Originally Posted by hiltonhead
Why should a person do this? Sounds as if the situation was handled perfectly to me. I really don't understand this attitude of being defiant just for the sake of doing it. Pushing everything to the limits, although perfectly legal, is quite childish. You sit here and tell everyone to "fight authority" as if it were some type of little game. Why in the world would someone go through all of the cycles when all they had to do was answer the question? You strike me as the type that prays for the day that you are illegally detained so that you can shout to the world that you were right all this time about the big, bad government.
I agree completely. I think people see what they want to see. If they view the FAM or any other LE officer as an ogre desperate to intrude on their privacy and trample their rights, that's the filter through which they will view every action. I tend to respond to reasonableness with similar reasonableness, and, oddly enough, I am usually treated with courtesy and reasonableness in my infrequent contacts with law enforcement officers.
There is another reason for going along with the program that is more oriented to self-preservation. The law enforcement officer can probably make life more difficult and complicated for you if he chooses to do so. Agreed, he should be above this, but cops are human, too, and their egos are not insignificant. I made reference in another message thread to the act of flipping a highway patrolman the bird while driving down the freeway. It may be a constitutionally protected act of self-expression, but I can't imagine any good coming of it. As one of my colleagues used to say, "Don't mess with the alligator until after you have crossed the swamp."