once they think that they have identified you, and the person that they have identified as “you” is not a bad person (whatever that is), they pretty-much lose interest in you. They should pay far more attention to what people DO than to who they ARE – or claim to be. But that is hard to do, and does not mesh well with bureaucratic processes, and so any terrorist or drug smuggler who wants to get into the country really doesn’t have too many barriers to entry.
llater,
llamas
I agree with llamas on this. Idiocy is no excuse for rude treatment, but it’s also a pretty thin justification for my sympathy when such is the (expected) result.
Llamas-
I still can’t get the video to play on my confuser. So I’m going to withhold comment on the video, except to say one thing:
If the video is complete, that is, if it doesn’t have any important information at all omitted to influence the viewer, I’d be surprised.
That being said…
There is a time and place to argue with or about the cop. It’s in an air-conditioned courtroom in front of a room-temperature-IQ political appointee in a black muumuu and a half-dozen people who couldn’t figure out how to get out of jury duty. It is not while my eeeevil pig self is standing in a driving rainstorm trying to ascertain whether a given person is driving in a head-up-rectum manner due to drug impairment or just natural stupidity.
mike-
To what address should I ship your “Lovelle is a Hero” bumper sticker?
Now, if everyone will excuse me, I have to go and harass people whose only “crime” is walking into convenience stores while wearing face masks and trench coats when it’s 85 and sunny or expressing their natural free-speech rights to yell obscenities in the street at midnight, and then do body-cavity searches on 19-year-old girls in order to make money for the city and remind everyone to submit to The Man.
You’re all missing the big picture! If the USA liberated Canada and Mexico, and incorporated them into your democracy, as every Yankee knows they secretly desire, then there would be no border issues to worry about! Invade now, and get it over with! Isn’t that what the Monroe doctrine was all about?
Sunfish – the video is available directly from YouTube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiQ3xK9yyso&feature=player_embedded
If you still don’t see it, then (briefly) it’s two girls describing how they were detained at the US border, questioned and searched, after trying to enter the US without US passports. The were doing this deliberately, as some sort of political test.
There’s no actual footage of what happened to them – it’s all their description of what happened to them.
Contrary to the powerfully-implied suggestions made in the video, they have now clarified that there was no body-cavity search.
I gave them the benefit of any doubt and took them at their word, that this is (roughly) what happened to them. As you suggest, the reality may well be somewhat different.
The investigation for no-passports sounds to me like it was on the up-and-up – they were, after all, admitted to the country and sent on their way, so on that sense, ICE actually served them well as US citizens. The Customs/HSA thing – maybe, maybe not. That sounds to me more like ICE flexing their muscles and practicing their powers on people that they already had in their custody. I would want to know the basis on which they decided to search these women and their vehicle, and I don’t think that ‘not having the right immigration papers’ is grounds for a customs search. But maybe I’m wrong.
Good luck with the jackboots. Have you tried the new Kiwi super-shine product yet? I’m keen, but don’t want to ruin a year of spit-shines with a product that doesn’t work.
llater,
llamas
Come on, get off it with the JBT stuff Sunfish. Billy is not here – unless I am wrong, and you can actually sense him lurking? 🙂
I agree only if this is a mere practical advice, free of any moral judgment.
Absolutely, but this is not the type of incident under discussion here, is it.
Mike: please take a deep breath, and try to see that our ChristianMan here is not the same person as those ‘fuckers’ none of us have ever met, and whose side of the story none of us have ever heard. Things aren’t always what they seem, you know.
Llamas:
I can’t get firefox for linux to play nice with youtube lately. I don’t know what it is.
Re: border searches: There has been case law that suggests that border searches are a type of administrative search, requiring rather less justification to be legal. However, I’m hazy on the details as these are not much of an issue where I am. I personally think that’s crap, at least as applied to people lawfully in the US, but note that I’m not one of the black-muumuu-wearing political appointees that I mentioned above and my opinion is worth roughly what you paid for it.
I just use plain black Kiwi wax. The Parade stuff is too expensive for all of the shiny scary stuff I have to wear.
