Originally Posted by
Wally Bird
This what confuses me.
To run a NCIC check you need an identity. If you (cop) have no identity for the subject then you have to detain him/her in order to get one. AFAIK all stop-and-identify laws do require RS, so it would seem that being summoned to an airport checkpoint is a convenient way to bypass this requirement in that it assumes RS exists merely by the fact of having been summoned.
That may well be the practice, but I have yet to see any of the LEOs here cite statutes or court opinions which legitimize it. If there are none then maybe they should reacquaint themselves with 42 USC 1983.
Exactly. The TSA can not detain me. If I start walking away after being screened, they can't do anything but call a LEO. And that LEO will not first spend time with the TSO getting the story. He will order me to stop, and at that point I am detained. We then find out whether the TSA has caught its' first terrorist or other legitimate reason, or whether they're griping about the usual comments regarding their parentage. The LEO instigates an investigative stop at the behest of the TSO, and has no reasonable suspicion other than the call from TSA (and given that the majority of calls to law enforcement by TSA are resolved in the passengers favor, a call from TSA can not be prima facie reasonable).