Pardon moi if I interject a few actual cases!?
This is an oldie, but covers a couple of cases involving OC cases in VA-unfortunately, the links no longer work (actual 911 call, etc).
Sorry if it’s long, but it is pertinent to the discussion (and it really happened)! It's from a VCDL e-mail newsletter dated 10/16/2006, and I've cut a few useless items?
Chris Graham, a reporter with the Augusta Free Press, wrote an extensive article on a problem that some VCDL members had with the Staunton police while openly carrying in a restaurant. I knew of the incident from the time it happened, but did not bring it up on VA-ALERT because at least one VCDL member was contemplating taking legal action at the time.
Note that VCDL has no problem with the police coming to the restaurant to make sure that a crime wasn't being committed. The problem comes when the police, seeing and hearing of no actual crime being committed before (they called the manager on the phone before arriving and were told that there was NO problem) and after they arrived at the scene, proceed to treat the VCDL members like they had actually been doing something illegal. Once it was clear that the VCDL members were minding their own business and the restaurant was quiet, the police should have simply left - as has been done by police in other localities. Instead they ask for ID, post an officer who is told to keep the members in their seats, pressure the management to ask the members to put their guns in their cars, and then, finally, leave.
You can listen to the 911 tape audio by clicking here:
http://www.mrs-tech.net/rip.mp3 NOTE: The audiotape is no longer at the site!
Delegate Mark Cole, standing up for gun owners, is quoted in the article as well.
http://www.augustafreepress.com/stories/storyReader$40750
NOTE: The story is no longer at the link!
A violation of constitutional rights?
Staunton incident highlights gun-rights debate
Chris Graham
[email protected]
"Three guys came into the restaurant, and two of them had guns in their belts. And, I mean, they didn't look like undercover police.
But then again, what does undercover police look like? But ... uh ... it just looks kind of odd. They kept getting up and going to the restroom and coming back and forth. They went to the restroom at least twice each. And I'm just a little concerned about it."
The 9-1-1 call was logged at 6:31 p.m. the evening of July 15.
The caller was a patron at Casa di Scotto's in downtown Staunton.
"Black or white?" the emergency dispatcher asked.
"White."
"One of them?" the dispatcher inquired.
"Three of them."
"Can you describe them any more than that?"
"They're sitting in the corner table," the caller answered. "One of them ... I should say two of them ... are about six-foot, six-foot-two, maybe, mid-30s. One looks like he's carrying either a Glock or, I'll say, a .45."
"Are two of them armed, or all they all armed?"
"I can only tell if two of them are armed. The other one, I couldn't tell. The one that didn't look like he was armed is the one that is in the red shirt. The other two appear to be definitely armed." [The complainant was right - two were armed and one was not - PVC]
'Weird call'
Alexandria resident David Yates was one of the men sitting at the corner table at Casa di Scotto's that evening.
"We sat down for dinner, and I would guess that maybe 10, 15 minutes after we sat down, one of my friends said he had seen a bunch of police cars rolling up. We kind of figured that something had happened. What really made it surreal was finding out why they were there," Yates told The Augusta Free Press.
Yates has listened to the tape of the 9-1-1 call numerous times. To his ear, it sounds that it all comes down to a couple of trips to the bathroom. [They had been to a shooting range and needed to wash their hands before eating and then again, later to , er, use the facilities ;-) - PVC]
"When you listen to the call, the whole premise of going to the bathroom being suspicious is kind of really out there. I know that that isn't the only thing - but I think the salient point is that I think the caller was reaching for a problem," Yates said.
Yates also thinks the dispatcher and the officers sent to the scene were themselves reaching for a problem - and a second call logged on tape a few minutes after the initial 9-1-1 call in which an unidentified Staunton police officer phoned Casa di Scotto's and asked to speak to a manager there to find out what was going on
inside the restaurant might back him up on that point.
"I don't want to alarm you or anything, but I just got a weird call, and I've got officers on the way to your restaurant because of it, and I wanted to see what you see - what's going on out there. I mean, does everything appear OK right now?" the officer asked the manager once she got to the phone.
