Originally Posted by
PTravel
I'm not so sure. Making a false police report is illegal. I don't know what they told the police that resulted in the OP's detention, but calling the police because they were made suspicious by the OP engaging in the clearly legal and constitutionally-protected act of photography clearly crosses a line. First, as has been pointed out time and time again, photography in an airport is legal, photography of a checkpoint is legal, and photography of TSOs is legal. Using someone's taking photographs and, particularly, outside the sterile area as grounds for interrogation and detention is, almost certainly, unconstitutional and illegal. Second, given the number of TSOs who have posted here about how they don't "want" to be photographed, it is at least reasonable to infer that, with respect to the IAH TSOs, the whole escalation was retaliatory. That, too, is illegal.
Your statements make many assumptions and "what it's". All we can do right now is speculate, until and if a police report is obtained, and possible other info obtained as well.
But as all here are only going on what the OP said, then let's do that: the BDOs did nothing illegal accoring to what was post.
Originally Posted by
studentff
Social shame is a blunt instrument, like a sledgehammer, that harms people it would be better not to harm. It would be better to fix these problems by individually punishing the offenders and their departments, but it seems that we are well beyond the point where departments can police themselves or executives/legislatures can police them on our behalf. And courts are increasingly ineffective at reigning in this sort of behavior because the offenders just keep doing it and make half-hearted apologies in the few cases where someone goes to the effort to have them slapped down in court. So we're left to the people having to directly administer justice, which is inevitably a crude sledgehammer approach.
Social shame is probably the most civilized and palatable form of mob justice. But what else are we left with? Given the choice between deterring abuse by shaming a couple of families out of town (Houston in this case) or putting up with endless abuse by police, I'll take the lesser of the two evils. Particularly since I think it would work pretty quickly at making cops think twice before doing this sort of BS.
Now you are changing what you wrote before to "social shame". What you wrote before was much more sever than any type of "shame" - unless you really try to spin what you said. What you were talking about before was to visits the crimes of the fathers onto the children and make them into utter social outcast (shame by itself does not do this). Your earlier statement was to utterly destroy their families.
Do you now disagree with what you first post?
Originally Posted by
studentff
Social shame is a blunt instrument, like a sledgehammer, that harms people it would be better not to harm. It would be better to fix these problems by individually punishing the offenders and their departments, but it seems that we are well beyond the point where departments can police themselves or executives/legislatures can police them on our behalf. And courts are increasingly ineffective at reigning in this sort of behavior because the offenders just keep doing it and make half-hearted apologies in the few cases where someone goes to the effort to have them slapped down in court. So we're left to the people having to directly administer justice, which is inevitably a crude sledgehammer approach.
Social shame is probably the most civilized and palatable form of mob justice. But what else are we left with? Given the choice between deterring abuse by shaming a couple of families out of town (Houston in this case) or putting up with endless abuse by police, I'll take the lesser of the two evils. Particularly since I think it would work pretty quickly at making cops think twice before doing this sort of BS.
And i would argue what you suggest is the greater of two evils.
Again, you wrote: "they and their families socially branded and ostracized so badly that decent people refuse to interact with them."
Where is their chance for redress of their punishment (the immediate family)? Do you really, honestly support this type of despotic type of justic? If you do, you seem to be much worse than those you are critical of. And let's hope you never achieve any amount of authority, because the abuse you would rain down upon people would be terrible.