This is a true story posted on another board, of an individual who was unlawfully detained, and commited no crime, while at the airport. First part is his account, the second his wifes. Our liberty is being confiscated, one piece at a time.
Wifes account:
A few of you on LJ know about this, and were asked to keep quiet about it until it was resolved. For the most part, it was resolved yesterday and since the 'hostages' have been released, I can comment on it without too much worry of blowback. So, clicky-clicky for the amazing and expensive story about how, after Shooty Goodness in September, I was arrested by the Dulles Airport cops, interviewed by ATF, FBI and Fatherland Security, handcuffed in front of the crowd at the check-in counter, had $3000 of guns confiscated and was accused of being a Neo-Nazi and white supremacist.
Now, you may not be aware of it, but it is legal to take guns onto airplanes. Really. The requirement is that they be in a gun case, unloaded, locked, and declared to the check-in clerk, who will give you a form to sign, as checked baggage. I've been travelling with guns this way for over fifteen years. Never a problem. Until Sept.
One gun case contained four pistols and an AR-15. One smaller case contained a .38 revolver. I got up to the counter and said the exact same phrase I've uttered every time I fly - "I need to declare unloaded firearms". The clerk gives me a bright orange tag to fill out (the declaration tag) stating that I certify the guns are unloaded. Since I have two gun cases I tell him "I need two". He gives me another tag. I dutifully fill out both and put one in each gun case, as required by law.
SO I lock up the cases, hand em over to the clerk and they go on the conveyor belt to the TSA goons and their x-ray machine. I go through security to my gate and wait for the plane. Fifteen minutes before my plane boards I get paged and asked to return to the check-in counter. I get there to no less than four airport cops, three guys in suits with walkietalkies and three or four white shirted TSA goons. I am told that the x-ray machines picked up a cylindrical metal object in my luggage and that they'd like the keys so they can open it and check it out. (The cylindrical object was my telescoping ASP baton.) They open the gun case and things get busy. All sorts of people are called over. After fifteen minutes I am handcuffed "For my protection" in front of the assembled crowd waiting to check in for their flight. I stand there for about a half hour as they try to determine if theres something wrong. I turn to one of the cops and say "Lemme guess, if I'm innocent then I have nothing to fear, right?" She agrees. Im sure she's being fitted for jackboots as we speak.
Now one goon comes up to me and says im under arrest for improperly checking in my guns. WTF? Theres a declaration tag sitting right there in the case with the guns. My legal obligation is met! They take me outside and remove my glasses, shoes, belt and stand me against the wall and search me. Outside the terminal are three marked cars, a cop with a dog, and a couple supervisors.
Still handcuffed, Im put in the back seat of a car for about a half hour as my fate is discussed. Finally im driven to the cop shop and put into a cage, still handcuffed. After about an hour or so, a couple suits from the FBI, ATF and Fatherland Security show up and take me to a room to ask questions. Having gone through my luggage, they found a t-shirt with what could have been considered a Nazi slogan on it ("Das Reich"..the shirt was left at kitiara's by one of the Shooty Goodness people when he changed clothes to go to dinner. Then there were the books...Small Arms Infantry Tactics, Counter Insurgency manual, etc, etc. Are you in the militia? Are you a white supremacist? (Asked by the Aryan, blonde haired, blue eyed FBI dweeb) Why do you have all these guns? Where did you get them? Do you own other guns? Do you own body armour? If you knew someone was going to commit a crime you'd tell us right? Etc, etc.
Back into the cage, and handcuffs, for another few hours. Finally, around 10pm, the let me go after taking all my guns and other weapons. Im charged with 'bringing a dangerous article onto airport property'. Huh? The guns were all in a locked case, as required.
