Stiletto Null
Member
Looks like more or less proper response...although EIGHT cops is a bit much.
A few minutes later, I heard a knock upon the driver’s side window, and turned to see one of your officers point his .40 caliber pistol at me. He ordered my to place my hands on the dashboard, which I did immediately and cautiously. Within moments, two more Springfield P.D. cruisers arrived. Three officers disembarked those vehicles, and drew their sidearms, pointing them at me.
As for the lawsuit, If one of us does this( pointing a gun at someone and not merely unholstering their weapons, the charge would be aggravated menacing, since it is a crime to threaten with lethal force without cause.
I'm retired Fire Dept not Police so I may be out of line monday morning quarterbacking somebody elses operation. I would like to offer a better scenario, In the above scenario, you take up position behind the subject vehicle and blip lights and siren after taking up a defensive position behind your car doors. If subject comes out shooting, you're in a better position than he is. If not, he doesn't wake up and reflexively reach for his weapon and get shot which I think is a possible outcome.
In Ohio, if you run a license plate, you get the registered owner's name and address, and a description of the vehicle the plates are registered to. Period. You don't get the CHL status of the driver. You don't get a LEADS report.
After an anonymous caller reported to the Miami-Dade Police that a young black male standing at a particular bus stop and wearing a plaid shirt was carrying a gun, officers went to the bus stop and saw three black males, one of whom, respondent J. L., was wearing a plaid shirt. Apart from the tip, the officers had no reason to suspect any of the three of illegal conduct. The officers did not see a firearm or observe any unusual movements. One of the officers frisked J. L. and seized a gun from his pocket. J. L., who was then almost 16, was charged under state law with carrying a concealed firearm without a license and possessing a firearm while under the age of 18. The trial court granted his motion to suppress the gun as the fruit of an unlawful search. The intermediate appellate court reversed, but the Supreme Court of Florida quashed that decision and held the search invalid under the Fourth Amendment.
Held : An anonymous tip that a person is carrying a gun is not, without more, sufficient to justify a police officer's stop and frisk of that person. An officer, for the protection of himself and others, may conduct a carefully limited search for weapons in the outer clothing of persons engaged in unusual conduct where, inter alia, the officer reasonably concludes in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the persons in question may be armed and presently dangerous. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 30 . Here, the officers' suspicion that J. L. was carrying a weapon arose not from their own observations but solely from a call made from an unknown location by an unknown caller. The tip lacked sufficient indicia of reliability to provide reasonable suspicion to make a Terry stop: It provided no predictive information and therefore left the police without means to test the informant's knowledge or credibility. See Alabama v. White , 496 U. S. 325, 327 . The contentions of Florida and the United States as amicus that the tip was reliable because it accurately described J. L.'s visible attributes misapprehend the reliability needed for a tip to justify a Terry stop. The reasonable suspicion here at issue requires that a tip be reliable in its assertion of illegality, not just in its tendency to identify a determinate person. This Court also declines to adopt the argument that the standard Terry analysis should be modified to license a "firearm exception," under which a tip alleging an illegal gun would justify a stop and frisk even if the accusation would fail standard pre-search reliability testing. The facts of this case do not require the Court to speculate about the circumstances under which the danger alleged in an anonymous tip might be so great-- e.g., a report of a person carrying a bomb--as to justify a search even without a showing of reliability.
Seeing as the victim was in compliance with the law, and the the officers were seemingly able to determine this before a seizure of the victim was attempted, it is reasonable to persue compensation for physical and mental trauma, and the termination of employment for the officers involved.
As mandated by Ohio law which requires, that a CHL holder who is armed in a motor vehicle must have the firearm in a holster "In
Plain Sight" attached to their person. The CHL holder did so with his firearm in plain sight. A passerby apparently spotted him and made a "man with a gun call"
Yeah, when you run them on LEADS, you get the owner's name, address, past criminal history, CHL status, and if you have a mobile data terminal no older than a few month, you can get the driver's license picture.
In this scenario there was no question that the subject in question was armed. Now, if it is your contention that a police officer that sees an armed man should simply walk away and not investigate then we are going to have to agree to disagree. So again I will ask is it your belief that when an officer sees a person with a firearm they are to assume that person also holds an appropriate license to carry that firearm?
"No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law." Union Pac. R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251 (1891).
