Don't you have something better to do?

James Joyner takes HuffPo to task:

Despite his resignation from the Senate, the Larry Craig story won’t die. Arianna Huffington spent her Labor Day wondering, “In the Age of Terror, Isn’t Busting Toe-Tappers an Insane Use of Our Law Enforcement Resources?”

Sometimes a clever title is used as a hook to attract reader attention but the article itself goes in a different direction. Not so here:

In the consensus judgment of America’s 16 intelligence agencies, the terrorist threat to our homeland is “persistent and evolving,” placing our country in “a heightened threat environment.” Given that chilling assessment, isn’t it the height of madness to use America’s finite law enforcement resources to seek out and arrest people for tapping the foot of a cute undercover officer in a restroom?

Does Huffington really believe that Sergeant Dave Karsnia of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport Police Department have been sent to North Waziristan to look for Osama bin Laden had he not been on toilet duty? Or even that there was something he could have been doing to thwart a non-existent terrorist plot at the airport that day?

This is true, and in general this question, popular with bloggers on those thumb-sucking, phone-it-in kinda days, is pretty stupid. Local cops are, by and large, not going to be looking for terrorists whether or not they're prowling around looking for something you disapprove of.

That said, I believe that Minneapolis still has a crime rate. And as Steve Levitt has pointed out, putting more cops on the street is one of the best ways to fight crime. It's hard to think of a crime that isn't a greater threat to the public order than Larry Craig's twinklin' toes.

Comments

As an airport cop, he has all sorts of things that he should be looking out for that are terrorism related, without having to go to Waziristan. Who would have expected a jeep full of propane tanks crashing Prestwick airport? Heathrow, sure, but Prestwick??

Then there's the very large and militant salafist population in Minneapolis. The large number of Somali cab drivers at the airport have run campaigns to ban seeing eye dogs from their cars as well as anyone who is carrying alcohol. They've bloody announced an insurgency at this airport, and for now it has been a civil one, but their goal is still Shariah and to make the rest of the community submit. There is definitely much more suspicious and possible terrorist activity happenning in Minneapolis than the twinkling toes of the 40 men arrested in the bathroom.

Posted by Hey | September 4, 2007 9:26 AM

It's hard to think of a crime that isn't a greater threat to the public order than Larry Craig's twinklin' toes.

That is a straw man, at least in that the cops didn't ignore more serious crimes to focus on catching Mr. Craig being a nuisance in a public restroom.

(Do we still refer to him as "Senator Craig"? I'll go with "Mr." for now.)

One of the biggest disappointments for anyone who works in law enforcement is that the general public simply refuses to understand the pressures and requirements of the job. The police are under the control of the voters, and they respond to the concerns that those voters make known.

So someone complained about people having sex in a particular public restroom. That is illegal, and the cops aren't going to ignore it because some blowhard says "..there's more important things they can do!" Can you imagine how the local media would scream for someone's head if a kid walked in on something like that at the wrong moment?

Making it so the police answers to the will of the voters is one of the checks and balances in our system of government. It is a good thing! But that means resources are going to be allocated to enforcing laws that you might not agree with, because not everyone agrees with YOUR opinion about which laws are important.

The officers on the vice squad who are told to hang out in bathrooms, waiting to see if anyone makes a sexual advance, are just doing their jobs as dictated by an elected official. I know for a fact no one ever asks them what their opinion is concerning their assignment.

James

Posted by James R. Rummel | September 4, 2007 9:37 AM

I think the Craig arrest fits into the terrorism narrative in precisely the opposite fashion: Craig, like most of the "terrorists" who have been caught in the US so far, was entrapped. There is a certain psychological common thread running through most of America's current invasive-threat obsessions -- terrorists, sexual predators, even illegal aliens to some extent. It's consistently unclear how many of these people there actually are; it's unclear (in many specific cases at least) whether they're doing any harm; and it's especially unclear whether they would have done anything illegal if someone hadn't gone out and tried to convince them to do something illegal. (Obviously, there are real sexual predators, and they do terrible harm, and police need to protect victims and catch offenders. But when loads of agents are hanging out in chat rooms pretending to be 13-year-old girls and deliberately trying to get people to hit on them, there is a great risk of producing false positives.)

I kind of wonder whether there aren't actually MORE cops out trying to entrap people into picking them up in public bathrooms these days than there were a few years ago. It certainly seems like we're suddenly hearing about a lot of these cases. And I wonder whether that isn't because a deep-seated notion has taken hold in law enforcement and in the population at large that there are dark, secret threats out there which are undetectable under normal circumstances, and we must subject people to unusual manipulation in order to tease these violations out and punish them.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 4, 2007 9:39 AM

At least this particular officer is no longer tasering bicycle riders...

