Posted on 08/03/2013 9:13:44 AM PDT by marktwain
RUTLAND — Joshua Severance says his Second Amendment rights to openly carry a firearm were violated, but Rutland police say they were following the law when they handcuffed and briefly detained the Milton man this week.
In a case that appears destined to end in a courtroom, Severance, 26, says he was walking down a residential Rutland street Monday afternoon with his shirt off and his 9mm Beretta semiautomatic handgun holstered on his hip when a city police cruiser stopped in front of him and an officer ordered him to place his hands on the hood.
“I figured they wanted to run the serial number and do a background check which is all well and good and part of being a responsible gun owner,” Severance said Thursday. “The next thing I knew I was being handcuffed, told I was ‘not under arrest’ and was put into the back of a cruiser.”
(snip)
Ed Cutler, legislative director for Gun Owners of Vermont, said what police in Rutland did wasn’t wrong, it was illegal.
“I think what they did was harassment and I would be happy to sue (Rutland),” he said. “Just because someone is carrying open the police have no right to detain them in any way.”
(Excerpt) Read more at timesargus.com ...
Maybe they don’t like bare chested guys, too macho? (I say macho with tongue in cheek knowing that there could be many reasons why one might doff a shirt other than not having a shirt.) Anyhow, a businesslike but still pleasant “What’s going on sir, no shirt, a gun?” could diffuse/defuse a lot of potential tension.
Being detained against your will = kidnapping
I believe that JohnGerald stated it correctly:
“Thus, the proper calculus is whether the officers had reasonable suspicion to stop and detain in this case. This requires a detailed understanding of the facts that the officers were working with. If the officers had nothing more than the sight of this individual with a gun, then there likely would not be reasonable suspicion, as open carry is perfectly legal in Vermont. The officers would have to have something more to make a stop in the first place, and everything after that would be compounding the already unlawful seizure.”
What is all too common now is a police state tactic of stopping people to find out if the might be anything that can be uncovered that might qualify as proper suspicion, i.e. detain people on a whim and then investigate whether a proper arrest can be made. And if the good citizen resists? An immediate arrest for obstruction.
In this case, there appears to have been zero reasonable cause to detain/arrest this individual. No more than any other person that cop passed that day. The cop could have asked the guy what he as up to without cuffing him or detaining him. And the guy should have been able to tell the cop to pack sand without getting arrested for obstruction. Since when is the Constitution ‘produce your papers come along for further questioning’
And filing charges against officers for kidnapping would certainly make them think twice about doing these things.
Make sure to file in an Article III court
KIDNAPPING
in criminal law and procedure wex definitions
Overview
Resources
DEFINITION
A crime at common law consisting of an unlawful restraint of a person’s liberty by force or show of force so as to send the victim into another country. Under modern law, this crime will usually be found where the victim is taken to another location or concealed.
In some jurisdictions, kidnapping accompanied by bodily injury, sexual assault, or a demand for ransom elevates the crime to first-degree or aggravated kidnapping. Although the terms kidnapping and abduction are, at times, used interchangeably, abduction is broader, generally not requiring the threat or use of force.
ILLUSTRATIVE CASELAW
See, e.g. United States v. Rodriguez-Moreno, 526 U.S. 275 (1999).
SEE ALSO
Abduction
DEFINITION FROM NOLO’S PLAIN-ENGLISH LAW DICTIONARY
Taking a person away by means of fear, force, or fraud. Kidnapping is a felony. It is also a federal crime, due to the assumption that the victim can be carried across state lines; this gives the FBI jurisdiction to pursue the alleged kidnapper.
Definition provided by Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/kidnapping
I first began losing the sheen of the image of LEOs as 'protect and serve' champions the night I was insisted upon to allow a search of My vehicle. Then told that if the copper found Me in the area again I would be arrested for "suspicion of being a drug-dealer".
Then later upon being pulled over for expired tags and when asked if I had paid My taxes and Registration fees the CHiP-O became outraged and told Me that I was 'stealing gas from his car and food from his table' when I answered honestly that no, I did not. I actually was paying them in another area and had no intention of becoming a Resident there or paying their outrageous taxes as a result. I had simply forgotten to update the tags situation before travelling in the area.
While this outraged fool was berating Me in this manner, and with his hand on his service pistol the entire time, backup had arrived -and proceeded to sit on the arrived cruiser's hood and merely watch while the first individual continued on. As well as when Dispatch radioed and asked him: "Code Four?", upon which he quite slowly responded (keys mic, long dramatic pause...) "Ten... four. (pause) For now..."
