You’re not law enforcement
Good:
An angry aide to Rep. Ron Paul, an iPhone and $4,700 in cash have forced the Transportation Security Administration to quietly issue two new rules telling its airport screeners they can only conduct searches related to airplane safety.
In response, the American Civil Liberties Union is dropping its lawsuit on behalf of Steve Bierfeldt, the man who was detained in March and who recorded the confrontation on his iPhone as TSA and local police officers spent half an hour demanding answers as to why he was carrying the money through Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.
The new rules, issuedin September and October, tell officers “screening may not be conducted to detect evidence of crimes unrelated to transportation security” and that large amounts of cash don’t qualify as suspicious for purposes of safety.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:11 am
This seems consistent with the law on sobriety checkpoints. Specific lawless/dangerous behavior can be addressed, but absent a reasonable suspicion that an actual crime is being contemplated, the person may not be detained.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:11 am
IANAL, TINLA, etc.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:54 am
They detain the guy because he is carrying legal tender, and they wonder why we ignore the Threat Level color code system.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:41 am
I know Steve! Good guy.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
$4700 is NOT a large amount of money, and Federal Law permits one to have up to $10,000 upon entering or exiting the country. If you are only flying interstate, theoretically you could stuff your carry-on with cash and it would be legal.
Profiling says carrying a large amount of cash is one of the things in the behavior profile of a drug mule, but when I was a cop, I couldn’t make a seizure just based on big bucks, there had to be additional evidence, such as packaging known to be used for drug sales, scales, etc.
I carried over half that amount of cash to Mexico recently and no one said boo to me about it.
November 13th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
—POWER—
give someone a tin star and they go nuts.