Posted by Parker | September 4, 2007 9:40 AM

Craig, like most of the "terrorists" who have been caught in the US so far, was entrapped.

Are you actually suggesting that the police officer who arrested Mr. Craig made it plain that he wanted to have sex with him? That the officer came on to Mr. Craig before he made the arrest?

Because that is what "entrapment" means in a legal sense. The suspect would have never acted to commit any crime if the police didn't encourage them in some way.

So we have some police officer who is sitting in a stall in a public rest room. He just sat there. It was Mr. Craig who acted like he wanted to hook up.

Hmmmm. I hope the readers here will forgive me considering that the arrest was in a rest room and all, but your interpretation of events doesn't pass the smell test.

James

Posted by James R. Rummel | September 4, 2007 9:46 AM

Hey, here's the real question: why do people continue to act and speak as though terrorism represents a major threat to the average American?

Posted by Freddie | September 4, 2007 9:49 AM

He just sat there. It was Mr. Craig who acted like he wanted to hook up.

Two points. First: the officer responded to Craig's up and down pumping of his foot with the proper response. Then Craig went ahead and moved his foot until it touched the other guy's.

Second: you know perfectly well that the reason Craig followed the pattern of actions he followed, which is well established "tearoom" communication, is that anybody who is not interested in hooking up or doesn't know the code will do something to indicate it long before it gets to the point Craig got to. At the point where Craig stared in through the bathroom door for around 2 minutes, anybody non-gay would have cleared their throat, said "I'm in here," or some other innocent remark which would have let Craig know: this guy ain't gay. That's why the code has developed as it has. It's an effective method for weeding out those who aren't interested, without doing anything invasive or incriminating. The only reason the cop DIDN'T do something that would have clued Craig in was that the cop KNEW THE CODE, and was signaling to Craig to continue by not saying anything.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 4, 2007 9:59 AM

Brooksfoe, that's not entrapment. Entrapment is when an officer gets someone to do something that they (arguably) would not have done otherwise. Larry Craig was clearly there to pick someone up; the cop just made sure that the person he picked up was a cop, rather than someone actually cruising.

James, it seems to me that if you're concerned about sexual activity in the bathroom, there's a very easy solution: station a beat cop there for a few weeks. People will very quickly get out of the habit of using it for sex, without having to arrest the guys who are cruising there.

Posted by Megan McArdle | September 4, 2007 10:02 AM

Stationing a cop in a bathroom 24-7 is very expensive, and it usually just pushes the activity into the next bathroom down the hall. That is why sting operations are a common response when illicit but consensual sexual activity (gay cruising, prostitution etc.) has gotten out of hand in a particular area. A few well-publicized sting arrests will cause the overall activity to plummet for a good while, and it will take time for the activity to reconstitute in a different place.

Really, these markets (for illicit sexual activity) aren't different from other markets, and they can be substantially disrupted by government activity.

Posted by y81 | September 4, 2007 10:18 AM

Well, maybe it's just that I can't get my head around why it would be a crime for Craig to have picked up a consenting man in the bathroom, or how, if the guy in the next stall weren't consenting, it ever could have gotten to the point where it would be a crime -- harassment, assault, or what have you. In this case, you had a situation where Craig touched his foot against the foot of someone who was not consenting to his advances, which I guess is supposed to be the "crime" here, only because the guy in question had been pretending to consent to his advances.

I mean, if Craig had said, "I'll give you $25 if you let me give you a blowjob," that's a different story -- that's solicitation to prostitution, and if he entered the bathroom intending to do that, that's a crime. But hooking up with a consenting adult is not a crime. If the crime here is supposed to be that he came on to someone who didn't want his advances, then that only happened because the cop pretended to want his advances.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 4, 2007 10:23 AM

Megan:

1. These were airport police. When you say they could have been out on "the street", do you mean patrolling the runway?

2. They were responding to complaints. You have an MBA - if you were the manager in charge of the airport, and people complained that they were trying to use the restrooms but that there was sexual intercourse taking place in there, would you shrug it off and say "at least there wasn't a bomb, so what's their problem?"

If your complaint is about allocation of resources, perhaps they should stop cleaning the bathrooms as well, so that more resources can be diverted to patrolling the streets. Maybe we shouldn't even have bathrooms, since they cost money. Can we really afford toilet paper, when there's crime all around us?

