pmocek

I'd like to hear about that, too.

I was very pleased with their work, and I like them both a lot. Note, though, that they were my lawyers. That engagement ended with the reading of the verdict.

Bruce, do you think the airport police are focused only on enforcing the law, or also on enforcing TSA policies? The police officer who popped into the FT thread about the guy whose smartphone was taken away at some airport in Alabama never answered questions about whether he took direction from TSA when he worked as an airport police officer. He described TSA's ever-changing policies exactly as if he had been concerned about them in the performance of his job.

I suspect most airport police think that whatever TSA staff say goes -- that TSA are the law at the airport checkpoints.

TXagogo

Maybe so...but now we have folks like you to SCHOOL their sorry butts on what is wrong! Way to go!

One other thing - if yer that guy Dilley? the police guy is that his name? - how do you go to work the next morning after an azz kickin like this one?

pmocek

Updated blog post by Keegan Hamilton at the Seattle Weekly with several quotes from me (did a quick phone interview this afternoon): http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/daily...not_guilty.php

N830MH

Great! I'll be watched on TV tomorrow. What channels is that? Is that ABC, NBC or FOX?

Ari

Figures he'd say something like that. ^

Deinonychus

It's on Fox Business.

It's a great show.

bdschobel

It's a good question, with a complicated answer. In my experience -- and I have quite a lot of it! -- the police are not generally the TSA's friends. For one thing, the police generally hate people who pretend to be police, and the TSA are often guilty of that. Moreover, the TSA often call the police for no good reason, and the police aren't too fond of having their time wasted. I have had at least a dozen encounters with police at TSA checkpoints, and every time but one, the police sided with me against the TSA. One time, in Boston, the police escorted me from the checkpoint (and I reentered at another one). Most of those encounters are documented right here on Flyertalk.

I suppose it's not unusual for the police to be the TSA's enforcers, and that's pretty clearly what happened to you, but it's not a certainty -- and may actually be an exception to the general rule of friction between TSA and real police.

You are certainly correct that the police do not know the TSA's rules -- and even TSA staff often don't, let alone the general public! But most local police know that they have no Federal jurisdiction, anyway, and won't try to enforce laws that they don't know or understand. Your case was an exception, obviously, and the idiot (Wiggins) who kept insisting that you couldn't film "at a Federal checkpoint" just made himself look ridiculous.

What do other people think about this issue? Are the police the TSA's friends? Or not?

Bruce

Boggie Dog

Suggest a letter campaign to ABQ airport officials asking for clear information of photography restrictions at ABQ so others will not be accosted by TSA and ABQ police employees.

edit to add:

Address questions to:

Daniel Jiron

Public Information Officer

Aviation Department

(505) 244-7700

[email protected]

PlatinumScum

Wirelessly posted (Treo: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2.1; en-us; Nexus One Build/FRG83D) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)

I suspect that the answer is generally no, but they like "troublemakers" even less.

mkt

You might find an individual PR practitioner, but a doubt a PR firm would take this. I would suggest a single part-time person to keep this fresh in the media, and supplement that individual with freelancers as needed.

And right now, both advertising and PR are suffering, so you should be able to get someone for cheap.

Boggie Dog

FlyersRights.ORG has issues with TSA. They have already built the infrastructure, have successfully lobbied, and seem to be a growing organization.

Why not make an effort to join up with them if they are willing to push strongly to address TSA issues?

MikeMpls

My thoughts exactly, and they've already proven to be effective with regard to tarmac delays.

Global_Hi_Flyer

There is often great tension between local police and federal enforcement agencies (and for the purposes of this post, I include the TSA even though it really isn't an "enforcement" agency). That's particularly true for administrative enforcement agencies (and TSA might be classed there, along with FAA inspectors, FDA investigators, and the like). The locals often don't like the feds because the feds come in and try to tell them what to do, even if it violates local police standards and/or local laws.

That said, there are plenty of cops that are drunk with power (again, not all, but some). Some of the worst are former cops that are now working for TSA.

In my experience, it varies by locale and airport. Miami-Dade typically are more forceful in terms of authority than you might find at Indy or Dayton. And when the local cops are more forceful, you tend to find that it emboldens the TSA screeners.

RichardKenner

I just spent time listening to the tape of the entire trial. Here are a few of my comments:

First, I think the thread title is highly misleading. This case has little or nothing to do with ID and all about photography. I believe that if Phil had presented both BP and ID to TDC and then pulled out his camera while TDC was inspecting the documents, nearly the same thing would have happened.

I believe the first 70% or so of the LTSO's testimony to be completely credible and it was uncontested. What happened was that Phil approached TDC and stated his right to fly without showing "approved" ID. TDC immediately acknowleged that right and sent him a few feet away an LTSO and BDO to start the identify verification process. The LTSO, as the first part of that process, asked Phil if he had anything one him with his name, such a check or a persciption label. He stated that he had a right to fly without any of those and the LTSO immediately agreed with him and continued the process by starting to fill out the required form.

At the time, Phil took out his camera, the LTSO noticed it, and the focus changed from an ID issue to a photography issue. The LTSO testified (had it not had been in Phil's favor, his attorney would probably have objected to it as speculation) that he believed that Phil intended cooperate with the verification process.

What surprised me about the LTSO's testimony is that he continually referred to Phil as the "passenger", not the "defendant", as I'm sure the prosecutor would have preferred.

I listened closely to both witnesses to see if there was anything that could produce a perjury charge and found only sufficiently-objective item and that was whether or not Phil yelled "don't let them search you!" after his arrest. There was no evidence presented in the trial that would refute that allegation, but Officer Wiggin's belt tape (which wasn't presented as evidence) either does or does not contain that statement. If it does not (something which the DA knows), then I think perjury charges could be brought and Phil would have ground for a civil action. But, in my opinion, everything else was too subjective (e.g., what, precisely constitutes "yelling") and subject to misremembering to bring a perjury charge.

One thing that I was surprised at was the poor performance of the prosecutor. I counted at least a dozen times when it appeared that he asked a question that he didn't know the answer to, which is a big no-no in trial. I think the defense attorney did an exceptional job.

I also feel the judge did a very good job. Had the decision gone against Phil, I can only see one ruling that could have been challenged on appeal and that was when he refused to grant a mistrial when the prosecutor mentioned that Phil went to jail. Indeed, I suspect the judge knew that this decision would be overturned if there were an appeal, but the best use of court time would be to let the case go on since if there were an aquittal (as there was), it wouldn't matter and I agree with his decision for that reason.

There were some interesting discussions about the law, especially as they related to the issue of disorderly conduct and jury instructions. There, the issue is that you have to be careful because some kinds of conduct that could be perceived to be prohibited by such a statute is protected under the First Amendment. So it needs to be contrued quite tightly. The other jury instruction issue was to point out to the jury that ID need not be shown on any demand by an LEO, but only if the circumstances for a Terry stop exist.

What seemed to be talked around, but never actually discussed because it wasn't relevant to the case, was whether the "concealing identity" statute was a "stop and identify" law, as some summaries of those laws consider it, or whether, as its plain language seems to imply, required some act of concealment, not simply refusing to identify oneself.

There was also a lot of dancing around a tricky legal issue. According to the video, after Phil's arrest, when asked to identify himself, he said "I'm not answering any questions". That's not directly responsive to the question asked, but is an assertion of one's Fifth Amendment rights, something that a jury is normally not permitted to know that a defendant has done.

pmocek

The show's producer decided to devote more time to the President tonight, so I got bumped. I'm now scheduled to appear on tomorrow's show (Wednesday, January 26, 2011).