Replies

So, you can afford a gun and holster, but not a shirt? Who knows if this was the police logic, more than “It’s not often you see a shirtless man with a sidearm.”

You hit the nail on the head. All the pontificating "constitutional lawyers" and "super experienced armchair police officers" that run roughshod through these forum threads never take a pragmatic approach to any specific situation.
Perhaps, at it's most basic interpretation the US Constitution could provide for a citizen to walk down any given road shirtless with a sidearm in plain sight but most neighborhoods exist in a polite societal setting and there is no reason to exhibit oneself in such manner nor is it "normal" outside of Crenshaw or Detroit to do so.
If it would be wartime and the USA was invaded by North Korea or the Chinese maybe then it would be normal and polite to dress like a street-tough and walk around with a sidearm displayed but so far we don't have to worry about that.
From my personal travels and my interaction with other police officers from other states I know that there are very few places in the USA that everyone is comfortable with open-carry and that is only in a few western states.
As a beat cop myself, my experience has led me to profile shirtless males who walk down a neighborhood street as there is a high probability they are someone who gets in trouble often....a logical deduction because in my part of the state most civilized and polite men don't walk around shirtless unless they're in their yard or at the beach. Also I've spent years encountering shirtless males on police calls and they almost always get arrested once we're called. So they get profiled.
So when police get a call like the one in the article, I have no sympathy for the person they get called on. There would be no article to post if the guy had worn a t-shirt and simply attempted to cover the sidearm.

On a sidenote, the only difference between the fictional police officer Andy Griffith and any other police officer from that era is that instead of Sapping an unwelcome stranger and dumping him in the boonies Andy Griffith would have politely escorted the unwelcome stranger to the edge of Mayberry.
The idea that police 65 years ago were nicer and more respectful than the police today is nonsense. The only thing that has changed between then and now is the amount of non-police (civil) bullcrap that police are expected to handle nowadays. There was less interaction between the police and the public 65 years ago compared to today because society understood that police handled certain things and that it was personally embarrassing to have your neighbors see the police at your house. Nowadays we're public servants in every sense of the term, handling things so outside of the purview of policework that it is absolutely ridiculous.

If all of you pontificating "constitutional lawyers" and "super experienced armchair police officers" want to get rid of the "nazi-stasi-police problem" here in the USA why don't you work on changing society's expectations of what police are and what they should be handling?

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.

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.

It was common for me to encounter shirtless males who were either intoxicated or on meth.

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.
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We have grounds for disagreement. Stand your ground at its finest and ultimate.

Well written.