[....] Hassan Aden, 52, of Alexandria spent 26 years with the Alexandria Police Department before leaving in 2012 to become chief of police in Greenville, N.C. He retired from the 250-person force in 2015. [....]

 

He said he was escorted to a makeshift office, prohibited from using his cellphone and given little information about the reason for the holdup. At one point, Aden said, he asked an officer how much time could pass for a detention to be considered reasonable. The officer replied that Aden wasn’t being detained. [.....]

 

Aden, who heads a consulting firm specializing in police and criminal justice reform, said he understands Customs and Border Protection’s duty, but said he was treated unfairly — especially because the detention stretched for more than an hour.

“I fully support the mission of the Customs and Border Protection agency,” he said. “And I fully appreciate the difficulty of their job and the dangers of their job. What I question here is essentially their policies and what they view as a reasonable detention. And I would venture to say that 90 minutes is an unreasonable detention when there is no probable cause to believe that a crime has occurred.” [....]