Cost of roadblock rage? $15,328

MSNBC | March 18 2005

Gerry Dunphy grew increasingly angry last summer about the new police checkpoints choking his Capitol Hill neighborhood. And one morning in August, as he was driving his son through one of three checkpoints to get to Union Station, his temper got the better of him.

Dunphy, 70, recalls shouting at the officers that they should stop wasting their time on passing cars and worry instead about whether a bomb could be placed on a train passing through Washington. Law enforcement officials say that he went further than that, pointing at the U.S. Supreme Court and screaming that his son was "going to use the train and tunnel to blow up that building."

Those words wound up costing him $15,328. Dunphy was charged with making a false threat, and yesterday a federal judge ordered him to pay that amount in fines.

The retired real estate agent paid $13,328 in restitution to Amtrak for the trouble his outburst caused — authorities evacuated and searched the train to Fredericksburg that Dunphy's son was taking, delaying hundreds of travelers by more than an hour — and an additional fine of $2,000. He also was ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.

Dunphy, who pleaded guilty in December to the misdemeanor, told Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola that he was sorry his tirade was misconstrued as a terroristic threat.

"I felt there was no security on the trains," he said. "My concerns were ignored, and I became angry. It must have scared the police. I'm sorry for berating them."

Dunphy, an Irishman and Oxford University graduate, is a longtime Capitol Hill resident known in the neighborhood for his intellectual curiosity and his willingness to state his opinions.

Federal prosecutor Heidi M. Pasichow said Dunphy's suggestion that his son could blow up a train was "not an appropriate way to communicate" his concern about security. "People who make these comments like Mr. Dunphy really need to think twice," she said.

But Dunphy's attorneys, and nearly a dozen of his friends who came to the hearing, said he was the victim of police overreaction.

Defense attorney Allen Dale said it was too bad that the government couldn't distinguish between a retiree and a terrorist. He said Dunphy was a "person terribly inconvenienced . . . who finally got ticked off enough that he said something he shouldn't have said."

His friends said they fear a new post-9/11 police state in which people can't get angry, question authorities or step across a line without being labeled a threat. They said that makes them feel less safe.

"They spent $10 million on those checkpoints, and who did they get but Gerry?" said his friend Jane Rasmussen.

The $2,000 fine imposed by the judge was less than the $10,000 prosecutors had sought. Facciola also did not require Dunphy to undergo anger-management therapy, as prosecutors requested. But he warned Dunphy to keep his frustration in check.

"I'm reminded of the Dylan Thomas line, 'Do not go gentle into that good night, but rage, rage against the dying of the light,' " Facciola said. "You, Mr. Dunphy, have lost the privilege to rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Dunphy, while writing out his checks in the clerk's office, chose his words carefully.

"I think it's a very unfortunate thing," he said of the incident. "There was a time I could talk to the police."

He added: "They still want to paint me as an angry man. That annoys me a bit."