So one would guess the more you fly the better your chance of being a target. Especially if you fly into little fields or at night. Makes my landing at as many airports in the country more of a challenge.
You're reading too much into it. In the end, these mammoths of bureaucracy are nothing more than a jobs program. You need GS employees to sustain these local crappy border economies with their above median wages. The fact they accomplish this by trespassing against their own neighbors is frankly, immaterial.
Jobs jobs jobs. Ask a federal DHS/CBP type, they'll tell you [privately] all day: "I can't make GS-11/12/13 money as a private worker anywhere with my lackluster education/practical skillset; I'm just trying to feed my family". Pure economic motivation. They know what they do for a living is kabuki. But they get paid to fly a plane and carry a gun. Beats working at olive garden as far as they're concerned and the retirement is way better. There's your smoking gun.
As a lawyer - I'd be worse . .
They ask me all sorts of questions asserting my fifth amendment privilege and refusing search for any purposes, including the dog. My little card also asks them to disclose their reasonable suspicion for a stop. If they lack a warrant I'm am going on my way and buttoning up my aircraft.
If they further reason to detain me, state the reasons since I do not consent to detention or search. If you have a warrant, display it. Detention to await another police organization without knowing the probable cause is illegal, and to step out my way or face civil rights charges.
After being stopped twice at illegally placed drunk driving checkpoints that cannot be avoided legally in my city, even if they are stopping every third car, and I'm the third car - they now know me and wave me along - see - non-compliance and standing on rights works.
The only thing CBP or any other law enforcement officer can ask for legally is our papers.
Pilot certificate, medical, Airworthiness and Registration. As I understand it, you can only be detained long enough to review these documents.
After that, any further discussion is at your discretion I would politely ask "am I free to go". Any question on their part would only get my same response: "Am I free to go". They cannot search anything without probable cause so don't do anything that will give them that. They cannot detain you beyond that point since the original reason for stopping and checking your papers have been completed.
All of this makes me nervous as hell. I know I don't have what they are looking for because I have never messed with the drugs and never will. I am into guns but don't mess with the automatics and never take them on the aircraft with me.
My biggest fear, and maybe this is from too much television, is that during said search it would be so easy to plant something and there you go, instant trouble.
Is that over the top paranoid or is it a real concern?
I have a question about all these rights, etc. As a Canadian, what rights apply to me when I am in the USA? Are there differences?
Thanks...but just in case I'm challenged, is there any place I can read, and maybe print out, to use if I'm told I don't have the same rights?You have the same rights as a U.S. citizen.
Just to put this into perspective, 60 flights a year are intercepted. That's out of 24 million flight hours per year (according to the FAA). Think about 4 hours per flight (a hopelessly optimistic estimate) and you have 6 million flights per year. Thus your chances of being intercepted are 1 in 600,000. To put this in perspective, your odds of dying in a car crash are about 1 in 112. Your odds of being fatally assaulted with a firearm are on in 356. Your odds of unintentionally drowning are roughly one in a thousand. Your odds of being subject to lethal execution are one in 96,000.
Oh, and your odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 136,011.
The odds of tyrannical morons bother you are low, so that makes it better. LOL.
Did you adjust that to only GA flights? The "intercepts" you're using don't happen to airliners I assume, and I'm not sure if your 24 million flight hour number is only GA?
Also why are you using flight hours instead of flights? No one cares how many hours of flight time it takes the number that's interesting is how many flights are stopped. Also, is the number growing or shrinking or remaining the same?
Fair enough. I think the fight against this is mostly idealism, we supposedly have due process and rights, but we keep giving them up to catch the lowest common denominator. As a taxpayer, I really don't care if bad guys take $100,000 across the border. I'm certainly not interested in paying billions to stop it.
Thanks...but just in case I'm challenged, is there any place I can read, and maybe print out, to use if I'm told I don't have the same rights?
Fair enough. I think the fight against this is mostly idealism, we supposedly have due process and rights, but we keep giving them up to catch the lowest common denominator. As a taxpayer, I really don't care if bad guys take $100,000 across the border. I'm certainly not interested in paying billions to stop it.
