Bart -- Here is the oft-cited quote from a 2005 TSA Directive, which the bloggers state is still in effect:

"Large amounts of cash" and "contraband" are used in the same bulletized sentence. I suspect nobody has challenged William is because this has been challenged over & over again. Clearly, this directive has given screeners the perceived and actual authority to consider cash as contraband depending upon one's definition of a "large amount."

And there is the problem, any TSA checkpoint can prohibit an item at will and the traveler has no recourse. If it cannot be checked the only choices left are to not fly or have the item confiscated, it is not surrendered if that is not the true choice of the traveler.

Maybe it will be challenged at the website, but with the day-long (or week long) moderation cycle and the random censorship of posts containing offensive-to-the-bosses acronyms like 'CYA' make it hard to have a discussion. (Which is pure PR CYA, since the A word itself seems allowed.)

Many of the not-quite-prohibited items were rationalized on PV by TSOs posting about the catch-all language from this printable prohibited items list. When a TSO can expand the definition of dangerous to include replicas of components of weapons, and non-metallic "anomalies" there isn't much of anything that remains outside of the scope of TSA's administrative search and prohibition.

Thank you! ^

It's not. If someone doesn't want to talk to me, that's cool. If I was saying hi only then it's their right to be rude or not want to talk. If I was looking at something else, then I'll take a different approach, if needed.

You don't get that either. It's very simple and you're making it complex - police can only search/hold with cause. They have to build that cause correctly, obeying the 4th Amendment and court precedent. That's it. There is no benefit of the doubt, no presumption of innocence. Those are court issues. LEOs have to have sufficient cause, appropriately obtained. End of story.

In your case with the bottle maybe I think it's alcohol. I can't take it out of your hand to check and obtain cause, that would violate search and seizure rules. I could, however, walk up to you and observe your demeanor (swaying, etc.) and any odor I might smell (no expectation of privacy in the air - it's free to all).

At no time were you presumed innocent or guilty - it was simply checking you out, using appropriate search parameters.

You actually do that ? Say "hi" to civilians on the street just for the hell of it.

Sure you do.

You guys must not know any good cops. The good cops I know are very friendly and will say "hi" even when they are not trying to find a reason to bust you.

Absolutely I do. Hell, I make a lot of posts here being friendly that have nothing to do with making a point. I've pulled over to help stranded motorists, helped lost people, bought lunches for kids I had to take away from parents out of my own pockets, etc.

I'm not looking to jam people up, per se. I just enforce the law. It's rarely a personal thing.

I agree. Speaking of presumptions, it appears that Polonious makes the presumption or, at least, starts from the preconception, that LEOs are automatically pre-disposed to violate rights. I don't view LEOs as the enemy. Quite the contrary. That doesn't mean that there aren't the occasional bad apples, and I'm the first to call for their punishment when that happens. However, I wouldn't want to live in a society without police protection (and I also wouldn't want their difficult and dangerous job). I smile and say, "hello," to LEOs (just as I do to firemen, paramedics and uniformed military) and I don't assume any nefarious purpose if they say, "How 'ya doin'?" to me.

TSA is something else altogether. I don't look for confrontations with TSOs, and when they're friendly to me, I'm friendly back. If a TSO smiles and says, "Hi, how are you today?", I'll smile and say, "Fine, thanks. How about you?" If, however, a TSO starts questioning me about where I'm going and why I'm going there, unless it's obviously casual conversation, e.g. "Hope you're not headed to Chicago -- bad storms there today and lots of delays," I'm not only not going to answer, I'm going to explain that, in the U.S., I have a constitutional right to travel wherever I want without justifying it to the government.

In my personal experience, TSA routinely engages in conduct that, in my professional opinion, crosses the constitutional line and, as an American and a lawyer, I will not tolerate it. I do not believe in TSA's mission (or, more accurately, I don't believe TSA remotely approaches carrying out its mission), and I will not cooperate in what I regard as a quasi-fascist effort to protect airline profits at the expense of civil liberties.

Again, in my personal experience, I have no such concerns about either the police, as an institution, or the overwhelming majority of LEOs. LEOs are there to protect me, my family and my property. That's a mission statement I wholeheartedly endorse.

Others may have had a different personal experience. Certainly, if you asked me my opinion when I was a hippie-freak teenager during the late '60s and early '70s ("Far out, man! Peace and love!"), my response would have been very different but so too had my personal experience. Times have changed, however, and so have my attitudes towards LEOs, and their attitudes towards me.

Correct. More over, as long as a LEO has an articulable suspicion, further investigation is completely constitutional. A LEO can't say, "Well, he was black and everyone knows blacks commit crimes." That's not a legally-cognizable articulable suspicion. However, is a perfectly constitutional to say, "I stopped him because he was wearing ragged clothes in a neighborhood where everyone dresses nicely, had a ratty knapsack that could, in my experience, contain burglar tools, and, when I drove by and he noticed me in my car, he started acting nervously and evasively." THAT is an articulable suspicion.