Alisa:
I emphasize arguing about an encounter under controlled conditions after enough time has elapsed to allow a fuller investigation, not only as a practical point from the driver’s POV, but also…what would you hope to accomplish by trying to hold roadside court?
I was thinking of someone else slightly more memorable when I made the jokes. But I don’t think he’s going to resurface.
More memorable? Ouch:-)
That’s still a practical point, which just fine. But I still don’t see how is this relevant to the case at hand, unless it is customary with the police to handcuff people who do not have a drivers license in their car. The point being that drivers licenses prevent about as many traffic accidents as passports prevent terrorism/drug smuggling.
Sunfish:
I don’t need you.
What I need is protection from the government so that I am free to deal with common criminals on my own account.
You can’t do that for me, and until the day dawns when you can, you’ll always be in the wrong fight.
Priorities, man.
Sunfish – I was just joking about the Kiwi – I didn’t expect a product review . . .
I use plain Kiwi too. Some of my older Justin 0506’s are probably held together by Kiwi alone.
Mike wrote:
‘What I need is protection from the government so that I am free to deal with common criminals on my own account. ‘
Bwahhahahahaha . . . . !
Here we go again, ensuring the exact and perfect cartography of the Libertarian map.
News flash – it’s not one-or-the-other. It never is. Sure, you need to be protected from the big bad evil government. But you need to be protected from bad nasty individuals, as well. Maybe you can protect yourself, although I’ll wager that, when push comes to shove, you really can’t. But the vast majority are not capable of protecting themselves from the depradations of others in any way that we would like as a society.
We have coppers so that we don’t have to live in a society, or a landscape, like Afghanistan – high walled compounds, separated by vast stretches of bandit country.
I have to keep hammering this point here, because Libertarians can be awfully dense about this sometimes – the closest you will get to the pure liberty you seek is in a system of well-defined laws, assiduously and impartially enforced. Do away with law enforcement that protects you from other people, and other people from you, and pretty soon you’re going to be paying tribute every week to someone a whole-lot less nice than Vito Corleone – and maybe paying tribute in ways you would prefer not to.
llater,
llamas
I am going to agree with llamas here, at least to a great extent. If we look at the turn of the century here in the UK, most private individuals were armed and much crime was handled on the spot. But someone has to take down the record of what happened and why and make sure it was lawfully done because otherwise you are on your way to the generations long family feuds of old. It was also the case that if an unarmed Bobbie was in trouble, an armed citizen or group of them would come to his aid.
As another example, look at L Neil Smith’s alternate universe where pure libertarianism reigns. While the labels are somewhat different and the police are private organizations backing up legal contracts and investigating for insurance companies, they still fulfill role of being a more highly trained adjunct to helping individuals keep the peace.
Cops do not have to be bad guys. They are an important part of a civil society and should be just your friends and neighbors. It’s the politicians who keep piling on the stupid prohibitions against the bete noir du jour who sometimes force them inro a bad guy role. (or set up the environment such that bad guys want the job!)
“News flash – it’s not one-or-the-other.”
Those aren’t my words, they’re yours and yours only.
“Maybe you can protect yourself, although I’ll wager that, when push comes to shove, you really can’t.”
You know what? I’ll wager you can’t either big fella. Sure you might slap the odd baggage thief about now and then, but have you ever thought to try that on with the IRS or the ATF? Do you reckon your mate Sunfish might help you out with that?
“But the vast majority are not capable of protecting themselves from the depradations of others in any way that we would like as a society.”
Who is this “we”? The American populace? Well that “we” seems to have the individual’s capacity for self-defense closer and closer every day to exactly where that “we” wants it: total and utter dependence on cops and their “training”.
I’m never gonna count myself as part of any “we” with you in it.
Just a reminder. Samizdata runs on the ‘What would be allowed in Perry’s livingroom’ principle. We do not allow ad hominum attacks; we expect everyone to be polite and to keep discussion at a reasonably rational level, although stating emotional bias is fine.
