aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Sunday, December 16, 2007

More pandering to paranoia in the guise of public safety

Texas plans to do criminal background checks during emergency evacuations before allowing evacuees to board rescue busses. Er, why?

The idea, according to Jack Colley, is to keep sex offenders and others who may be wanted by police off the same buses used by the most vulnerable during an evacuation: the elderly, disabled residents and children.

“This will allow us to help them evacuate,” Colley said of sex offenders and others wanted for crimes. “We’re not going to leave anyone.”

Oh, how kind of them. They’re going to help the criminals and sex offenders evacuate.

And how, precisely, will they handle that in the chaos of an emergency evacuation?

“We’ll have procedures and we’re not going to advertise what they are,” [Mr. Colley] said.

Gee, golly. That makes the confidence just rise up inside of me!

Via Maggie at Of Counsel, who wonders what the public safety issue really is:

The article doesn’t say this is a response to any incident that’s previously occurred. And given that buses are full of people and people have eyes, it’s not going to be the easiest thing to “vicitmizeâ€Â� a fellow busrider. [...]

They claim they are after only those with outstanding warrants, sex offenders, and parolees. I’m not sure why they’ve chosen these three groups. If you’re evacuating the jail, what are you going to do with a person with an outstanding warrant? Are local police really going to have time to deal with that in an emergency?

Yes, I’m real sure their super-secret procedures will work all of that out.