This story has been picked up by Carlos Miller in his Photography Is Not a Crime blog.

QL

So competent TSA employees who use sensitive aircraft instrumentation to crawl up the sides of airplanes, screeners who interrogate people for checks and other cash instruments, screeners who can't identify a TWIC or Passport Card, these are the people you want to train as LEO's?

REALLY?

The comments on that blog wrt with this case are mind numbing. Like "I highly doubt this guy was a lawyer because <blah blah blah, insert strange legal theory here>". You would think people would be interested in reading an actual account from an actual attorney who took the time and trouble to memorialize these events. But they'd rather just bounce nonsense around.

Please read a little before you reply. I was asked my opinion of what I think should happen given a certain set of circumstances. Only in your twisted mind is this tantamount to me playing word games.

Not once did i state or imply what will happen. Again, a little reading on your part would be helpful to the conversation.

And if you don't want men to give my personal opinions, please instruct others to not ask me for it.

Plead to not attempt to compare punishing innocent people by comparing society and punishments to grade school classroom.

And you are incorrect; i am concerned with everyone involved. Yet I simply know and accept one thing, as a society we can not preserve freedom and civil liberties if we willingly choose to ignore them for some people. John Adams understood this well...

You don't take the position, that PresRDC did, that local police are becoming more hostile and militant, then? Sounds like you'd prefer them coming to the checkpoint over a TSA police force.

No, I didn't say that. They can recruit their own police force and send them off to an academy for training. There's a huge pool of people out there that want police officer jobs. Some of those could include existing TSA employees. If local police are becoming more hostile and militant, as PresRDC states, wouldn't that then be a way to work around dealing with local police?

Federal police officers get sent off for a 16 week course. Do the TSA screeners get that much?

TSA apparently doesn't understand this since TSA chooses to infringe on the civil liberties of people who travel.

How many children did you pat down today? What crime were they accused of?

Oh Dear Lord.

The answer to scumbag local pigs is... more pigs, sponsored by one of the most unamerican organizations ever? Sheesh. Or, more appropriately, eek!

My solution would be much simpler than that. Remove the TSA from airports-- period. Perform psychological testing on all police officers annually; immediately fire those that show tendencies to power-trip in any situation. Bring back the private security screeners, paid for and answerable to the airlines themselves.

This whole mess we're in today is the direct result of a knee-jerk overreaction by a scared leadership (first Bush, now Obama) and a Congress who's too concerned about personal gain and not appearing "soft" on terrorism to care about trampling our individual rights and liberties.

Guess what-- nothing in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or any other important document has ever guaranteed everybody's safety, and for good reason: life is inherently dangerous. Our goal should not be total security and safety (as it appears to be today), but instead to develop a reasonable assurance that people aren't bringing things onto planes that will go "boom". Unfortunately those in leadership positions within our nation are too cowardly or self-interested to see past the gross violations and abomination that is TSA.

So no official complaint to the TSA or internal affairs at Houston PD? Is that correct? Just some e-mail between you and TSA wanting to sit down and discuss their policies?

Have you seen the police report or been able to listen to the phone call reporting the incident (or seen a transcript of it)? I'm curious what kind of report was written. Crime report? Information report? Do you know?

If your lawyer has asked you not to comment on those issues, I can understand if you're not able to respond.

Take it you've had a bad law enforcement experience, too, to be using these terms?

Because it's hyperbole from some dude on the internet with absolutely no power to make it happen, and we recognize it as such. Get over it.

I note that you've gotten hot and bothered over that, while apparently being utterly unconcerned with the actual person who was held by police for 90 minutes for doing absolutely nothing but confusing some paranoid TSA screeners with "training" in imaginary junk science.

I won't bother to speak about this personally, except to state that I put my disdain for TSA into action. I won't actively associate with screeners (except on this board), and would not consider inviting their family members into my home (or anywhere else) for anything social for any reason. TSA screeners and their relatives are poison, as far as I'm concerned.

How is ostracizing TSA screeners who break the law and their family members violating anybody's civil rights or liberties?

The last time I checked, we as a nation were free to associate or dis-associate ourselves with anyone we chose. That's why there are organizations like the Boy Scouts (made up primarily of boys and men), the Girl Scouts (made up primarily of girls and women), the NAACP, the KKK (OK, not the best example admittedly), country clubs with various membership rules, etc., etc.-- you get the picture. That's also why stores can have signs saying that they can refuse service to people as they see fit.

It is nobody's right to be able to forcibly associate themselves with another. Or is there some finer point in what you're saying that I'm missing here?

I have to admit to not having read every single last post in all 10 pages of this thread, but I have read much of it and I don't see anyone raising what to me is the most obvious and most troubling concern here -- the OP notes that in this incident the "number of HPD officers at this gathering started at one, escalated quickly and ballooned to six. In addition, several uniformed TSO's and a number of other non-uniformed persons with lanyard ID's were standing nearby".

Doesn't it strike anyone else as a bit wierd, and a bit disturbing, that all one needs to do in order to distract and tie up a significant part of the security and law enforcement resource at an airport is walk around and snap a few photos? Are these morons really so stupid/na�ve as to believe that some terrorists have already figured out that all you need in order to neutralise an airport's entire security resource is 2 - 3 guys with cameras? Can't they hire some people who are at least half as intelligent as the guys OBL has working for him?

Not specifically. In many ways it's quite the opposite.

I've got a considerable amount of respect for LEOs who are friendly, respectful, and abide by the law. We have a number of County Sheriffs that stop by the station in the evenings, and I think quite highly of them. When I was running as an EMT back in the day, they would show up on a number of calls when needed (traffic accidents, attempted suicides, etc.) and were nearly always helpful.

However, when dealing with LEOs who reacted the way that the LEOs in this situation at IAH did, I wouldn't hesitate to use insults to describe them. They represent the potential for abuse of authority, abuse of power, abuse of process, and even physical abuse. When I use the term "pig" it's not directed at all law enforcement-- just those who represent the bad side of it.

You might be left asking then why I'd refer to a theoretical TSA-LEO force as "pigs" when they haven't done anything bad (because they don't even exist yet). My answer to this question is simple. Based upon my personal experience and this board's collective experience with TSA screeners to date, I'd say that the likelihood of those folks representing law enforcement's worst and ugliest and most abusive is pretty high. Having a few friends who are Federal LEOs I already notice a tendency toward some bullying tactics when they don't get their way. I can only imagine how much worse it would be with LEOs who would work for a federal agency such as TSA that lacks professionalism, credibility, accountability, and doesn't in any way enforce moral, ethical, or procedural standards. A TSA-LEO force is simple gestapo thug abuse waiting to happen.

I haven't entered the discussion of punishment, one way or the other and see no reason to jump in now.

From my last e-mail, which to date has gone unanswered:

(In the e-mail to which this was responding to, he said if I had a specific specific complaint based on a specific event, he would pass that along the channels for review and mentioned the Office of Civil Liberties in Washington.)

From what I understand, HPD's is an information report and, as such, I am not able to have access to it under the current circumstances.

If there's a problem with a local PD, replacing them with Pistole Packin' Screeners is not the solution.