Posted on 05/04/2006 8:53:59 AM PDT by StevenB
Illegal Immigration Counter Protesters Detained
The topic of discussion on the Bryan Suits radio show on 570 KVI earlier this evening was a call by a Seattle area citizen, Eric, who called to say that while thousands of illegal immigrants marched a couple of feet away, 5 United States citizens, he being one of the 5, who should be covered by all of the constitutional amendments, including the 1st and 2nd, were detained by the Seattle Police Department for over 2 hours because... well hard to say really. The reason for Caller Eric's call into the show was, surprise, surprise, the medias total lack of coverage of what should be a fairly big story. U.S. Citizens constitutional rights infringed in order to protect illegal aliens non existent right to hold a protest march.
Now I am a regular listener of the Bryan Suits show, as you should be, especially if you, like me, are in the male 35-64 year old demographic, and as Bryan can testify, I am also a regular emailer, but did not catch every single minute of the show since the 5pm to 8pm time slot is right in that end of the work day - drive home - eat dinner time window so I may have missed out on some of the conversation but here is a recap as best as I can recall. Full disclosure on my part requires that I state my Father is a 25 year retired Seattle Police Officer and I may or may not own a gun, try breaking into my house and you may or may not get an answer right then and there.
It all started with a 911 call from someone the police say was not part of the march claiming that there was a group of people with signs opposed to the marchers who were armed. The caller said he saw a gun holster sticking out from a partly open jacket. The police responded to the call and found the counter protesters and asked if any of them had weapons and sure enough, 3 of the 5 had guns and one had a switchblade or some sort of knife. Caller Eric said he was the one counter protester that did not have a weapon. At that point they were cuffed and taken to the West precinct where they spent the next 2 plus hours being detained until the march was over. The problem is they had not violated the law as the 3 with guns had valid concealed carry permits and as best as I can tell while switchblades appear to be illegal, there was no mention of the person carrying the knife being arrested or charged with a crime.
A Seattle Police officer, who called himself Steve, called into the show to give his version of the events. While for the most part, the stories matched, Office Steve's main point was they felt they were doing the appropriate thing in order to potentially avoid a violent situation and needed to take the people to the station in order to do a proper investigation. As Bryan Suits said, it was kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for the police but he, along with myself, kept asking under what authority were these people detained and why did it take over 2 hours to finish the investigation and let them leave? Bryan's conclusion, as was mine was it seems fairly obvious that the message from the police hierarchy was to hold these people until the march was over. One thing that bothered me about the conversation with Officer Steve was how Suits had to explain to him it is legal to openly carry a firearm. In the State of Washington you must have a concealed carry permit to have a concealed weapon but not to openly carry. Officer Steve made a comment that implied he thought since the holster was partly visible, that was in some way a violation of the law since the weapon was no longer concealed, which is not the case.
Later a female caller gave Bryan a ring and said she was one of the counter protesters who was packing heat. The first question from Bryan was in effect, what were you thinking bringing a gun into a situation like that even though you are totally within your rights to do so? Her response was she always has her gun with her, expect in bars and other "gun free zones" or as I like to call them, "potential sitting duck shooting galleries". She mentioned that the gun was in her purse and they told the officers when they first asked about the weapons that they had valid permits for them. She said once at the station they were told they would be released once the march was over which contradicted what Office Steve said about it just taking that long to finish the investigation and there was no intent to simply hold them until the march was over.
Now last I checked, United States Citizens have a 1st amendment right to free speech and even in Seattle we have a 2nd amendment right to keep and bear arms and it sure seems to me like those and potentially others were violated. I do know one thing, if I were one of the Seattle 5, I would "lawyer up" and have filed a lawsuit against the City yesterday, because as I emailed Bryan, until the city gets hit with a lawsuit and pays a big judgment, expect this kind of thing to keep on happening. My one question of any city official is when did POTENTIALLY preventing a violent situation supersede our constitutional rights?
Thursday on the Bryan Suits show, where you can listen to live over the internet by going here, the hope is someone from the City will be on to discuss this topic in further detail. Also, its Led Zeppelin Thursday, so get your request in early.
If anyone has any additional information, clarification or corrections, please post them in the comments and I will update accordingly.
That's debatable.
