Comments on: Norwegian hotel calls cops on man because they got his name wrong and thought he used an assumed name; police arrest him in the nude; hotel charges him for the room

By: rmstallman

rmstallman — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 15:32:00 +0000

If a hotel requires your “real name”, that is already bad.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 21:54:00 +0000

You know, there might be some middle ground between preventing abuse and forcing people to choose names from a list which seems to exist to enforce cultural ‘purity’.

By: Navin_Johnson

Navin_Johnson — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 16:18:00 +0000

I seem to remember a U.S. case that involved some white poor parents naming their innocent child “Hitler”.

By: olr

olr — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 15:12:00 +0000

Would it also be the parents prerogative if they wanted to call ther child eg. “Aryan Nation” or “Shoot Me”? This law and others are in place to protect children against their parents bad choices. Would it also be the parents prerogative if they wanted to eg. not send their child to school.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:03:00 +0000

You believe that having the police charge into your hotel bathroom while you’re showering and arrest you is nothing? You must live some kind of crazy, fucked up life if that’s normal for you.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 21:55:00 +0000

But it’s so much easier to have a fluid definition of ‘arrest’ that allows for more flexible deference to authority.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 21:41:00 +0000

If you go to the article, it says that he was dressed and then marched through the hotel. So, yes, he was arrested. He wasn’t charged.

By: kwhitefoot

kwhitefoot — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 20:20:00 +0000

Tried to comment on Tønsberg Blad’s article but the ()(&¤#% idiots require a Facebook account to do so.

By: kwhitefoot

kwhitefoot — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 20:06:00 +0000

A quick search on gulesider.no (Yellow Pages) found two with the name Dagfinn Helland. And Gulesider doesn’t list everyone.

By: kwhitefoot

kwhitefoot — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 20:02:00 +0000

ID is not compulsory here in Norway.

By: B. Peasant

B. Peasant — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 19:19:00 +0000

The 2003 law is far more liberal than what Stooge describes.

By: B. Peasant

B. Peasant — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 19:19:00 +0000

Can you point me to this alleged list?

By: jandrese

jandrese — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 18:49:00 +0000

Are you serious? If true, that sounds outrageous to my American ears. If someone wants to name their kid “Happy Sunshine” or some other dumb crap, that’s their prerogative. Kids can change their name when they turn 18, and use nicknames until then if they hate it.

By: B. Peasant

B. Peasant — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 18:48:00 +0000

The name didn’t sound fake. Dagfinn is a perfectly normal first name, and Helland is a perfectly normal last name. (And contrary to what the hotel found, there’s actually people who have that name.)

By: jandrese

jandrese — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 18:47:00 +0000

That’s how I read it too. The guy left the hotel in a huff and the hotel refused to refund his money because he had already taken a shower. Mostly it’s the hotel that comes out looking bad here because they called the goddamn cops on him over their own clerical error and then refused to even comp his room. That’s some outrageously bad customer service right there.

By: invictus

invictus — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 17:40:00 +0000

Good luck checking into a US hotel without a credit card or a large wad of money for a deposit.

By: Ashen Victor

Ashen Victor — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 17:15:00 +0000

In Spain it´s compulsory. If you are 14 or over, you MUST have it.
There is also a special id for foreigners residing long periods.
If you come from a country where national id is not compulsory, hotels accepts the most popular international standard: your passport.
The real problem comes when a Schengen Area citizen comes without a national id or a passport: all funny faces and awkward.

By: Navin_Johnson

Navin_Johnson — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 17:02:00 +0000

He’ll have to give them a bad review on “Jelp”

By: dr

dr — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:37:00 +0000

Tønsbergs Blad is a local newspaper serving a tiny area. This is probably big news by their standards. I live in Oslo these days, right now the online
Aftenposten has no mention of this.

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:10:00 +0000

The manager grabbed his crotch? Maybe he just needed to adjust himself.

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:09:00 +0000

He was pretty cheeky

By: daneyul

daneyul — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:09:00 +0000

My understanding is you can’t (officially) be arrested in the US for failure to produce ID. In many states you can be “detained” however–and how long that detention can be is pretty variable. Just what “Produce ID” means gets murky too–it often seems that “produce ID” can be interpreted by the courts as simply answering verbally, in a reasonable, believable way, who you are.

But, in any case, if you do fail to produce an ID, there’s a good chance that refusal will cause the police to find some other reason to actually arrest you. But technically, I don’t think there’s any official requirement to have physical ID upon your person that can cause arrest per se in the US.

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:08:00 +0000

Partners with The Dream Police

By: Lupus_Yonderboy

Lupus_Yonderboy — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:54:00 +0000

What country? I believe in the US you are under no legal obligation to have ID but that if you don’t many businesses (hotels, airlines) can refuse service to you. Almost all hotels will require a credit card backed up by ID and if you have a credit card witha fake name then *that’s* very very illegal but I don’t believe that there’s a specific legal requirement on the hotel room itself (just various other requirements that make it practically impossible to rent a room under an assumed name in a legal manner).

By: Wingnut

Wingnut — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:51:00 +0000

Typø: a traditional Norwegian dish made from lutefisk, reindeer fat and snow.

By: seyo

seyo — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:51:00 +0000

Much ado about nothing methinks. Other than the hotel charging him and being assholes. But Is that really remarkable? It’s just human error followed by dickishness. Seems to me like that’s standard operating procedure in all shitty hotels.

By: toyg

toyg — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:49:00 +0000

Sounds like something straight out of “Lilyhammer”.

By: Stooge

Stooge — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:41:00 +0000

Yup. All given names have to come from the approved list, and there are heavy restrictions on choosing family names as well.

The law’s applied rather inconsistently though: on the one hand Bjørn is not approved (it literally means bear and animal names are not allowed) yet is widely used, on the other hand parents have been jailed for giving unapproved names.

By: dragonfrog

dragonfrog — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:13:00 +0000

You don’t have to be hauled down to the station to be arrested – if the police are present, and are not allowing you to leave, you’re under arrest.

In this case, he was arrested for a short time in his hotel room, then the police decided no to charge him with a crime, so they released him from arrest.

By: alxr

alxr — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 14:07:00 +0000

We can prove who we are in the UK through various means (one of the most common being a driving licence – you can hold a provisional licence without having to learn to drive; there are also some government-sponsored card schemes), you’re just not legally compulsory to have ID on you, or to own any at all, at any time.

Melinda9: I’m really surprised that the US arrests people for not having ID, as I’d have assumed your somewhat more rigorous freedoms would protect against that. There’s not even a requirement here to have your licence on you while driving (although you must present it at your local police station within seven days if requested by a police officer while you’re in control of a vehicle).