"Yes, as far as I can tell," the manager responded.
"I had somebody call me and tell me there are a couple of armed men sitting in one of the booths in the corner."
"Yes, yes. I know one man has a gun."
"OK, do you know who he is? Are they causing any problems?" the officer asked.
"I didn't notice anything bad. I know they are drinking."
"They're drinking alcohol?"
"Yes. Only one ..." [The one of the three who wasn't carrying a gun - PVC]
"They're drinking alcohol. All right. But they're not causing any problems?" the officer queried.
"No, no, no, no, no."
"If you could tell the officers. We do have officers on the way to check on them, OK?"
The manager's next reply was unintelligible on the tape.
"I want to ... you're sure there's nothing going on? You're OK?" the officer asked next.
"We are fine."
"OK. If anything changes, go ahead and call us right back."
"What I have an objection to, shall we say, is that the call was not handled well at the various stages," Yates said. "You can hear the words that were actually said - at dispatch, in the cruiser, right up to the point where they got on scene. I think anybody can draw their own conclusion that the officers knew what this was about - and they certainly were not in any hurry to get involved in it."
According to a police report filed on the incident, it took 12 minutes until the first units arrived on the scene at Casa di Scotto's - an intriguing amount of time given the restaurant's proximity to the police department's headquarters in the downtown district.
The actions of the officers once they had arrived were also intriguing in the eyes of Yates.
"The officer in charge greeted us by indicating that they had received a call of armed people in the restaurant. At this point, the officer in charge asked, 'Do you have identification?' " Yates said.
Yates replied that he did have ID, as did his dinner companions.
The officer in charge then told them that he needed to see them.
"He then ordered a younger officer to remain with us and 'make sure they stay put,' Yates said.
"The officer in charge returned after a few moments and said they were in the process of running background checks. When they were complete, he again approached us, returned our respective IDs and said, 'Gentlemen, I understand that you have a right to be here, but the owner has said that they want you to remove the firearms from the restaurant, and that's their right," Yates said.
'A hassle'
There has been a good bit of discussion in the Virginia General Assembly in recent years on the guns-in-restaurants issue. Current Virginia law does not place any prohibitions on the right of residents to openly carry weapons in restaurants - though, curiously, to some, there is a stricture on the books on carrying concealed weapons in restaurants.
Yates has a valid Virginia concealed-handgun permit.
"I'm astounded that this kind of thing can still happen in Virginia - because it's no secret that state law requires open carry in restaurants, it's no secret that open-carry is legal, and it's no secret that people wash their hands before they eat dinner," said Mike Stollenwerk, an Alexandria resident who got caught up in a similar kind of encounter with police in Reston when he and a group of friends, including Yates, sat down for dinner at a Champps restaurant in 2004 with guns strapped to their hips in plain view.
"That was a relatively mild encounter. It was just a little bit dramatic. A bunch of us after shooting had gone to eat at Champps in Reston, and the Fairfax police got called by somebody out in the street. At the end of the day, basically, they came, they saw, and they left. It was played up by The Washington Post as this huge, dramatic incident that illustrated that the General Assembly was out of control by continuing to allow people to open-carry in restaurants - but that was nothing to what it appeared to what they went through," Stollenwerk said.
"The Fairfax County police responded to a man-with-a-gun call. They didn't demand our IDs. They didn't demand or tell us to stay seated. There was none of that. It was a little bit weird - but oh, well, they left. This Staunton thing is, I think, much more intrusive," Stollenwerk told the AFP.
Yates has been pressing the issue of apparent intrusiveness in a string of communications with the Staunton Police Department in which he has requested that the city come up with and implement a policy for dealing with 9-1-1 calls involving reports of "armed citizens" who are not otherwise engaged in suspicious activity that does not include the kind of heavy-handed police measures that he feels he was made to fall victim to.
"I really think that more than likely this was an issue of standard procedure that doesn't fit the specific situation. Nothing that was alleged was wrong. There has to be a nexus to some kind of wrongdoing, and there was none," Yates said.
