Man violently removed from United Airlines plane. ~Update~ United may have broken the law.

[Machiavellian]

Alby_da_Wolf said:

Porcupine_I said:
I don't know about the laws in the United States, but i can't believe the police is there to enforce arbitrary rules of a private company.

If the police are called to such a case, their questions should be: "Is there a security concern? Has the man broken any law? Is this a dangerous situation?" If not, you are on your own dealing with this situation.

This.

And the company's policy about overbooking is totally messed up in the part about removing people already on board (possibly with their luggage in the hold too) to make room for other people that still aren't.

Yes, police do enforce any company rules.  In other words, if this was a bar, your home, a business and you wanted someone to leave, you can call the police to make them go.  Its your property and you have the right to admit or not admit someone on that property.  Also this is airline security which enforce you know airline security.  Airline security is not part of United and their action actually is their own.  Since United is the one that called them it's still their fault that the incident happened.

As for the overbooking policy, you better check every airline because they all do it.  Federal regulations actually allows them to do it and regulate how they reimburse customers for overbooking.