Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit

[kpete]

Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit

Silly me. I thought flying on 9/11 would be easy. I figured most people would choose not to fly that day so lines would be short, planes would be lightly filled and though security might be ratcheted up, we’d all feel safer knowing we had come a long way since that dreadful Tuesday morning 10 years ago.




My last tweet:

Majorly armed cops coming aboard



Someone shouted for us to place our hands on the seats in front of us, heads down. The cops ran down the aisle, stopped at my row and yelled at the three of us to get up. “Can I bring my phone?” I asked, of course. What a cliffhanger for my Twitter followers! No, one of the cops said, grabbing my arm a little harder than I would have liked. He slapped metal cuffs on my wrists and pushed me off the plane. The three of us, two Indian men living in the Detroit metro area, and me, a half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife living in suburban Ohio, were being detained.

The cops brought us to a parked squad car next to the plane, had us spread our legs and arms. Mine asked me if I was wearing any explosives. “No,” I said, holding my tongue to not let out a snarky response. I wasn’t sure what I could and could not say, and all that came out was “What’s going on?”

No one would answer me. They put me in the back of the car. It’s a plastic seat, for all you out there who have never been tossed into the back of a police car. It’s hard, it’s hot, and it’s humiliating. The Indian man who had sat next to me on the plane was already in the backseat. I turned to him, shocked, and asked him if he knew what was going on. I asked him if he knew the other man that had been in our row, and he said he had just met him. I said, it’s because of what we look like. They’re doing this because of what we look like. And I couldn’t believe that I was being arrested and taken away.

the rest:
http://shebshi.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/some-real-shock-and-awe-racially-profiled-and-cuffed-in-detroit/

[Angry Dragon]

1. Fear, Hate,

Not a real good way to run a country

Usually those things turn to violence............

[MADem]

2. Racially profiled...by a passenger/passengers on the plane.

She was dimed by the people on the plane--not "the authorities." It's a key distinction. Also, they ended up questioning everyone on the plane, apparently; at least according to her account.

The cops would have had their asses handed to them if someone reported "suspicious activity" and they took no action.

They had done some background check on me already because they knew I had been to Venezuela in 2001. They asked about my brother and sister and asked about my foreign travel. They asked what I did during the flight. I told them I didn’t get up at all, read, slept and played on my phone (in airplane mode, don’t worry). They asked about my education and wanted my address, Social Security, phone number, Facebook, Twitter, pretty much my whole life story.

Again, I asked what was going on, and the man said judging from their line of questioning that I could probably guess, but that someone on the plane had reported that the three of us in row 12 were conducting suspicious activity. What is the likelihood that two Indian men who didn’t know each other and a dark-skinned woman of Arab/Jewish heritage would be on the same flight from Denver to Detroit? Was that suspicion enough? Even considering that we didn’t say a word to each other until it became clear there were cops following our plane? Perhaps it was two Indian man going to the bathroom in succession?


....She walked me back to my cell, telling me it was for my own protection as they had brought in the rest of the passengers for questioning. They would fetch my stuff from the plane and allow me to call my husband. My cell had been occupied by the Indian man I had sat next to on the plane and in the squad car. So I waited for them to move him to the second cell that was holding the watch stealer. As I passed by the small window in that room I could see the watch stealer splayed out on the cot. He appeared to be asleep. I wondered where the Indian man would sit.

[progressoid]

3. Rec.

[Octafish]

4. It's a crime...

...being anything other than white in fascist America.

[ThomCat]

5. The crew caused all of this, because of racism!

Two dark skinned men went to the bathroom, one after another! Oh No! We must declare an emergency! Lock them up! Strip Search them! Investigate absolutely Everything about them! Climb up their asses with a microscope! Don't miss anything!

To Hell with civil rights, or actually waiting until someone actually does something truly suspicious. Simply being brown, and getting put in seats next to each other, is suspicious enough!

"What is the likelihood that two Indian men who didn’t know each other and a dark-skinned woman of Arab/Jewish heritage would be on the same flight"

Are you kidding me? That's supposed to be the justification? It's supposed to be so inconceivable for two Indian men and one Arab/Jewish woman to be on the same plane? It probably happens half a dozen times every day!

Hello! There are a hell of a lot of Indian men in this world, and they travel! Arab/Jewish woman aren't so rare either.

:wtf:

There were "50 other similar incidents across the country that day." "He said they had to act on a report of suspicious behavior, and this is what the reaction looks like."

Do you wonder, like I do, if all 50 incidents were triggered purely by racist paranoia, or were any of them actually necessary for valid security reasons? How many people did we humiliate, detain, and completely violate, just because of what they look like? :(

[MADem]

6. Let's not be too hasty with the "we" stuff....

Don't lump me in with those people who made reports of suspicious conduct. I wasn't there and didn't see what they saw--or didn't see.

