Airport gun arrest backfires: Officer defied order

Dumb Mom, dippy daughter. Daughter very lucky it happened in the U.S. instead of Mexico. Good Judge. First cop used head.

With real life scenarios like this, who needs comedy writers.

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Sam I am, grn egs n packin

Nikita Khrushchev predicted confidently in a speech in Bucharest, Rumania on June 19, 1962 that: " The United States will eventually fly the Communist Red Flag...the American people will hoist it themselves."
 
C.R. Sam,

I would suppose you've never forgotten anything in your life?

And you never felt that you needed to do what you felt was correct when you faced such a situation?

Don't be so critical of these two.

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John/az
"When freedom is at stake, your silence is not golden, it's yellow..." RKBA!
www.cphv.com
 
I live and have lived near Wahington, DC for going on five years now. On one of my bike rides around and among the Mall, I stopped one day to take a snack break near the East Wing of the National Gallery.

After snacking I went to throw out the wrapper of my snack (a banana peel) and noticed a knife lying on top of the outdoor trashcan I was intending to use. The knife was a Case folding lockback, but the blade had been ground/filed down so much it looked more like a shank. Not wanting a child to find this crappy but still potentially dangerous knife, and not particularly wanting to own what likely had been an instrumentality of crime, I scooped the knife up into a piece of paper and headed inside the museum to find a cop that could dispose of the knife for me.

Inside I flagged down the first uniformed officer that I saw. I don't remember what department he was from, but I do remember he was armed, so he must have been more than just a Smithsonian security guard. Before pulling the knife out I explained to him what I had found, where I had found it, and my concerns about leaving it there. He simply asked me for the knife, I handed it to him, and he thanked me for being so civic minded.

That is the way this whole mess in Hartsfeld should have played out. Maybe a bit more paperwork for a gun than for a knife, but this woman in Atlanta was abused by the system FOR DOING THE RIGHT THING! What kind of message does that send? Are we all just cogs in a big machine that chews people up and spits them out all in the name of "upholding the law"?

Morality should always be above the law. Without this concept, being "A nation of laws, not men" has no meaning. The two higher up officers that ordered her arrested are morally bankrupt, criminally stupid and arrogant as hell. They sought to punish someone who came to them for help, doing the right thing, hurting no one in any way and their response is to throw her in jail. Must be that the Peter Principle applies to law enforcement.

The only good thing about this story is the cop that she spoke to first. His taking the right action is to be commended. Remember, there is no requirement to follow orders that are illegal.
 
Yes, the lady definately did the right thing when she discovered the gun.

Yes I have forgotten things, many things.

I think momma was remiss in not keeping track of her gun.

There has been so much publicity about Americans traveling to Mexico having major problems with the Mexican authorities when a single pill, single round of ammunition, or a weapon was found. Almost always serious jail time is involved. Resolution usually takes massive amounts of money and months of time.

Yes, I forget things. But I darn shure check my bags and pockets when traveling to a foreign country...( or state )

I still think daughter was remiss in not checking the borrowed bag. She is very lucky that this was resolved prior to her arrival in Mexico. She could very well be sitting in a Mexican jail, and still there next year.

Sam
 
Safety deposit box and pick it up on your return through the same airport.

Why wake the bear when he is sleeping ?

Mike H
 
This story makes me feel better knowing that at least one officer and the judge did the right thing. I read this earlier without this bit of information and it made me sick. Cudo's to the officer. We need more like him who are willing to put their job on the line to do the right thing. I imagine that for the line officers he is more the rule rather than the exception.



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Richard

The debate is not about guns,
but rather who has the ultimate power to rule,
the People or Government.
RKBA!
 
This is a perfect example of someone running afoul of a law which does not require "intent". IOW, simply the doing of the act is a criminal offense. Now, for some laws, that is fine. But obviously, this woman had no intent to board with the gun, or conceal it from discovery or commit a crime.
This is a time when Depts. increasingly regulate their officers ability to use discretion. IMO, I don't feel that all textbook "felonies" require immediate incarceration. This type of case could easily be filed at a later date by the State's Atty. or County Prosecutor. The offender is known, a member of the community, has i.d, etc. Oh, wait, I forgot that her flight makes her a "flight risk". DOH! :)

[This message has been edited by VictorLouis (edited May 25, 2000).]
 
Officer and judge get my respect. These are the ones I would like to believe are representative of their ilk, not the slimy ones who relieved this officer.
 
Well, Ms. Reed, the lesson here is that the system is broken. Watch old WWII films about Nazi Germany, and simply imagine GA, TX, NY, and other American accents in place of the poor German. An exaggeration at present (and, hopefully always so), but we're showing troubling signs that are similar.

Don't depend on finding more LEO's and judges with such compassion and common sense. The system is broken, and while good people are still aplenty, the system can chew you up before you ever find one with enough backbone to save you.

Sad to say.

In this case, I am glad to read that the state of GA is still blessed with brave, decent people such as these.

Regards from AZ
 
I'm very glad for the girl.
Whenever I see some arrest with felony charges, I ask myself if there was actually anything morally wrong to justify it. This young woman did nothing that was morally wrong. At best she inadvertantly broke some regulation and tried to correct the situation. I do believe in enforcing regulations, but with fines and punishments that fit the offense, not the life wrecking punishment that a felony conviction entails.
Today, we have too many laws making minor matters felonies, and not enuogh enforcement and punishment for crimes that are recognized as heinous (murder, rape, robbery, stealing, lying) by peoiple around the word and throughout history.
 
I just do not understand all of the "at least she did not get popped in Mexico" part of this discussion.

Woo-Hoo! We treat our people, eventually, better than some glorified banana-republic.

Have things gotten so bad that this is how we are to measure our morality? Are we now "good enough" so long as we are not the worst in the world?
 
Dizzipator,

The armed guard you found very well COULD have been a Smithsonian employee. A small number of them are authorized and trained to carry firearms. Most of them are stationed in the National Gallery of Art, for obvious reasons.

In fact, there is a firing range specifically for guard training and qualification in the basement of the National Gallery!
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Juan Hunt Greer:
If anybody knows a way to find out the first officer's name, post it, I, for one, would like to buy him a steak dinner!
crankshaft[/quote]

According to Neal Boortz (Atlanta radio talk-show host), the officer is Joseph Head. Neal has a brief update on this situation at his web site ( http://www.boortz.com/ ) in the "Nealz Nuze" section ( http://www.boortz.com/nealznuz.htm ).


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"There's not much comfort in the fact that crime is down 6 percent. So instead of 100 criminals targeting you, now there are only 94. Whoop-dee-doo." -- Paxton Quigley
 
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