At a Remembrance Day ceremony, my friend and I were stopped for an ID check by police. Just as my friend and I met, they stopped us. They were checking because I was alone, then we said we were together. The check on my friend went quick. Mine took a few minutes, they kept asking if I had a driver's licence and some other questions like if I was every arrested etc. because they had trouble finding my name. Thankfully they cleared me.
Why was it hard to find my name? I'm sure no one can give me a good answer because it could be an issue with spelling. 
Could there be any other reasons why it took so long?
They were checking because of the recent events in Ottawa.
One cop with an MP5a3 and another with a teargas launcher were patrolling the event.
 

Just doing their job keeping people safe. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want a repeat of the incident in Ottawa.

Probably more to do with you being "no trace".  If, for instance, you've no traceable ID, such as a driver's licence and you've not come to the attention of the Police or other authority in the past, then a more thorough check could have been getting carried out.

 

It also depends on how common (or uncommon) your name is, for instance there could be several John Smiths with the same date of birth recorded.  Finally, the control room may just have been busy, thus the requesting officer was put in a "callback queue".

 

Many, many reasons that it could be delayed.

 

Thanks,

 

William.

Probably more to do with you being "no trace".  If, for instance, you've no traceable ID, such as a driver's licence and you've not come to the attention of the Police or other authority in the past, then a more thorough check could have been getting carried out.

 

It also depends on how common (or uncommon) your name is, for instance there could be several John Smiths with the same date of birth recorded.  Finally, the control room may just have been busy, thus the requesting officer was put in a "callback queue".

 

Many, many reasons that it could be delayed.

 

Thanks,

 

William.

Yeah, I thought something like that.

No, they were using Ottawa as an excuse..

Why were you stopped in the first place?

There could have been lots of reasons for why it took long. Sometimes the system runs slow, sometimes they are verifying your information is correct, or it could have been for about 100 different other reasons.

 

I am not sure what database they use in Canada but I know in the US we use NCIC and for Florida we also had a state database called FCIC. Sometimes we would run a person and for whatever reason the database gives us a weird result and we have to recheck it a couple times. I've seen "matches" come back because the person we were running was born on the same month and day as someone with a warrant but the year they were born in would be like 15 years apart. Not sure why it does that but it gets really aggravating.