I refuse to accept collective blame for the behavior of individuals I don't even know, never mind speculate on their motives.

I also question how people would have responded if something bad had happened on that plane, and reports had gone unchecked.

There was a fighter aircraft following that plane, so obviously something must have looked wonky. One report suggests that the person reporting this incident (flight crew?) thought the two Indian guys were in the bathroom TOGETHER (mixing up their three ounce cocktail bombs, perhaps it was surmised?). Maybe that's an argument for videotaping the cabin, like they do on school buses, to identify the bullies and the fight-starters, because a quick glance at the tape would have shown anyone interested that they didn't go in at the same time.

Everyone on the plane got questioned, so it wasn't fun for any of them. The question is, who pointed the finger at those three, and PRECISELY why? What was the thought process? That would help us get to an understanding of this. Was it race/appearance? Or was it that PLUS conduct, and the poor woman just happened to be sitting with those guys?

Oddly enough, sometimes no contact/communication is "more suspicious" to someone looking for trouble than a casual greeting between strangers might be.

Apparently "three people" kept going to the bathroom per one report, which also suggests that men were "making out" in the lav--so maybe it was a gay hater that phoned it in, who knows...:

http://newsone.com/nation/casey-gane-mccalla/fighter-jets-follow-911-flight-due-to-men-making-out-in-bathroom/

http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/region/wayne_county/security-situation-with-flight-from-denver-to-metro-airport
The other 113 passengers were ordered off the plane without their belongings. They were bused to a holding area and questioned by the FBI. Agents used dogs to inspect the plane's cargo. Nothing suspicious was found.

To be clear, I don't like the TSA methods, I don't like the profiling (having been a target of it myself), and I think we need to come up with a better way (sniffer technology, maybe?) to insure aircraft safety without all of this bullying and searching nonsense, but I think that once a report is made, the cops pretty much have to investigate it.

[ThomCat]

8. It is very easy to rationalize why anything might have been okay

after the fact, if you don't mind letting bad things happen to other people. There are always convenient excuses you can imagine. :eyes:

So what, if someone was in the bathroom for 10 minutes. You've never had to use the bathroom for that long? Ever?

I've stayed in an airplane bathroom that long because of turbulence. Back when I could still walk, I didn't want to leave the bathroom until we hit calmer air, so I waited a few minutes.

But I'm white, so that wouldn't be suspicious.

None of your convenient excuses explain why SHE was taken, harassed, and stripped naked.

• She was asleep for most of the flight.
  
  
• She never spoke to the other men.
  
  
• She never got up during the fight, so she never used the rest room.
  
  
• She is a different ethnicity from the other two men, was only seated next to them because the airline put them next to each other, and Nothing indicated that they knew each other.
  

I don't accept feeble excuses for racist actions. Racist actions have serious effects. This isn't some casual encounter that everyone will walk away from as if nothing happened.

The fact that others on the plane got questioned, that's supposed to make it okay that these three were handcuffed, locked in a cell, strip-searched, and interrogated?

Seriously, :wtf:

[MADem]

9. Oh, please. Just STOP with the Fauxrage.

"Convenient excuses?" Did you bother to READ what I wrote? Apparently not--you put your prejudices front and center and you're just pissed off at those evil people--how DARE they try to protect the flying public on a day when the nutjobs have said they will retaliate? What nerve of them.....

This shit happened on Nahn Wun Wun--not any day of the week. A fighter aircraft was tailing the plane, based on a report--FROM the plane. Apparently, the TSA had credible evidence of shit happening in and around Detroit, because TWO Detroit-connected planes got that same treatment.

She had "bad luck." She was sitting with those guys, and clearly, someone who was ON THE PLANE (not the arresting officers) thought she was deliberately ignoring the other guys, the way conspirators deliberately ignore one another. Some idiots thought they were using "hand signals." That was reported to "the authorities"--who--just to be clear, here-- were NOT ON THE PLANE when the reports were made.

We do not know if anyone else in that seat would have gotten the same treatment, white, black, Asian or a conglomeration-- because we can't re-run the experiment, now, can we? All we can do is throw down the RACE card.

You're making assumptions and blaming "authorities" who were not even aboard when the report was made.

But hey, whatever.

WTF indeed.

Go back and read what I wrote, not that it will make any damn difference. You have your mind made up.

[pacalo]

7. I'd be willing to bet that the person who reported her couldn't hold a candle to her

in the intelligence department.

Home of the brave? These days, it's home of the Chicken Littles, with special emphasis on "little".

[sufrommich]

10. God, my blood pressure went up just reading that.

I honestly think I'd be so shook up that I wouldn't have been able to drive home.She should have called Geoffrey Fieger before she left the Detroit area. What a sickening account.

[SpartanDem]

11. Shameful