Take a Stand Against Terror: Lighten Up
By CLYDE HABERMAN
Published: July 26, 2005
MAYBE the bag searches in the subways and on commuter lines will foil a terrorist plot, and maybe they won't. But at least one side benefit is a distinct possibility:
Perhaps some New Yorkers will now abandon the overstuffed backpacks that contribute to making crowded trains a misery for their fellow passengers.
Surely you have run into these people. More likely, they have bumped into you. That's because the sacks between their shoulder blades are so gargantuan, they have no clue where they end and you begin. They're among the people who make you wonder if a separate baggage car should be created, or at a minimum, a freight charge imposed.
Wouldn't it be nice if some of them, sensing that a fat backpack might increase their chances of being stopped and searched, realized that they could get through the day without bringing along what looks suspiciously like half their worldly possessions?
It is too early to tell if the new police inspections have altered rider behavior in this regard. "That's a very difficult thing to try to say," said Tom Kelly, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. But it would not be surprising, he said, if people were indeed putting "less stuff in the bag."
Wouldn't it also be nice if the stuff that they left behind included firearms? You have to believe that a few New Yorkers, and perhaps more than a few, routinely ride the trains with unregistered guns in their briefcases, satchels and handbags.
What if some of them start worrying about being caught in a random search, and think twice before heading out the door in the morning? For them, there is wisdom to be gleaned from the first "Godfather" film: Leave the gun. (Whether to take the cannoli, or anything else, is optional.) Would we all not be better off?
Wouldn't it be nice as well if we managed in these jittery times to lower the stupidity quotient in the city, if just a tad?
Stupid, most people would probably agree, is to get angry at a ticket agent in Pennsylvania Station and announce, because you have no self-control, that there is a bomb in your bag. That is what one clever fellow from the Bronx is accused of doing on Sunday. He had no bomb. He was only kidding. Ha-ha. Some joke.
The police were not amused. They arrested this man, and charged him with making a terroristic threat and falsely reporting an incident.
C'mon, his court-appointed lawyer said, the guy is no terrorist, not even close. That may be so. But the police had to make do with the charges available to them, since the penal code apparently has no provision covering stupidity.
PERHAPS, as a result of an incident like this, knuckleheads will get the message. This is probably not the best of times to test the good humor of either the authorities or other New Yorkers. Police officers are human, and they are understandably tense. Many among us are.
Then again, maybe we all need to take a deep breath.
Even if the police searches are deemed helpful - and are also declared constitutional once the civil libertarians are done with their predictable court challenges - New Yorkers may ask themselves how many other changes to their routines they are willing to accept.
They may wonder, for example, if this is the right moment for the transportation authority to follow through on a proposed rule to forbid subway riders to walk from one car to another.
Last month, the authority's chairman sent the rule into bureaucratic limbo. With fears of subway terrorism running high, it may well stay there for a long time. The very idea of not being able to escape a car under attack - as it is, more than 25 percent of the subway fleet's 6,182 cars have their doors locked - may be more than many New Yorkers can bear.
Another security change urged by some elected officials and editorialists is to wire the subways for cellphone use. Their argument is that this communications link could be vital in a disaster.
Mr. Kelly of the transportation authority said yesterday that there was no plan to install the equipment needed to create cellphone capacity in tunnels and at stations, because "the cost is prohibitive."
No doubt, many riders will be relieved. Cellphones can be used to set off bombs, as they were on trains in Madrid. Besides, making cellphone use possible underground would cost riders their last refuge from maddening, uncontrolled yakking.
Sure, a terror threat is frightening. But life does go on. Some would say that it needs to be kept as sane as possible.
