So I was crossing the Canadian-US Border Returning To the US........

Don't forget Sept 11th is coming up and Canada has a bad reputation as a harborer of bad people. I think they are on a little extra high alert this time of year.

Canadian border guards piss me off. I was detained for hours over a speeding ticket 2 years prior (I didn't even remember). The ticket was settled and paid, the guy just wanted me to admit I'd been charged with a crime.

Beano wrote: Canadian border guards piss me off.

You should have told them he was your evil twin.

Yeah, I've gone across the the border a number of times and 90% of the time the US border guys are more scrutinizing and/ or just plain pricks and coming back through canadian border guards they seem to act like real T-Bags about 40% of the time so don't try and put that shit on the Canadian border guards put it on the US guards where it belongs.

4) Why would they pull me out of the car in the first place just because of the birth date coincidence? I mean they had my passport and knew it belonged to Robert C Johnson. Would a criminal of the name Robert E Johnson be likely to steal Robert C Johnson's passport for some reason?

No, but it would probably be relatively easy for someone to doctor the "E" to look like a "C".

Nice job staying calm & cool though.

By being so calm you saved yourself a whole bunch of trouble rojo.

No matter how big an asshole the cop is,whether you think you are right or wrong....the cop is always right on the street. You probably saved yourself a couple hours and big hassle and possible ass kicking by rolling with it.

Does it suck and is it un fair? Hell yes. But that's the way it is.

rojo - you're thinking too much. Relax, they're just doing their job.

I was troubled more by the Canadian border patrol. The US border control guy just asked me questions about my wheels & then let me through.

Next time you update your passport (and you may want to do it sooner rather than later), you may want to put your full middle name. With a common name like you have, anything that can make you unique may help.

I had a similar thing happen to me. I was driving home from school for Thanksgiving and got stopped at a border patrol road block. I had a few duffel bags in the back seat full of dirty laundry (I can't remember why I didn't just put them in the trunk). They asked me to get out of the car and handcuffed me while they searched the bags and had dogs sniff around my car. Apparently they were looking for someone in particular and my car and appearance matched the description.

I was confident that I had nothing to worry about and, like Rojo, I stayed calm and the whole thing was over in about 10 minutes. I know alot of bad stories about law enforcement officers come up around here, but 99% of them are just doing their job and if you've done nothing wrong then just cooperate and most of the time everything will be fine. You have to understand that they're just human too and if they have even the slightest suspicion that you're armed and dangerous, they're probably terrified and just don't want to take chances.

Yeah, I think a lot of the trouble people get into in these situations stems from their 'I shouldn't have to put up with this shit' attitude. Some people think it's some sort of huge crime against their human rights to even be talked to aggressively by law enforcement, so they get mouthy and belligerent instead of just playing it cool like Rojo. And I doubt you were in any great danger of being shot unless you became physically violent or did something really stupid like quickly reaching into your pants like you had a gun. I'd say worst case likely scenario would've been you getting TASERed, and despite all of the news I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people live from that.

I have a name that, I know from research, is shared by only one other person in North America, so this kind of thing wouldn't happen to me....as long as that other guy behaves.

Glad to see the police aren't racially profiling anymore and are coming down on WASPy looking people trying to capture resistance fighters. The stereotype is that the resistance fighters are olive skinned Arabs or Mediterraneans. Many Middle Easterners are very WASPy looking. Maylaysian and Indonesian resistance fighters look Chinese. Chechen resistance fighters look like half-Mongol Polish and Russians. Egyptian resistance fighters look Afro-American. My frat bruddah decades ago was 100% Egyptian, midnight, played B-Ball like Kobe.

Americans are no longer free. Our military did nothing while we lost our freedoms. Our rights and Constitution are gone. We are all slaves.

I got pulled over by police and did what they said. They raped me then tasered me, they laughed as I pleaded for them to stop. Then they kicked me in the head, and when I tried to get up they said I was resisting arrest and had assualted them.

Wet Coast wrote:

Don't forget Sept 11th is coming up and Canada has a bad reputation as a harborer of bad people. I think they are on a little extra high alert this time of year.

Yeah, right, Canada now has a harder policy to get into their country then we do, I was just there.

I always give them my Passport AND my driver's license, and smile. And I always look up and to my right (by habit) remembering what I bought in Canada to bring home, and I've never had a problem.

Rojo, suggest you get one of those (if you have not already) frequent flier TSA security checked cards...

Then give your passport, with your drivers license, and the TSA card to the border peeps. And smile.

How do they know it isn't the real Robert E Johnson's passport, just with a misprint? Or perhaps REJ didn't have time to pull off more than a single character alteration in his passport?

Yeah, it could have gone a LOT worse for you.

Here's a guy (semi-famous science fiction author, Peter Watts) who basically didn't comply as quickly as he probably should've (just like you stated in #3 of your original post) and ended up convicted of a felony. Luckily he got no jail time. (I guess felons can't vote in US elections... but he's Canadian, they can't either.)

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1186

is the best individual post to read, gives you a good idea of what happened.

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1292

as well.

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?cat=38

gives you all his posts on the subject.

Face it, the border patrol is about as close to the nazis as you get in America. They stop trains traveling through Rochester becasue they are traveling near the border. They set up road blocks on the Northway 50 miles from the border. Usually they violate the rights of Muslims and Mexicans, so people don't care, but every once in awhile they screw "regular" Americnas like yourself.

People elected Obama to straighten out atrocities like this, but it looks like he is too much of pussy to do anything about this or anything else Bush put into place.

Law enforcement in the US sounds pretty shocking....