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Earl Musick’s VIPRgate Letter

HCCLA Pres­i­dent Earl Musick’s let­ter to the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle on the sub­ject of METRO VIPRgate:

Objec­tion to searches

Regard­ing “Under­cover offi­cers ride buses in anti-terror effort” (Page B2, Thurs­day), the Har­ris County Crim­i­nal Lawyers Asso­ci­a­tion (HCCLA), which rep­re­sents more than 600 area criminal-defense lawyers, is alarmed that Metro Police Chief Vic­tor Rodriguez invited Trans­porta­tion Secu­rity Admin­is­tra­tion teams to con­duct oper­a­tions at Houston’s bus stops.

The TSA is known for its dis­re­spect for and abuse of air­line pas­sen­gers’ civil lib­er­ties and dignity.

Metro said that agen­cies involved in the oper­a­tions would, among other things, per­form ran­dom bag checks.

Ran­dom bag checks are, except in very nar­row cir­cum­stances (none of which apply to Hous­ton bus pas­sen­gers), ille­gal and in vio­la­tion of the Fourth Amend­ment to the Constitution.

Local Metro buses are over­whelm­ingly used by peo­ple who don’t have cars. Bus pas­sen­gers are the least afflu­ent and the least pow­er­ful of Houston’s res­i­dents. It also bears say­ing that they are pre­dom­i­nantly nonwhite.

It’s not that Chief Rodriguez is inca­pable of keep­ing Metro bus stops safe with­out fed­eral help: Accord­ing to him, even with­out TSA inter­fer­ence, Hous­ton has one of the safest tran­sit sys­tems in the world.

So Chief Rodriguez invited an abu­sive fed­eral agency into our com­mu­nity to per­form ille­gal searches on the least pow­er­ful among us, and it wasn’t even nec­es­sary. We object.

Earl D. Musick, pres­i­dent, Har­ris County Crim­i­nal Lawyers Association

I don’t believe I could have said it any bet­ter myself.

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This entry was posted by on Monday, April 23rd, 2012 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

About The Author

Mark Bennett got his letter of marque from the Supreme Court of Texas in May 1995. He is famous for having no sense of humor when it comes to totalitarianism.

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One Response to “Earl Musick’s VIPRgate Letter”

  1. Mike Paar says:
    24 April 2012 at 9:06 am

    Any­one with any sense knows this isn’t about pre­vent­ing ter­ror­ism. It’s about expand­ing the role of the TSA and Home­land Secu­rity. I find it laugh­able that when one does a google search for Home­land Secu­rity there is a large ban­ner next to the link pro­claim­ing “Pre­serv­ing Our Free­doms”. Fla­grant pro­pa­ganda at its finest…

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