Mitigating Circumstances

I'd like to comment in length on a post I recently read reference proposed law changes in Indiana about the "legality of firing on a law enforcement officer". Trying to express a complicated perspective in 140 characters or less was too challenging. I think in my effort, I may have been misunderstood and lost a few follows in the process. But such is life. The true seeker of knowledge and understanding will ask the hard question. Those just along for the ride will always abstain from confrontation.

So I want to qualify on a couple of points before I get to the confrontational portion of my expose' here.

I am a citizen of a currently free America. One that depends on the enforcement of laws established to keep it free, and peaceful. I want it known up front that I uphold the role of the law enforcement officer, and support the often horrific job they have to do.

Secondly I'd have to say that there is no greater calling than that of the protector. Whether that's LEO, military or citizen soldier. These are jobs that often times extract the very most that a human can offer, to wit their very life. They do it with substandard pay, and mostly under the woeful eye of those that want, and need, the protection they offer, but seldom want the restrictions that can come with security.

Thirdly, while I respect the badge of office, and authority, I also respect human nature for the flaws it can harbor. Which is where we are now going to tread.

As a young and rambunctious man, like many, I tended to push some envelopes of legality. It was never an intentional matter of seeking to break the law, but it was a somewhat self serving desire to do whatever I wanted to do, and whenever. I drove too fast, drank one too many beers, shot some game and did some fishing where, and when I shouldn't and without the proper credentials needed. I never hurt anyone, but as always, the potential is there. I got caught a few times, skated a few times, and slipped away without anyone being the wiser more times than I can count. But I never hurt anyone. No justification, just stating a fact.

All of that changed when I had kids. Because like so many others, we never really seem to understand the reasons behind restriction until we have someone we care about more than ourselves. When the kids came, life got serious. On to my point.

Several times in my life I've bumped up against that portion of human nature I mentioned before...the flawed side. The side that lacks that character trait that makes a person like you or me hesitate, and more often than not, refrain from progressing in a manner that is either illegal or carries the potential to hurt someone else. This is what is called Common Grace within the realms of the religious. That small piece of God's love given to every man as a gift that makes most people "good" even if they don't share a relationship with Him. This post isn't about religion so I won't expand here and now on that.

I think it is safe to say that while the majority of those that profess to be protectors carry enough of this Grace in their spiritual pocket to be righteous in the endeavor, there are certainly those that slip through that don't. These are the ones who wear the badge, or carry the weapon, because it renders them more powerful in their own mind. They are the dangerous ones. They present a problem in the military, and I've seen them on the streets of America. A few examples.

When I separated from active duty with the Marine Corps, my first choice for civilian employment was with a municipal police department. My first stop was the Maricopa County Sheriff's department, that at the time was listing some openings on it's deputy program. I wasn't successful at getting in, much to my displeasure, because it was only open to a minority selection. Not my point here either, but it points my direction.

Instead, I got a job with the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office in the jail system working on a project called Arizona Boys Ranch. They were part of the juvenile detention system of the county jail. We took boys between the ages of 15-18 into a work release half way house type program up into the mountains of Arizona where we worked for the Fish and Game, Forestry Department, and Parks and Recreation systems. For me it was a lateral attempt to get into the Sheriffs Department. For the people running the program it was a way to make money off of kickbacks, graft and shell games. Money supposedly spent on the welfare of the kids was making its way into private pockets, and when I figured it all out and spoke up about it in an employee meeting, I got the proverbial boot. That's the shady side of LEO administration that hurts the tax payers pocket, but doesn't really represent a victim. Here's a couple examples of the nasty street scenarios that do, did and could have potentially gotten someone killed.

In 2002 I was the director of security for my local church. Ah...I saw the flicker of the eyebrow, and the flash of eye that comes whenever I mention being "director of security" for a church. But I live in an ethnically diverse part of Charlotte, NC, and the church was across the street from one of the most crime challenged high schools in the city. The area is also rated as one of the worst in Charlotte and two years ago was rated as 8th from the top of the 40 worst neighborhoods reference crime in the nation. So yes, we have a security program, and I carry a firearm. I am licensed to carry that firearm concealed, and I am proficiently trained in its use.

So early one morning back in 2002, around 3:30 or 4a.m. I'm wakened by a loud bang. I only heard it once, and my sleeping mind told me as I was waking up that it resembled a gunshot, and close. I looked out the window and saw nothing. My bedroom faces the back yard, and that's where the noise seem to come from so I picked up my .45 that sits in the bedside drawer and walked out into the back yard. I had stood on the porch for a couple of minutes when I heard the noise again. This time, being awake, I knew it wasn't a gunshot, sounded metallic, but too squishy if that were to make any sense. It actually sounded like someone kicking a metal bucket, and it was coming from the front.

