Idiots. Blooming idiots.
Understatement.
“Not consenting to search” now equals “copping an attitiude”. Good deal.
The conversation that the lady said she overheard sounded pretty unlikely to me. I was betting that she was either 1) lying; 2) delusional; or 3) taken in by a prank. Looks now like it might be 3).
So I’m wondering – when can the cops “afford to ignore valid leads”?
Here’s my hypothesis:
Educated and erudite men of middle eastern extraction having a dinner on the way to a seminar/symposium when they notice nosey yokel eyeing them suspiciously and eavesdropping. In a moment of colossal bad judgement, perhaps abetted by one to many incident like this, one starts to make vaguely suspicious statements. The others jump in as they see the eyes on the woman grow to the size of saucers. They pay their bill and head on to the seminar. They drive along, for hours on end, growing more weary. At alligator alley one realises he has no change for the toll, or simply is tired and forgets to pay, setting off the toll alarm. The other pulls over to offer assistance when the police stop him. The rest is picked up by CNN and all major news wires.
If this turns out to be a joke concocted by those men, I hope they get charged with something, or at least pay the cost of the police time wasted in checking them out. I applaud the woman for sticking her neck out and reporting them to the police. I was watching CNN with rapt attention and the lady didn’t seem to be a crackpot. This was not funny. Those guys are lucky the police didn’t shoot first and ask questions later.
I’m with ShibbOleth. That sounds eminently plausible, and is almost exactly what I was thinking.
Well, the three men have been released now; they say the woman is “flat-out lying”. Before they were released, the local sheriff said, “If this turns out to be a hoax, they will be charged.” I had to wonder, charged with what? Apparently that was a good question, since they weren’t charged.
Now if the woman in question did in fact lie, and if that could be proven, then of course there’d be charges against her. We’ll have to see what happens.
If the three men actually said anything, they would probably be charged (in the state of Georgia) with something along the lines of communicating a threat.