to be edited for content from a real keyboard:

[ford_prefect42]

Officer: do you have any charges to press?
Bartender: not really.
Officer: well, ima arrest him, you know, just because.

Comments

[kittles]

Probable Cause: a collection of facts which would cause a reasonable person to believe that, well, "just because."

[akilika]

From what little I managed to glean from murmured bartender conversation, the charges wound up being trespassing and an existing warrant.

Which... I'm taking to mean that he wasn't taking the cops' friendly advice to move on. It took them ten to fifteen minutes to come back in asking for charges.

Which basically means I think you've come up with the perfect definition of probable cause, because yeah, the whole thing does add up to "a reasonable person would think this was the right thing."

(It took what seems like half an hour for the bartender to call the cops. And they showed up in two minutes. Go, cops! :-D)

[ford_prefect42]

Yeah, from the perspective of this libertarian, this was a completely positive law enforcement experience.

[ford_prefect42]

The funny thing to me is that.... Well, the officer didn't *say* "on probable cause", or, "for disorderly conduct", or anything like that. No, he literally said, (in a bar full of people that, I will note, were overwhelmingly supportive, going so far as to literally cheer the pronouncement) "You know, just because."

Given the tenor of the news lately, it kinda makes me hopeful for the relationship between the public and law enforcement.