I've had to send a 10 or 11 year old boy alone into an airport men's room, and I don't want him to be in there while people are having intercourse. It's airport management's job to make sure that there are restrooms available that are clean and free of inappropriate activity. I pay to fly, and I expect adequate public bathroom facilities for myself and my children.

As for the idea that it would be better to have a policy of patrolling but never arresting, that's like the old Chinese saying "kill the chicken to scare the monkey". The problem is that the monkeys catch on eventually.

Posted by Ann | September 4, 2007 10:23 AM

Although, on second thought, putting the bag in front of the door indicates that he probably intended to have sex in the bathroom itself, which would have been a crime. So I guess he just got caught.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 4, 2007 10:29 AM

Brooksfoe -

I think the problem is not that he was trying to have sex with another consenting adult, but that he was trying to do it in a place where others that hadn't consented would be exposed to it. I don't want my 10 or 11 or even 16 year old son to be using a bathroom stall while two men are having sex in the next stall. Let them get a room.

Posted by Ann | September 4, 2007 10:30 AM

What would cops do if sexuality, drugs and immigrants were legalized?

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | September 4, 2007 10:38 AM

No, but Ann, I don't think anybody thinks it's okay for people to have sex in public bathrooms. Not in airports, anyway -- the policy of the owners of Studio 54 is up to them I suppose. The question was whether it was okay for men to discreetly hit on each other in public bathrooms, before, as you say, getting a room. So in this case it would hinge on whether Craig intended to do the deed in the bathroom or not.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 4, 2007 10:43 AM

If there is unpleasant conduct occurring, and I would definitely count sex in a public washroom as unpleasant, you can discourage much more effectively with a washroom attendant. Clubs and restaurants have them to discourage drug taking and they're very cheap, minimum wage vs a police officer's salary.

A sting is exceptionally ineffective at discouraging conduct. It is good at arresting people engaged in conduct you are targeting, but especially at a travel hub there is little to no chance that it will have any deterrent effect - even with the arrest of a senator it took months for this to get the national coverage required to advertise the airport as a bad place to hook up.

If peopel still engage in sex while the attendant is present, kick them out of the airport and give them a tresspass notice that bans them from the airport for a few years, with the threat of criminal tresspass if they come back. That is MUCH more painful and effective than a misdemeanor. Typical of liberals to not focus on results.

Posted by Hey | September 4, 2007 11:01 AM

(Do we still refer to him as "Senator Craig"? I'll go with "Mr." for now.)

James,

Of course you have the freedom to call him whatever you like, but Larry Craig is still a U.S. Senator until his resignation takes effect, and the style is to use titles for politicians who left office under any circumstances, whether in disgrace, defeat, or retirement.

For example, you'll find "President Reagan" and "the first President Bush" to be far more common than "Mr. Reagan" or "Mr. Bush."

Posted by Brittain33 | September 4, 2007 11:11 AM

Brooksfoe -

I agree. We'll never know where Craig intended to do whatever (if anything) he hoped to do. Did he have enough time between flights to leave the airport and go to a hotel?

I'm not a fan of adultery, but still I would consider this far less serious if there was evidence that he did not intend to go any further in the bathroom itself. We'll never know what would have happened otherwise, but I doubt that the past complaints were strictly about people expressing an interest, without anything else actually happening in the bathroom.

Hey - I think that having full time attendents in every single bathroom (or at least men's room) in the entire airport would be expensive. In a club, it's possible to have one central facility, whereas in an airport you need them spread out.

Posted by Ann | September 4, 2007 11:14 AM

James, it seems to me that if you're concerned about sexual activity in the bathroom, there's a very easy solution: station a beat cop there for a few weeks. People will very quickly get out of the habit of using it for sex, without having to arrest the guys who are cruising there.

This is another attempt to create a straw man, Megan, and it is insulting.

I'm not particularly interested in stopping sexual activity in a public restroom. What concerns me is having a police force that is under the control of the voters, and which responds to their concerns.

I could be wrong about the straw man charge. Please indicate where I said that bathroom hookups were my primary concern, and I'll agree that you have a point.

James

Posted by James R. Rummel | September 4, 2007 11:26 AM

Parents of young children like myself are certainly concerned about stopping sexual activity in public restrooms. And why should our votes and our views count for less than a bunch of childless sexual libertarians?

Now if someone with a background in criminology can point me to a study that says that every big city police department is the country is crazy, and that sting operations don't reduce the level of illicit activity as cost-effectively as stationing a cop in every public restroom, I would listen to that, but I'm inclined to suspect that police departments know more about this sort of thing than a magazine writer and her commentators.

Posted by y81 | September 4, 2007 11:44 AM

y81

YES.. let's protect our children from sex! Let's show them on TV how people are getting killed by shotguns every few seconds but never how they were born (and please no nudity)!

