He was detained. Thus he was released after.

I'd argue that detainment without probable cause is kind of the underlying message of "Innocent until proven guilty"

What? "Innocent until proven guilty" does not mean that police aren't allowed to perform investigations. That's a ridiculous misuse of the phrase.

Investigation does not equal detainment

And neither equal "guilty until proven innocent".

Isn't it an underlying principle? It's meant to prevent detainment without proof of guilt. Otherwise, people could be held indefinitely for no reason. Now obviously there is a gray area between "hey we can't hold on to anyone until the courts say so" and "I don't like the look of that guy, lets put him in jail." But I don't think it's unfair to argue that handcuffing and pointing a weapon at someone who has not posed a threat and is only under suspicion (unreasonably in my opinion) of stealing a laptop is an over reaction and in conflict with that principle. To me, the level of detainment is not commensurate with what is reasonably required in order to investigate or protect the public interest.

> Otherwise, people could be held indefinitely for no reason.

There are definite restrictions on that—however, they're after a few days in jail, not after 10 minutes in cuffs.

Probable cause is not the relevant test for detaining someone.

Police can detain with reasonable suspicion alone, and it is entirely likely they had reasonable suspicion in this case.

From reading the end of the story, it is clear that they did not have reasonable suspicion. They had a responsive seller on Craigslist who was selling the same computer as the supposed buyer had lost. Do you believe owning the same model computer is reasonable suspicion? Does use of Craigslist meet your threshold of reasonable suspicion? Their reasonable suspicion was predicated on the signaling of the person inspecting the laptop, and that signal never came.

Interestingly, there was a recent This American Life with almost this exact same setup, but it was approached cautiously and executed correctly. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/549/a...

Is that true? I've always heard that Terry allows officers to stop you, and ask questions under reasonable suspicion, but that performing pat downs and handcuffing is only allowed if there is a reasonable suspicion that the suspect is armed.

And I'm still not really convinced that there was reasonable suspicion that a crime is being committed. Wouldn't that mean that any private party sale negotiated in public is inherently suspicious? I know law enforcement has a lot of leeway here but that would be kind of alarming.