In other words, speak unto others as you would have them speak unto you.
Okay. DING! Round 2.
Dale.
Either one or the other of two young women or someone else (perhaps yourself) should have explained what this was all about.
I watched the first few minutes of the film and although I am not American, English is my native language (so there should have been no language problem) but I could not make out what the situation was supposed to be.
I am going to guess that they were crossing an international border and started to play games (“ask questions”?) of the border guards, rather than prove who they were.
It is true that the borders did not use to be a Federal government responsibility – before (I think) a Supreme Court judgement of 1854 immigration was a State government matter.
“But it was nothing to do with immigration Paul – these women were Americas, unlike you”.
True enough – and (at a time when millions of illegal immigrants, many with hostile intent [and if you doubt that they have hostile intent then study organizations like La Rasa], cross the border seemingly without great difficulty) picking on two Anglo women was rather COWARDLY. Still one is not going to be called a racist picking on them (remember even Hispanic Border Patrolmen have been framed as racists) – so it is tempting (if there is a quota of stops to fill).
I can guess (I do not know as the account was so confused) what happened.
Border guards (out in the sun for hour after hour) checking people coming into the United States, faced two women doing a civil liberties stunt.
“Who are you to ask me questions – I am going to ask you questions instead”.
That sort of thing – provocation.
The smart thing to do would have been for the border guards to say “whatever – now move along”. Or as I say at the amusement park when people start asking me “questions” (with a long line of cars behind them – and remember the “questions” are nearly always the sort which are designed to have no reasonable response – “why is it six Pounds?”, “why are you bald?” “why are you so ugly?” and so on) “the visiters centre is the yellow building next to Wicky’s cave – round to your right and then to your left”. Any more questions and I repeat the words in the quotation marks – if the smart mouth stuff carries on, then I call security (rather than have a line of cars held for ever).
True security does not strip search people – but then it does not face people who are likely to blow your head off (as the Border Patrol does).
However, I repeat (as a person who spent about 20 years in various security jobs before I started selling parking tickets) it was obvious that these two women were NOT a threat – they were just middle class “smart mouth” types trying to provoke.
So the correct response would be – “yes, whatever – now move along”.
“But you are missing the point Paul – there should not be any Border Patrol, Federal or State”.
Well as the Border Patrol has its hands tied behind its back as it is (if you doubt that ask Ramos and Campion) it might not make much difference anyway.
Just get used to calling various parts of the United States “Mexico” (and not just the bits that used to be Mexican).
Although, with Comrade Barack in power – that might actually be less bad than what may happen to the United States.
Even if the PRI takes back Mexico (and PAN is clearly on the skids these days) even the PRI is not a bunch of Marxist bastards – like the Administration in Washington D.C.
They have more in common with the regime of Mayor Daley Senior than the machine of Durbin and Daley Jr, a machine that made a choice to ally with the Saul Alinsky followers (Barack Obama and co).
In Mexican terms that is not PAN or PRI – America now has a regime that Mexico almost had (the people who almost one the last Mexican election) the PRD or whatever the Reds call themselves these days.
No doubt my comment will turn up in due course – as I was not rude, at least not by the standards of the people who tell me to fuck myself (and so on and so on).
The sort of abuse I get every work day – and the sort of stuff the Border Patrol people get to (along with “polite questions” – which are actually more nasty than the abuse).
Still at least I do not face people trying to blow my head off – unlike the Border Patrol.
@Paul Marks: As the British say, “Here, here”.
However, possibly what you (and certainly what I) have commented above would seem to be offensive or just plain unacceptable to some – i.e., to those who would seem to give priority to emoting all over the carpet and/or committing argumentum ad hominem, rather than engaging in rational debate/discussion.
@Dale Am: If some of the comments in this thread are typical of “What would be allowed in Perry’s living room”, then that living room might seem to present a rather depressing intellectual vacuum. Is this the environment of the “Samizdata thinkers”?
I would suggest that most people with enquiring minds would probably ask a similar question if they read this thread.
