Something like this would wind up with several attorneys beating the crap out of each other to try to get to you first for the suit against hte jurisdiction responsible, unless they had probable cause at that time and were ready to charge you.

I had such a case where I screwed up and left. I was a radio personality in battle with a corrupt school superintendent. Finally the light of public scrutiny forced this yahoo to run out on a no-cut employment contract with almost 7 years remaining on it and took a job out of state. A press conference was called and I showed up. I was advised by a friend within the school system that the police had been called and that if I did not leave that I would be arrested for tresspassing and as it was Friday afternoon I would spend the entire weekend in jail awaiting arraignment. As a credentialed member of the media, I had every right to attend the press conference but I decided that I didn't want to spend the weekend in the pokey.

The next week when i told the story on the air, the city council president (also an attorney) called me up and said "Paul, you really screwed up. You should have let them arrest you. (name of another attorney) and I would have been duking it out on the courthouse stept trying to be your attorney first. You could have sued the city and the schools for enough money to retire today at 5PM" (I was 25 at the time).

My policy since then has been to give name and DOB and if anything else is discussed, I hand them my family attorney's business card and say "Anything else you want to know happens with this gentlemen in the room." That always ends the issue.

Don't get me wrong, I am one of hte biggest supporters the police will ever have. I have some dear friends who are sworn officers. I spent time in the field myself. But I have had, and had friends have, so many incidents where they or I got railroaded that now my response is name, DOB and lawyer up.

You need to understand that cops HATE paperwork and the amount of paperwork after an arrest is really abusive. They are not going to arrest you unless they feel pretty strongly about it, and there had better have been a crime committed. This is why you remail respectful and avoid sarcasm, profamity or any other verbal abusiveness.

--Paul

That's not necessarily true. The consensus (here, at least), is that you're not required to show ID to get into the sterile area. They'll give you a hard time, but the TSA will let you through.

part of what you wrote using the "common sense approach" happened........

happened: "FAM: Sir, I am a federal air marshal [displays ID]. Why were you asking the flight attendant how many people there were in the crew? "

happened: "Goalie: I was going to give them all a Tootsie Pop as a way of expressing my appreciation for their job. See, I have a bag of them here."-i did open my briefcase and show them.

didn't happen: "FAM: I see. How thoughtful of you. Sorry to have troubled you. Have a nice day."

happened: the rapid fire questioning and me showing my i/d and what i mentioned in my initial post.

i'm going to take the wait and see approach as this situation could go from one extreme to the other and i would not want to give the "other extreme" any fuel but what i would like to do now with utmost sincerity is-to those of you who expressed your concerns by pm and here in this post, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU and i will keep you informed (though i will continue to give out tootsie pops but i might take a different apporach in wording how i offer them).

This is wrong. http://www.snopes.com/horrors/mayhem/needles.htm


IMHO the FA blew things way out of proportion. She should have said, "Six -- thank you, I love Tootsie Pops!"

That may be the case under Michigan law (about which I know nothing), but it's not that way everywhere. If I call the police in most states and make what they believe is a specious report, they are free to blow me off. If the report turns out later to be valid and something bad happens as a result of their non-response, they may incur civil liability (e.g. I or someone else can sue them), but there's no criminal liability.

I suspect that the policy is the same in the federal sector. The FBI receives numerous complaints from crackpots, and they generally ignore them. They don't send out an agent just because someone calls. In fact, I know of several cases where there was clear evidence that a federal crime was being commited, and the FBI declined to respond because the gravity of the crime was below the threshold that they felt was worthy of their time.

You assume that the FA was hysterical and that she reported that the passenger wanted the information so that he could give a gift. Neither fact is in evidence. Given the rather narrow focus of the FAMs' duties, I would expect that they would act on just about any flight crew member's report of unusual activity.

The number of forum members that are advocating that people refuse to answer any questions from FAMs or other law enforcement personnel, lest they provide incriminating information, really makes me wonder. Do all of you have such guilty consciences that you're afraid at every moment that you're going to give yourself up? Have you been stopped, interrogated, and slapped into jail on the basis of something that you said carelessly? Does this sort of thing happen to you a lot? I've had hundreds, probably thousands, of conversations with law enforcement personnel at all levels, both as a colleague and as a private citizen, and not one of these has resulted in my arrest. I have to wonder what the rest of you have been up to for you to maintain this level of paranoia.

What if they were poisoned?

Even so, I would be very hesitant about eating anything given to me by a stranger unless the food came in a wrapper that was reasonably tamper-proof and sealed. People have strange ideas, and someone might slip in tainted foodstuffs just for grins and giggles. There have been a number of relatively recent episodes of cops being served tainted food (cleaning chemicals, glass, spit) in fast food restaurants. I know of officers that won't eat anything in a restaurant unless it was prepared and wrapped before they arrived, or they watched it being prepared.

On several occasions, I've considered picking up some burgers, subs, or other sandwiches while en route to the airport so that I could give them to the flight crew in appreciation for their work, but I don't know if they would eat it, given these concerns.