People like myself are afraid of sex becoming such a taboo that people have to hide for it like junkies...

Modern citizens often see nudity as degrading and uncivilized.. historically it has been quite different.. the more open minded and egalitarian a society was.. the more flesh was allowed and accepted to be shown..? the same with sex?

Is it not ironic that for centuries during the renaissance and baroque period you would have badly-copied-Greek nudity hanging everywhere as art while our society was not allowed to show a tit.. imagine all the people walking the streets of Paris, Rome or Vienna during a summer 250 years ago, all dressed up in hundreds of layers, passing one stone-breast and penis after another..

today - nudity is oftentimes considered as ‘pornographic’ (something you have to pay for?) or ‘exhibitionist’ (something rather sick?) ..? or even better - nudity can be considered ‘liberal’, ‘arty’, ‘provocative’, ‘underground’, ‘rebellious’ or fashionable..?

Having grown up in our ‘god-full’ society myself – I too find myself conditioned and can shriek away if suddenly surrounded by ol’ bellies.. but it has not always been that way..?

Here a famous passage, quoted from The Republic by Plato written 360 BCE (Book V), in which Socrates famously tries to argue for the equality of women.. he continues to reason that unless a society realizes that women are equal to men and that also animals should never be killed for taste and pleasure we cannot achieve a fair and just civilization.. when he then later also doubted what people thought of the Gods and even suggested that we should get rid of that obsolete invention called ‘marriage’.. it was too much for even ancient Greece.. they killed him and what followed was the beginning of the end.. are we at the end of the end?

But let us hear out Socrates:

Then, if women are to have the
same duties as men, they must
have the same nurture and education?

Yes.
The education which was assigned to
the men was music and gymnastic. Yes.

Then women must be taught music and
gymnastic and also the art of war?

That is the inference, I suppose.
I should rather expect, I said,
that several of our proposals, if
they are carried out, being unusual,
may appear ridiculous.

No doubt of it.
Yes, and the most ridiculous thing
of all will be the sight of women
naked in the palaestra, exercising
with the men, especially when they
are no longer young; they certainly
will not be a vision of beauty, any
more than the enthusiastic old men
who in spite of wrinkles and ugliness
continue to frequent the gymnasia.

Yes, indeed, he said: according to
present notions the proposal would
be thought ridiculous.

But then, I said, as we have
determined to speak our minds,
we must not fear the jests of
the wits which will be directed
against this sort of innovation;
how they will talk of women's
attainments both in music and
gymnastic, and above all about
their wearing armour and riding
upon horseback!

Very true, he replied.
Yet having begun we must go
forward to the rough places
of the law; at the same time
begging of these gentlemen for
once in their life to be serious.
Not long ago, as we shall remind
them, the Hellenes were of the
opinion, which is still generally
received among the barbarians,
that the sight of a naked man
was ridiculous and improper;
and when first the Cretans and
then the Lacedaemonians introduced
the custom, the wits of that day
might equally have ridiculed
the innovation.

No doubt.
But when experience showed that
to let all things be uncovered was
far better than to cover them up,
and the ludicrous effect to the
outward eye vanished before the
better principle which reason asserted,
then the man was perceived to be a
fool who directs the shafts of his
ridicule at any other sight but
that of folly and vice, or seriously
inclines to weigh the beautiful by
any other standard but that of the good.

______________

We are still quarrelling over gay marriage
when Socrates was already suggesting the end
of marriage...

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | September 4, 2007 12:23 PM

why should our votes and our views count for less than a bunch of childless sexual libertarians?

Depends on how many of you there are, doesn't it? If the childless sexual libertarians outnumber you, then yes, your votes and views count for less. However, the corollary is the simple fact of your reproduction does not entitle your vote and view to any additional consideration, which is what most parents seem to think.

Posted by T | September 4, 2007 12:32 PM

T, I am confident that there are many more parents of young children than there are childless sexual libertarians. And indeed it would seem, unsurprisingly, that our views and our votes do count with the Minneapolis city government, but that many people here don't like being ruled by the preferences of the majority.

Posted by y81 | September 4, 2007 12:42 PM

" Let's show them on TV how people are getting killed by shotguns every few seconds but never how they were born "

You seem a bit confused about the whole baby thing if you think they come from two men having sex in a bathroom stall.

Or are you saying that childbirth should be broadcast on TV more often? It's a bit messy, but you're right that we see blood and pain on TV anyway, and at least the birth process usually has a happy ending.

