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On Nov 1, 8:36 am, wrote:
On Nov 1, 7:02 am, thunder wrote:

On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:21:32 -0700, ohara5.0 wrote:
Unless they have probable cause they better not ask for my ID cuz
I'll
tell em "I'm your boss, the taxpayer, go away". I thought this issue
was settled in a case in Wy where a guy sitting in a truck was asked
for
his ID by a cop for no reason. He had not been driving, he was just
waiting for someone. He refused and was arrested. Court ruled cops
have no right to ask for ID for no reason.

Yeah, but. The standard is not probable cause, it's reasonable
suspicion, and you *can* be
prosecuted if you don't identify yourself.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/06/24/do....id/index.html

As in the WY case, simply being on a boat does not constitute
"reasonable suspicion". If you were adjacent to a power plant or
something else that could reasonably be a target, maybe, however,
simply being aboard a boat in open water could not b interpreted that
way.

I did have something similar to this happen to me.
We were at a boat landing at a FL state park eating at a picnic
table. I came back from the water and found a ranger going through my
ice chest and I asked calmly what he was doing and he said he was
searching for alchohol to which I replied "No way" and slammed it shut
telling him he had no cause for doing so. He told me that he had
ticketed my friend at a nearby table for posession of alcohol in the
park. Neither of us had any alcohol but he had simply sat down at a
table on which there was an empty beer can. Consequently, he wanted
to search my ice chest. I told him that he needed a search warrant
and sat on the ice chest. We both got tickets for posession of
alcohol. Friend #3 who is a lawyer calmly sat watching the whole
episode and whn the rangers had left said "This will be fun". Next
month, we had to appear at the Wakulla County Courthouse in
Crawfordville, real redneck land. We all showed up as did the rangers
to our surprise. The lawyer told the judge what had happed and he
(the judge) was speechless with anger. He then gave the rangers a 15
minute rant on what they could legally do and what they couldnt do.


You got lucky. Here (NY), town justices do not have to have any legal
training. You could've ended up with yahoo whose main job was stacking
produce at the local IGA grocery store.