Lawsuit Shoshana Hebshi: Some Real Shock and Awe: Racially Profiled and Cuffed in Detroit

It is, frankly, shocking to me that some people will use the deaths of people they never knew to advance their own agenda in this way.

In the comments section of Hebshi's blog about this incident someone claiming to be a son of these very people writes:

And he goes on to discuss how he believes American interests in the Middle East were the cause of 9/11. Certainly doesn't square with Tandon's theories.

 

Oh, I agree, it's wrong. I was just pointing out that there was an opportunity once law enforcement had established that there was no bomb threat to Mirandize her and the others.

 

There are so many unanswered questions here.

72 hours before any of them boarded the plane, all of their names were fed through Secure Flight. Nothing turned up otherwise they wouldn't have been on that plane. DHS also does threat assessments on passengers, again nothing was found or they wouldn't have been on that plane. That's all done long before they even got to the airport.

Once they were at the airport, we can make a couple of assumptions. She didn't note anything in her blog post about going through the scanners or having any kind of bad TSA search experience. If she had, she probably would have written about it in her blog as a kind of foreshadowing event for what was to come once they landed. My assumption is that whatever search she went through, it was nothing out of the ordinary.

I don't know when the crew phoned in the threat, so it's hard to know how much time authorities had to gather and look at the data. But we know they had at least a half hour on the ground. That's time for them to look at all of the data above, plus PNR info that would have shown if any of them had flown together. PNRs may now contain car rentals and hotel reservations (depending on how the reservation was made) so they could check those records too. The FBI and state police have their own databases that they could have checked to help determine if these people were threats. And then there are the myriad other databases that they could have (and maybe did) checked. Credit card transactions, arrests, facebook and twitter postings, and who knows what else. And we know they checked at least some of that data because she mentions it in her blog post.

One of two things happened.

They didn't find anything and decided to send in the swat team anyway.
They did the checking and found something and decided to send in the swat team

If they did the checks and didn't find anything of interest, they could have just questioned these passengers in the same manner that they questioned everyone else, but they chose not to.

If they did the checks and found something, then how did they get on the plane in the first place? If so there were multiple layers of failure. Sending in a swat team is some serious business, so what was it that they found? I'm not so sure there was anything because she didn't remark about it in her blog post. She mentions all of the questions they asked (about her travels, her family, etc.). There didn't seem to be anything remarkable there.

In any case the decision to send in a swat team was a bad one, imo. If the three passengers really did want to blow something up, once they saw the swat team, they would know the jig is up and do whatever nefarious deed they had in mind.

If they were innocent (and they were), sending in the swat team is still a horrible idea. You've got 100+ people in a tight and enclosed area along with kids - kids that do spontaneous things. This could have ended up very badly.

And then there is the statement by the FBI agent -- " “It’s 9/11 and people are seeing ghosts. They are seeing things that aren’t there.” He said they had to act on a report of suspicious behavior, and this is what the reaction looks like." The way I read that was that at some point in all of this he knew there was nothing going on with these three people. At what point did they figure that out?

 

Great! The more recent feeds are highlighting the strip search. That will draw attention.

 

It hasn't quite hit mainstream media online in western Europe, but the comments from Austrian readers about the jets being scrambled are interesting. The French articles I found focus on people being victims of the day and of circumstance.

Considering that the Guardian has now picked up the story I expect that by tomorrow it will make it to non-English outlets here as well. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/14/shoshana-hebshi-9-11-flight-detroit

 

Skip this article and go straight to the comments. Many are beyond despicable. I have no hope for this country. The AFS people -- look at the appalling things they say to her -- are morons. Sorry, that's an insult to morons. They are scum. They need to have this happen to them.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation...-airline-detainee-racial-profiling/50400268/1

 

I know those people are out there, but I'm always surprised to see them. The ignorance they display is truly mind boggling.

I took a glance at the article after I looked at the comments and saw this:

"A Washington Post reporter later told Hebshi that she had been taken into custody by mistake -- that authorities had meant to detain only the two men."

What?? After all of the data they had available to them, the swat team takes her in by mistake? This doesn't excuse how the two men were treated by a long shot, but what??

This story just keeps getting worse and worse.

 

This is where the lawyers are going to have a feeding frenzy and start buying new vacation homes when she sues -- the only search that they were legally empowered to do in this case was a Terry stop, and to be meaningful that must be done early. By having several interactions with them before they were searched, the whole concept of Terry stop was moot -- if they'd had weapons hidden on them, they'd already had several chances to use them.

From what I've read, she's clamming up a bit and declining further media contact. My bet is that she already has an attorney engaged on this case.

 

I already am. However, as airlines go, F9 is is already on thin ice financially. With an incident like this, we could push them through the ice and make a point.

 

It really doesn't matter whether one person wins this or that case, and basically while I wish her well, I don't think it will matter much, win or lose. The security state is not founded on law, but rather on obedience and organized cruelty. If occasionally an obsolete provision of the former Constitution crops up here and there, well, pay off the loud mouth and proceed just as you were. Only Congress can stop this monster by pulling the funds, and Congress won't do that. All those planes that were diverted because of the climate of fear -- well, that is exactly what pervades Congress, and they are a cowardly bunch to begin with.

 

Before long some supine Congressman will introduce an immunity bill for this sort of thing.

 

I doubt the toilet is out of camera range. Most likely it has a separate camera to record any attempt to flush contraband, including that concealed in body cavities.

 

Disagree. A big settlement will indeed have significant impact.

 

How will Congress immunize them from a lack of customers????

 

Like to think so, but when's that going to happen? 3 years from now? The London police killed a Brazilian guy in an anti-terror maneuver because he was the wrong skin color. You'd think the police in this country would learn from that.

 

Ain't gonna be no lack of customers. Baa-baa-baaaaaa.

 

Shoshana has a date w/ the ACLU From CBS):

 

You haven't been paying attention to the drop in travel since 9/11.

 

And is Frontier is lying. AP story:http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/decision-to-remove-woman-from-airplane-disputed-1856909.html

 

Great idea! A strong boycott effort of Frontier that took them down would send a message to the airlines and push them into this fight.