>>>Instead, American Airlines “departed from its established procedures,” according to the lawsuit, and sent police a single passenger’s information — Lowe’s.
If an innocent man goes to jail, the penalties should be so profound that it hurts. They should be levied a billion dollar penalty and I would say even that would be generous.
I don't understand how AA is the one getting sued here. The police is the one who ends up making determinations right? Along with the whole "17 days without knowing what the crime was"...
What was going on with the justice system here? Of course AA is a component in the events that lead up to his arrest, but surely our justice system should not just arrest people on AA's word and not provide any recourse. Why are we putting shoplifters into a jail cell for 17 days _even if you knew they were shoplifters_. How does a judge look at this situation and determine that this person is a flight risk?
There are so many points where humans could have intervened and stemmed the damage, but didn't.
> I don't understand how AA is the one getting sued here
The article indicates that AA inexplicably identified the victim alone as the perpetrator, rather than sharing the passenger list with police. One imagines they'll be facing many, many millions in damages for such negligence.
But... I mean.... AA says "this is the guy". Police says "OK", they go to person, who says "wait what?". Police had the footage right?
I imagine that AA is not doing something out of malice. Maybe everyone who is arrested claims they're innocent, but if you're going to put someone in jail for 2 weeks you better have good evidence! Yeah, maybe it's annoying, but so what? Everyone has to do annoying shit for work.
> Yeah, maybe it's annoying, but so what? Everyone has to do annoying shit for work.
Have you ever interacted with American cops? They are on average completely useless, either unwilling or unable to follow their job description. Some of it isn't even any individual officer's fault (training is a joke, no performance standards, dysfunctional culture). But the end result is that they don't make up a high-quality set of civil servants, even by the not-very-high standards of American civil servants.
That is just inaccurate, the police don't even do a good job of that. The police, like every other bureaucracy with unchecked power, exists to perpetuate itself and enrich its members. This is not specific to the police except insofar as the police are exceptionally powerful and unchecked, and it is less a conspiracy of the powerful and more a typical dysfunction of government taken to an atypical extreme.
> our justice system should not just arrest people on AA's word and not provide any recourse
There is recourse against the government. But it's long and winding and expensive.
A private airline is under different constraints. I'm surprised AAs' lawyers let it get this far without settling. (Unless the plaintiff jumped the gun, in which case he likely gave up his strongest card.)
I meant my statement to be about what things should be like. I am shocked at this case, but I am not too naive to believe that the justice system in the US (and elsewhere) is close to what it should be.
If society wants things to be better, repeating how we think things should be over and over is helpful! It's better to have a place to go, rather than just declare we are not in the right place.
I don't understand how AA is the one getting sued here.
In a situation where multiple parties have wronged you, you can bring suit against any of them. In this case, the State has immunity and the individual at AA likely doesn't have enough assets to be worth suing. That leaves AA potentially holding the bag.
17 days in a cell without being told what you're being locked up for? For shoplifting? Absolutely a waste of society's resources, unless you think the justice system is for vindication.
In a society governed by laws, any form of detainment is unacceptable without probable cause, and any form of detainment that goes beyond an inconvenience is unacceptable without a trial.
What does this even mean? I would encourage you to stop using this word so much lest you find it lose its meaning and impact. Try calling me a racist instead?
Why AA?
They didn't put him in jail for 17 days under cruel conditions.
Everything after the wrong identification was done by the state. Especially if the differences between the wanted perpetrator and the arrested person is obvious.
Because you haven't a prayer of punishing the state (although you may squeeze some money out of tax-payers who never agreed with the actions to begin with).
Had some less egregious shit happen to me (border patrol lied and said a dog determined there were drugs up my ass). Got strip searched, taken to multiple hospitals across the state of Arizona against my will based on utterly fabricated 'probably cause' for attempted warrantless search of my body cavities. Cuffed and strutted and talked down to by doctors who called me a druggy purely based on entirely fabricated evidence, spending nearly a day in lobbies of hospitals while health care professionals ignored HIPAA and patient consent laws to do the bidding of border patrol. Looked up the court cases, a woman in identical situation was even raped by the doctors in every orifice on the same accusations and she didn't get jack.
Step A when you've been wronged by the state is to find the most proximal private entity and put them through the ringer. In this case that's AA. The state will protect itself and even if you succeed you'll need to move afterwards.
It might have sounded like a corrupt third world country before we had ready access to information other than what the local newspaper and encyclopedia could provide. But now that the individual has the tools to consider the bigger picture, this sounds exactly like the United States that I've been hearing about for well over a decade. Much of that I've become aware of right here on HN.
> Looked up the court cases, a woman in identical situation was even raped by the doctors in every orifice on the same accusations and she didn't get jack
Police should have realized right away this was an error and re-requested the manifest. Stills from surveillance footage (included in the actual complaint another poster linked to) show multiple people boarding the plane.
The was this article is written is very bad journalism, AA (obviously) didn't know anything about the theft in a completely unrelated store, and didn't report it. The only thing they did was replied to a subpoena incorrectly. This article makes it sound like AA was doing their own investigation into a crime they knew nothing about.
They are saying that the police should not have taken the action they took based solely on the unconfirmed identification provided by AA, which is correct.
I think terminating a companys existences. Or at least all of it's operation and for a period of let's say 3x is reasonable. If they are people we should be able to jail them. Have there be period where no one can work there and they can't operate.
If an innocent man goes to jail, the penalties should be so profound that it hurts. They should be levied a billion dollar penalty and I would say even that would be generous.