Free Republic just got a mention on the Bryan Suits show. Although the caller said the fact that "Caller Eric" did not have a gun and was held for 2.5 hours after being cleared was news to him....
From the original article:
"Caller Eric said he was the one counter protester that did not have a weapon. At that point they were cuffed and taken to the West precinct where they spent the next 2 plus hours being detained until the march was over."
Been an admirer of you for quite some time, hope to meet up some day..........
If it were me (and it definitely would have been had I not had business to attend to that night), I would be "lawyering up" as we speak. I almost wish it would have been just so I could raise the holy unmitigated Hell on the Seattle PD and media for this.
Quite telling that the media is not reporting about this nor Kirby's producer's stolen gun story. Telling, not surprising, this is the Seattle media after all.
How about taping the envlope to a brick and shipping it back???
That's right. The politburo doesn't issue those permits without the implicit understanding that the privilege shouldn't be abused by carrying a gun in a situation where you might potentially want to use it.
How do you know if they were intimidating anybody? I didn't read that anywhere. How do you know they didn't take them for self defense?
They will have after their next rally in California. They're planning on registering people to vote so they can "change the make-up of Congress."
No big deal. We've got bigger fish to fry I'm sure.
The Officers were within their authority to ask the counter protesters to see their licenses. Someone had reported that one of them was carrying a gun, carrying a concealed handgun without a license is illegal.
Terry vs Ohio gives the officers the authority to perform a stop in such a circumstance. They can however only be detained during such a stop for very limited purposes, such as verifying their identity, and freezing a situation in which there is reason to believe that a crime has been committed or was about to be committed.
Unless they didn't have drivers licenses with them, verifying identification isn't a difficult process, and they had the additional identification of their concealed pistol licenses.
We haven't heard that there were accusations that they were threatening people. They were carrying their firearms legally.
The length of a Terry Stop is limited to being able to as some questions about the situations that reasonably led them to believing that a crime had been or was about to be committed and verifying their identity. Courts have considered stops that take 20 to 30 minutes to be reasonable. They would also reasonably ask others if the counter protestors had been acting in a threatening manner.
If they didn't have complaints from other people that they were threatening others, the Terry Stop should have ended when their identities were verified, and it was determined that their possession of the concealed firearms was legal.
Their removal to the police station for hours was not a Terry Stop. What the officers did requires evidence of a crime.
My pointing out the law was so people would realize the vagueness of this law. It also leaves wiggle room for an officer to do an investigation. No it does not. The law requires some thing that legally warrants alarm.
Terry Stops also don't require laws with any wiggle room. An officer performing a Terry Stop does not even have to have a particular law in mind that he thinks may have been broken, they merely need to determining that the situation is suspicious as a whole.
They don't need any wiggle room to do a Terry Stop, but a Terry Stop is not an in depth investigation, and it cannot be a long detention.
Most importantly, outside of this case, is that an overzealous prosecutor, with a political or ideological motive, could use this vagueness in the law to prosecute someone for headlines.
I very highly doubt that. A layman might claim the law is vague, a prosecutor would have a hard time doing so. Issues such as what warrants alarm have been settled case law for a very long time though cases on things like disturbing the peace cases.
When our Supreme Court ruled that open carry was protected, and people started doing so there were a number of incidents in which the Police mistakenly thought what they were doing was illegal. Some were arrested. Some may have even been charged, but if they were, the charges were dropped. Not a single one was prosecuted.
I guess maybe some of have a different definition of "the people" than you do. To me "the people" refers to US citizens, not citizens from every other country on the earth especially illegal aliens.
I don't for one minute believe our forefathers wrote our constitution to encompass citizens from other countries unless they immigrated here legally and became US citizens.
Appears racist as well i.e. the presumption that these Mexicans would ultimately become violent.
It was common and customary for private merchant ships to be armed with cannon in order to repel pirates. There is ample evidence of wealthy men owning cannons, particularly Southern plantation owners
Civil War and Revolutionary War reenactors TODAY have privately-owned black powder cannons. They normally fire blanks, but there's nothing to stop them from being loaded with ball or cannister
When you raid a cat-house, you arrest trhe piano-player, too.
How do you know that. The Second states "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
I see no wiggle room in that statement, I don't care what some lunatic liberal judge or moronic law professor thinks.
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.