Florida Terrorism Sweep Nets Mother of Two, Non-Terrorist

Police arrested a mother of two last week as she exited a cruise ship in Port Canaveral, Florida. Her crime? She failed to pay an $85 court fee—in 1991. Police had scanned the ship's manifest for terrorists after (after) it had gone to sea and turned up the old warrant, which stemmed from a shoplifting charge. The fugitive had apparently absconded to Connecticut, gotten a degree, and now designs jet engines.

Instead of letting her pay the $85, the authorities held her in jail over the weekend and will transfer her to another detention center in a different county to settle up later this week.

Comments

[Kaptious Kristen]

Jeebus, FL sure does work hard to maintain its status as the biggest law enforcement joke in the world, doesn't it?

[Paul.]

Believe me, nothing about Florida is funny.

[Brett L]

Someone's never been to the Sopchoppy Worm Gruntin' Festival.

[Paul.]

Case in point.

[T]

I had to google that to make sure you weren't joking. Well done.

Hey, Brett, wanna move back to Spring? I got a nice house you can buy...

[Brett L]

As soon as I find a buyer who's willing to pay 10% above market for mine, I'm there. Or a job that lets me carry both. New gf wouldn't like it, but I guess I can probably find enough wimmenz to get me over that.

[T]

As soon as I find a buyer who's willing to pay 10% above market for mine

Yeah, I'd like one of those myself.

[Brett L]

I'm upside down by at least that much according to Zillow, and I believe them. Basically, there are no buyers and not even the forclosures are clearing. I can't even refi to a longer term, lower note and rent it for the carrying cost right now because of the dead market.

[Brian AC]

Well, this is kinda funny.

http://www.coolpl8z.com/view-plate.php?id=113

[Hyperion]

I hope that she is a liberal, who believes that we shouldn't have any fear of our all benevolent government. But I seriously doubt it since she got a real degree and a job.

[Paul.]

She stole cigarettes from a WalMart. I think we all know what liberals think of WalMart... oh, and cigarettes.

And of course by stealing the cigarettes, she denied Oceana of its precious tax revenue. What of healthcare and the children? This woman is no liberal.

[Drake]

Statute of limitations? Seriously?

[Hyperion]

What limitations? When you commit even a minor offense in this great country, there is no limitations, you are punished forever.

Welcome to USSA

[The Late P Brooks]

The Rule of Law does not sleep!

[Paul.]

You know, timestamps not withstanding, I still consider my comment an original. But you and I are of the same mind on mixed metaphors. We love them.

[Episiarch]

What the fuck? Go go go, police state!

[Mediterranean Death Cult]

Bet it cost more than $85 to keep her over the weekend. Idiots.

[pmains]

Why does that matter? They can tack on additional fees for that, as well.

[iggy]

Examples must be made! We can't have monsters like this running around.

[KPres]

The fact that she has to be locked up all week to be transferred is a bunch of bureaucratic bullshit, but I wouldn't be upset about her spending a day or two in jail. Fuck it, she did steal.

[KPres]

Nevermind. I was thinking they picked her up for the shoplifting. For the court costs, they should have just let her pay and be on her way.

[Paul.]

The long arm of the law never sleeps.

[The Late P Brooks]

The fugitive had apparently absconded to Connecticut, gotten a degree, and now designs jet engines.

"Kid, have you rehabilitated yoreself?"

[R C Dean]

now designs jet engines.

Not, I suspect, any more.

[Ron]

Again the state spends thousands to collect pennies.
She probably would have paid the $85.00 on the spot if they had asked.

[Paul.]

I like the deep, critical nature of the reporting, "If you have anything in your past, this could happen to you!"

No one in local news seems to be concerned that Big Brother scans all traveler manifests, and if you owe Oceana $85, you'll become an un-word.

[Hyperion]

Soft on crime! Why do you hate the children?

[T]

As always, because I've met children. They're eminently hateable little monsters. Only some of them grow out of it.

[Kaptious Kristen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zePQavforA

[Paul.]

Submitted without comment? This must be serious. Clicking link now...

[Paul.]

Well, she certainly did make the scene...

[Ron]

How does an architecture degree lead to designing jet engines.
Since I was an architecture student I know the two have no correlation.

[Brett L]

I assume that they teach CAD in architecture, no? Drafts(wo)men are always needed.

[Paul.]

I agree, something very fishy here. To Guantanamo with her!

[Paul.]

IN fact, you're on to something here. You know who else was intensely interested in jet-related things in the months before 9-11?

[Loki]

Me. I graduated from a college with B.S. in Aerospace Engineering in Spring of 2001. And now I hang out on a libertarian website? Truly I am a monster. Drone dispatched in 3... 2... 1...

[Jordan]

Homeland Security mission creep? Gee, who could have foreseen that? So, I guess there's no statute of limitations if you dare deprive the state of precious revenue. As if anyone needed a lesson on where the state's priorities lie.

[John]

DHS has no mission. If it is an invasion, DOD has the mission. If it is terrorism, DOJ has the lead. So where does that leave DHS? Busting meat packing plants hiring illegals mostly. And there isn't a lot of funding opportunities in that.

[Hyperion]

That's only when they aren't protecting us from dangerous guitars.

[Scarcity]

On a DVD I watched recently I noticed that on the FBI warning screen there was now also a DHS badge.

So there you go. DHS is now duplicating the FBI's most trivial missions. If that's not cabinet-level, I don't know what is.

[Zeb]

I'm pretty sure that the FBI has nothing to do with the "FBI warning" on videos.

[The Late P Brooks]

I like my metaphors shaken, not stirred.

[Paul.]

If you can't stand the heat, Brooks, don't live in a glass house.

[Caleb Turberville]

She made something of herself and became a productive member of society; therefore, she is an enemy of the state.

[Andrew S.]

I'm actually going on a Disney cruise next month, so I occasionally browse the forum over on the Cruise Critic message board. The thread on this is awful. Just a bunch of people crowing about how it's her own fault, and that if you haven't done anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about, and everything is good and happy, and all that other crap.

[ChrisO]

I have to think the cruise ship industry is going to put some pressure on the local yokel police departments to stop doing this kind of thing. Bad for business.

[R C Dean]

I'm a bad person, I know that, so I don't feel the least bit bad about wishing that every single one of those fucktards who think this is just grand has an extremely unpleasant encounter with law enforcement and a week in jail over something very, very trivial.

[Andrew S.]

Yeah. I was feeling generous and trying to make a reasoned argument. Even brought up three felonies a day to make that exact point. They continued with the "she did the crime, she has to do the time" talk.

[Auric Demonocles]

I found Cruise Critic to be a good resource for trip planning, but I also never went into any threads about topics like this.

[The Late P Brooks]

Bet it cost more than $85 to keep her over the weekend.

If they calculate interest and penalties like the IRS, they'll probably do okay.

[Auric Demonocles]

Last year I got audited because my bank sent the wrong info to the IRS, so they thought I lied about $30k of income from investments with the bank. This audit was from about 3 years prior. I got the info from the bank proving that wasn't my income they reported and sent it in to the IRS.

Eventually I got a letter back dated July 20th, stating that they had received my materials on June 17th and would begin looking into them. In the meantime I would be responsible for the interest. That's right, it took them over a month to say "Hey, we got your letter", not even actually look at the content, and they wanted me to pay for the interest during that time.

As it turned out, the audit did show that I had forgotten to submit a w2 for working one week in a grocery store, so I owed about $30.

[Zeb]

Shouldn't it be obvious that they are fucking liars when they say that this was about looking for terrorists? Isn't the rationale for checking passenger manifests that the ship/plane/whatever is a potential terrorist target?