USA Patriot Acting Out

An interestingly lurid (and also, of course, possibly completely made up) account of overzealous anti-terrorism actions on the part of the Denver police against an amateur photographer here. My favorite details: gruff Secret Service agent calling the hapless shutterbug both a "raghead collaborator" and "dirty pinko faggot." He forgot "gook," "rotten rebel" and "filthy redcoat."

Comments

[Eric]

This is hillarious!! I have met numerous Secret Service agents and it strains credibility to think that one would have spoken like that to someone. However, even more incredible is the assertion that there were Army rangers there. In the first place Rangers should be capitalized, but more importantly Army Rangers would not be used as the part of the security deatial. This is clearly made up.

[brent]

I think the new Homeland Security guys et al should be outfitted like Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Then follks could be entertained while they're having their rights taken: "Hey dude, were you arrested by the Red Ranger or the Yellow Ranger?" "Dude, I only wish it was the Yellow Ranger. She's hot!"

[Tyler]

I believe a National Guard unit in the Denver area is a Special Forces unit. If they have been activated to be at the airport why not at a hotel?

[Eric]

It would be a sahme if the soldiers from the 20th SFG were pulling guard duty at the airport, what a waste of training! More broadly speaking the taksing at the airports was in their capacity as a state miltia, not the US Army. The use of the US Army in law enforcement is problematic at best and this article describes the Army in an offensive posture. The USSS would simply never use them like that, they have their own organic support.

[Carl]

This is entirely unbelievable. First, The USA PATRIOT Act has no provisions which address the ability of police to arrest potential terrorists beyond that which they already had.

If you are acting in a suspicious fashion, and you are not being cooperative with police, you can expect some bad treatment.

In no way do I believe that the police should be able to confiscate cameras and film until they are able to establish just cause. However, I also think that this story shows 1-It's not a bad idea to cooperate with people who are trying to stop terrorists; 2-When the police go a bit overboard, all sorts of fictions are attached to the story; and 3-It may not be a good idea to take unbelievable quantities of photographs of security personnel and a non-descript hotel when the vice president of the United States is staying there.