Nuyorkians Back Bag Peeks
By Callimachus | Related entries in In The News, Polls, The War On TerrorismBut split on party lines over balance of right and protection.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2005 and is filed under In The News, Polls, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.A large majority of the city’s registered voters support the current random bag searches of bus and subway passengers, a poll released Friday indicates.
In a Quinnipiac University survey of 1,601 voters, 72 percent favored the searches while 25 percent opposed them. That support was solid among blacks, whites and Hispanics.
Random searches of packages and backpacks carried by people entering city subways began last month in the wake of bomb attacks in the London subways.
The searches have raised some questions about civil liberties, however, and most of those polled, 55 percent to 38 percent, said government security measures should not violate basic civil liberties.
The 255 who considered themselves Republicans were an exception, with 60 percent of them agreeing that “The government should take all steps necessary to prevent additional acts of terrorism in the United States even if it means your basic civil liberties would be violated.”
The 854 who consider themselves Democrats were 62 percent to 32 percent against that proposition. Independents also rejected violations of civil liberties, 54-39 percent.
