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Council vote sets a bad example
By Jesse Ducker
On Jan. 15 the Sunnyvale City Council voted to continue the Justice Department's investigation of Sunnyvale residents who fit a specific ethnic profile. The department presented a list of 11 men to the city and the Sunnyvale Public Safety Department, and asked them to help with their investigation. The council temporarily suspended the investigation for a week at its Jan. 8 meeting in order to publicly discuss and vote on the issue. At the next meeting, its vote allowed the investigation to resume. I must say I'm a little disappointed.
Let me issue a few disclaimers. First, I know that the vote was quite close; 4 to 3 to be exact. Second, I know it was not an easy decision for the council members who voted in favor of the continuation, and it was a vote they put a lot of thought into. Every council member made it quite clear during the meeting that they were very sensitive to the individuals civil liberties and legal rights. Third, I know that these interviews are voluntary and non-custodial. Fourth, I have no doubt that the departments investigation will be "legal, ethical and safe," as Chief Irwin Bakin has said. The department is composed of honorable and respectable men and women, and I seriously doubt any of those who do submit to the interviews will be mistreated.
Regardless, I think the vote by the city council sets a bad precedent for what the city of Sunnyvale is willing to do. I laud council members Fowler, Howe and Vorreiter for voting against the continuation.
Profiling by any other name still stinks. I've heard the many justifications; they're usually based around statements like, "Well, the fact of the matter is the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were all of Arab descent. So if that means the people of Arab descent have to live under increased scrutiny, so be it."
I find it curious that the public never seems to extend this logic when the perpetrators are Caucasian. When Timothy McVeigh destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, there was no increased scrutiny of twentysomething white males around the country. When Charles Bishop, a 15-year-old flight student in Tampa, Fla., committed suicide by flying a plane into a skyscraper, there was no call for the halt of flying lessons for disaffected white male high school students (and Bishop wrote in his suicide note that he supported Osama bin Laden.) But nowadays, all it takes is a group of Arab men to walk into a supermarket together to arouse suspicion.
The distrust of people of Arab descent seems to follow a long-standing pattern of American behavior--that people who are of a different race or ethnicity than the majority must repeatedly prove their worthiness to live in this country. They must tolerate being inconvenienced, or even distrusted and humiliated, in order to make the rest of us feel more comfortable in our everyday lives.
By voting to allow the continuation of an investigation that specifically targets males of Arab, Pakistani and Indonesian origin, and between the ages of 18 and 33, they have set the stage for further, possibly more intrusive investigations.
What if the Justice Department decides to increase the scope of its investigation? What if they start wanting to talk to all males of the above origin, not just those in that specific age group who recently immigrated to the country? What if they start requiring fingerprinting? What if the interviews stop being voluntary and non-custodial?
I know I sound alarmist here, but these things always start small. Once you agree to a bunch of small things, the larger, more intrusive requests don't seem like such a big deal anymore. When your freedoms start being limited for the sake of your "comfort," then everyone loses.
I don't believe that the city council's decision is tantamount to any of the above examples; I just believe it sets a bad example. I urge the council to take extreme care when or if it makes future decisions regarding investigations of this sort. You know what they say about good intentions paving the road...
Jesse Ducker is the editor of The Sun.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