Right, at which point you have an articulable suspicion ("He was walking erratically and, when I neared him, I detected a strong smell of alcohol,") and can ask to see the bottle.

Exactly. I think the point Polonious is trying to make is that, absent an articulable suspicion, no one in the U.S. may be stopped by a LEO and demanded to prove that they are NOT doing something illegal. That, however, is not what you're describing.

That's pretty much what I've experienced with LEOs in my small community.

I've seen lots of LEOs do that, particularly those that patrol a regular, "beat." When I was really young, in elementary school, EVERYBODY knew "Joe the Cop," the policeman who patrolled our neighborhood. He knew most of the kids and their parents, and everyone knew him. He ALWAYS said, "hi," to everyone. A great guy and someone in whom the community felt comfortable reposing their trust.

More recently, my experience living in LA, SF and Orange County is that, when I encounter a LEO on foot, e.g. waiting for takeout in a restaurant or buying coffee in a 7-11, far more often than not, I'll get a friendly nod and/or a, "hello," which I'm always happy to reciprocate. I think most LEOs realize that, without the support of the community, their job would be a lot more difficult and, further, I think that, at least these days, most LEOs become LEOs because it's an opportunity to serve their communities.

Next time you see a cop, trying saying, "Hi." I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the response you get.

I probably don't. I don't think I've ever seen one "on the street" out of the cruiser anyway. At the airport, yes.

I don't think you understood the context properly -- I wasn't inventing a hypothetical, I was relating an actual event that happened to me when I was 16. I WAS standing and holding a dark green bottle of ginger ale. Without being conscious of it, I was holding it with the label towards my body. A cop pulls up and demands "let me see the bottle", and when I look at him and shake my head, he jumps out, and says "I SAID, 'let me see the bottle'" and he grabs it out of my hand, looks at the label, sniffs it, hands it back, gets back in his car and drives off.

Exactly as you have, I said twice previously in this thread said that someone standing on a corner, COMBINED WITH some other articulable facts (such as those in your example) could create PC to have a look at the bottle. But the simple fact of having bottle in one's hand does not, in and of itself, create PC. That's "probably" one of the main reasons they call it "PROBABLE cause" and not "POSSIBLE cause". Someone holding a bottle in public is POSSIBLY breaking the law, but someone swaying down the sidewalk, singing loudly and holding a bottle in public is PROBABLY breaking the law.

I think I've made that pretty clear in about three posts now, but you amongst others want to keep arguing against views you want to attribute to me but I have not taken. Poor observation skills such as these are probably one of the leading causes of improper determination of PC.

Can't say that I do. They were useless during my three experiences as a crime victim -- once accusing me of being part of a break-in into my home as some sort of elaborate insurance ploy, another time doing nothing until I tracked down the guy who stole my briefcase myself and gave them and the prosecutors the whole case on a silver platter, and a third time when someone tried to mug me and I beat the guy up and then was assisted by some local gang bangers. So they're never around when you need them.

But I HAVE filmed them whacking people over the head with truncheons on three continents, I HAVE had them plant marijuana in my hotel room and then try to get a bribe out of me in exchange for dropping the charges (I got that guy fired), I HAVE had them harrass me for all manner of petty things, (including my ginger ale story, hitch-hiking, giving me 100 $ tickets because I didn't come to a *complete* stop at a stop sign at a deserted intersection, etc. etc.), I HAVE had them make death threats, I HAVE had them rip my press pass into shreds in front of my eyes and tell me to get lost, and I HAVE had them repeatedly threaten me with arrest at TSA checkpoints. Oh, and I had a sister who had one give her a choice of speeding ticket or a hand job.

If there are "good" cops out there, they're very well hidden.

Incorrectly done.

Now also note that what the Exclusionary Rule does is eliminate evidence in court. The officer could have done the exact same thing and, had it been a beer, made you pour it out but not cite you, take you to jail, etc. No violation occurred because no actionable charges were filed.

I've "slapped the wrist" of many people over the years and told them to cut it out. Officer discretion and all of that. And maybe I took a Constitutional liberty or two but I knew, beforehand, I wasn't going to press charges. Of course I don't recommend doing it because you may find something else out later that you have to press charges on and that evidence might be tainted (Fruit of the Poisonous Tree), but I've taken beers and joints and paint thinner (huffers), etc. away from kids without proper Constitutional due process, because I filed no charges.

If they came from homes that gave a crap about them I usually told their parents, which is infinitely worse than criminal charges.

Also, I was not using your specific example other than to demonstrate how their is no "presumption of innocence" on the street. If that were the case no LE work would be done other than what was personally observed by the LEO. On the street, presumption of innocence means diddly-do. All that counts is reasonable suspicion and probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, so long as criminal charges are anticipated.