A Stitch in Haste

I just finished watching The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, the cheesy but fun 1974 Walter Matthau movie about the hijacking for ransom of a New York City subway car.

As I was watching the DVD, it occurred to me how easy it was for the four thugs to get their weapons on the train — I especially liked the trombone case. And it also occurred to me that the current atrocious (and constitutionally suspect) random suspicionless search program in the subways would have done nothing, absolutely nothing, to prevent the Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

Are the police searching this station? Simple, go to the next station. Or, better yet, just enter the subway an hour earlier on another line (since you can stay on the subways as long as you like and every station is accessible from every other station if you make enough connections).

And once again my head is spinning knowing that a judge — or anyone else for that matter — can honestly think that this random search program is entitled to any deference, let alone a new standard of absolute deference, to transit and police experts. It is indisputably obvious — to anyone — that this program is absolutely worthless. But the bureaucrats say (without any evidence to back it up) that "it works." So we are obligated, according to this judge, to believe them.

Incredible.

Oh, and the four villains in Pelham also had to get out, with their pockets stuffed full of money. Terrorists wouldn't even have that burden — they just need to get in, not out.

Every apologist for the subway search program should watch Pelham and ask themselves honestly: Could New York's random search program possibly have deterred Mr. Blue* and his gang? And can it possibly prevent, or even deter, a coordinated terrorist attack?

If not, then why erode the Fourth Amendment for it?

*Pelham was the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's use of color-coded villains in Reservoir Dogs.