ChristianMan: If we as a society can find a way to rationalize pulling two young women from their car, handcuffing them, stuffing them in a room and have some goon, female or not, threatening to shove a finger up their ass and vagina, then we as a society had damn well better stop and have a think about what we believe is important, moral and ethical.
I’d also like to you to ponder the question: “If this had been my great-grandmother, would my great-grandfather have come back and shot them dead?”
If a politician murders his mother, the first response of the press or of his opponents will likely be not that it was a terrible thing to do, but rather that in a statement made six years before he had gone on record as being opposed to matricide.
Probably not, Dale.
If it had been my great grandmother (a rural Ozark Mountains native who’s father and brother were both evangelist/preachers) I suspect that the closest great grandpa would have gotten to the shootin’ part would have been hearing great-grandma talk about it over dinner. I doubt anyone but great grandpa would have dared to grope that woman no matter what the justification. I met great grandma as a child and frankly, if I had to choose between crossing her or crossing Billy Beck, I would have to give it some serious thought.
I think these border ‘guards’ messed with these cute girls just because they were harmless (and not too bright) ditzes. Bullies don’t pick on hard targets.
ChristianMan’sView is obviously an Old School racist collectivist and whilst I do not discount all religious people as intellectually devoid cranks, it does pre-dispose me to just ignore them rather faster when they also present other evidence of being cranks. And as he does not actually make any arguments to support his notions either.
Dale Amon: if our response to any situation which offends our world view is to go ballistic, start to hate and grossly insult everyone who disagrees with us or whom we feel are in some way to blame, and see the affair as potential (or worse, real) justification for killing someone, then what sort of rational animal are we – if “rational” is the correct term for that sort of behavior?
For example, George Sodini on 8/4/2009 gunned down and killed 3 women and injured 9 others, apparently in just such a frame of mind – according to his blog.
That behavior would seem to suggest a fundamental and dangerous (to other people) irrationality. It would not be correct to call it “civilized” or “Christian”, though it might be correct to compare it to the Islamic terrorists whom we have been fighting a war with since 9/11/2001 – in the sense that Americans collectively would seem to offend their world view to the point where Americans are perceived to be mandatory targets for hate and murder/jihad.
I would therefore respectfully suggest that if you continue down the path of rationalization that you seem to be taking, then it could become difficult to distinguish your mental state and rationale from that of either the trigger-happy George Sodini or the bomb-happy Islamic terrorists.
Arguably the most powerful weapon that you possess is your God-given (or, if you are an atheist, then “natural-born”) reasoning power, not some “rights” (artifacts) that have been manufactured through the exercise of that reasoning power.
If you really want to do something about the plight of these two young women, then stop whinging and consider using that weapon to address the causal problem (i.e., the “contra-rights” rules that guide the border guard’s behaviors), rather than the symptoms (i.e., the border guard’s behaviors).
That might not be as easy as or provide the instant gratification for you of killing someone, but it might be a more effective contribution to American society as a whole, in the long run.
By the way, Mikra: Very droll, but I presume you are just supposing.
So, you totally missed the premise? Things that were utterly and totally inacceptable, no sir, no circumstances, are now rationalized away as ‘necessary’ in a utilitarian way. Given that you seem to think these acts were morally okay, then let us try another question: “What acts that are utterly beyond the pale to you today will be rationalized as necessary and okay by your great-grandchildren?”
Perhaps by then it will be okay for border guards to just shoot someone dead if they don’t look right. And everyone will say it’s okay, they had it coming to them for looking wrong.
Perry de Havilland: Your last comment above seems to answer the question I posed about what Dale Am called “Perry’s living room”.
mike-
That’s fine. I may have a pathological need to be liked, but I have a dog for that.
Paul-
The story of Compean and Ramos is a little more complex than that, and perhaps a little more complex than suits this thread. But they’re not a great choice for martyrs unless we want to threadjack this to hell and gone. [1]
Ostralion:
What probably happened was what’s called a Terry stop. The very short version is, behavior that in your mind is completely innocent can look suspicious to an outside observer. Ducking into a doorway, put into a context of other facts that you may not have known about, could have looked like casing a building for robbery or burglary. Generally, a brief field interview is how we sort wheat from chaff in those encounters. If you felt rudely- or inappropriately-treated, all I can say is, every cop has a different style of dealing with the public and some approaches are better than others.
