TSA goon squads at the bus station: police state, here we come

by Amy Alkon on April 18, 2012

Paul Joseph Watson writes for Prison Planet that Big Sis has started a program with the TSA and police officers to search and interrogate passengers on Houston buses. This practice isn’t new. As we’ve written several times at TSA News, this program of warrantless searches on buses, trains, boats, and highways, is part of VIPR, and has been going on all over the country. Houston is just the latest stop. Watson writes:

Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee unveiled the program, labeled Bus Safe, at a Friday press conference. According to a Metropolitan Transit Authority of Houston(METRO) press release, agencies involved in the scheme will, “ride buses, perform random bag checks, and conduct K-9 sweeps, as well as place uniformed and plainclothes officers at Transit Centers and rail platforms to detect, prevent, and address latent criminal activity or behavior.”

“While local law enforcement agencies focus on overall safety measures noted above, representatives with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will also be on hand, lending their counter-terrorism expertise and support during the exercise,” states the press release.

“If you think you’re going to be a bad actor on buses, get ready. You are going to have a short-lived time frame,” Jackson Lee said during the press conference. The Congresswoman is a staunch advocate of the TSA, having recently chastised the passage of a new law that allows airports to evict TSA agents and replace them with private screeners by claiming it would lead to a new 9/11-style attack.

From the press release, let’s emphasize this:

While local law enforcement agencies focus on overall safety measures noted above, representatives with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will also be on hand, lending their counter-terrorism expertise and support during the exercise.

And this:

The move to monitor and curtail crime on buses and trains is just one component of a much larger initiative called BusSafe – a national pilot program created by a peer advisory group of mass transit police chiefs and security directors, and one which METRO’s Police Department is adopting to enhance safety on the system.

“Safety”?

What about safety for our Constitutional rights?

Random bag checks? Turn the clock back to 1999. Think about how you’d react if you heard your bag would be checked simply because you needed to take a bus to work. Your need to travel is not evidence you’ve committed a crime; it merely suggests you’re employed.

All of you who are keeping quiet about the TSA and now this, who think it’s no big deal . . . note that the police state searches have crept out of the airport. And note that they’ll continue their creep as long as people taking for granted their constitutional rights say and do nothing.

More from the InfoWars piece:

According to Phillip Levine of the Houston Free Thinkers blog, shortly after Lee gave her press conference the operation went straight into effect, with DHS and Metro Police officers questioning passengers who were exiting buses about their destinations and their reasons for riding the bus.

“When I arrived at Wheeler I got off the stage and instantly noticed the massive police presence. The police presence consisted of DHS, metro police, HPD, TSA, and Harris county police officers. They were going on to buses searching and stopping people for questions. Apparently Sheila Jackson Lee was there pushing for more security like what I was viewing. I asked the TSA agent if there was gonna be a bigger presence of metro or TSA. He said both,” Levine said in an email.

This is a wake-up call for Americans who had hoped to avoid being harassed by TSA agents by not using airports.

TSA agents are now being used to literally occupy America with an expansion of the 9,000 plus checkpoints that were already operational last year. 12 more TSA VIPR teams (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) will be added to the 25 who are already present at transportation hubs throughout the country.

Derrick Broze posted at the Houston Free Thinkers link above:

Now more than ever we must educate our brothers and sisters on their own importance in the current Awakening. Protest, make videos, write letters, prepare, vote for freedom candidates. We must push for the ideas of freedom, voluntary association, and mutual benefit in every avenue we have available. Continue to push for freedom everywhere you go and do not submit.

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