From: cdhart@laurie.net (Carolyn Hart)
Subject: SNET: [piml] [Fwd: March 9 column -- papers, please?]
Date: 9 Mar 1999 06:09:55 -0500
To: piml@egroups.com


->  SNETNEWS  Mailing List

Vin Suprynowicz wrote:
> 
>     FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
>     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED MARCH 9, 1999
>     THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
>     A last lonely bark in the night?
> 
>     The protests of a traveling businessman from Tulsa have brought to
> light an eight-year-old program -- it even has a name: "Identify, Detect,
> and Locate" -- under which Las Vegas Metro police officers apparently make
> weekly rounds of the valley's longer-term residence hotels and motels,
> picking up photocopies of the drivers licenses which guests present when
> they check in, and "running" those IDs for "wants and warrants."
> 
>   A Metro spokesman says the policy does not apply to the major hotels on
> the Strip or downtown, catering to tourists who tend to stay for shorter
> periods of time. And District Attorney Stewart Bell says he didn't even
> know this was going on -- though he presumes it's perfectly legal.
> 
>   Louis De Silvio, a 52-year-old Army veteran and regional sales manager
> for a telephone company, says he couldn't believe the response when he
> asked the desk clerk at the Ramada Limited on Boulder Highway Feb. 28 why
> she needed to photocopy De Silvio's ID as he tried to check in.
> 
>  "Because we're going to turn it over to the police. They require us to do
> this," De Silvio recalled the clerk telling him.
> 
>   When told if he didn't like it he could go elsewhere, Mr. De Silvio did
> just that -- and reports he again ran into the same practice.
> 
>   At the second hostelry, "First he told me it was a state law, then he
> said it was a county law, then he said it was a police procedure."
> 
>   It isn't any of the first two, of course. And even if it has become
> "police procedure," Undersheriff Richard Winget insists the program is
> entirely "voluntary" -- that in fact it was the owners of such residential
> inns who "came to us and asked us to assist them to keep their complexes as
> reasonably safe as possible."
> 
>   But local ACLU board member JoNell Thomas isn't having any of it.
> 
>   "We don't live in a police state ... where the police are free to track
> innocent people just because they would like to or even just because they
> might have the cooperation of some hotel," Thomas says. "It doesn't matter
> what the reasons are. We in this country don't allow police to taker these
> kinds of actions without a warrant, without probable cause."
> 
>   The issue may not be that cut and dried. If a motel clerk becomes
> suspicious of a party's behavior and asks police to "run" a license plate
> to make sure the establishment isn't harboring the Hole-In-The-Wall Gang,
> presumably we would want the officers to cooperate.
> 
>   When questions start to arise is when Clark County deputy district
> attorney asserts "If you don't want to go through with it (presenting an ID
> and allowing it to be photocopied for police), you're free not to stay
> there."
> 
>   Is that really the case? Once such a process becomes "routine police
> procedure," are we sure managers of new establishments aren't now told
> "This is the way we do things here. Have those Xeroxes ready for the
> officer every Tuesday ... or did you want to (start ital)not cooperate(end
> ital) with your local police?"
> 
>   It's tempting to argue that guests agree voluntarily to submit to the
> innkeeper's rules when they check in. But that's always assuming they're
> able to find someplace with different rules. Is it really still a "free
> contractual arrangement" to buy a ticket on a non-smoking airline, for
> instance ... if regulators no longer allow any "smoking airlines" to exist?
> 
>   Freely traveling the highways is a constitutional right, not a privilege.
> States already crowd this unenumerated liberty pretty far off to the
> shoulder when they require virtually everyone to carry a driver's license
> -- even though courts used to regularly hold that states could only license
> "driving" in the meaning of the word which refers to commercial hauling.
> 
>   (Don't tell me the driver's license "merely certifies you've demonstrated
> you know how to drive safely." Why then am I supposed to inform the state
> every time I change my residence address -- do people tend to forget how to
> drive when they move across town? And why do I need to show the thing each
> time I try to board an airplane? I never ask to (start ital)fly(end ital)
> the plane. No, let's call this thing what it is -- a police identity and
> tracking card.)
> 
>   Must we now all show these "travel papers" to find a room, as well as to
> board a plane or cash a check? What next? In California, drug police are
> already reported boarding trains, "checking IDs" as a pretext for smoking
> out nervous drug runners.
> 
>   American audiences used to boo and hiss at the blatant symbol of fascism
> when -- in some old black-and-white movie -- the westbound American or
> English train passenger trying to escape to freedom was approached by the
> Gestapo man in the sneer and the double-breasted suit, asking "May vee see
> your papers please? Papieren?"
> 
>   Sherlock Holmes solved the case of the horse Silver Blaze by noticing
> "the dog that did not bark in the night." Similarly, our warning klaxon
> here may be the very fact that most Americans today see nothing strange at
> all in some supercilious bureaucrat demanding that we "show our papers"
> before we're even allowed to rent a room for the night.
> 
> Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
> Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the
> Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $21.95 plus $3 shipping ($6
> UPS; $2 shipping each additional copy) through Mountain Media, P.O. Box
> 4422, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127-4422. The 500-page trade paperback may also be
> ordered via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html, or at
> 1-800-244-2224. Credit cards accepted; volume discounts available.
> 
> ***
> 
> Vin Suprynowicz,   vin@lvrj.com
> 
> The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. -- John
> Hay, 1872
> 
> The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not
> get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases
> to discriminate between good and evil.  He becomes a slave in body and
> soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don't adjust! Revolt
> against the reality! -- Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw, 1943
> 
> * * *

------------------------------------------------------------------------
eGroup of the Day:
"QueerLaw" - Discuss queer legal theory, sexual orientation and The Law.
http://offers.egroups.com/click/240/0

eGroup home: http://www.eGroups.com/list/piml
Free Web-based e-mail groups by eGroups.com



-> Send "subscribe   snetnews " to majordomo@world.std.com
->  Posted by: cdhart@laurie.net (Carolyn Hart)