So I walked through the house with the pistol in my hand, wearing only camouflage pajama bottoms. Yea laugh, the kids bought'em for me for Christmas that year. I walked out on my front porch but couldn't see anything for the hedges around the front yard. I had my cellphone in one hand and the pistol in the other when I poked my head out from between the hedge path at the front walk. As I did, I heard the noise again to my right. So pushing the pistol into the waist band of my drawers I started down the sidewalk in the direction of the bangs. Two or three houses up the block I saw the culprit. A local drunk walking down the street with an aluminum baseball bat smacking mailboxes. I looked back at mine and sure enough, crushed. That was the bang that woke me up. I dialed 911 and started back down the walk towards my house talking to the dispatch on the way. I recounted what I had heard, what I had seen, and what I had done, and what I was doing.

I had just stepped into my yard when I was surprised to see the first squad car pull up. Much too quickly for them to have alerted to my call. One car, obviously seeing me, pulled to the street in front of my house, a second pulling up behind him. I approached the first car and immediately recognized the officer. He and I had made contact on several occasions within the community watch program I belonged to. I briefly explained to him that I had my pistol in the back of my pajamas (which I had to hold up because the pistol outweighed the elastic capacity of the waistband). I showed him the cell phone in my left hand and he could see my right hand holding up my pj's. I think he may have smirked a bit as I approached. I was explaining about the noise and the bonehead with the baseball bat when a third patrol car came zipping down the street from the same direction, passed the two parked in front of my house and went to the next block intersection. He flipped a screaming u-turn and barreled back down on us. As he approached, he slid to a stop, kicked his door open and while we all watched proceeded to draw his service weapon out, point it at me and scream, "Put your hands in the air where I can see them!!" I looked at the officer sitting in the car for direction, he looked at the other officer, seeing the drawn weapon, and stated I'd better do as told. I told him that if I let go of my britches everything was going to head south. He said he knew, and that he'd cover for me. Meanwhile the screaming officer was still screaming for me to raise my hands. I let go of my pj's and grabbed some sky...my britches fell, the pistol landed in the grass besides my feet and the officer I was speaking with got out of his car, all at about the same time. Skippy came running up slapped cuffs on me as my buddy was assisting with my exposure and retrieving my weapon.

I sat in the back seat of the police car for the better part of an hour while the officers tried to sort out what had occurred. My buddy told me that they had received several 911 calls about someone with a metal pipe destroying mailboxes. My call was the last and they were already in progress when it came in. They barrelled past the culprit and saw me in the glow of a street light. The officer explained that when he saw me in pajama's he recognized me and the circumstances of my call, so when he approached he had no great concern over his safety reference me. The second officer behind concurred. The third officer was an idiot and was bound and determined to arrest someone, even if it was the wrong person. He didn't arrest me, but he did cite me for a CCW violation because I didn't have my permit on my person and confiscated my pistol.

So even though I was responding to a situation which I considered a potential threat to my family and myself (until I figured out what was happening), and even though I was standing on my own property when skippy came barreling into the situation, and even though three other officers tried to talk reason about the situation into him, he persisted with the citation. Keep in mind that he also pointed a gun at my face without probable cause as well.

When I went to court over the ordeal, I didn't even have to speak on my own behalf. The officer testified first and was perhaps five minutes into his spiel when the judge stopped him and asked a couple of questions. Reading from the 911 transcripts of all the calls, he asked the officer what lead him to identify me, standing barefoot and in pajama bottoms only, as the subject. Secondly, how did he know I was armed as he approached, and if he saw the weapon, how could that constitute a concealed weapons violation. And last, what was the address of the arrest, and where was I standing. All issues I, and the other officers, had brought up back the night of.

The fact is, I could have been standing on my property outfitted like Rambo on a tantrum and there wouldn't have been anything they could have done. They tossed the ticket and six months later I eventually got my weapon back. But not before I spent $500 in attorney fees.

Second situation. If you've read any of my former posts you'll remember that I was a bondsman for several years licensed by the Dept. of Insurance in NC. My job was writing bonds for accused criminals, posting those bonds, maintaining contact with the accused until they appeared in court, and chasing them down if they ran.

I also worked doing fugitive recovery for other agents working for the same insurance company as I did. If I had a bond skip that I required assistance on, I sought their help, and I reciprocated when they needed help.

In February of 2006, we made a routine run down to Spartanburg, SC about 90 miles south of Charlotte. We were after a bond skip for drug charges that was written for $20,000. Information on the location was offered by a girlfriend who was a responsible party on the bond and looked to forfeit the collateral on that sum if he wasn't caught. We responded to a location with the assistance of a local Dept of Public Safety Officer who was called off at the last minute, but returned when that call was aborted about 15 minutes later. Four of us approached a housing project unit in a rough suburb of Spartanburg. The lead identified himself at the front door, showing badges and documents reference the reason for being there and requesting to search. Typically a resident (who is listed in primary bond documents) can't refuse a search as its part of the contract. But when a third party is involved, they have the option. The counter option is then presented as "either let us search, no fault no foul, we don't find the mark, we leave. Or, if you refuse, we call the Sheriff's department who can get a warrant and search. Anything found is evidence of a crime. They usually opt for the first. In this case they did. Three and a half minutes later, we were finishing up when the DPS officer showed back up, cleared the operations, and we all left. Two took information gotten from the girl friend and located the skip some five miles away at a car wash and the deal was done.

