KTXdm9 said:
A right not exercised is a right lost.
The same can often be said of rights that are exercised poorly. I'm sorry, but all debating aside, this law student went out there looking for a confrontation, found the mildest form of it imaginable, and is now playing it up like it's a sensational situation.
Do you (or any of us - me included) really have any idea how that call was dispatched to the officer in that case? As a career LEO myself, I can tell you that dispatch often gets the facts wrong. This isn't entirely their fault either: call takers might type something wrong that was said by a caller, and many times a caller won't give an accurate account of the facts in a case.
Imagine this scenario:
"113, check a report of a man waving a gun around at the intersection of Main and Elm St. Caller reports that the individual is a white male, possibly in his 20's, and he's reportedly pointing a black handgun in the air".
I've had that call myself (places and call signs changed for the sake of the internet). It was a false call, at least to the extent that the guy wasn't waving his gun around as described by dispatch. The person was carrying openly, but in a non-threatening manner. Someone apparently felt threatened by the presence of a gun, and took some dangerous artistic liberties in describing the situation as more than it was. On the basis of that dispatched call I had every right to temporarily detain the person, temporarily disarm them, and request identification. I did not have a requirement to debate the law with them, explain all of the facts of the call, or play backyard lawyer with them.
Incidentally, in that instance I merely approached the guy, talked to him, requested his ID, then determined that the call was factually inaccurate. I then thanked him for his time and politely sent him on his way (I personally didn't feel the need to disarm him, but certainly may have if he had been anything but cordial during my initial approach at the scene).
As law enforcement officers we are expected to respond to dispatched calls of all kinds, and determine an appropriate outcome for the situation. We don't always have all of the facts when we walk into a situation, and we do the best we can with what we have.
In this instance the officer was polite, not grossly overbearing, and the law student was snippy and arrogant, and probably made things worse for gun owners in the eyes of the majority of Americans. Your mileage may vary, but I think choosing our battles can be important, too.
Vector said:
I don't want to call out any specific poster, but here is a question for those who think the guy OCing did something wrong, or acted like a "jackwad".
You are on your way somewhere, legally OCing, minding your own business, and a LEO stops and disarms you. How would you handle the exact same situation?
Another words would you comply with every request this LEO made without objection?
If so, how long would be too long, and how many requests for ID or information would be too many?
Since we're playing scenarios here please keep in mind that, once again, officers don't always have all of the facts going into a situation. Sometimes the wrong guy is temporarily detained for a good reason, and sometimes the right guy is temporarily detained for the wrong reasons (bad information, as I described above). Asking a person for their identification is such a situation is not an obtrusive request.
I once made a felony stop on a car after a dangerous pursuit of the vehicle. The vehicle (occupied x4) was pulling out of a parking lot of a business that I was responding to on a report of an armed robbery. The vehicle EXACTLY matched the description of the suspect vehicle, and fled from the area when I attempted to stop them. After a chase of several miles we boxed the suspects in, and took them from the vehicle at gun point. Much to our surprise, these idiots were not the suspects in our robbery, it was merely a guy and his friends who believed that we didn't have a reason to stop him (because he hadn't done anything wrong). Do you think that fact kept him out of jail after his display of "civil disobedience"? We had EVERY right to stop that vehicle, because we had EVERY reason to believe that it was occupied with 4 people who had just robbed a store at gun point. Had he merely pulled over and acted intelligently, he would have been identified, determined to not be the suspect, and been sent upon his way.
That's an extreme example, to be sure, but I'm using it to illustrate a point here: just because YOU don't understand why an officer is stopping you does not always mean that HE doesn't understand why he has a legal and fully justifiable reason for stopping you. Sometimes it's just because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes it's because a person inaccurately described your behavior as criminal, or perhaps you fit the description of someone who was doing something criminal. It happens.