As a taxpayer you should care. It's not 100,000,00 or a million, it's almost all cash , billions.laundered by American banks often on a 60-40 split, bank retaining 40. Many of these banks are the same ones we had to bail out due to no doc sub primes, deregulation , poor leverage , etc. many illegal business are funded by this money, car dealers, resturants, all kinds. Not to mention having to have police in schools where a lot of drugs are sold, on and on. Many years ago Khrushchev said of the U.S. " we don't have to attack you, it's not necessary. You will ruin yourselves" . He was referring mainly to drugs and it's influence on the young in this country. It's coming true.
So, here's a theoretical for you.
I guess they catch you on the ground, just after or just before a flight, when you're at the plane, ready to go, or leave the field.
Let's say you see them on the field, you hop in and power up, take to the runway, and leave before they get to your plane. Now it's a game of cat and mouse. Tracking you around, following you from hop to hop. Wonder what that would do.
change the word airplane to car . . . deal with police trying to stop you . . .. and you have a pretty good idea of what to expect. . .
Hmmm, don't think so. With a car, there is law and precedence; 'move to the right for sirens and lights', but if the cop in the car is driving along, no one pulls over. In my case, the cops/CBP/DHS whatever are just driving up without sirens and lights. You hop in, fire up and off you go. If they are behind you and flip on the lights, sirens - how are you to know when you are taking off?
I believe the jurisprudence for planes will be very similar to cars - and recommend you follow those same rules - acknowledging there are no roads and airplanes can go to unsupervised or patrolled locations.
Thanks...but just in case I'm challenged, is there any place I can read, and maybe print out, to use if I'm told I don't have the same rights?
Banks: I've been against the bailout since before it happened. Criminal.
Illegal businesses? Who cares? Sell whatever you want. I don't care.
Police in schools? Already there. Don't care. Close 'em down and have folks teach their own spawn. I don't have any.
Got anything else?
Yawn.
You wouldn't be yawning if those banks had gone under as we would have revisited 1929 except that there's no world war to pull us out of it. Immature response, you fail the course.
Sounds like the flights originating from the legal hippie lettuce States are getting more scrutiny.
If you take off from CO or CA for instance, fly low, make a few stops, and don't file.
Good info in this thread.
change the word airplane to car . . . deal with police trying to stop you . . .. and you have a pretty good idea of what to expect. . .
California has NOT repealed its law against recreational use. If anything, they should be stopping people traveling INTO California!
As for medical marijuana use, 21 states and the District of Columbia have repealed laws prohibiting that.
Yeah, but our recent visit to San Diego where my daughter lives, our son-in-law has his green card and he could have gone in and bought me hoochie all day long.
I don't recall if there's a daily limit, or an ounces limit you can buy in one day, but I could have given him money until they run out of inventory and loaded up the Cessna. You can't do that in TX. You still have to buy it illegal. That's harder to do.
My point was, I fly to CA, soninlaw loads me up, I fly back. Easy-peasy.
And since when does CBP's mission include intercepting "illegal" drugs moved from one state to another without crossing a border?I don't know anything about Texas, but buying pot in CA is no more or less legal than in twenty other states and the District of Columbia.
Great question. I think we are missing the point of CBPs latest enforcement it isn't drug money that stuff is paid to move freely. There is movement afoot to stop Muricans from moving legit already taxed money out of the country. We need it here so we can tax it again and again.And since when does CBP's mission include intercepting "illegal" drugs moved from one state to another without crossing a border?
And since when does CBP's mission include intercepting "illegal" drugs moved from one state to another without crossing a border?
Air and Marine Operations Center
The Air and Marine Operations Center (AMOC) is the nation’s only federal law enforcement center
that coordinates interdiction operations in the Western Hemisphere. The AMOC was established in
1988 to counter the airborne drug smuggling threat. OAM has expanded the AMOC’s role in air and
marine interdiction. Today, AMOC provides detection, monitoring, sorting, tracking, and coordination
of law enforcement response to suspect airborne and maritime activity at, beyond, and inside our
nation’s borders. The center has conducted unmanned aircraft and airspace security operations;
responded to natural disasters, covert and overt electronic target tracking; and determined general
aviation aircraft threat.
In some cases, it might not be obvious that the police were here for you instead of some other purpose.
so - THEY know - and thats all that matters to them and the courts . . . you are attempting to flee . . .
How do they prove in court that you knew they were after you and not there for some other purpose?
it doesn't matter what you know . . . and its assumed you know.
CBP's "theater of operation" from their annual performance report.
Go ahead and point to a state boundary that appears to be outside their jurisdiction...
http://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/PAR.pdf
From the same report, page 26: