Video Flimflam

We are appalled to read that the San Diego airport authority put out a $200,000 promotional video on NBC following John McCain’s acceptance speech at the GOP convention (“Breaking News,” October 9). Are there no improvements to be made at the airport itself without squandering public money on such flimflam?

But then again, we know that ex–school superintendent now–airport authority chairman Alan Bersin is a trained professional when it comes to spending tax dollars on self-promotion and empty gestures. Special thanks for this mess go to ex-legislator Steve Peace and legislative compadres like Christine Kehoe in Sacramento for peeling off the airport authority from port district oversight.

Name Withheld
via email

Correction

A “Breaking News” story on October 9 misidentified the venue in which John McCain delivered his speech accepting the Republican Party’s nomination for president. The speech was given at Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Un-American Checkpoints

Re “Illegal Ways to Avoid the Border Wait” (Cover Story, October 9). Perhaps if the Border Patrol stopped running internal U.S. checkpoints and roadblocks around our county and stopped sending mobile teams to prowl through inner-city neighborhoods and instead focused these officers at the actual border, like it says in their name, “BORDER Patrol,” then the border would be more secure and cross-border traffic would flow faster and more efficiently, with the added benefit of the U.S. not having to devolve into a third world type of police state.

My experience is that San Diego–assigned Border Patrol officers presume they have the same authority to stop and search vehicles on county roads that they have at the actual border. Accordingly, they are illegally searching and popping open people’s car trunks by scaring and bullying people into giving “consent” to search the vehicles. They coyly call it engaging in “consensual conversation” and “consent,” but it is actually a conversation and search that you refuse at your own peril. You either give consent for them to search your cars and trunks and tell them anything they want to know, or else you are pulled over to the side of the freeway, where you will have to sit on a bench and be stared at and humiliated in front of all of the other motorists passing by while agents verbally work you over.

In my case, as I approached the 94 freeway checkpoint one sunny Saturday afternoon, I innocently gave the first officer who was manning the actual booth both my wife’s and my passports, but instead of then waving me on my way, as I had established citizenship with the best of all documentation, a passport, the agent then asked me to “give consent” to him to search my trunk! I went “huh!!” and then the full impact of the stop hit me fast!

I quickly shot back at him that I already went through immigration at Tecate and that I was not going to open anything for him. He repeated his question a few more times and then directed me to pull over to the side of the road, whereupon three other officers descended on my car, ordering us out of the car and to step away from the car and to sit on a bench. The other three officers each asked me to give consent to search my trunk, and I repeatedly told them no, that I am a paid-up member of the ACLU, and that I am refusing to give consent to search my trunk as a matter of principle, since the United States has a Bill of Rights with a Fourth Amendment that supposedly bars police state–type searches.

Subsequently, the lead officer said that either I give consent or he would bring out his dogs to smell my car, and I told him that he still did not have consent to open my trunk. By this point the officer’s demeanor showed that he appeared hell-bent on getting into my trunk one way or another.

The Border Patrol agents then brought out their phony-scam sniffing dogs, who ran around my car and then barked and sort of leapt up a few times while running around the car; whereupon the lead officer then declared that he now had the legal right to forcibly open my trunk and demanded that I give him my car key, and so I involuntarily complied. The officer then ransacked my car as well as my trunk and undercarriage for about ten minutes and of course found nothing of interest, as all I had in my trunk was a spare tire and a box of floor tile.

I don’t know if the Border Patrol either got ripped off by whomever sold them the dog or, more likely, that the dog did not signal anything at all by his bark and that the officer was, in my estimation, probably scamming me.

In my case, these agents also took my passport (which I had on me) and my California driver’s license and went inside and made photocopies of all of it to keep for their files. The officer in charge even sent an officer back inside with loud orders to copy all of the pages in my passport. (Was this to somehow scare or intimidate me?) They then returned our IDs and passports and gave me my keys back and told us nonchalantly that we could now leave.

In the midst of all this, my wife then began taking pictures of the four agents while we were sitting on the bench, and it totally freaked them out, with them running over yelling to stop taking pictures.

