-Caveat Lector-
from alt.politics.media
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As always, Caveat Lector.
Om
K
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<A HREF="aol://5863:126/alt.politics.media:96817">TRAVEL PAPERS REQUIRED FOR
HOTELS & TRAVEL</A>
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Subject: TRAVEL PAPERS REQUIRED FOR HOTELS & TRAVEL
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Gretchen Anonymous Remailer)
Date: Tue, Mar 9, 1999 4:56 PM
Message-id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
MARCH 9, 1999
A last lonely bark in the night?
By Vin Suprynowicz
The protests of a traveling businessman from Tulsa have brought to
light an eight-year-old program -- it even has a name: "Identify, Detect,
and Locate" -- under which Las Vegas Metro police officers apparently make
weekly rounds of the valley's longer-term residence hotels and motels,
picking up photocopies of the drivers licenses which guests present when
they check in, and "running" those IDs for "wants and warrants."
A Metro spokesman says the policy does not apply to the major hotels on
the Strip or downtown, catering to tourists who tend to stay for shorter
periods of time. And District Attorney Stewart Bell says he didn't even
know this was going on -- though he presumes it's perfectly legal.
Louis De Silvio, a 52-year-old Army veteran and regional sales manager
for a telephone company, says he couldn't believe the response when he
asked the desk clerk at the Ramada Limited on Boulder Highway Feb. 28 why
she needed to photocopy De Silvio's ID as he tried to check in.
"Because we're going to turn it over to the police. They require us to do
this," De Silvio recalled the clerk telling him.
When told if he didn't like it he could go elsewhere, Mr. De Silvio did
just that -- and reports he again ran into the same practice.
At the second hostelry, "First he told me it was a state law, then he
said it was a county law, then he said it was a police procedure."
It isn't any of the first two, of course. And even if it has become
"police procedure," Undersheriff Richard Winget insists the program is
entirely "voluntary" -- that in fact it was the owners of such residential
inns who "came to us and asked us to assist them to keep their complexes as
reasonably safe as possible."
But local ACLU board member JoNell Thomas isn't having any of it.
"We don't live in a police state ... where the police are free to track
innocent people just because they would like to or even just because they
might have the cooperation of some hotel," Thomas says. "It doesn't matter
what the reasons are. We in this country don't allow police to taker these
kinds of actions without a warrant, without probable cause."
The issue may not be that cut and dried. If a motel clerk becomes
suspicious of a party's behavior and asks police to "run" a license plate
to make sure the establishment isn't harboring the Hole-In-The-Wall Gang,
presumably we would want the officers to cooperate.
When questions start to arise is when Clark County deputy district
attorney asserts "If you don't want to go through with it (presenting an ID
and allowing it to be photocopied for police), you're free not to stay
there."
Is that really the case? Once such a process becomes "routine police
procedure," are we sure managers of new establishments aren't now told
"This is the way we do things here. Have those Xeroxes ready for the
officer every Tuesday ... or did you want to (start ital)not cooperate(end
ital) with your local police?"
It's tempting to argue that guests agree voluntarily to submit to the
innkeeper's rules when they check in. But that's always assuming they're
able to find someplace with different rules. Is it really still a "free
contractual arrangement" to buy a ticket on a non-smoking airline, for
instance ... if regulators no longer allow any "smoking airlines" to exist?
Freely traveling the highways is a constitutional right, not a privilege.
States already crowd this unenumerated liberty pretty far off to the
shoulder when they require virtually everyone to carry a driver's license
-- even though courts used to regularly hold that states could only license
"driving" in the meaning of the word which refers to commercial hauling.
(Don't tell me the driver's license "merely certifies you've demonstrated
you know how to drive safely." Why then am I supposed to inform the state
every time I change my residence address -- do people tend to forget how to
drive when they move across town? And why do I need to show the thing each
time I try to board an airplane? I never ask to (start ital)fly(end ital)
the plane. No, let's call this thing what it is -- a police identity and
tracking card.)
Must we now all show these "travel papers" to find a room, as well as to
board a plane or cash a check? What next? In California, drug police are
already reported boarding trains, "checking IDs" as a pretext for smoking
out nervous drug runners.
American audiences used to boo and hiss at the blatant symbol of fascism
when -- in some old black-and-white movie -- the westbound American or
English train passenger trying to escape to freedom was approached by the
Gestapo man in the sneer and the double-breasted suit, asking "May vee see
your papers please? Papieren?"
Sherlock Holmes solved the case of the horse Silver Blaze by noticing
"the dog that did not bark in the night." Similarly, our warning klaxon
here may be the very fact that most Americans today see nothing strange at
all in some supercilious bureaucrat demanding that we "show our papers"
before we're even allowed to rent a room for the night.
Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the
Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $21.95 plus $3 shipping ($6
UPS; $2 shipping each additional copy) through Mountain Media, P.O. Box
4422, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127-4422. The 500-page trade paperback may also be
ordered via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html, or at
1-800-244-2224. Credit cards accepted; volume discounts available.
***
Vin Suprynowicz, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. -- John
Hay, 1872
The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not
get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases
to discriminate between good and evil. He becomes a slave in body and
soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don't adjust! Revolt
against the reality! -- Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw, 1943
* * *
FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED MARCH 9, 1999
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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