ChristianMan’sView…
First of all, I’m also Christian, or try to be, usually, and speak for yourself.
Second, what does Sodini have to do with anything that Dale said?
And I’m at least a little bit on board with Dale: I would not support a ban on strip searches or cavity searches. However, the search needs to be reasonable. What possible need could have existed to justify that-intrusive a search? After all, strip searches are only very rarely (if ever) performed outside of jails[2] and cavity searches virtually always require warrants, where a judge will want to know why the need to be so intrusive.
In my entire adult life as a cop, I have never performed, nor been present for, nor even (I don’t think) been a part of an investigation that involved a cavity search. Talk about them makes for great television but they’re just so, so rare in real life.
Strip searches, okay, occasionally, but those also require justification. (As with any other search, it must be “reasonable” and acres of trees have been slaughtered to print the court transcripts of us fighting about what that means) And legally, the ICE officers would have needed something besides “They were being evasive and deceptive and playing retarded juvenile word games.” (Okay, normally that would be the case. As mentioned above, 4th-amendment case law becomes a little weird where international borders are concerned.)
And Llamas mentioned part of the problem: Federals are sometimes capable and insightful. More often, they’re the evolutionary missing links that the creationists claim haven’t been found.
[1] The short version: they may or may not have done wrong in the initial shooting, but they did try to cover it up. A cover-up is ALWAYS a f***-up, IMHO.
[2] ..where the current state of US search-and-seizure law is radically different from the current state of the law outside…
Llamas, it’s guys like you and Sunfish that give me hope.
Dale Amon: I am sorry, but I don’t think you ever stated an actual “premise” as such, so I am not sure exactly what you are referring to.
In answer to your other points, my view/opinion is this:
* What happened to those two girls/women was totally unacceptable and yes – it had me boiling mad about it – it is so completely un-American as to be alien. But when I realized that those girls/women would seem to have been more than just a little bit culpable for creating the situation, I went off the boil and became impatient with them.
If they were so culpable, then to bleat on about it in a lopsided YouTube vid and for us to emote all over the carpet on the possibly weak strength of that would seem to be winding us up into a rather pointless and unproductive state. (That didn’t happen here, did it?)
Rather than revel in the strength of my emotions over such an apparently insubstantial thing, I would prefer to use that strength as motivation to first establish the substance – the facts of the matter – for myself, and then (assuming the facts supported it) plan what to do about it to address the causal factors – and I supposed what they were, in my comments above.
* I would never attempt to rationalize away what happened to those two girls/women as being “necessary” in a utilitarian or any other way.
* I decidedly do not consider the border guards acts to be morally OK (so I would pass that thought on to my great-grandchildren too).
* It would not be OK for border guards to just shoot someone dead if they didn’t like the look of them.
* If the two girls/women were shot dead by the border guards, then I could not agree that everyone would or should say that it was “OK”, or that “They had it coming to them for looking wrong”. I would expect the full force of the law to come into effect.
I have answered your points individually for clarity. I must confess that I am confused as to how you seem to have deduced that my position might be so extremely different to what I hereby state.
I repeat, what happened was NOT surprising under the circumstances. This is not to justify it. It is simply an arguably correct statement. Consequences of our actions. If you drop a brick onto your foot, it is going to hurt.
I repeat, let the border guards get on with their dirty, potentially dangerous and certainly thankless job and stop messing them about. They are just doing their job, rightly or wrongly.
I suggest again, if you want to do something about this situation, then stop irrationally blaming and condemning people, and start to address the causal factors: the authorized rules and regulations that govern the processes and scope of action that the border guards are instructed and allowed to follow.
