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Airline Passenger Mistakes Vintage Camera for a Bomb

posted by martyb on Wednesday October 13 2021, @08:11PM   Printer-friendly

[2021-10-13 20:46:32 UTC; Update: Corrected story link.--martyb]

owl writes:

I feel sorry for the accused.

Bomb scare that led to emergency landing at LaGuardia Airport was just passenger adjusting camera: sources:

The “security incident” that forced a New-York bound flight to make an emergency landing at LaGuardia Airport on Saturday turned out to be a misunderstanding — after an airline passenger mistook another traveler’s camera for a bomb, sources said Sunday.

American Airlines Flight 4817 from Indianapolis — operated by Republic Airways — made an emergency landing at LaGuardia just after 3 p.m., and authorities took a suspicious passenger into custody for several hours.

It turns out the would-be “bomber” was just a vintage camera aficionado and the woman who reported him made a mistake, sources said.

Why in the world was the passenger in custody for “several hours”? They didn’t do anything wrong.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by weilawei on Wednesday October 13 2021, @08:26PM (2 children)

    by weilawei (109) on Wednesday October 13 2021, @08:26PM (#1186758)
    That's why they were held and that's why our legal system pleads out 98% of cases as guilty.
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @08:29PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @08:29PM (#1186764)

    The worst effect of that (certainly intentional) is that once a case is plead out guilty, there's no trial by a jury of peers to establish the truth of the matter. If the prosecution can exert enough coercive pressure, typically by overcharging, then defendants qre essentially making forced "confessions" under duress.

    Our whole society loses by not establishing the truth properly. There's no way 98% of all arrested are guilty--we've seen enough innocent people on death row to know that.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday October 13 2021, @08:46PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday October 13 2021, @08:46PM (#1186773)

      Even better - when most victims of such policies are coerced into admitting guilt, it makes the statistics for the effectiveness of just about any policy look really good:

      "98% of suspicious individuals identified by our anal crime probes were found guilty"

      Makes your anal probing policy sound really effective and worthy of greater funding and less oversight, when in reality all you're showing is that your legal system is really good at getting confessions out of anyone who enters.

      And since most of the populace (and their representatives) are too ignorant and/or perversely motivated to recognize the flaw, such things can readily grow ever more invasive.

      We didn't get to be the most-incarcerated nation on Earth by accident.