http://m.theeastcarolinian.com/news/article_bcb8ca82-0c39-11e7-82ea-2fd83c607f73.html?mode=jqm
From Aden’s Facebook Post (I can’t link to it here):
Can’t wait until Fareed Zakaria gets detained by CBP…
So what? He was detained, checked and released. It would be odd to give someone a free pass for just claiming to be a police chief.
The opposite of security theater is not free pass.
The articles about this all state that the guy’s name was an alias used by someone on the watch list. That passenger would rightly be sent for secondary inspection in order to verify whether he was the person being sought. Unfortunately, CBP is very understaffed and it takes time, especially when there are several planeloads of passengers in line waiting for inspection, for an officer to go through the steps required to clear someone whose name is a match in the system. This is not racial profiling, as the former police chief suggested. [-(
It’s not “understaffed.” It’s very, very expensive security theater that has never caught a single terrorist.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/01/tsa-business-security-theater-not-security/357599/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/01/tsa-fails-95-percent-tests-homeland-security_n_7485558.html
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/homeland-insecurity-checkpoints-warrantless-searches-security-theater
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/11/does_the_tsa_ever_catch_terrorists.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/03/opinions/abend-tsa-screening-failure/
I am not sure I see a problem here.
I understand nobody likes to be held back for security reasons but people need to realize that certain things just take time. If the CBP needed to run his credentials or speak to a supervisor, it all takes time. Being placed in a room is normal. What other type of structure is there other than a room? A field? Humans inhabit spaces broken up into rooms.
We would all love to have total free movement and walk around without ever having to produce papers but that is no longer possible. We live in troubled times and a certain level of security checking is needed.
I think this chief showed a total lack of professional respect to a fellow security officer by slamming him on Facebook. I doubt this chief comes to the aid of all the people his officers detained while they did their jobs on the street. To suggest that he is “special” is a bit disgusting given his prior occupation. He should know damn well what an officer needs to do while checking someone out. And that check takes time.
Why? Has it been helping?
He finally understands what many minorities experience when their rights are violated. It’s one thing to be held long enough to do a full security check because “certain things just take time.” However, to be told that he wasn’t being detained, but he was not free to leave, having another officer realize the inappropriate nature of the situation and resolving it, sounds too familiar to me. As long as we allow law enforcement the benefit of the doubt and not be critical of their actions, these incidences will continue to occur until they happen to ALL of us. I can not excuse CBP for this event. They need to train their officers appropriately, respect the constitutional rights of individuals, and respond quickly to the public’s complaints.
From your own Slate link: “What these numbers don’t get at is whether the TSA airport screeners prevent terrorist attacks through their very existence—deterring plots by hanging around. This is quite probably the case …”
^As he is a member of a minority, I’m sure he already understood this.
I could get them detaining a nobody like me because I have zero online presence. But it takes less than 10 seconds to google Aden’s name and see a photograph and news articles on him. That’s less time than it takes to put the man in a room and argue about the definition of detainment. What’s next, they’re going to detain Beyoncé for hours while they verify her identity because it’s so hard to find a public photo of her?
“He finally understands what many minorities experience when their rights are violated.”
Agree with @garland. I’m sure he’s well aware. The LEOs I know that are minorities know all too well about discrimination. They see and experience it when off duty/not in uniform.
As per his report in the OP, perhaps CBP should call detaining what it is instead of pretending it’s not.
I wouldn’t assume that an ex- police chief of a village at the back end of nowhere is incapable of wrongdoing. They checked him out, it took 90 minutes.
@marvin100, your links all reference TSA, not CBP. Do you not know the difference?
CBP is most definitely understaffed, and they have a completely different mission than TSA. It's not "security theater" and CBP has indeed caught terrorists.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/01/11/behind-the-badge/ may be of interest, as it notes significant differences in the opinions of white and black police officers.
That’s not how watch list matches are cleared, @anomander. If it was that simple, it would certainly take less time. There’s a protocol that must be followed on each passenger. Sometimes it involves calling another agency for clearance, and sometimes that other agency causes a delay.
Note to self: Don’t share a name with anybody on the watchlist.
Then maybe there are two things wrong: Lying about detention, and having unreasonable protocols for clearing watchlist matches.
There’s no question that the person involved was being detained. There may have been a reasonable basis for his detention, but he was being detained. I am not up on the application of the Fourth Amendment to border security. Normally, simply having a name that matched a non-distinctive name on a watch list would not constitute probably cause for arrest, which is the normal Fourth Amendment standard, but it would constitute a reasonable basis on which he could be subjected to brief detention and frisk. That usually is measured in a few minutes, not over an hour. But standards may be different at the border.
The thing about CPB is that everything I have read and heard about them over the last few weeks makes me think they are a bunch of out-of-control yahoos who need a serious dose of 21st Century training and professionalism. I heard a former commander interviewed on the radio last week, and he sounded like a Klansman. I have been dealing with CPB all my life – I spent part of my childhood near a border that we crossed frequently. I have never had a problem with them, personally, but then I have never looked like the people they seem to be targeting now.
How are TSA agents trained? I recently flew with a different airline from the usual one. Their TSA agants were so professional compared to agents of the airline I usually use. I flew from at the same airport. Does the airline have anything to do with TSA agents? I know TSA is a federal institution. I mention it because the difference was too great to be accidental.