God Help America

From today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

Profiling charged on 'nightmare' flight
A doctor on Delta Flight 442 was detained by U.S. marshals.
By Thomas Ginsberg
Inquirer Staff Writer

The incident on Delta Flight 442 was scary enough last month: U.S. marshals seized an unruly passenger, then one aimed a pistol at other passengers for a half hour and shouted at them to stay seated.

The event, however, didn't end there. Unknown to most passengers on the Atlanta-to-Philadelphia flight, the marshals upon landing also seized an Indian passenger from first class and silently whisked him away in handcuffs.

Far from being a terror suspect, the second detainee turned out to be a former U.S. Army major and military doctor from Lake Worth, Fla., where he has had a family practice for two decades. Both detainees later were released without charge, and the physician's angry account of his ordeal offers a glimpse at the dark side of America's war on terrorism.

Yesterday, suggesting that the line between security and civil-rights violations is blurring, the physician, Bob Rajcoomar, filed notice in U.S. District Court that he may sue the U.S. government for illegal detention and emotional distress. His wife had been left to wander the Philadelphia airport for three hours during his detention, never told of his whereabouts.

"This is blatant racial profiling," Rajcoomar, a naturalized citizen since 1985, said by telephone from Florida. "They think they can pick up anybody, willy-nilly... . It's not in keeping with traditions of the United States."

David Steigman, a spokesmen for the newly created U.S. Transportation Safety Administration, which oversees the air marshals, gave few details about the detentions or the marshals' actions and declined to discuss the potential lawsuit. Atlanta-based Delta did not comment on the legal action.

Rajcoomar, "to the best of our knowledge, had been observing too closely. When the aircraft landed, the airline declined to press charges" against either man, Steigman said.

Stefan Presser, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which filed the lawsuit notice, called the detention a civil-rights violation that should "send a wake-up call to Americans before it's too late... . In our haste to protect ourselves, we are literally turning on each other."

The dramatic hours on Aug. 31 aboard Delta Flight 442 started when a passenger from Philadelphia - described as waiflike and disturbed - caused alarm when he began looking at other passengers' luggage.

Two U.S. air marshals rushed back from their first-class seats to investigate. The marshals were later identified by police as Shawn B. McCullers and Samuel Mumma, assigned to the regional Transportation Safety Administration office in Atlantic City, which declined to discuss the case.

"Air marshals issued a series of warnings to passengers to stay in their seats. The unruly gentleman didn't stay in his seat, so they took action to restrain him," Steigman said.

Rajcoomar, sitting in window seat 1-D, reading a book and sipping a beer, said he knew nothing until the marshals showed up and began pushing the unruly man into seat 1-C, adjacent to his.

Alarmed, Rajcoomar said he stood up and asked to be moved. A flight attendant told him to take one of the first-class seats vacated by the marshals.

"One [marshal] sat on the guy in the first seat; he was groaning, and the more he groaned, the more they twisted the handcuffs," Rajcoomar said.

Then, in coach class, a woman rose to switch seats with her child, who was sitting in an aisle seat, according to Rajcoomar's wife, Dorothy, who was sitting in coach class because the couple could not get seats together.

"That's when they started hollering," Dorothy Rajcoomar said of the marshals. One of them rushed to the divider between the first-class and coach sections and leveled his pistol at the coach-class passengers.

"He took control as if he was a terrorist himself," said Bob Rajcoomar, who was then sitting in a first-class aisle seat directly in front of the marshal. "He says, 'Nobody move, nobody look down the aisle, nobody take pictures or you will go to jail, nobody do anything.' He basically hijacked everybody."

One passenger, Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge James Lineberger, said marshals "were yelling at passengers to keep their heads and hands out of the aisle... . I couldn't believe they would do such a thing."

Bob Rajcoomar said he, like every other passenger, was watching the marshal but never spoke to him.

About 30 minutes later, the plane landed and Philadelphia police officers came aboard to help take away the unruly man. Thinking the incident was over, passengers began standing up, Rajcoomar said.

"Then out of nowhere, hell broke loose," Rajcoomar said. "One of these marshals came down to me and said, 'Head down, hands over your head!' They pushed my head down, told me to bend down... . I just couldn't believe it. I was speechless, in shock."

Unseen by his wife 30 rows back, Rajcoomar was whisked off the plane, taken to an airport police station, and locked in a cell he called so filthy "I wouldn't even put my dog in it."

During detention, Rajcoomar said, he was never asked anything except his name, address and Social Security number. He asked why he was being held.

"One of the marshals said something like, 'We didn't like the way you looked,' " Rajcoomar recalled. "They also said something like, 'We didn't like the way you looked at us.' "

Finally, after about three hours, Rajcoomar was released without explanation.

"It was like a nightmare," Rajcoomar said. "The marshals were completely out of control... . If they had pulled the trigger, we'd all be dead. I don't feel safe knowing they're there, not with this kind of behavior."