TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Kate Prince on Dec 30, 2022

A viral video is raising questions about how much authority Nashville airport police had during an incident in which officers threatened to arrest Southwest Airlines customers with canceled flights on Christmas evening. The video shows an officer telling those with canceled tickets to leave the secured area and go to a pre-security ticket desk for help. He then tells them they would be arrested for trespassing if they did not leave. Nashville criminal defense lawyer David Raybin said the response to the situation was “clearly inappropriate.” Based on his understanding, Raybin said what happened at the airport that night did not rise to the level of criminal trespassing. "There was nothing that these people were doing that would constitute any kind of breach of the peace or any kind of bad behavior,” he said. The Tennessean has the full story.