June 19, 2004
Commentary:
What ARE the priorities here?
By Jack GrantFrom CNN.com:
A teacher's aide who forgot to put away her marshmallows and hot chocolate at Yellowstone National Park last year was taken from her cruise ship cabin in handcuffs and hauled before a judge, accused of failing to pay the year-old fine.Hope Clarke, 32, crying and in leg shackles, told the judge Friday she was rousted at 6:30 a.m. by federal agents after the ship returned to Miami from Mexico. She insisted that she had paid the $50 fine before she left Yellowstone, which has strict rules about food storage to prevent wildlife from eating human food.
Customs agents meet all cruise ships arriving from foreign ports and run random checks of passenger lists, and a warrant claiming Clarke had not paid the fine was found in the federal law enforcement database.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Outerbridge conceded there were some "discrepancies," but suggested to the judge that Clarke appear in court again to clear up the warrant.
U.S. Magistrate Judge John O'Sullivan, who had a copy of a citation indicating the fine had been paid, apologized to Clarke, who spent nearly nine hours in detention, and demanded that the U.S. attorney's office determine what went wrong.
Zach Mann, spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, called the arrest "an unfortunate set of circumstances." He added, "We were acting on what we believed was accurate information."
What the hell is going on?
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement put a 32 year old woman in leg shackles over a $50 fine, a fine that was proven to have been paid?
Is this woman a potential terrorist threat? It certainly doesn't sound like it.
Why the hell aren't they focusing on the REAL dangers to our nation, such as looking for nuclear and chemical weapons placed by terrorists? Why the hell did they even bother with this case? Where are the priorities?
So much for the War on Terror and protecting our citizens, we're too busy shackling citizens over a $50 fine.
These are precisely the abuses of power that occur when we allow them.
Posted by Jack Grant at 10:08 on 19 June 2004Indeed. And that is why the Patriot Act is so dubious. I don't know that she was nabbed under Patriot rules, specifically, but this Poindexterian utopia of vast databases that have all of out transactions (library records?!?) etc. on record frightens me. Maybe we should be heartened by the fact that the law enforcement entities have such command of the world that even such an innocuous person is noticed. Good for preventing terrorism, no? (Which is a huge deal, and I'm not trying to be flippant at all). Well, 1) they got it wrong wrt her record and 2) why the hell are they (the Feds) hassling campground litterers? It's like my worst nightmare that because someone somewhere saw me smoke pot back in 1989, I can get put on some list and have my civil rights suspended. I am not a huge ACLU fan, nor am I a conspiricy theorist, but it is stories like these that really make you wonder what the hell is going on in this country.
I've only read a few of your entries, but you seem to have a lot of common sense. A bit libertarian perhaps?
Regards,
Posted by: Liz at June 21, 2004 06:43 PM
