Wednesday morning’s on-line Seattle Post-Intelligencer brought another bit of sterling reporting by Casey McNerthney, this time about a Seattle recidivist identified as David W. Groce.
The story detailed how Groce allegedly strolled into the Union Street Market wearing a hooded sweatshirt, pulled a pistol and robbed the place Sunday evening. According to the report, Groce was booked into the King County Jail just five days after he was released from the same facility after serving a sentence on a drug conviction.
Groce reportedly has a history of crime, including convictions for theft, assault and escape. The frosting on this guy’s cake was that he was reportedly found one time with marijuana at the King County Jail work-release facility. He has now been charged with first-degree robbery.
If all of these accounts and allegations are true, Groce is a bad guy.
Contrast that with the scenario played out on Aug. 15 down in SeaTac, where dozens of open carry activists gathered at an apartment complex for an annual barbecue. There were lots of people, both male and female, legally packing firearms, having a good time, and nobody suffered so much as a scratch. These are the good guys.
This column makes the point because right now, about 1,500 miles east of here in Wisconsin, a federal lawsuit has been filed by a fellow named Brad Krause who was arrested at gunpoint in his own yard two years ago for openly carrying a handgun, which is not illegal under that state’s constitution. Even Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen made that abundantly clear in a 2009 memorandum to Wisconsin police departments after the Krause case was cleared in court.
This column wrote about the aftermath of that case here, just days after Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn infamously told reporters that “My message to my troops is if you see anybody carrying a gun on the streets of Milwaukee, we’ll put them on the ground, take the gun away and then decide whether you have a right to carry it.”
Flynn quickly tried to justify this arrogant dismissal of constitutional rights and attorney general opinion by adding, “Maybe I'll end up with a protest of cowboys. In the meantime, I’ve got serious offenders with access to handguns. It’s irresponsible to send a message to them that if they just carry it openly no one can bother them.”
Krause’s federal complaint has all of the earmarks of a civil rights train wreck. Defendants in this case include the three officers who were involved in the 2008 arrest, the City of West Allis and the West Allis Police Department. According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, “when TV reporters were interviewing Krause in West Allis about the Van Hollen memo on April 21, 2009, two squad cars pulled up with their emergency lights on, and officers began to question Krause, according to his lawsuit.
“During the questioning, one officer stated that had television camera not been filming, Plaintiff would have been taken to the ground at gunpoint, disarmed, and possibly arrested,’ the suit reads,” according to the newspaper.
If that’s true, somebody in West Allis needs a serious attitude adjustment, and it’s not Brad Krause. His case is getting the expected attention from Wisconsin open carry activists on the Open Carry.org forum.
In Wisconsin, the right to bear arms is protected by the state constitution. Open carry is the only option for legally carrying a defensive handgun because there is no concealed carry provision in state statute. It’s been the “Catch 22” issue for anti-gunners like out-going Gov. Jim Doyle, who twice vetoed concealed carry legislation, pretty much in the same vein as Chicago’s new handgun ordinance.
Doyle once told an audience that the state didn’t need a concealed carry provision because open carry is legal. However, he’s never discouraged Flynn or other police from harassing legally-armed citizens.
Doyle is a Democrat, like Chicago’s Richard Daley, who crafted his city’s new gun ordinance to require Chicago residents wanting to own handguns for personal protection to first take a safety course and spend at least one hour on a gun range. His ordinance prohibits gun shops and gun ranges inside the city.
That is one reason the city has been sued again by the Second Amendment Foundation, the group that filed the landmark McDonald case leading to Second Amendment incorporation to the states by the Supreme Court. This column explained it all here last week.
Comments
...and don't forget "If I see one of those open-carry wack-jobs, I'm going to spread him out on the ground, and if he even so much as flinches...two weeks off!"
Yeah, this is pretty much par for the course. I love the statement,"If the News crew hadn't been there WITH cameras rolling..." Funny, how if you or I try to record an 'encounter with law enforcement' that they insist that the recording cease 'because it interferes or obstructs law enforcement officers' in their line of duty.
I've got an app for my DROID X called Cop Recorder. Launch it, hit Record, the app hides itself and the recording. It records audio for as long as you have memory in your phone. (May I suggest the 32GB SD) To stop it, launch the app again. File can be played on virtually any device.
