suspicious behavior

The recent experience of a couple of young guys from Detroit should be a lesson to all of us: you are subject to arrest and detention if you are ABC (Arab Buying Cellphones), AQA (Anyone Questioning Authority), or DWB (Driving While Black).

The latter category of criminal activity, of course, has been well known for some time here in the land of the free and the home of the owners of the factors of production. Regardless of region, state, or neighborhood, you are putting yourself in jeopardy with law enforcement officials (LEO) if you choose to engage in suspicious behavior such as Driving While Black (DWB). Like DWI (Driving While Intoxicated), Driving While Black automatically makes one a threat to law-abiding citizens (LAC), at least in the perceptions of vigilant LEO. Whether you are driving a Cadillac on the South Side of Chicago or a pickup truck in Macon, a new Range Rover in Beverly Hills or an old Saab in Columbus, real Amerikan LEOs and LACkeys know enough to use common sense and avoid DWB, ABC, or AQA.

AQA has also been a crime for long enough that any fool should know better than to Question Authority. It didn't just start in the 1960s, when a large collection of dissenters started dressing funny and otherwise disrespecting the police, the military, and other protectors of freedom by asking questions. The gall. The nerve. There have always been troublemakers on the lunatic fringes of respectable society for as long as there have been authoritarian fear-mongers to protect us from deviants, malcontents, and ourselves. It's only recently that it has explicitly become public policy that dissent = treason.

The events of last week, not only in British airports but on U.S. highways, are only an extension of that proud tradition. Two young men of Southwest Asian descent can't buy cell phones in quantity without being arrested for conspiracy to commit terrorist acts. Okay, so Sheriff Bubba from southern Ohio got a little carried away in his patriotic zeal to nail a couple of foreign devils, can ya blame the guy when it's the policy and practice from the top-down to report and detain those who are guilty of, you know, "suspicious behavior"?

I know I'm over-reacting; that's what I do in this space. I'll try not to harm any human or animal subjects in the process. What this "suspicious behavior" issue - and the zeal with which patriotic citizens are encouraged to report each other - reminds me of some other incidents I have encountered.

Back in the day when I was between freelance jobs, I did some landscaping for an acquaintance in the campus area of town. We met several times to discuss their needs in the back yard of their large, beautiful home on a ravine, and I spent several hours a day for several weeks working alone in the yard with hand tools and ladders. I had conversations with his wife about the condition of the trees, the shrubs, the groundcover, and the weeds. I knew their son, a well-connected lawyer. I met some of their neighbors.

One day when the family was on vacation, someone broke into their house, tripping an alarm system that alerted the police. A vigilant law enforcement officer in his high-tech vehicle spotted me from the ravine carrying landscaping stones and called for backup. The LEO questioned me, heard my explanation of what I was doing, handcuffed me, and locked me in the back seat of his car. An hour or so later, when my identity had been confirmed, he let me go, rationalizing his actions by saying that if it were my house, I would have wanted him to do just what he had done.

No.