Eisboch wrote:
"Chuck Gould" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Oct 31, 10:39?am, "Eisboch" wrote:
"Chuck Gould" wrote in message

ups.com...



One of the challenges is that under existing law, a USCG boarding
officer cannot ask anybody aboard the boat for identification, but
only for documents identifying the boat.
Some additional insight on this issue:
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.o...mber/Gov.Lacks...
That doesn't make sense. The USCG is the only branch of the service that
is
empowered to arrest a civilian. Seems like they would need to know who
they
are arresting.

Eisboch
I'm far from entirely informed on the details of USCG arrest powers
(thank heavens!), but they may be allowed to ask for ID when making an
arrest but not when conducting a boarding.

A failure to identify the person being arrested would be contrary to
the Constitution on an extremely fundamental basis. How could anybody
rely on the right of habeus corpus if the government could factually
claim "We have no idea who we have in custody!"?


I never knew this before until a week or so ago. There was a show on "The
Military Channel" that was doing a feature on each of the armed forces
academies. The CG is the only one that can make an arrest. The Navy can
stop, board and search but if an arrest requirement results, they have to
hold the subjects and call for the CG.

There has been a program between the Navy and CG, kind of like an
exchange program, to familiarize the officers with the other services
operations for years. Originally to enable faster integration between
the two during times of war. It appears that this program has evolved
into a program where a CG officer is embarked on Naval warships for the
ability to enable arrests on the high seas.