Officer: "I don't consent to being recorded. This is a private conversation."
Me: "Well that's interesting, as our conversation is not private, we are in Public, you are a Public Servant, and I am the Public. Anything I say, you will use against me in a court of law and in order to protect the integrity of this interaction, I will record this conversation. You have been informed of my intent to record and it is your choice if you want to continue this dialog. How may I help you Officer?"
Practice, Rinse, Repeat.
Many states are "one party" states and Wisconsin is one of them. To legally record a conversation, only one party need to agree, even if that is the person doing the recording. It is not necessary to announce to the police that you are recording their contact with you,and I would say it is even a poor idea. They will claim they were being set up by you. Instead, it is better to let them just be themselves and document it.
Brad's entire initial police contact and arrest was recorded by Brad. He has a digital voice recorder running every time he leaves his home, so all subsequent police contact has also been duly recorded. This eliminates all the he said - he said questions about the police behavior and/or threats to him. If the police edit out incriminating portions of their contact, Brad has his own audio copy to fill in the missing comments.
Whenever you see an officer with a microphone on his shirt, you are being recorded. For similar reasons, it is adviseable to have your own recording of such events.
You may make as many CD/copies as you wish, but never ever erase the original file from your recorder. It is the master copy. It is a good idea to own a recorder that you can password lock the file, so the police may not tamper with your recorder should they take possession of it.
Thank you Dave for stating the obvious in a way that maybe the un-educated will understand. I was at the BBQ and yes these ARE good people. Obey the law and respect others is what us legal gun owners do. Some need to open their eyes to the reality of this fact and quit living within the realm of ignorance and fear.
redboneshadow
Mike Cheney
C2A
The tide in this battle is beginning to shift and I think those who thought they could do anything as long as they wore a badge are beginning to have their doubts as the public starts to fight back to defend themselves not only from the criminals but the abusive law enforcement this country has spawned. Police officers are public servants and as such are subject to recording anytime they are performing their public duties whether it is on public or private property.
It would be a better Country if the entire United States, would follow the Example of VT, AZ, and Alaska and simply observe the right of Constitutional Carry, Open, Concealed no matter, this is a Constitutionally Protected Right that is in the Bill of Rights, under the Second Amendment, and no Lawyer or Justice, can in Good Faith deny this.
If the Courts all the way up to and including the Supreme Court would simply enforce the Rule of Law and stop legislating from the Bench, we would all be better off.
To date there has yet to be a single incident of the feared OK Coral taking place anywhere in the entire United States, Bloodshed in the Streets over Traffic Arguments, I’ve not heard of any, the news is very quick to report on any issue where a gun was used to commit a crime but where is the same zealous reporting on the use of a gun to prevent a crime?
Dave,
All of your links are broken. They are being created with an additional http:// Here is the URL being created in my browser (Firefox):
http://http//www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/101340644.html
Thanks for the great articles.
Travis
I wish we could get good articles like this one in the Milwaukee paper.
Even when carriers do good things, like stopping robberies, they don't get a mention.
I expect the upcoming case against Brookfield (western suburb of Milwaukee) will get some press - another federal case against another police department that MAJORLY infringed the rights of an open carrier... on July 4th, no less.
This nation's children are suffering the sins of omission by their parents who, in the past, have allowed the most egregious of laws to be enacted, and did so without a peep.
They let it happen because they had nothing to worry about, and the law didn't affect them, or so they thought.
Appropriate quote:
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
Excerpt from the American Declaration of Independence, by Thomas Jefferson.
And of course there's this one as well:
"Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice."
- John Adams
Too bad our parents and their parents weren't paying attention ...
“The good guys are those who have assumed their moral obligations and duty to provide, to keep and bear arms in defense of self, family, other persons, property, possessions and State and Nation as required.
The bad guys are those who intentionally violate the rights of other persons.
The general rule for use of force in self defense is--’only that amount of force necessary to cause the perpetrator of the rights-violating act to cease and desist their activity.’”
gw III
I am restoring all lost comments, and apologize to my regular readers for this SNAFU:
===========================
Anonymous
...and don't forget "If I see one of those open-carry wack-jobs, I'm going to spread him out on the ground, and if he even so much as flinches...two weeks off!"
