Terry is not the case law at hand on this issue. This was not a Terry stop.
Well, at least we cleared that up. I'm surprised, frankly, because I thought you were relying on the "weapons pat down for officer safety" aspect of Terry as the excuse for disarming the "suspect."
In this case, the Police had specific and credible (from the dispatcher) information about a particular suspect in a particular location. With that kind of info, an LEO can go far beyond Terry.
So, as has been asked (various ways) of you several times by others without success: If you received a dispatch call from the dispatcher concerning "a man with a wooden staff" - assuming for the moment that wooden staffs are perfectly legal in your municipality – you would naturally be duty bound to respond and investigate, in spite of the absolute fact that wooden staffs are (here assumed to be) legal, knowing that a staff is capable of being used as a weapon, and knowing that for some reason your locality issues “concealed staff†permits on a shall-issue basis, allowing law-abiding people to carry their staffs concealed, even though it is legal to carry them openly.
Having arrived at the specified location, you do in fact note that there is a Caucasian man, well dressed, in full possession of a 5.5' oak staff, calmly drinking coffee. There are no obvious signs of terrorized or upset people in the immediate area, but the police “cannot ignore the call and they must go to the man with the staff and talk to him. They have no way of knowing if he is a little league coach, or a homicidal maniac†- aside from the fact that as they are experienced police officers that they must have experienced the difference between an environment where someone has made some sort of threats or other upsetting behavior, and that the action specified in the dispatch call
is perfectly legal.
The action he is engaging in is perfectly legal, just as if they had received a call about a man carrying a rock, or driving a car, or holding a 4-pound brass paperweight, or carrying a yo-yo - all things that can be, and have been, used as weapons at various times - but completely in spite of the legality of his actions, the “appropriate†response of the police is to sneak up on the person, knock them off balance, and attempt to confiscate “the weapon,†before taking the man outside and berating him for engaging in a
perfectly legal action that is not forbidden by any law.
The use of deadly force is controlled by three things, Ability, Opportunity, and Intent. If an Ofc can prove two of the three, he can disarm that person and if needed, use force to do it. In this case, you had the ability (A gun), the opportunity (Within range) and in order to prevent possible escalation of the incident, the officers disarmed you thereby diffusing a potentially life and death situation. […] Honestly, they could have used a lot more force than they did and still been ok in the eyes of the law. They could have drawn weapons and applied cuffs. I am actually surprised that no cuffs came out, but it sounds like they were trying to be polite.
So, by this logic, since
any person who is holding any hard object, or long object, or object attacked to a cord, or pointy object or an infinite number of other objects
anywhere, in
any situation, at any time, has the ability to use that object as a possible weapon, an officer can always prove ability and opportunity, and is therefore authorized to use force to disarm the suspect, who had been observed violating no laws, including pulling guns, and using cuffs. Therefore, we can expect that in this case they could possibly draw sidearms, disarm the staff-bearer by force “if necessary†and cuff him. To investigate the existence or non-existence of a lawful activity, which does not appear to be harming anyone.
Silly, silly me, I had this lovely baroque conception that in a once-free country, in the absence of an accusing witness who credibly alleged some actual wrongdoing on the part of a suspect, the police actually had to observe some wrongdoing on the part of a “suspect,†in order to have moral justification to act. Gad, I must have been reading Jefferson and Cicero again.
Dex }:>=-
load who are worthless.