Hire a lawyer. $900 "Start to finish" is the quoted price. Apparently 'start to finish' doesnt include $500 to file a motion to get a Bill Of Particulars from the prosecutor, who was dragging her feet in getting that info to us. After all, how the hell can I defend myself if I dont know what they have a problem with? There were five guns in one gun case and they said the AR-15 was the dangerous article. Why they picked that one out of the five in there seems wierd...after all, if there were five guns in there wouldnt each one be just as dangerous? (And, no, there was no 'assault weapon' ban that affected any of this..it was a post-ban gun). So the court date was yesterday. I show up in my Going To Court suit. Docket lists 49 cases... Lawyer arrives. So we get into the courtroom. Judge asks if tehres any changes. Prosecutorgirl says the state of VA chooses not to pursue charges at this time for lack of evidence. Im free to go. Great. Now where the hell are my guns? I was thinking my toys had been turned over to the tender mercies of ATF for 'testing'. I was told I could go to the airport copshop and get them back. So, later that afternoon, kitiara (who was very supportive, very outraged, and very understanding of the whole mess) gave me a ride to the copshop. I went in , showed idea, and me and the proprty clerk inventoried my toys...AR-15, Browning P35, 1911 45, S&W .38, S&W .357, Glock 9mm, butterfly knife, etc, etc. The property clerk and the other cop did NOT seem happy to let me have my toys back. Probably the kind of cops that think only they should have guns. So I sign the forms and get my toys back. The property clerk walks them to the parking lot and puts them in the truck. He then stands there as if expecting me to thank him for carrying them..fat chance. We leave.
Now, how to get them back to MT? Well, feeling boldened and a little bit confident that the airport cops realize they might have screwed the pooch, I figure I'll check 'em in the same as last time but paying much, much more attention to every step. I filled out a declaration tag for EACH gun (overkill, yes) and followed them as they x-rayed the bags. No problems. I didnt relax until the plane was actually airborne and I didnt fully feel safe until I was on the ground in Missoula with my cases in hand.
$1500 in lawyer fees, $500 in airfare, another $1000 in lost time from work.
And it isnt over. TSA wants to fine me $1200 for failure to declare firearms...but if I dont contest it, they'll cut the fine to $600. I asked the attorney if he thought that maybe the TSA will see that VA didnt have a leg to stand on and maybe wash their hands of it too. We'll see.
The reason I havent said anything was because until I got my guns back, I didnt want to make any waves. If some well-meaning person started asking questions or rallying public opinion or something like that it would have , in my opinion, just made things more difficult. But, now that my guns are safely with me, it doesnt have to be a secret anymore.
Needless to say, I wasnt a big fan of airport security before and Im far less a fan of them now.
Wifes account:
What was I thinking, reading Stephen King at the airport!
What a completely surreal evening I had last night. As I'd mentioned, I reluctantly dropped John off at the airport around 4pm or so. I went with him to the baggage counter and waited while he filled out the paperwork to declare his firearms, walked with him to the security line, and kissed him goodbye. I thought I might need some distraction, so I had agreed to meet some friends for dinner at 7pm. I went home, changed, and then headed to the restaurant. Just as I pulled into the parking lot, my cell phone rang.
I said hello, and a polite stranger asked if I was [my name], identified himself as a police officer, then asked if I was safe and okay. My forehead wrinkled, and I said I was. The officer then asked if I knew John, and whether he had (a) been staying with me this past week and (b) brought firearms with him for the purpose of shooting at the local range. I said yes to both, and jumped to the conclusion that John must've not cleared each and every gun - I know I'm obsessive about checking mine when I travel - it wouldn't be unreasonable for him to have left one magazine in when dealing with the number of guns he brought with him. So the officer then asked if I'd mind coming to the airport to talk to him.
I left messages with my dinner companions and pulled into the drab police building at Dulles airport about 20 minutes later.
First it was very odd - they wouldn't even tell me that John was there. I had to ask for the officer who'd called me *by name* and say why I was there, and then state my "relationship" to John. It was only then that they even admitted they had him. The officer who'd called me came out and introduced himself, then introduced me to two FBI agents who asked if I wouldn't mind talking to them about John. One was named Joel - clean-cut broad-shouldered all-American looking guy. The other one, Tim, was tall, pale, and lanky with a blonde crew cut and blue eyes. Both seemed pretty young - couldn't have been out of their early thirties if that. Like the officer before them, they were extremely polite.
They told me that John was in a little trouble. They dodged my questions at first, and then said he had brought a firearm with him that he had not declared. The way in which they said it implied that he had a gun I hadn't seen, that it was loaded, and that it was on his person. They didn't outright say any of those things - but they very adroitly led me right to that conclusion. Then they started asking me questions. Who was I, how did I meet John, what were our political views, did we "meet with others who might have similar political views" on his visit... lots of things that were clearly leading right to the idea that he was some sort of milita nut who was here on a recruiting mission or some such.