==========================
by Mike Cheney 1 day ago ..Thank you Dave for stating the obvious in a way that maybe the un-educated will understand. I was at the BBQ and yes these ARE good people. Obey the law and respect others is what us legal gun owners do. Some need to open their eyes to the reality of this fact and quit living within the realm of ignorance and fear.
redboneshadow
Mike Cheney
C2A
=============================
by Anonymous 1 day ago ..The tide in this battle is beginning to shift and I think those who thought they could do anything as long as they wore a badge are beginning to have their doubts as the public starts to fight back to defend themselves not only from the criminals but the abusive law enforcement this country has spawned. Police officers are public servants and as such are subject to recording anytime they are performing their public duties whether it is on public or private property.
==========================
by Kelly Jarboe 1 day ago ..It would be a better Country if the entire United States, would follow the Example of VT, AZ, and Alaska and simply observe the right of Constitutional Carry, Open, Concealed no matter, this is a Constitutionally Protected Right that is in the Bill of Rights, under the Second Amendment, and no Lawyer or Justice, can in Good Faith deny this.
If the Courts all the way up to and including the Supreme Court would simply enforce the Rule of Law and stop legislating from the Bench, we would all be better off.
To date there has yet to be a single incident of the feared OK Coral taking place anywhere in the entire United States, Bloodshed in the Streets over Traffic Arguments, I’ve not heard of any, the news is very quick to report on any issue where a gun was used to commit a crime but where is the same zealous reporting on the use of a gun to prevent a crime?
============================
by Gene German, Wisconsin Gun Rights Examiner 1 day ago ..Many states are "one party" states and Wisconsin is one of them. To legally record a conversation, only one party need to agree, even if that is the person doing the recording. It is not necessary to announce to the police that you are recording their contact with you,and I would say it is even a poor idea. They will claim they were being set up by you. Instead, it is better to let them just be themselves and document it.
Brad's entire initial police contact and arrest was recorded by Brad. He has a digital voice recorder running every time he leaves his home, so all subsequent police contact has also been duly recorded. This eliminates all the he said - he said questions about the police behavior and/or threats to him. If the police edit out incriminating portions of their contact, Brad has his own audio copy to fill in the missing comments.
Whenever you see an officer with a microphone on his shirt, you are being recorded. For similar reasons, it is adviseable to have your own recording of such events.
You may make as many CD/copies as you wish, but never ever erase the original file from your recorder. It is the master copy. It is a good idea to own a recorder that you can password lock the file, so the police may not tamper with your recorder should they take possession of it.
========================
by Anonymous 1 day ago ..Dave,
All of your links are broken. They are being created with an additional http:// Here is the URL being created in my browser (Firefox):
http://http//www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/101340644.html
Thanks for the great articles.
Travis
==========================
by MKEgal 1 day ago ..I wish we could get good articles like this one in the Milwaukee paper.
Even when carriers do good things, like stopping robberies, they don't get a mention.
I expect the upcoming case against Brookfield (western suburb of Milwaukee) will get some press - another federal case against another police department that MAJORLY infringed the rights of an open carrier... on July 4th, no less.
=====================
by Anonymous 18 hours ago ..This nation's children are suffering the sins of omission by their parents who, in the past, have allowed the most egregious of laws to be enacted, and did so without a peep.
They let it happen because they had nothing to worry about, and the law didn't affect them, or so they thought.
Appropriate quote:
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
Excerpt from the American Declaration of Independence, by Thomas Jefferson.
And of course there's this one as well:
"Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice."
- John Adams
Too bad our parents and their parents weren't paying attention ...
========================
by Ghostwriter III 8 hours ago ..“The good guys are those who have assumed their moral obligations and duty to provide, to keep and bear arms in defense of self, family, other persons, property, possessions and State and Nation as required.
The bad guys are those who intentionally violate the rights of other persons.
The general rule for use of force in self defense is--’only that amount of force necessary to cause the perpetrator of the rights-violating act to cease and desist their activity.’”
gw III
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