Posted by Ann | September 4, 2007 1:41 PM

What the hell is a sexual libertarian? Other than the set that excludes all asexual libertarians?

I am not a libertarian; I think it's a ridiculous position to hold. And I'm a parent of two young children. But I think that the risk of sending my child into an airport bathroom where two guys might be giving each other subtle cues that they'd like to hook up are pretty minimal -- certainly no worse than the risk of them seeing a drunken businessman hitting on a female colleague at an airport bar. On the other hand, I am really uncomfortable with the idea that when they go into the airport bathroom, there might be an undercover cop in there trying to lure men into hitting on him, so he can arrest them. I don't know what other kind of weird stuff is going on in a society that's run that way.

Incidentally, on the effectiveness front, putting an undercover cop in an airport bathroom seems to me very analogous to putting a speed trap right next to an interstate border where the speed limit suddenly drops radically. It's extremely unlikely that "the message will get out", because those caught in the trap are transient and unlikely to communicate with each other. So it's unlikely to actually reduce speeding. It will, however, generate a lot of nice arrests, which looks good on your department reports and may generate some revenue. Also, such behavior is associated with in-group boundary marking by the community doing the arresting: we don't drive that fast/act that way, ovah heah. (Says the cop, to some dude who had no intention of violating his rules and has no idea what he's talking about.)

Posted by brooksfoe | September 4, 2007 2:00 PM

I'm not a label pro, but I assume that sexual libertarian implies that you hold to libertarian notions with regard to sex. ie the standard liberal left leaning positions that government should have absolutely no rule as long as consenting adults, no harm no foul, blah blah blah.

I am very confused a lot of these sexual libers coming out of the woodwork all upset that a gay man was busted for trying to have sex in a bathroom stall. I know some people are so enthall to their sexual urges that they can't even go to the bathroom without craving, hunting, seeking out their next sexual encounter, but it's apalling to most of us.

Developing a complex code to make me simply weirded out instead of angrily disgusted when some sexual deviant wiggles his fingers under my bathroom stall does not help.

The problem is the behavior. These people are deviants, and for some reason we have this knee jerk, "the right is intolerant of gays" reaction coming up here, when I don't care if you're gay or straight this kind of behavior needs to be put down.

Posted by sam | September 4, 2007 4:28 PM

Hugo,
After having read your terribly spaced out dialog with socrates I fail to see how you came to the conclusion that Socrates was advocating the end of marriage.

Please englighten us.

Posted by sam | September 4, 2007 6:19 PM

Would you refer to your colleague Andrew Sullivan as twinkle toes?

Posted by Twinkle Toes = Homophobic Bigotry | September 4, 2007 7:11 PM

Brooksfoe -

We don't know for sure if Craig (assuming that he was looking for sex) was planning to do it right there in the bathroom. But I'm curious as to how often you expect that such deals are completed elsewhere. Do you think that gays that find each other in an airport bathroom usually leave the airport altogether to get a hotel room? Do you think it likely that Craig or others know of nearby utility closets that can conveniently be locked from the inside?

I agree that a child seeing men tap their toes or wave their hands isn't by itself all that traumatic, but it seems unlikely to stop there. Or am I missing something?

Posted by Ann | September 4, 2007 8:48 PM

Arianna was married to a closeted politician so she may unconsciously identify with Mrs. Craig. Can't take her seriously on this one because of that.

Posted by rufus jones | September 5, 2007 9:58 AM

sam

After having read your terribly spaced out dialog with Socrates...

It is not "my" dialog. I wished that one of the most important dialogs in human history was in fact mine but I was born 2300 years too late for that?

I was quoting Plato in the Republic (who in turn was quoting Socrates) - you know that "other book". Ancient Greeks loved terribly spaced out dialogs because this is what the reality looks like? (however, I am not suggesting we should all try to imitate Finnegan's wake!)

It was not during this passage that Socrates made the claims about marriage... I could quote that part too if you want but it seems to me that you are seeking a quick pill and not lengthy self-digestion?

Let me repeat Socrates again via Plato:

But when experience showed that
to let all things be uncovered was
far better than to cover them up,
and the ludicrous effect to the
outward eye vanished before the
better principle which reason asserted,
then the man was perceived to be a
fool who directs the shafts of his
ridicule at any other sight but
that of folly and vice, or seriously
inclines to weigh the beautiful by
any other standard but that of the good.
____________________________

one thing however puzzles me, sam. you seem
to be disgusted with sex..

you attack some imaginary left? do you understand that libertarians are NOT "left".. some Republican policies are very left and the opposite of realistic.. as the out of closets Republicans and priest (around the world) prove to us all so often?

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