Our first task is to establish at what point in this encounter the Fourth Amendment becomes relevant. That is, we must decide whether and when Officer McFadden "seized" Terry and whether and when he conducted a "search." There is some suggestion in the use of such terms as "stop" and "frisk" that such police conduct is outside the purview of the Fourth Amendment because neither action rises to the level of a "search" or "seizure" within the meaning of the Constitution. 12 We emphatically reject this notion. It is quite plain that the Fourth Amendment governs "seizures" of the person which do not eventuate in a trip to the station house and prosecution for crime - "arrests" in traditional terminology. It must be recognized that whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has "seized" that person. And it is nothing less than sheer torture of the English language to suggest that a careful exploration of the outer surfaces of a person's clothing all over his or her body in an attempt to find weapons is not a "search." Moreover, it is simply fantastic to urge that such a procedure [392 U.S. 1, 17] performed in public by a policeman while the citizen stands helpless, perhaps facing a wall with his hands raised, is a "petty indignity." 13 It is a serious intrusion upon the sanctity of the person, which may inflict great indignity and arouse strong resentment, and it is not to be undertaken lightly. 14
The danger in the logic which proceeds upon distinctions between a "stop" and an "arrest," or "seizure" of the person, and between a "frisk" and a "search" is two-fold. It seeks to isolate from constitutional scrutiny the initial stages of the contact between the policeman and the citizen. And by suggesting a rigid all-or-nothing model of justification and regulation under the Amendment, it obscures the utility of limitations upon the scope, as well as the initiation, of police action as a means of constitutional regulation. 15 This Court has held in [392 U.S. 1, 18] the past that a search which is reasonable at its inception may violate the Fourth Amendment by virtue of its intolerable intensity and scope. Kremen v. United States, 353 U.S. 346 (1957); Go-Bart Importing Co. v. [392 U.S. 1, 19] United States, 282 U.S. 344, 356 -358 (1931); see United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 586 -587 (1948). The scope of the search must be "strictly tied to and justified by" the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible. Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 310 (1967) (MR. JUSTICE FORTAS, concurring); see, e. g., Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 367 -368 (1964); Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20, 30 -31 (1925).
The distinctions of classical "stop-and-frisk" theory thus serve to divert attention from the central inquiry under the Fourth Amendment - the reasonableness in all the circumstances of the particular governmental invasion of a citizen's personal security. "Search" and "seizure" are not talismans. We therefore reject the notions that the Fourth Amendment does not come into play at all as a limitation upon police conduct if the officers stop short of something called a "technical arrest" or a "full-blown search."
In this case there can be no question, then, that Officer McFadden "seized" petitioner and subjected him to a "search" when he took hold of him and patted down the outer surfaces of his clothing. We must decide whether at that point it was reasonable for Officer McFadden to have interfered with petitioner's personal security as he did. 16 And in determining whether the seizure and search were "unreasonable" our inquiry [392 U.S. 1, 20] is a dual one - whether the officer's action was justified at its inception, and whether it was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.
"...in making that assessment it is imperative that the facts be judged against an objective standard: would the facts [392 U.S. 1, 22] available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or the search "warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief" that the action taken was appropriate? Cf. Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925); Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 96 -97 (1964). 20 Anything less would invite intrusions upon constitutionally guaranteed rights based on nothing more substantial than inarticulate hunches, a result this Court has consistently refused to sanction. See, e. g., Beck v. Ohio, supra; Rios v. United States, 364 U.S. 253 (1960); Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98 (1959). And simple "`good faith on the part of the arresting officer is not enough.' . . . If subjective good faith alone were the test, the protections of the Fourth Amendment would evaporate, and the people would be `secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,' only in the discretion of the police." Beck v. Ohio, supra, at 97.
In this scenario there was no question that the subject in question was armed. Now, if it is your contention that a police officer that sees an armed man should simply walk away and not investigate then we are going to have to agree to disagree. So again I will ask is it your belief that when an officer sees a person with a firearm they are to assume that person also holds an appropriate license to carry that firearm?
I think the argument being made is that if both "sleeping in your car" and "open carry" are absolutely legal, and if in fact open display in that circumstance is required by law in Ohio; that simple possession of an openly carried firearm while sleeping forms absolutely no cause to believe any crime at all has been or is going to be committed.
If there is zero reason to believe a crime is involved, why are they bothering the guy?
Unless the guy in the car was believed to have carried out a specific crime, he should have been allowed to finish his nap--and no, I'm sorry, but possession of a firearm does not constitute a specific crime worthy of being awaken at gunpoint.
By all means Vex, please expound on the common sense of initiating armed contact with with a citizen who is not suspected of committing any crime and who has not requested your presence. As for relying on caselaw, what else should we rely on if not the law? It would seem you are suggesting that exceptions to the law be made for police officers if "common sense" could be demonstrated in their actions.
In this scenario there was no question that the subject in question was armed. Now, if it is your contention that a police officer that sees an armed man should simply walk away and not investigate then we are going to have to agree to disagree. So again I will ask is it your belief that when an officer sees a person with a firearm they are to assume that person also holds an appropriate license to carry that firearm?
This Court also declines to adopt the argument that the standard Terry analysis should be modified to license a "firearm exception," under which a tip alleging an illegal gun would justify a stop and frisk even if the accusation would fail standard pre-search reliability testing.