Meet Deborah Davis. She’s a 50 year-old mother of four who lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Her kids are all grown-up: her middle son is a soldier fighting in Iraq. She leads an ordinary, middle class life. You probably never would have heard of Deb Davis if it weren’t for her belief in the U.S. Constitution.
Will it come to this? The ID card above is satire, but how soon before it becomes reality? When honest, law-abiding citizens can’t commute to work on a city bus without a demand for their “papers,” something is very, very wrong.
One morning in late September 2005, Deb was riding the public bus to work. She was minding her own business, reading a book and planning for work, when a security guard got on this public bus and demanded that every passenger show their ID. Deb, having done nothing wrong, declined. The guard called in federal cops, and she was arrested and charged with federal criminal misdemeanors after refusing to show ID on demand.
On the 9th of December 2005, Deborah Davis will be arraigned in U.S. District Court in a case that will determine whether Deb and the rest of us live in a free society, or in a country where we must show “papers” whenever a cop demands them.
The pictures of the pretty flags at the visitor’s entrance to the Federal Center are nice, but they didn’t show pictures of
the eight-foot chain link fence with barbed wire that surrounds the complex, and they didn’t show the vehicle checkpoint where all visitors’ cars are searched and checked underneath, and they didn’t show the four-foot high sign stating that, to gain entry, all persons must present valid identification and submit to a vehicle and/or physical inspection.
This place has 28 federal agencies, an Army Reserve facility, and 6,800 employees on a daily basis. That makes it the largest concentration of government agencies outside Washington D.C., and that means it makes sense to take precautions to protect it.
She was free to go after refusing her to show her ID. There is no law that says a Cop (or anyone else for that matter) can’t ask you to show ID. And you have every legal right to refuse that request. It’s known as a ‘consensual exchange.’ She was asked to leave the bus three times. The refusal to follow the directives of the Federal police (that’s who arrested her, not the security guard) is what caused her arrest.
The ID check requirement has been in place since at least 9/11, possibly back as far as Oklahoma City. As long as you have the right to refuse to show your ID, your Constitutional rights have not been violated. Davis excercised that right. What she didn’t have was the right to enter the DFC on HER terms. It’s Fed property, they make the rules.
Here’s the kicker: If the guards at the DFC take your ID and check it for warrants, arrests, or against a no-fly/no-ride list, at that point they would be violating your 4th amendment rights. Why? Because it’s no longer a consenesual exchange and is now an investigation without probable cause. Checking Davis’ ID is legal; comparing it against a list is not.
Once she entered DFC property, regardless of if she were in a car, on foot, on a pogo stick on or piggyback, she’s under Fed jurisdiction and subject to their rules.
Davis’ web site is incredibly one-sided and has more spin than a Maytag on rinse cycle. The bolggers are using this as their sole source of information and just lapping up the rhetoric as if it were the gospel truth, especially the biased descriptions of the incident used on the site. Based on what I’ve read on the various blogs, most people read the headline and a paragraph or two and don’t read any further. They then hop on the blog sites and start screaming bloody murder about how we’re turning in Nazi Germany. Well, there’s no comparison. We can always say no to producing ID and walk away. But by doing so, we may not be able to avail ourselves of all modes of transportation or enjoy access to every venue. Has everyone forgotten the Madrid train and London bus and subway bombings already?
Take a look at these and see what you think:
The latest ruling on the John Gilmore case, very similar to Davis’ and also found at the “papers, please” site:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200403/msg00226.html
Colorado Supreme court ruling on an ID as a ‘consensual exchange’:
http://www.csp.state.co.us/academy/ar202.htm
Regulation on following “signs & directions”:
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/12feb20041500/edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2004/julqtr/pdf/41cfr102-74.375.pdf
Ruling on the validity of ID checks upon entering Federal property:
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1130157956384
People need to stop, look at BOTH sides and then think. Move past the “my son is in Iraq” and “her arms were wrenched behind her” (when doesn’t that happen during an arrest?) pity angles, and get to the LEGAL issues, the ones the courts will decide: 1) What, is any laws were broken, and by whom; 2) What, if any, Constitutional rights were violated.