They started out treating me like some poor stupid femme who'd been unknowingly lured into some sort of illicit affair with a Very Dangerous Fellow. On top of that, both were extremely flirty. They seemed to think that I didn't know John had any guns with him. When I said I did, they wanted to know how many and what types. Then whether I knew that he had "illegal high capacity magazines with him." I said that so far as I knew, all of his high-cap mags were pre-ban and thus not illegal. They asked if I knew he'd made "modifications" to his guns. I said sure, he'd put a new trigger in his Glock while he was here. Stupid, stupid questions calculated to make me think he was some sort of maniac.
Then they moved on and asked me if I knew what kind of "literature" he had with him. This really irked me. I was under the impression that there were no banned books in America, and one can read whatever the hell one pleases. On top of that, they said "he has a Das Reich t-shirt with him - is he a white supremacist?" To paraphrase Darling John, "does he *look* white to you?" I explained that a friend had left the shirt at my house while changing for dinner, and that John had taken it with him so that he could mail it back to said friend with some thank you gifts. And John approached this better than I did - the shirt was not his size.
White supremacists. Hmph. My gun instructor is black. Hell, the guy who owns the range we frequent is black. John himself is half-puerto rican. The gentleman to whom the 'Das Reich' shirt belonged is married to a Lebanese belly dancer.
Anyhow.
They started asking about me. Did I shoot, when did I pick up the hobby and why, did my father know that a man from Montana carrying firearms was visiting me. Why wasn't my father worried for my safety. HAH! Like I'm some poor defenseless doormat. I explained that my father raised me in such a way that he didn't *have* to worry about me.
Then the kicker. The "this is really supposed to shock you" question: "are you aware that he had two pairs of handcuffs in his luggage?" I said I was. Then they said "why would he be travelling with those? At which point I said, "are you sure you want me to answer that question?" They said yes, and I said "Some people *like* that sort of thing."
They both blushed. And quickly moved on. There were other strange things, like "your friend could be in a lot of trouble, yet you seem very calm, why is that?" and "did he meet anyone when he was not with you, unbeknownst to you?" (duh, if I don't *know* about it how can I answer that question?" and "would you be willing to take a lie detector test?"
Overall it was surreal, like I said. It was like something out of a television show - guy from Montana, travelling with guns (gee, there's a shocker), he MUST be a terrorist! The one thing they kept saying over and over was "tell us about John, anything you can think of." I'd say "what specifically do you want to know?" and they'd just shrug and say "anything." I refused to do that, beyond noting his fondness for Krispy Kreme donuts. After about 45 minutes they ran out of things to ask me and told me they were about to interview John, and that I could wait in the lobby.
The lobby was like an ice chest, so I gave the officers at the desk my number and went to get some coffee. Figuring I'd be waiting awhile, I also grabbed a copy of Stephen King's The Gunslinger. I'd tried reading The Drawing of the Three once and hated it, but my friends have been raving about the revised edition so I thought I'd give it a shot. I'm sitting back in the police lobby reading and sipping my Latte, and Tim The Friendly FBI Agent comes out and says "you know, what are we supposed to think when we see you reading books like that?" He wasn't kidding.
WHAT THE @#%!???
Since when is it "suspicious" in this country to read ****ing Stephen King? It wasn't "Blowing Up Airports 101." It wasn't even nonfiction for goodness sake. At this point, I asked Tim for a business card. He said he didn't have any, but I was welcome to his phone number, and winked at me. Guess he likes handcuffs too.
While I waited in the lobby, several other police officers came out to talk to me, just casually. Said they'd heard I liked shooting and wanted to hear about what kinds of guns I had, that sort of thing. Each and every one was flirtacious as all get out, even the ones old enough to be my dad. I overheard one of them say to his friend as he was walking away, "she's really something." *rolls eyes* Lecherous bastards.
When they finally released John, around 10pm (remember, I'd gotten the call at 7, and he had to have been there since about 5), the officer who came out to tell me they were releasing him said to me, very pointedly "you might want to be rethink your lifestyle choices, and maybe think twice before travelling with your firearms."
Again - what the ****? It's not *illegal*, there are *rules* and John *followed* those rules. Where does this moron get off telling me to watch my "lifestyle"?
