Summary of Agreement (not judgement): 1. Plaintiff received $25K (directed to ACLU legal and subject to tax) 2. Philadelphia PD must communicate the following for a period of months: "Investigative detentions may be made only on reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct and any arrest must be based on probable cause. A referral by TSA agents is not grounds for arrest unless an officer makes a judgment ofprobable cause…
Seems like a lame outcome. If there is no admission or finding of wrong doing it really feels like there was no accountability whatsoever. The $25k is a rounding error and looks more like a token payment than anything else. They don't even have to make that paragraph part of their permanent police training. edit: How did they manage to drag this out for 5 years and still not have an actual judge or jury rule on this.
Accountability for what, exactly? He wasn't arrested. He was detained. Police have wide latitude to detain people that are suspicious. I think any objective human being would say that a second look at him was warranted with those items in his bag. Whether he meant to or not, he pretty closely matched the profile of a radicalized US citizen.
BTW, the title of this article isn't even accurate - he wasn't arrested - but then I guess "I was detained for a few hours because I raised several red flags at the airport" probably wouldn't make it to the front page of HN.