Posted on 04/11/2014 4:17:30 AM PDT by Timber Rattler
A Columbus, Ohio, family said their children were traumatized after what was meant to be a fun trip to the National Museum of the United States Air Force ended with guns drawn on them.
Alice Hill, 65, her daughter-in-law, Wendy, and two young grandchildren visited the museum on April 4 and, as they were leaving, were ordered to get out of their vehicle by military police. Hill said the officers pulled guns on the family and cuffed the adults in front of the children, according to an incident report.
(snip)
The family was detained for about 90 minutes as authorities sorted through questions about whether the van was stolen — it wasn't — and whether they were casing cars in the lot — they weren't.
(snip)
"An initial check of the vehicle plates with the National Law Enforcement Terminal System reported the vehicle as stolen," according to a base statement Tuesday. "Security forces responded as trained, and executed high-risk traffic stop procedures. Further investigation of the full vehicle information number revealed the vehicle was not stolen."
(snip)
"We sincerely regret the fact that their enjoyable day at the museum ended with this high-risk traffic stop," their statement read. "Had the vehicle not originally come back as stolen, this situation would have been resolved with a quick courtesy stop of the vehicle to clarify the initial report."
(Excerpt) Read more at daytondailynews.com ...
Fort Hood #1 - “Why was Army security so lax?> How did this happen?!?”
Navy Yard - “Why was Navy security so lax? How did this person have access to the base (where he worked)?”
Fort Hood #2 - “Why was the Army security so lax? Don’t they know that Army bases are targets?”
Dayton - Wright Patterson Air Base - “Why are you harassing this poor family just because you thought they were driving a stolen car?”
Good thing they didn’t have a dog with them...
Should we check our vehicle's status first? ;)
In my years in the AF, on some bases I found the Security Forces to be rather anxious for some kind of action. This may have been one such instance.
Also, don't pass up the tours of the back lots. Pensacola and Dayton each have a version. The Air Force tour takes you through the shops where restoration is done and upcoming projects are stored. I was there a couple of years ago and they had a B-17 ball turret that looked as if it had just come off the assembly line!
And, one day is simply not enough for the Air Force museum.
Ban assault grandma’s.
Not bloody likely.
I can see being cautious on the approach and asking them out of the vehicle while you and your guys figure out what’s going on, but there’s an awful lot of “mights” and “coulds” in there to be immediately treating them as violent criminals. I’ve been in their shoes before, in far more dangerous grounds than Wright-Patterson AFB, and I’m not understanding why there’s apparently zero on-site judgment being used. It sounds like they reverted to some battle drill and didn’t bother analyzing the situation beyond what some database told them.
Anyone in the military who’s had to sit through getting their paperwork updated in S1 should know you can’t trust a database any farther than you can throw the SAN that hosts its data.
Some context might help here ....Sounds like this happened 2 days after the latest Ft Hood shooting, so it’s understandable that they were extra sensitive to anything out of the ordinary or a little suspicious.
If they were being treated as violent criminals, there would be a passage in there about how they were thrown to the ground, a knee placed on their back, were cuffed behind the back, and held down until the matter was resolved. If that had happened, I think the poster would have chosen to excerpt those parts of the article.
It sounds to me like a lot of discretion was used here, and this family was treated a lot better than somebody would have been if they looked more like your typical violent criminal. But discretion only goes so far. If you are on a military base in what is presumed to be a stolen vehicle, you can expect to be handcuffed.
HUH
Which makes you wonder why Timber Rattler decided to limit the information you had available at the time.
You make a valid point. However, it shouldn't have taken 90 minutes to figure this all out.
Another case of another incompetent federal agency.
The Air Force MPs are probably less efficient than the civilian police about this sort of thing. Anybody who has dealt with the military about anything will not be at all surprised by this. 90 minutes is as to a blink of an eye when it comes to administrative tasks performed by the military.
When we drove onto the base last year to visit this Air Force Museum, and as we passed a big sign that informed us that we were entering Wright Patterson AFB, I said aloud that we were now on a military base and we would be following all of the rules. So if the sign says “keep off the grass”, we were going to keep off the grass. When you’re inside the fence, it’s not like you are in the real world.
Stupid jerks.
What is so "high risk" about a van driven by a 65 year Grandma, her daughter, and two grade school kids at the museum? Don't these cops have two eyes?
Couldn't the bullies just stop her and say something like, "Ma'am, could you please turn the car off, hand me the keys, and give me your license and registration? We need to check out the status of your vehicle."
Stupid, hair-triggered jerks. They've all been watching too many episodes of COPS!.
Grandma is lucky they didn't drag her out of the van and have six or seven burly thugs jump on her screaming, "STOP RESISTING!" while fighting to see who could get her arms behind her first and the cuffs on. Maybe they could even taser her one or twice.
Stupid, stupid, hair-triggered, SWAT-wannabee jerks...
If I were the Base Commander, these jerks would be suspended from their jobs and their supervisor severely disciplined. This was a complete over-reaction to a non-threatening situation.
“Should we check our vehicle’s status first? ;)”
Just your action trying to check your vehicle will trigger the LEO to visit and question you.
Hell, if you just ask about cash transaction limits at a bank they report your inquiry to the feds.
The Military is what it is.
The alternative is to eliminate public access to the base, eliminate the museum, and let the Smithsonian handle this sort of thing.
But, keep in mind, the Smithsonian thought is was a good idea to hack the Enola Gay in half so they could add 10,000 square feet of explanatory BS about how the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was a war crime.
Kids...
HA!!!
Little Soviet midgets most likely.
So now you are criticizing these MPs for things they didn't do?
Duly noted...
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