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Comment by tsunamifury | Hacker News Reader

The problem with your logic is giving private companies complete rights over your physical person once you enter their plane will (and does as shown by the incident) lead to abuse for profit.

There was no security issue, there was no emergency, there was no legitimate reason to remove this person from the plane. The abuse and physical harm of a passenger was done entirely in the name of saving a few dollars by not sending their staff on another flight.

This was wrong and it was an abuse of the security personal to enforce their monetary needs.

Separately, the security personal should be fired -- for also being utterly unprofessional, unable to read the scenario, and reacting with unnecessary force.

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That entire way of policing has been normalized and legalized over the decades now. For example, originally "Less Lethal" options were intended to be used in a situation an officer would otherwise have to use their firearm. Now, they're just used as compliance "come-alongs"; these kinds of things start in our prisons and then come to our streets. Now you have police tasering streakers just to stop them, or swabbing students' eyes with pepper spray to get them to submit.

Is it any wonder that "failure to comply" has become legalese for, "You've given us the right to do anything to you, up to killing you on camera."

This isn't the airlines, although obviously their customer service is appalling; this is an issue with our police.

Well, the only response police have to non-compliance has always been violence. It's always been against the law not to comply with their orders. And it seems obvious that they will choose the sort that's less risky to the officer (taser, pepper spray), because each and every one of them knows the stories of the officers who got hurt.

So yeah, if the police tell you to do something, you should expect to do it. It's neither the place nor the time for a debate and if you think they're wrong, you need to argue that in court. And that will be a lot easier if you don't resist arrest in the first place.

Again, an absurd and grandiose interpretation. You do not need to comply with the police in "Whatever they say." If a Police officer violates the law, you cannot comply with them. If they use physical intimidation, they are not acting as an officer of the law. You are a citizen with an obligation to comply to the legal extent, not a slave to the whims of officers.

> You do not need to comply with the police in "Whatever they say."

In what sense? You can say that you only have to comply with lawful orders, but unless the cop believes their own order to be unlawful, which is unlikely, they're going to force you to comply. And if you're wrong about the order being lawful, you will get hit with resisting arrest, which will only make life harder for you in fighting it.

If you want to put a stop to it, do so in the courtroom. Do it on the streets and you'll be tasered and accomplish nothing.

The difference is in the rate of escalation. In the US, non-compliance can lead to violence really, really quickly.

On average, the people being arrested are more likely to attack the cops. If, on average, people went quietly with the police and fought this in the court system, things would change for the better.

>On average, the people being arrested are more likely to attack the cops.

Compared to... people with no contact with the police? You cant actually be saying that the average arrest is resisted, can you?

Normally one would make an apples to apples comparison of the average of arrested people in both populations, instead of trying to include the people who weren't arrested for reasons I'm not at all clear on.

Who was being arrested? "Resisting" isn't some magic phrase that turns a simple encounter into a mugging by the state, sorry. As for risk, if you're a police officer you've chosen to protect and serve the public, which is a sacrifice; if you can't potentially take the risks to make that sacrifice... find a new damned job, we don't need or want you.

What is needed is extensive revamping of legislation to curb both police powers, and equipment, starting with an end to the war on drugs and associated weaponry/vehicles/agencies.

What I mean is, that if that is the proposition on the table, don't take it.

I think what surprises people is that that proposition was on the table in the first place. Maybe it's specified in the fine print of the contract, but it violates most people's sense of fairness and decency.

The thing is, on a plane the crew is king and you have to follow their orders. If they decide that you have to leave the plane, you must leave the plane. Now, their reasons might be questionable. You have every right to fight the airline once you are off the plane. But there is no room for this while on board. Basically, as soon as he started to refuse to follow the crew's orders, it was a lost case for him.

s/plane/bus/g

s/leave/sit in the back of/g

Well, one of the differences is that it's easier to kick someone off a bus mid-travel. That's why the rules are different. Also, racial discrimination ist still illegal on a plane. Just don't fight this fight while on the plane.

