The first observation I noticed was the way the police department treated the ethnic suspects. All three were constantly referred to in pejorative terms, openly. Today, I would like to hope that this behavior would not be considered acceptable, especially because it seemed to cloud the officers judgment of suspects. Immediately it was observed that the Irish suspect, who was a suspected terrorist, was not truly considered as a suspect because one of the detectives sympathized with his ethnicity.
Secondly, there was an observed lack of interagency corporation between the FBI and the police department, essentially almost to the point where a suspected terrorist would be able to walk free. Today, it seems like this would have created a media firestorm, but at the same time I feel like we have been hyper-sensitized to the threat of terrorism- at the time it seemed like most Americans struggled to relate to the IRA induced terror occurring in Britain. Today, we would never consider offering political amnesty to a terrorism suspect.
Lastly we would have absolutely no qualms about him being held for 5 years without a trial. This seemed like a huge issue for the government at the time, and it is amazing how quickly our views changed on due process for those considered enemy combatants. Now, an unknown amount of people face detention without hope of trial, or even more disturbingly, rendition to black sites where they are subject to interrogation techniques favored by governments without any concern for human rights.
No comments:
Post a Comment