"This encounter could have been handled at a much lower level - with greater simplicity. This could have and should have been so much less of a hassle for everybody," Yates said.
Staunton police chief Jim Williams, for his part, doesn't like the description of his department's handling of the Casa di Scotto's incident as a hassle.
"We were responding to a citizen's call for service. This wasn't something that we initiated," Williams told the AFP. "A citizen had called and said that there were individuals who were carrying guns in the restaurant, and there was something about them that didn't look right. This isn't something that you see every day in Staunton, and in the mind of the citizen making the complaint, the subjects seemed to be acting suspiciously. So they asked us to come check it out.
"I don't know that you can ignore what was said by the person who initiated the call for service," Williams said. "There is a balance in these kinds of situations between a citizen's rights and the protection of the public. There has to be that balance."
Staunton Commonwealth's attorney Ray Robertson struck a similar chord in a Sept. 1 response to a letter from Yates asking for clarification of details of the police department's response to the July 15 9-1-1 call.
"It was a patron of the restaurant who considered the activity of Mr. Yates and his friends suspicious enough that he made a 9-1-1 call to the police department," Robertson, who serves as the chief legal advisor to the city PD, wrote in the letter. "It is disconcerting to many people to see laymen in public with guns strapped on their hips, although it is legal in many cases.
"The gun-toting patrons were also alleged to have left the open portion of the restaurant and gone to a back room (presumably the bathroom). In this day and age, when so many robberies occur, with so many disturbed people opening fire randomly in establishments like restaurants, and in which the threat of terrorism has become more and more scary to many citizens, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that a patron not used to observing such activity might place an emergency call.
"Complaints of this nature do not have to allege an illegal activity. All they need to show is an articulable suspicion. I would analogize with the case of a patrol officer late at night who observed a car driving very slowly, alternately going off the side of the road and then crossing the center line, and making wide turns. None of these actions constitute an illegal activity. However, they do arouse suspicion, and that is enough to give the officer the right, and indeed the responsibility, to investigate further.
"It seems to me that this is what the officers did in this case," Robertson said.
Robertson declined to offer further comment on the matter when contacted by the AFP.
'A constitutional right'
Fredericksburg Republican Del. Mark Cole has been working with fellow state legislators to add some common sense to the laws regarding open-carry and concealed-carry.
"The current law makes absolutely no sense," Cole told the AFP. "What the current law does is prohibits someone who has had a criminal-background check done, and has a demonstrated proficiency in the safe handling of a gun, and has been issued a permit to carry concealed by the state, it prohibits them from carrying the gun concealed in any restaurants that serve alcohol. However, if they open-carry, if they show everybody that they've got a gun, they can carry - as can anybody who does not have a permit and can lawfully carry a gun. The current law is just plain stupid.
"We place way too many restrictions on concealed-carry," Cole said. "You ought to be able, if you have a permit, to concealed-carry anywhere that you can open-carry. To place additional restrictions on concealed-carry makes absolutely no sense."
Guns in restaurants - particularly those that serve alcohol, like Casa di Scotto's - don't make much sense, either, in the eyes of John Shanks, the director of law enforcement relations at the Washington, D.C.,-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
"You think about barrooms and barroom brawls - and so many times away from bars, conflicts that are typically an exchange of words or maybe a pushing or shoving match, you introduce a gun into that, and it
automatically turns into a deadly type situation. You do that, and then introduce a gun and alcohol into it, and not only are you putting the two people that are fighting who are in disagreement at risk, but you're putting everybody in that room at risk. Because where are those bullets going to go if you miss the person, one, and two, if it goes through that person and comes out the other side at close quarters, where is that bullet going to go? What other innocent victims are going to be taken down by having a drunk with a gun?"
