Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Whatever you think about open carry or concealed carry, or this pistol or that rifle, one thing that we can all agree on is that police officers should not harass someone who is not breaking the law. Whether you like or agree with open carry in states where it is legal or not, it is the law. Police officers pride themselves on “enforcing the law” and police brutality apologists on internet forums and the like frequently respond to reports of violence from law enforcement officers by saying “stop breaking the law!” and other such talking points.
But when a Houston officer confronted an open carry protester who legally carrying a firearm, he was harassing a man who was not breaking any law whatsoever. Instead, the man was using a firearm, protected by the Second Amendment for the purposes of political speech protected by the First.
All of this was captured on video, in spite of the officer’s best efforts to delete the file his misconduct was captured on.
“Got your ID?” the cop asked.
“No, sir. I do not,” the open carry protester responded. This is still legal.
But the officer said that the ID was necessary so the man could be identified. So the protester told the officer that he could simply tell him who he was.
The cop responded, “How do I know you’re not lying to me?”
Seconds later, the cop freaks out and throws the man’s protest sign to the ground and illegally seized his weapon, without the man’s consent.
“You are going to jail for failure to ID because you can’t tell me who you are, you can’t prove who you are. I’m tired of you idiots coming out here,” the crazed cop said.
Once the officer realized that he was being filmed, he sobered up a little bit.
“Take the phone off now because we are going to erase it because you’re recording everything,” the deranged officer said.
The cop messed up pretty epically though, as he double clicked the record button, thus stopping and restarting the recording instantly.
Watch the video [at the link, ed.] below…
Now police say they have opened an investigation into the officer’s apparently illegal actions. We’ll keep you posted on any developments in this story.