I learned fairly early on not to make threats that I couldn't back up. If I started what was likely to be an adversarial conversation with someone, I almost always had something that I could charge them with. It might have been what would be called a "chickens***" charge, but it was a valid one, nevertheless. I was never even accused of making a false arrest.

Having been a cop for fifteen years, I have some insight into the paperwork issue. Arrests are only one way of resolving a problem, and they're frequently not the most desirable way. But people who insist on resisting authority on principle often do themselves a disservice.

War story: I was called to a bar where a bachelor party was in progress. The party had gotten out of hand, and the management wanted the partiers to vacate the premises. All were visibly intoxicated. I had concerns that they would either get into their cars or wander outside and start more trouble, so I called a couple of cabs and offered them this choice: get in the cabs and go to the home of their choosing, or ride in our drunk wagon to jail, where they would spend the night. All but one saw the wisdom of Option #1, and got into the cabs. This individual insisted that I could not force him to take a cab, and that he would not go. His buddies attempted to persuade him otherwise, but he was adamant. Instead of riding in a bright yellow cab, he got to ride in a dingy black and white police car.

A couple of hours later, I got a call from one of our reserve (volunteer) officers. The detainee (he was not charged criminally, but was detained under what amounted to a "drunk in public" statute) was her husband. She asked me if I could get him released into her custody. I couldn't - once he was in the tank, it was up to the county sheriff. He spent the night on the rubber floor of a large, open cell reserved for inebriates. I spent a few hours there while I was in the academy (it was part of our training), and I didn't look back on the experience fondly.

By the way, the paperwork on this type of detention was to fill out a form that was about four lines long. I would have been just as happy to have waved bye-bye to him and his friends as the cab pulled out, but he had to be a hammerhead. Think about this when and if you are trying to decide whether to answer some innocuous questions, and whether your resolve to stick it to the man is really worth going to jail.

Well, as I have said in many other instances where people are telling stories about encounters with cops, there are roughly 800,000 of them in this country, and I can't begin to explain the behavior of each one. Maybe he had instructions to aggressively question (interrogate, if you will) anyone that behaved in what he felt to be a suspicious manner, and maybe he was just an overbearing zealot. I freely admit that not all cops handle situations in the best way that they can be handled. I think I've been guilty of that a few times, myself.

What paranoia? FAMs or other LEOs detaining me provides me with no benefit whatsoever whether I'm guilty or innocent. Why waste my time or take any risks? Or entertain this ridiculous terror of terror hysteria?

All of my conversations with LEOs so far have been with them as either the victim of a crime or a witness to one, BTW. Unless you count three traffic stops, one of which resulted in a minor ticket, none of which were in the last five years. Since I happen to be white, clean cut, well educated and pretty articulate, conversations with LEOs (or anyone with authority in the US) go pretty smoothly. (Especially versus some of my FlyerTalk friends who happen to be the "wrong" race.) I don't have a personal grudge against LEOs.

I probably would be too. Then again, I wouldn't report it to law enforcement on the basis of what the OP posted.

Now you've gone and done it ... and you've disappointed me greatly as well (not that I expect you to lose any sleep over it). I truly hope you were trying to be facetious.

With most people in law enforcement having that attitude, is it any wonder that independent thinkers (and yes, FFs are a very independent-thinking group) have an ingrained distrust of so-called law-enforcement officers?

I will tell you that during the 30+ years that I have lived in New York City, my encounters with law-enforcement officers, in the aggregate, have not left me with a really favorable opinion of them, primarily because of that same attitude.

I have had contact with LEO's in the airport about 4 times. In each instance they were called, at my request, because I disagreed with a TSA employee (most recent) or an airport employee. In every instance it has worked to my benefit. Why? Because even if I was being stubborn, a "real" LEO quickly figures out who is right, and who is wrong, and who is wasting their time. I am ariticulate and logical and, notwithstanding popular opinion to the contrary, most LEO's appreciate someone who is articulate and logical, even if the individual is being a stubborn butthead at the moment.

The post was in response to another member's new motto (I'm not going to look it up now, so forgive me if I don't get it exactly right) of "Arrest me or leave me the hell alone." If the officer is pursuing a legitimate investigation and has probable cause at that instant to make an arrest, he might very well decide to go ahead and do it. Only the cop that was playing the bully and was bluffing would be overcome by this tactic. The gravity of the offense would determine whether it was worth the time and effort required to go through with the arrest, but most of the cops I know would not readily back down just because someone got in their face.

I believe I gave some examples where there was prima facie evidence of a crime, but a brief investigation revealed that the situation was not as first suspected. This kind of thing happens all the time, and cops generally get the exculpatory information by asking questions. If you don't want to answer the questions, that's your right, but I have to look at that as indicative as a consciousness of guilt (unlike the courts, the cops don't have to operate on the foundation of a presumption of innocence). Given that a big part of the job is to find and investigate crimes and attempt to identify the people responsible for them, this is not an unreasonable course of action.