We see a fair amount of the posts talking about different outcomes in concealed and or open carry situations. The law as pertains to the constitution and individual rights is always on center in the discussion. What is rarely mentioned (never) is what does the person who gets detained, cuffed, run through DMV, etc. look like?
I know what outcomes I can expect, I'm a guy who has a nice personality, I'm respectful to any police officer who stops me or has questions. Typically I can defuse a tense situation or negate it from the start (not always). If I'm open carrying and a cop wants to see my ID I say "sure, no problem", there is no reason from that point on for there to be one.
Now take a guy heavily tatted up, one who not only looks rough but is a tough customer. Take anyone who is a sizeable and confident and tough looking guy and an officer should be in an entirely different zone in terms of their readiness and self preservation mode.
My point here is that as pertains to the recent post where a guy got cuffed for 20 minutes there may have been a lot of visuals that raise questions that need to be checked out. People who look like they need to be checked out have a way of being in situations that are more suspicious in terms of raising questions than mainstream people who aren't raising flags by the way they look.
Three people in a car at 2:30 in the morning waiting for a bus. Two guns in the car even though only one guy has a permit to carry one concealed. What were they driving? Yeah that does have a subjective value to the officers making the inquiry.
Same guy could have been sitting in a BMW, he's dressed in casual but elegant slacks and sport jacket, his wife's dressed nicely, he gets treated differently. That's life, and the police officers have every right to use their discretion in satisfying themselves that these are not felons in the process of committing a crime. There are people I'd be (as a cop) holding a gun on and disarming if I saw they had a CCW until I was satisfied all is legitimate.
Now as a little incident I had, looks didn't keep me from having a gun held on me for over five minutes. In fact the $115k Audi S8 I was driving had the big burly cop holding the gun pretty annoyed with the spoiled rich guy he was dealing with, he probably thought I was a drug dealer, I get that a lot. I got off on the wrong foot with him when I passed him on the inside of a set of double yellow S turns. I think the thing that really annoyed him was that I was entering a turn at about 120mph, looked back and saw the inside light bar and realized I had passed an undercover SWAT type thing. I slowed down to 45 mph and let him follow me the mile and down a side street to my home so my car wouldn't be towed since it was already at home. This was one purple faced highly annoyed cop, I would tell him he could put his gun down, that he was making me extremely nervous and he'd scream, "don't F'ing threaten me to put my F'ing gun down", he was acting like I was on the edge of threatening him to the degree he could shoot me. Every single sentence had two to four "F" words in it. His gun was shaking and it was cocked and locked with his finger on the trigger. I can tell you I've never been happier to not have a gun in the car, I'd have been shot for sure. He really worried me when I was out of the car, hands in the air, obviously not armed or a threat, and he tells me to get back into the car. I told him he was making me way too nervous with the gun pointed at me to get back into the car where he might misconstrue a wrong movement to be cause to shoot me. I thought the dangerous period for a cop was getting their guy out of the car and any proximity to possible weapons that the guy might have, it seemed wrong to have me get back in the car when he had a gun on me.
He let me go (after some lengthy grilling about had I been drinking, and mainly what the **** did I think I was doing) saying he had a serious bust to get to, and I think to this day it was because of how badly he had over reacted with how long he held a gun on me and the out of control way he was screaming. He had me dead to rights on very serious traffic violations. He did not put the gun away until he was done questioning me, that thing never got lowered or relaxed.
During the Simpson style slow speed chase I had prayed to get away with this grievious error in judgement, my prayer was a promise not to speed or do anything crazy if I got off, and you know what? I haven't broken that promise since. I figure one free pass is all you have coming on something that stupid.
My point here was that we hear a few cases where the reaction by officers may have been because something may have warranted over the edge behaviors that may be easier to understand if we could see the person and what they look like, the car they are driving, does the person seem inordinately nervous, etc. The whole package is going to change the response, that's the way it is.
I know what outcomes I can expect, I'm a guy who has a nice personality, I'm respectful to any police officer who stops me or has questions. Typically I can defuse a tense situation or negate it from the start (not always). If I'm open carrying and a cop wants to see my ID I say "sure, no problem", there is no reason from that point on for there to be one.
Now take a guy heavily tatted up, one who not only looks rough but is a tough customer. Take anyone who is a sizeable and confident and tough looking guy and an officer should be in an entirely different zone in terms of their readiness and self preservation mode.
My point here is that as pertains to the recent post where a guy got cuffed for 20 minutes there may have been a lot of visuals that raise questions that need to be checked out. People who look like they need to be checked out have a way of being in situations that are more suspicious in terms of raising questions than mainstream people who aren't raising flags by the way they look.
Three people in a car at 2:30 in the morning waiting for a bus. Two guns in the car even though only one guy has a permit to carry one concealed. What were they driving? Yeah that does have a subjective value to the officers making the inquiry.
Same guy could have been sitting in a BMW, he's dressed in casual but elegant slacks and sport jacket, his wife's dressed nicely, he gets treated differently. That's life, and the police officers have every right to use their discretion in satisfying themselves that these are not felons in the process of committing a crime. There are people I'd be (as a cop) holding a gun on and disarming if I saw they had a CCW until I was satisfied all is legitimate.
Now as a little incident I had, looks didn't keep me from having a gun held on me for over five minutes. In fact the $115k Audi S8 I was driving had the big burly cop holding the gun pretty annoyed with the spoiled rich guy he was dealing with, he probably thought I was a drug dealer, I get that a lot. I got off on the wrong foot with him when I passed him on the inside of a set of double yellow S turns. I think the thing that really annoyed him was that I was entering a turn at about 120mph, looked back and saw the inside light bar and realized I had passed an undercover SWAT type thing. I slowed down to 45 mph and let him follow me the mile and down a side street to my home so my car wouldn't be towed since it was already at home. This was one purple faced highly annoyed cop, I would tell him he could put his gun down, that he was making me extremely nervous and he'd scream, "don't F'ing threaten me to put my F'ing gun down", he was acting like I was on the edge of threatening him to the degree he could shoot me. Every single sentence had two to four "F" words in it. His gun was shaking and it was cocked and locked with his finger on the trigger. I can tell you I've never been happier to not have a gun in the car, I'd have been shot for sure. He really worried me when I was out of the car, hands in the air, obviously not armed or a threat, and he tells me to get back into the car. I told him he was making me way too nervous with the gun pointed at me to get back into the car where he might misconstrue a wrong movement to be cause to shoot me. I thought the dangerous period for a cop was getting their guy out of the car and any proximity to possible weapons that the guy might have, it seemed wrong to have me get back in the car when he had a gun on me.
He let me go (after some lengthy grilling about had I been drinking, and mainly what the **** did I think I was doing) saying he had a serious bust to get to, and I think to this day it was because of how badly he had over reacted with how long he held a gun on me and the out of control way he was screaming. He had me dead to rights on very serious traffic violations. He did not put the gun away until he was done questioning me, that thing never got lowered or relaxed.
During the Simpson style slow speed chase I had prayed to get away with this grievious error in judgement, my prayer was a promise not to speed or do anything crazy if I got off, and you know what? I haven't broken that promise since. I figure one free pass is all you have coming on something that stupid.
My point here was that we hear a few cases where the reaction by officers may have been because something may have warranted over the edge behaviors that may be easier to understand if we could see the person and what they look like, the car they are driving, does the person seem inordinately nervous, etc. The whole package is going to change the response, that's the way it is.
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