Either change change those authorized rules and regulations (if they are wrong) or ensure that they are used to govern the process properly (it is probably more likely that they are not, at present). The objective of this would be to fix the symptoms – i.e., reign in the border guards’ hitherto unacceptable behaviors, and ensure that American’s statutory rights are fully upheld. Reason does not dictate whether the border guards should be shot/punished (though part of me might like them to be), though law might, but I would just prefer that the cause was fixed to prevent the possibility of such a situation recurring.
If that doesn’t work, then maybe the recruitment of border guards is the issue, or maybe the appointment or election of federal/local lawmakers and/or administrators is the issue. Who knows?
From experience, I would suggest that, in addressing the issues, one thing you can be sure of is that the whole thing will be crawling with potential and real human error and fallibility. It will be almost impossible to get right, therefore. As Deming pointed out, in order to remove human error from a process, you need to remove humans (i.e., automate).
That does not mean that you cannot minimise human error, but it does tell you something about the constraints.
My view is that, if you are not prepared to pursue this sort of constructive approach to rectify matters, but would be happier just blowing off hot air in a discussion forum about things, then you would by definition not really be committed to ensuring that our society is maintained in the state that the American fathers gave it to us, and that we would like to see passed on to our grandchildren.
If that were the case (i.e., if it is sufficient just to vent our feelings in a discussion forum) – and I do not intend this to be personal – then you/we are the soft, atrophied type of Americans. We would have deserved what we got, having lost the nerve/fibre to defend our country from internal and external enemies.
These enemies are not necessarily obvious, and they do not necessarily carry arms. It has been suggested that they typically carry pens and we elect them to govern us.
Planning and action are required, and then we can and will move mountains. As H.G. Wells pointed out, we can literally “make” reality. However maybe this is in the “too hard basket” for the majority of us.
So – and it is just my opinion: Put up or shut up.
Mike wrote (of me) :
‘I’m never gonna count myself as part of any “we” with you in it. ‘
Well, colour me disappointed. I’m minded of Marx’s observation about being a member of any club that would have me.
Dale Amon wrote :
‘Llamas, it’s guys like you and Sunfish that give me hope.’
Well, it’s nice of you to say so. But I think it is probably well to re-state at this time that I have not been a serving LEO for (quite a few years now) and I quit that line of work, in part at least, because I had/have some serious reservations about how law-enforcement was practiced at the time and place in the US where I used to be. I’m afraid that time has not improved my opinion much.
Sunfish, by all appearances, mirrors the best officers I have known. Unfortunately, there’s still a deal too many of the other sort.
That being said, I’m not yet persuaded that the Federales did anything grieviously wrong in the instant case. Did they communicate poorly, move with sub-glacial speed, display a quixotic illogicallity, deploy terrible people skills and generally contrive to ensure maximum dissatisfcation on the part of the citizens they are supposed to serve? Why, yes, it would appear so. Welcome to everything that the Federal government does. They can’t process a used-car deal in less than 45 days, what makes you think they can handle something complicated like an immigration question in a timely and effective manner?
At the risk of a dreadful threadjack, I submit that what this case may demonstrate is a thing that I have whined about here before – most police officers are dreadfully-poorly incentivized and much of what we find disturbing in law-enforcement actions is not the result of the officer’s personal cravings to be a JBT, but a result of the incentives that are put in his/her way.
llater,
llamas
llamas, I think the last para of your last comment makes a very good point, and one that I had overlooked in my focus on the process.
Even if you did change the governing rules/regs and the process for the better (as I was suggesting), then what’s to ensure that the job is going to be done with any more enthusiasm or skill than before?
You could train the guards more to help develop the necessary skills, but if the job still remains boring, tedious, unpleasant dirty, dangerous or something like that, then it is still not likely to be done with much enthusiasm – so you’d get a lackluster performance.
Upping the pay-rate could have an effect, but exactly what the outcome might be would be unpredictable (there’s no method or real theory involved).
So changing the pay-rates on a suck-it-and-see basis could be a legitimate and pragmatic way to proceed. From experience, I wouldn’t recommend just fiddling with the pay-rates on their own though – i.e., not without first reviewing the process (as above).