FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Interrogated and Detained at IAH for Photographing
Old Sep 12, 2010 | 8:34 am
  #472  
wildcatlh
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: FLL
Posts: 393
Originally Posted by essxjay
The verbatim is the same, but perhaps not the chain of discovery and standards of evidence.

Of course it does.

Throughout this discussion there appears on your part to be: 1) a conflation of unparticularized suspicion or hunch with the (U.S.) legal standard of probable cause; 2) ignorance of the legal distinction between reasonable suspicion and probable cause; and 3) confusion about or indifference to whether the threshold of proof for either standard of warrant or arrest was met in the OP's case.

The standard of reasonable suspicion is based on specific and articulable facts taken together with rational inferences from those facts.

The stricter standard of probable cause is a reasonable belief that a person has committed a crime, supported by circumstances sufficiently strong to justify a prudent and cautious person's belief that certain facts are probably true.

If we're to have a fruitful discussion of the OP's case we all should be honest about whether we're posting mere opinion of the incident or commentary informed by the law.

. . . . .

The $64,000 question remains: What specific, articulable facts did the Houston police officers have to suspect the OP of illegal behavior? (Remember to keep in mind that the TSOs' hunches and unparticularized beliefs about c/p photography are all LEO were presented with.)
Just wanted to add one thing to a great response: An individual's silence in response to police questioning can never be used as part of the equation to form probable cause.
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