I found out later by searching the Internet that citizens do not have to give ID to the Border Patrol, as the stop occurred inside the U.S., and that I did not actually have to even talk to them. Accordingly, from now on it will be the Border Patrol’s problem to figure out my nationality, as I am only going to say, “Am I being detained?” and “Am I free to go?”, and I suggest all motorists stand up for freedom and do the same and not even roll down the window when stopped at these un-American checkpoints and that more videos of these encounters are in order.

In addition to encircling our county with roadblocks and being a hindrance to traffic, the Border Patrol has caused numerous accidents and injuries by their reckless chases through our streets, and they are also trigger-happy, as any Google search will turn up numerous hits on the Border Patrol shooting wildly at fleeing vehicles as well as shooting unarmed people in the back.

In one of these many shooting cases, justice was served, however, in an incident in which two Texas Border Patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, together shot 15 times at a fleeing marijuana suspect, Osvaldo Dávila, wounding Dávila in the buttocks. The Border Patrol agents then abandoned their wounded victim, hid the shell casings, and failed to file a report on the shooting. In this rare case of justice, the Border Patrol agents are presently serving 11 and 12 years in prison (where they presumably now have to watch out for their own backsides).

In summary, the Border Patrol has gotten wildly out of control in post-9/11 America and needs to be reined in, as it has become a clear and present danger not just to immigrants but to U.S. citizens as well.

Vincent Peppard
via email

No More Free Stuff

Re “Illegal Ways to Avoid the Border Wait” (Cover Story, October 9). This article was yet another interesting read about the illegal alien problem. Thank you for letting others know what I have known for years. The poor people of Mexico are going through extremes to get out of their country, and this article tells why. It stated that the Mexican government is rich, but they provide no social services for their people. No wonder the lure of the United States is so great. That’s what the open-border idiots don’t seem to get. It’s the Mexican government that is enslaving their own people and making them come here for free medical care, education, etc., and we as Americans have allowed that to continue. If we stopped paying for all that free stuff, then maybe there would be an incentive for the Mexican people to rise up and make their voices heard against their corrupt government. As the article states, it should be the Mexican dream, not the American one. Yet you won’t hear either presidential candidate talk about anything involving illegal immigration and why it’s happening.

D.S.
via email

North? South?

I just have a question concerning your cover story in the October 9 Reader (“Illegal Ways to Avoid the Border Wait”). Very interesting story — I just finished it. But your cover picture, there’s no caption, and I looked inside the Reader and there’s no reference to it, no explanation. I’m guessing this is from the Mexican side looking northward into America. Is that correct, or is it from the American side looking southward into Mexico? I haven’t been to Mexico in 66 years, and the border crossing didn’t look like that back then.

Name Withheld

The cars shown in the cover photo are waiting to enter the United States. — Editor

Twits In Paradise

Tsk, tsk. Sounds like my recent letter to the Reader (“We’re Cornball Rednecks,” October 2) hit a raw spot, considering the angry and irrational responses. Yes, the truth is often hard to take, but it is what it is. If you had the courage of your convictions, I’m surprised that neither respondent had the courage to give their full names. As for the poor sap that recently moved from sophisticated Washington, D.C., to this backwater, you have not been here long enough to give a qualified opinion; write again in about two years and I guarantee you will have changed your tune. That is, if you’re still here, which I doubt. As for the mayhem you describe in your hometown as an excuse for leaving (you f——— wimp), this goes on every day in San Diego. If you don’t believe me, take a stroll through Southeast San Diego one night, preferably around midnight. As for your description of L.A. as a s—hole, I can assure you that that great city has more culture in one block than in the whole of San Diego.

As for the second respondent, if you could spell, I might take your rants seriously. Two letters, one profane, one illiterate; I think both you “gentlemen” are going to fit right in here in sunny San Diego, two twits in denial.

Rico Gardiner
Mission Hills

Letters to the editor are edited; comments from the Reader website are not. — Editor