Originally Posted by LessO2
Um, if everything happened the way you describe it, it sounds like they just took it without the owner's permission. Police call that theft.
TSAers here like to tout that they do not confiscate anything, and that the pasengers "voluntarily surrender" the items. This is not what happened here.
Taking the item and "discarding it," again, the way you describe it, without the owner's consent, is theft of property.
I think you didn't read my post correctly. No one (except me) knew whose bottle it was. They were waving it around and he didn't claim it. So no one *stole* anything. Police did not need to be involved.
The point I was making appears to have been lost. I was complimenting a TSO on using good old fashioned common sense, a most valuable commodity these days.