From the AP (via the Seattle PI: Woman arrested, cuffed for eating candy
A woman is eating a candy bar as she descends an escalator into a DC metro station when a transit cop warns her to finish it before entering the station. "Both Willett and police agree that she nodded and put the last bit into her mouth before throwing the wrapper into a trash can." Then the officer follows her into the station and asked her for ID. She makes a derogatory remark and keeps walking, at which point he arrests, frisks, and then handcuffs her.
"'If she had stopped eating, it would have been the end of it and if she had just stopped for the issuance of a citation, she never would have been locked up,' Transit Police Chief Polly Hanson said Thursday."
So basically, the woman was arrested because she was chewing inside the station? This sounds to me more like an arrest due to proper lack of respect paid to the arresting officer. And what was that officer doing anyway, first warning her and then harrassing her when she does exactly what he says?
But people (and journalists) need to remember that the US Supreme Court this year ruled that people are required to show ID whenever anyone with a law enforcement uniform asks for it, regardless of any evidence of good reason.
Those DC subways are nice and clean, sure. But Seattle's bus tunnel is no landfill, and we don't need a metro SS to keep it that way. either.
Your papers please!
