Say Anything Blog

Back in April I posted about a Ron Paul/Campaign for Liberty organizer being detained in the St. Louis airport for having a large amount of cash on his person.  Here’s a Fox News segment on the situation, including an audio recording made of the TSA security agents bullying and threatening Steven Bierfeldt.  To wit: “You want to play smartass, and I’m not going to play your f**king game.”

Today comes news that the ACLU (of all people) is filing suit in the case, claiming that the detention was unlawful:

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A lawsuit filed Thursday against the Transportation Security Administration alleges a Ron Paul supporter was unreasonably detained at the St. Louis airport because he was carrying about $4,700 in cash.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of Steven Bierfeldt, director of development for the Campaign for Liberty, an organization that grew out of Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign.

The organization had hosted an event in St. Louis that included the sale of tickets, T-shirts, stickers and other materials and Bierfeldt said he was carrying the cash proceeds in a metal box when he was detained at Lambert Airport for about 30 minutes on March 29.

The lawsuit does not seek money but asks the court to declare the TSA’s actions unconstitutional and to prohibit the agency from similar searches when there is no evidence aircraft are endangered.

“It’s obviously important that the safety of flights be ensured,” Bierfeldt said in a telephone interview. “But subjecting innocent travelers like me who are doing nothing wrong — I think it diverts TSA away from its core mission of safeguarding air travel.”

There is always a fine line between giving law enforcement officers enough authority to safely and effectively enforce the law and giving them too much authority to the point at which they begin infringing upon the rights of citizens.  When law enforcement officers abuse the authority they’re given, they make it more difficult for all law enforcement officers to enforce the law.

Supposedly the suspicions about the cash Mr. Bierfeldt was carrying had something to do with concerns over drug smuggling or other sorts of illegal activity.  While those concerns may be valid, how many drug smugglers carry large amounts of cash on them in what is obviously a metal cash box?

What happened to Mr. Biefeldt was wrong.  There are no excuses.  As I said when I first posted on this, everyone involved in harassing or threatening Mr. Bierfeldt should be fired.  This is America.  Not China or Cuba.