stop-and-search
I guess I'm just a suspicious-looking guy.
I've blogged many, many times in the past how I get stopped waaaaaaay more often than the average person at various international borders. But I haven't been randomly stopped on the street since leaving Costa Rica.
Guess the counter restarts today!
Met up with some CouchSurfers from France (by way of Singapore/Thailand) for dinner and a drink, and started walking back up the (powered down) Mid-Levels Escalators back home, when I was stopped by a police officer. He asked for my ID, where I was going (home), where I lived (a few streets up), and whether I work here (nope, vacation).
He then asked to search my bag. Since I had no idea what my rights were in this spot, I allowed it. He did a very detailed search of my bag. He then asked for my wallet. He went through my wallet in an even more detailed manner which suggested he was looking for drugs (perhaps a dime bag hidden inside or something). But he also took out my membership cards, even stopping to examine my Harrah's Diamond card.
As an aside, I'm perhaps lucky this stop didn't happen last week when I was carrying around >90000 HKD (>10000 USD) in my bag. Not that there's anything illegal about carrying around a lot of cash, but, you know. Usually, I at least have a few thousand HKD in my wallet, but by pure dumb luck I happened to have almost no cash on me tonight.
Bag and wallet search done, he gave me a quick patdown, his partner handed back my ID, and he thanked me. All in all, extremely professional, polite and quick. On a pleasantness scale of -10 to +10, it was at worst a -2. If the US border were that good when they stopped me, I'd probably be a lot more willing to travel to the US.
Of course, as a dutiful libertarian I'm sworn to be outraged by the invasion of my personal privacy. I since learned via my post on the Geoexpat.com forum that they have the right to check my ID, but not search my person or belongings. And thus the police will be politely informed as such next time.
I've blogged many, many times in the past how I get stopped waaaaaaay more often than the average person at various international borders. But I haven't been randomly stopped on the street since leaving Costa Rica.
Guess the counter restarts today!
Met up with some CouchSurfers from France (by way of Singapore/Thailand) for dinner and a drink, and started walking back up the (powered down) Mid-Levels Escalators back home, when I was stopped by a police officer. He asked for my ID, where I was going (home), where I lived (a few streets up), and whether I work here (nope, vacation).
He then asked to search my bag. Since I had no idea what my rights were in this spot, I allowed it. He did a very detailed search of my bag. He then asked for my wallet. He went through my wallet in an even more detailed manner which suggested he was looking for drugs (perhaps a dime bag hidden inside or something). But he also took out my membership cards, even stopping to examine my Harrah's Diamond card.
As an aside, I'm perhaps lucky this stop didn't happen last week when I was carrying around >90000 HKD (>10000 USD) in my bag. Not that there's anything illegal about carrying around a lot of cash, but, you know. Usually, I at least have a few thousand HKD in my wallet, but by pure dumb luck I happened to have almost no cash on me tonight.
Bag and wallet search done, he gave me a quick patdown, his partner handed back my ID, and he thanked me. All in all, extremely professional, polite and quick. On a pleasantness scale of -10 to +10, it was at worst a -2. If the US border were that good when they stopped me, I'd probably be a lot more willing to travel to the US.
Of course, as a dutiful libertarian I'm sworn to be outraged by the invasion of my personal privacy. I since learned via my post on the Geoexpat.com forum that they have the right to check my ID, but not search my person or belongings. And thus the police will be politely informed as such next time.