If you’re a wanted man, it’s a good idea to avoid airports. There are more law enforcement on property – from myriad agencies – than just about anywhere else. There may be police, FBI, DEA, CBP, and virtually every other three-letter agency you can come up with. There are cameras everywhere. And you have to show I.D.
So it’s no surprise that a man with outstanding warrants would get arrested in the Atlanta airport.
But would it surprise you that a well-known Grammy Award winner and pioneer of hip hop subgenre trap music was arrested – and that they got the wrong guy?
Rapper and record producer T.I., whose real name is Clifford Harris Jr., was arrested at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport on Sunday night. The 43-year-old artist, known for hits like “What You Know,” was detained by authorities who mistakenly believed he was the subject of an arrest warrant.
That’s because there was an outstanding warrant issued Clifford Harris. But a different one, who lives in Baltimore and is 25% heavier. That Harris is alleged to have engaged in violent behavior, stalking, and possessing an illegal firearm.
The Clifford Harris sought by Baltimore authorities reportedly weighs 205 pounds, whereas T.I. weighs approximately 165 pounds. T.I. was taken into custody and transported to Clayton County Jail. He was released two hours later.
Earlier this year, T.I. and his wife, Tameka “Tiny” Cottle-Harris, were accused of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in 2005. The lawsuit was filed under California’s Sexual Abuse and Cover-Up Accountability Act, which extends the statute of limitations. The couple has denied these allegations.(“We are innocent of these fake claims, we will not be shaken down, and we look forward to our day in court”).
He was also arrested in 2018.
Rapper T.I. was recently arrested outside of his gated community when trying to get home. He was charged with disorderly conduct, public drunkenness and simple assault.
Security footage from the jail shows a different side to the story. pic.twitter.com/E8e34idFz9
— The Root (@TheRoot) May 17, 2018
T.I. recently announced the release of his 12th and final studio album, “Kill the King.”
The police do not carry a weight scale or a lie detector . Better to be safe than sorry .
The guy ought to be cooperative , and in the future carry paper evidence of the mistaken identity and subsequent release .
This is what happens when the government and the travel service providers have colluded to undermine the privacy rights of Americans and done just that in the name of security and law and order. The gullible and apathetic public have enabled a surveillance state in America that would make the stasi and other “security services” in Communist Eastern Germany and the Soviet Union be jealous at what they couldn’t do as thoroughly and easily as US “security services”.
“Better to be safe than sorry” can be used to also justify the police firing bullets first at central mass on “Alert” and asking questions later. Still supporting “better safe than sorry”, “Alert”? It could unfortunately well be too late at that point for “Alert”.
If it was a famous British Calvin Harris who legally changed his name to travel as C Harris, would these same law enforcement clowns have treated him the same was as this rapper/producer Clifford Harris?
*Center mass*
It’s interesting you bring up the game done with revising the statute of limitations and making the change effectively retroactive. People who support that kind of disruption to the rule of law should consider that much the same thing can be done in some states to people who have had an abortion or facilitated another person’s abortion in some jurisdictions where old laws were not revoked by the legislators but merely got superseded by later laws or court rulings that can be revoked by the legislators.
In concept this is simple. We want to apprehend those who have warrants. We don’t want to detain those with the same name who have no warrants. We trade alpha (type I) risk [missing a “bad” guy] with beta (type II) [detaining a “good” guy]. There is almost certain to be a tradeoff between I and II. If you want no good guys detained, be prepared for more bad guys to get away. Of course, better technology let’s you improve one without increasing the other, but that can add a big brother layer. This is the one case for those stupid names; Tryzbezia is highly likely to only be detained if he has a warrant.
I wonder if pre-check gives you any protection from problems caused by the bad people who share your name? Would a passport be sufficient for thus to be solved quickly at the airport?
A passport and PreCheck on boarding pass don’t provide immunity from governmental “better safe than sorry” “identification”-driven nonsense at US airports. In some cases it has even increased the odds of problems during domestic airport transit.
In a different context, a couple of months back I was following a matter where a Finnish citizen was trying to go from Austria to Finland via Germany. At the airport in Germany they grabbed him on an Interpol red notice. In that matter there was no confusion, for Singapore had already fed sufficient details to Interpol and the German national police are more by the book than our fly by the pants American law enforcement types and the super-messed up US DHS which are more eager to land credit for a catch than to do the right catch and avoid wrongful catches.
Law enforcement depends so much on databases for outstanding warrants, etc. Since the technology is cheap and available, those databases should be required to include a link to the state’s DMV photo when available, to prevent these types of occurrences.
The legislative solution here is compensation for false arrests. Anybody falsely arrested deserves to be paid for their time spent in custody at at least 3 times the billing rate of the highest billing share partner at Kirkland & Ellis. Compensation is also due as an apology for the embarrassment of being arrested at all, for the unplanned disruption to one’s personal schedule, and for any incurred fees (appointment or reservation no-show fees, rebooking fees) attributable to that disruption. I would support treble damages in all areas.
This was sloppy police work to say the least. An arrest warrant has more biographical information on it than simply a name. Date of birth, at a minimum will be on there. Did TI share the same birthday as the person he was confused for? Driver’s license number, state of residence, and FBI number if applicable (all arrestees are assigned a unique FBI identifier after their first arrest and fingerprint scan is reported to the FBI’s NCIC system). TI would have a unique FBI identifier tied to his fingerprints if anyone had cared to look. ATL has its own jail/holding area. Are they going to say they don’t have a fingerprint scanner for booking into the jail on site?
I can understand initial confusion. I can’t understand how on earth it the identity issue was not quickly and easily sorted out while still at the airport, given all the various biometric means of authenticating an individual there. How does someone get hauled to an offsite county jail before this error is figured out? Astounding incompetence and negligence.
Mistakes happen. Nothing to see here. Move on with life.
US DHS has even harassed women because the government flagged the women down as if they were named men on the US aviation blacklists. Then it was sometimes calls to the FBI to tell them that the names on the ID aren’t the same, nor is the sex on the passenger’s ID the same as the sex of the actual names blacklisted persons, and other such differences. This is what we get from government actors with the “better safe than sorry” passenger identification nonsense at US airports.
This is also a case of someone who may have the financial option of travelling private. Although not someone with a Taylor Swift budget, it may well be worthwhile for a touring rapper or(?) to fly private to avoid missing a concert gig.
Agreeing with “Lars” above, on all points…
No excuse for not having better safeguards. They should connect a warrant for John Smith to his state ID and his passport (when the warrant is issued or the ID & passport is, whichever later). No different John Smith using his state ID or passport should then be flaggable.
Who?
@GUWonder
I don’t agree with you often, but you have this one nailed.
Lars, above comment, has nailed this! Well commented.