bjcc:
The resposiblity to feed pax is the airlines, irrespective of what you may think.
To which FR might quite reasonably say to the Police: 'Sure - they can buy food on the plane. Or they can buy food in the terminal. You won't let them do either? Oh, well then it's your problem now. You've detained them, you get to feed them.'
Exactly as if they were in the cells.
Wonder if any of them had the nouse to phone for pizza delivery?!
Backtrack, Why should Police refuse to allow food in? No reason that I can think of.
Me neither. Let's face it, we have no clue as to who said what to whom. Perhaps the Police said 'ok, they can be brought food' but see above. Could be any number of screw-ups between Police, FR, airport managment, and caterers. We're guessing. Doesn't matter; the end result was the pax got no food or water, and that's just wrong. And the Police preventing them from leaving the area was the proximate cause of the problem. As for threatening a bit of unoffical 'punishment' if pax insisted on using the bathroom... well that's indefensible.
bjcc, I'm not the enemy - in fact I applied for, and was accepted to, the NYPD equivalent of the Special Constabulary (I didn't complete my training due to moving out of the area). I'd still say that a lot of people were detained for a long time on highly dubious legal grounds (since they were neither searched nor questioned), and the issues with food, water, lack of information, and toiletting, when 99% of the people *must* be innocent, and probably 100% can't be considered genuine suspects - just plain wrong!
R1