Please don't compare this to the civil rights movement. Police brutality is not a good thing, but the injustices that started that movement were orders of magnitude greater.

Have you been paying attention to how muslims (including US citizens) are being treated on planes and in airports?

What about the security apparatus that underpins the no fly list and is feeding this comment into your "is this a terrorist" machine learning profile?

What about the idea that corporations (like private prisons) sometimes have the right to completely ignore due process?

Please stop acting like everything is OK and this is not about civil rights.

This isn't a case of a man being refused the right to fly because he is muslim. The guy was chosen at random. There are plenty of recent incidents that could reasonably be compared to rosa parks refusing to move from the front of the bus, but this isn't one of them.

No that is not true. You do not have to put yourself in physical danger. You do not need to comply with abuse of others. You do not need to be complicit in illegal activity.

The crew is not "King." They have an expanded set of duties they can enforce.

This sort of grandiose interpretation of the law is why we have absurd egotistical displays of violence in the name of non-offenses.

Not exactly: the crew’s first duty is to protect passengers’ safety. In that regard, they are allowed to compel passengers and can do things like confiscate alcohol for disinfection and demand that a surgeon operates a dying patient/passenger. They are allowed to flag a passenger as rowdy or suspicious. They are not allowed to demand that a passenger disembark for other reasons than security.

Harming a passenger when you had a peaceful solution available is the exact opposite of what they are meant to do.

The crew didn't harm him. They asked the passenger multiple times to leave. When he refused they asked airport security to remove him. Airport security asked him multiple times to leave, and when he refused they dragged him out and he bumped his face against an arm rest.

The plane couldn't leave until this person left. So there was a plane full of people who couldn't leave because of this jerk.

And he wasn't abused. He was told to leave multiple times by airline crew as well as security. He refused every time and forced security to drag him out. Whereupon he accidentally hit his face on an arm rest.

It's not abuse for profit. We all benefit from cheaper refundable fares from the overbooking system. We also benefit from having our flights not be canceled when the air crew isn't able to show up on time.

The plane absolutely could have left, entirely full of ticketed passengers. United held the plane to force this scenario -- since they wanted to replace ticketed paid passengers with their own staff to fly for free.

A pilot will not leave if they have a passenger on board who refuses to follow instructions by the crew. If you feel like you are treated unjustly (which might very well be the case here), take the fight off the plane.

Really? Would a plane not leave if the crew requested you remove your clothes and fly naked? Would it not leave if they forced you to fight another passenger?

There was no safety issue, and the crew only has power over you in the event of an issue of safety. There was no such issue.

Their "staff" was a flight crew that needed to get to Louisville or another plane full of 200 passengers would be stuck on the tarmac unable to fly.

Ah, and UA didn't knew it before the people boarded? So, not only they are morons, but they are totally incompetents.

I have not seen such ridiculous defence of something indefendible like you're doing on this thread.

The plane could leave at any time. It could leave with him on it and the staff member standing in the terminal. It could leave with another passenger exiting.

To be fair, the passenger thought he bought a "ticket", a fungible item which allowed the bearer transport. What he did was enter into a contractual agreement with an airline and the post-9/11 security infrastructure that expects passengers to shut up and obey. It's easy to make this mistake. The airlines still call them "tickets".

Of course it could have. They let him sit down. It's bizarre they couldn't figure this out before letting people on the airplane.

They should have just shot the jerk. After all, we ALL benefit. Who cares about the rights and the blood shed of one person. We ALL benefit. The airline had NO OTHER CHOICE in the matter. They couldn't have offered more compensation to give up seats. I'll bet $800 cash would have done the trick. Everyone knows $800 flight coupons are pretty worthless. They couldn't have put their employees on other flights. Nope, there weren't any other options other than forcibly removing this one passenger so that we ALL benefit. A little bloodshed is nothing in the world of commerce.

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