Shanks told the AFP. [Hey, permit holders! The Brady Campaign is saying that you are all a bunch of drunks with guns! We all know who has really been doing the heavy drinking (and weed smoking), don't
we? - PVC]
"Police officers are trained to think before they pull the trigger - am I justified in pulling the trigger? Has the use-of-force continuum been met to where I'm authorized in using deadly force? They also have to think about - what's behind my target, and what are the consequences of pulling the trigger, where is that bullet going to go if it goes through the suspect, if I miss the suspect? They think about that as well - and when you talk about people who are concealed-carry, or people who are carrying with no license at all
openly, that thought process does not necessarily take place. They just have this kind of macho chip on their shoulder, and they say, Oh, there's somebody who's a threat, I'm going to shoot them. And they don't think about the consequences and where that bullet is going to go," Shanks said. [Mr. Shanks - show me where there has been a problem with America's 2.5 million permit holders who can legally carry in restaurants in their home states. He can't, but he has a good imagination that could happen, but never do. - PVC]
Bob Ricker of the advocacy group Virginians for Public Safety said state law needs to be updated to reflect these new realities.
"We're opposed to guns anywhere there's alcohol served - whether or not it's open-carry or concealed-carry," Ricker told the AFP. [And Mr. Ricker calls US extreme! - PVC]
"The state of the law in Virginia is that under the concealed-weapons-permit law, if you're a permit holder, you're prohibited from taking your gun concealed into a restaurant or bar. The open-carry part of it is there's nothing that says you can't do it, and there's nothing that says you can do it - it's just not covered under the law. So what's happened is, a lot of people who I think are really irresponsible gun owners, what they do is, if they go into a restaurant or bar that serves alcohol, if they have a concealed-weapons permit, they simply unconceal the weapons and claim that they are legal. [So, Ricker says that all of you who open carry in restaurants TO OBEY THE LAW are acting IRRESPONSIBLY! We didn't write the law, Mr. Ricker, we are simply obeying it. I wonder if Mr. Ricker only views gun owners obeying the law as irresponsible? - PVC]
"Everybody who is an expert in firearms recognizes the fact that guns and alcohol don't mix. We think this is a very, very dangerous situation - not only the fact that somebody would have a gun in a bar and may be consuming alcohol, but especially a gun that's openly carried. Even someone who goes into a bar or restaurant openly carrying who is not consuming alcohol, that gun sticking out there is an open invitation for anybody who's had one or two drinks too many and can grab at it or do anything else. [Ricker has made a great argument for him to SUPPORT VCDL's efforts to allow concealed carry in restaurants! Of course Ricker can't show where open carry has ever actually been a problem. - PVC]
"It's one of those situations where it's just not a safe firearms practice to have guns around alcohol," Ricker said. [Gun owners carry guns where alcohol is served all the time in Virginia - openly in restaurants or concealed (with CHP) at special events, all without incident - PVC]
"We think that this whole kind of Wild West atmosphere that the gun lobby is promoting is really very counterproductive," said Jim Sollo, the vice president of the advocacy group Virginians Against Handgun
Violence. [Oh, here comes the old 'Wild West' analogy. After all these years, you would think Mr. Sollo would come up with something better than that. But, there probably isn't anything else for the gun banners to use as they bluster at us. - PVC]
"Most of these people are not trained in when it's legitimate to use their weapons. The whole thing is just rife with problems. The more you get guns out in places where there are lots of people, the more you get them out in public, the more likely things are likely to go bad," Sollo said. [Oh, please. And where has there been any trouble stirred up by Virginia's 130,000 permit holders in all these years?
After VCDL meetings every month we have up to 50 people open carrying in a restaurant that serves alcohol. There has never been a problem, completely contradicting Sollo's statement. More smoke and mirrors and not facts. - PVC]
"I know people are always saying, well, they're going to be the hero, they're going to run in there and stop the guy who's robbing McDonald's - but those things almost never happen. And so it's just kind of a macho thing that doesn't do anything except create danger," Sollo told the AFP. [Sollo just doesn't understand that gun owners carry not to be intimidating (that can get you put in jail), but to protect ourselves in the case of an emergency. What is so complicated that he can't get his mind around the concept? - PVC]
, but then it IS still winter here.
