Monday, March 21, 2011

Security Officers Ejecting Unwanted Person From The Shoreham Hotel In Washington D.C.


When I worked at the Shoreham Hotel back in 1976 and 1977 I was told to put certain people out of the Hotel. One was working as a assistant executive steward. He was passing out leaflets for the Socialists Workers Party. Since the hotel workers were already in a union I don't know exactly what he was up to except you can't pass out leaflets in the hotel. I went down in the sub sub basement to check him out. I told him he could not pass out leaflets in the hotel but that he was free to pass them out on the sidewalk outside the hotel.

He looked a little bit like Lee Harvery Oswald I thought. He had the same attitude of defiance. He started shouting look how these security are abusing me. I had not touched him or abused him in any way.
  I told him to leave and eventually he did.

  Another time I was hired by the American Bankers Association to work extra security for their convention. I was told there was an old lady who like to come and make trouble and it was our job to keep her out. I think this was a meeting of the ban Hanover's Trust. And she maybe was a small stockholder who wanted to make trouble for the powers that be. As far as I can remember she never showed up.

Now with almost everyone carrying a cell phone or camera that takes video and audio it raises the question of what expectation of privacy does someone have in a public place like a hotel lobby.
I don't think security officers can tell someone not to take a picture or video in a public area of the hotel. They can tell them not to but enforcing it would be difficult without banning the person from the hotel as is done in the video shown above.