It is my impression from reading press reports over the years that making labored jokes in the presence of law enforcement/customs/security types in the vein of
will get the hapless joker in deep shit, like being detained and questioned for a long time, getting person, belongings and vehicle searched very thoroughly indeed, being treated/prosecuted as someone uttering a bomb threat etc.
Now I’d assume that a rational person involved in actual criminal/terrorist activity would not draw attention to himself by this kind of behaviour, and someone making a bomb threat would phrase it as an actual bomb threat not as the opposite of a bomb threat as in the first example.
So my question to people familiar with the law enforcement mindset is: Which of the following explanations apply?
[list=a]
[li]Null hypothesis - The original premise is faulty; obvious jokes-in-bad-taste of this kind are often dismissed as such as a judgement call, i.e. the book not thrown at the joker.[/li]
[li]CYA - as the repercussions on the officer dismissing a ‘joke’ would be too awful in a case where the ‘joke’ wasn’t, the officer cannot risk making that judgement call.[/li]
[li]psychology - bad guys often don’t act rationally but rather act out e.g. with this kind of ‘joke’ when the rational course of action for them would have been to shut up.[/li]
[li]Irritation - this kind of bad joker being informally punished for the unofficial crime of Being An Asshole[/li]
[li]other[/li][/list]