We had come into nominal "contact" with a third party individual while there. He had the same first name, but a different physical description as our skip and as a "guest" as well, was told to let us proceed and stay out of the way.

Six weeks later I was contacted by the lead agent about the circumstances of the operation. He indicated that this "third party individual" had filed a simple assault charge against him for allegedly "coming in contact with him while passing in a stairwell". There was no grounds for the charge so I told him I wasn't concerned.

Six months later he contacted me again and indicated he had been contacted by SLED agents (South Carolina Law Enforcement Division) about the circumstances of the operation. They wanted to talk to everybody concerned. I told him to give them my phone number and hung up. Several months later, in February, a year almost to the day, I got a call from a SLED agent. He asked me to describe what had happened, which I did, and he indicated it was consistent with the other accounts. Done deal.

Not hardly. August of that same year, 2007, I was in Arizona dealing with my dads first bout with leukemia. Things were looking pretty bleak for him and I had all but shut the doors to my NC business. I received a call from one of the other agents who proceeded to tell me that serious charges had been levied against us by this "third party individual". The simple assault he first claimed had been escalated to felony assault by pointing a gun, aggravated assault by unlawful containment, crossing state line without license, illegal entry, search and seizure. (Remember at this point that I told you we had been cleared by a DPS officer before leaving the scene) The total of which would have put the four of us behind bars for between 25 and 30 years each.

He told me they had all turned themselves in on the charges so they could get it cleared up as soon as possible. I told him where I was at, (Arizona) and what I was doing, he told me the smart thing, as it was all bogus, was to stay where I was until they could get through the worst of the bullshit. If they wanted me bad enough, and could find me, they could come and get me. I concurred but told him I'd do that anyway because my dad's situation was grave, and I wasn't going anywhere.

Several days later I got a call from my oldest son. He informed me that an armed SWAT team was at that point working their way through my house searching for me. They claimed to have a warrant, and information from an informant that I had been seen in the neighborhood that day. They apparently were not represented by NC LEO. A call was placed to my wife at work, she was instructed to come home. When she did, they took her into custody and tried to force her to tell of my where abouts. She told them the truth, Arizona. My son put an officer on the phone wherein I explained that I was in fact in Arizona. I had had no formal indication of charges bound over against me and had in fact checked NCIS on various occasions just to insure I didn't have a warrant on me. Being a recovery agent myself, I certainly wasn't interested in being a fugitive. SLED agents threatened to take my wife into custody, send my two minor children to DPS and ransack my house if I didn't come out of the woodwork. Because I was talking to them on a cell phone, they simply wouldn't believe that I was in Arizona.

I had to go to a Phoenix local police station and ask an officer to place a call on a land line before they would believe I wasn't hiding in the bushes somewhere in my neighborhood. The officer from AZ asked if there was any reason he should take me into custody on the warrant. The SLED agent said no. Now ponder this. If SC LEO are in NC, and they don't have a warrant posted on NCIS, and they don't have local LEO with them, why are they in my house with an armed SWAT team looking for me on charges I had yet to be presented with?

As it all turns out, this was all about that "third party individual" thinking that, because there was an insurance company involved, he could bamboozle some big money out of us with bullshit charges. The SLED agents were working for the State Attorney General who saw some big headlines over the case. What actually ended up happening was, two years later, June of 2009, the case finally went in front of a Superior Court Judge and a jury. The other agents were still working for the insurance company, so it payed their attorney fees. I wasn't, so it didn't. I didn't have the 15 grand he wanted so I defended myself. Sometimes having a fool for your attorney works to your advantage.

Because I wasn't schooled in law, but still had the right to defend myself, I made some mistakes in court that were overlooked. I asked unorthodox questions, and spoke to the jury in a format that was far from ordinary. I made a plea to their common sense.

The prosecution presented five witnesses that told five different versions of a really poor story. The jury, made up primarily in June of school teachers who had been passed over during the year, saw through the absurdity of not only the five stories, but the states case as well. We were acquitted of all charges and the state got slapped with a hefty bill.

Now, I have just explained in great detail, some of which I will more than likely have cut out by the time you get this far, some situations where I have been unjustly accused, and suffered the consequences. It was only my own intelligence, and not the mercy of any of the states advocates, in either situation that got me free. In both instances either myself, or members of my family, were in danger by the almost gangster tactics of roug officers. Even so, I bear no hostility towards LEO in general. But I can tell you this. As a citizen of these United States, I have not only the right, but the responsibility to protect those members of my family, as well as those other citizens within my area of influence.

My life, and those of my family, are no less precious that the lives of the officers working the streets of America. I'd give my life in defence of the righteous actions of any one of them. But I'll be damned if I'd not shoot one if I felt they were going to take my life or anothers without justifiable and righteous cause. There is no instinct more inherently ingrained in us than survival. And sometimes, bad guys wear badges.