I would have agreed with you but the fact that more than one LEO has already proven that they completely buy into the attitude that non-LEOs are either Perps, or Uncaught Perps seems quite evident.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
, I believe is appropriate.
How far we have come to tolerate just a WEE bit of tyranny:
- What reason do I need to keep ID upon my person?
- Is an ex-felon NOT a Citizen afforded the Rights of everyone else? If not, why are they on the streets?
- By what authority do they have to tell the Citizen how to utilize their arms? IE: What good is a gun w/out a round in the chamber, aside from being a hammer?
What part of ‘shall not be infringed’ does anyone NOT get? When one needs a PERMIT for their rights...they not longer are Rights.
Yea, that rubbed me the wrong way. And when I pointed out that I was the only one carry a green Geneva Convention card designating me a combatant, and that he was the civilian, he went from highly agitated to a spittle generator.
The cause for the exchange? It began when he stopped and screamed at me to stop blocking a driveway with my car. Because I had the audacity to explain that it was MY driveway (after thanking him for the concern), he went straight to the attitude that seems to be best summed up as, "I can arrest you any time, any place, with no reason, and call it obstruction, so you had better do as you're told this instant".
Now this was a middle-class neighborhood where there was little to any real crime. Why was he trip wired to confront me as a hostile?
Interestingly enough, the neighborhood did have a problem with people blocking driveways to park and walk to the restaurants a few blocks away, but that was only Friday & Saturday after 7pm. This incident was about 3pm during the week. I still would have been A-OK and appreciative of his attention to the matter, if he hadn't began by screaming at me like I was a reprobate and then kept doubling down on his mistake.
I'd like to say that was an isolated experience, but I can't.
Seriously, it could be anything, even a beanie with a little plastic propeller on top. This is why my “police as predator” analogy holds. Anything that attracts their eye as out of the ordinary will attract their attention.
They are even sensitive to other people’s attention, as well. I had a friend who was doing a citizen ride along with a cop, and he noticed a car ahead with a burned out taillight. The cop noticed that he noticed, so pulled the car over.
He just gave the driver a mild warning, however, and this was also important, because he told my friend that she was a poor woman with some kids, and he didn’t want to give her a ticket she would have a hard time paying. (With the subtle message of “so stop paying attention to things that I will have to do something about.”)
Yeah, they’re human. But they are also predators.
Agreed, mate. See My previous for why...
Just to be clear, I don’t give a damn whether you, or any other LEO, is comfortable with me exercising my Constitutional rights.
Violating someone’s rights isn’t practical approach, its a violation.
If you want to stop and ask me why I don’t have a shirt on and why I’m carrying, I might give you polite reply beyond, “none of your business”. But if you cuff me, you’ve just made a personal enemy, because you are no longer acting within the confines of the law or your position.
Just out of curiosity, did you report the incident to internal affairs, or at least write a letter of complaint to the head law enforcement officer of the agency?
It was common for me to encounter shirtless males who were either intoxicated or on meth.
The second, I and others had just been let go as a cost-cutting measure and I was almost finished moving out of the area when it occurred. I had not been a resident of the area for some time and the vehicle was not yet registered under the new owner's name, so I had not really paid attention to the expired tags. I do not recall exactly but he (previous owner) could have been posted to the East Coast or down Orlando way...
Add to that, the presence of another CHiP-O that seemed to see nothing wrong with what was occurring so apparently that was common practice and I could expect little or no support from the agency, the fact that I was no longer a legal Resident of the area (State) so the subject of jurisdiction was up in the air, and I being between jobs, living out of the area and had no money to spare for traveling expenses. Once the vehicle was towed it was gone permanently, along with all the things I was moving in it. No way I could bloody afford the 25$ per day "storage fees" to get it back -assuming I could manage to come up with some paperwork that would be acceptable, or a hotel to stay in the area if I wanted to raise a fuss about it.
Well if you don’t actually have a lawyer then what... they say go ahead call him, and you have nobody in mind let alone a number?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
While you can, consider putting the lawyer of your choice on at least annual retainer. (Think contract...they LOVE that sh!t) Remember him at the holidays. A consanguineal member of the bar is often a good choice.
You can have my lawyer when you pry my cold dead fingers from around his throat.
It’s so lazy and disingenuous to place all the blame on only police, for some police overstepping their bounds, when it’s society itself that created the modern era of policing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We have grounds for disagreement. Stand your ground at its finest and ultimate.
I didn't do my job that way. But that was just me.
I wouldn't be so smug about that. If you are not part of the solution, you are (or were) part of the problem.
I think what you’re getting at here, is that it’s wise not to be gratuitously strange in such an environment. I’d agree. Not everything legal is wise.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.