TexasCHLforum.com

“(Officers) asked if they could search him for a weapon, and even offered to take him away from the rest of the crowd so he wouldn’t be embarrassed by that, but he refused,” Lane said. “They asked him several times if they could do that, and he continued to refuse, so at that point they asked him to leave for the evening, and he refused to do that as well. This went back and forth several times until they finally decided that there was no sense in continuing the argument, so he was arrested.”

Again, I will point out that he was not ordered to leave. So, unless it can be proven that he had done something illegal or incriminating to warrant the attention, I think the officers made something out of nothing and should have left him alone.

EDIT: Unless, of course, the author of the article has this wrong and he was ordered to leave. This is also possible, but not what we have to go on.

Sorry I've been away from the discussion for a bit. My computer did not want to boot properly for a couple of days.

I understand officer safety and all that, but the officers in question here are the one's that initiated the entire event. I think we can agree that news articles often get many facts wrong and many times leave facts completely out of a story. I have not gone back and re-read the story, but from memory the officers either told him he could leave or asked him to leave. This is very different from being commanded to leave. It doesn't say he was doing anything other than being there with an empty holster, so that's all we have to go on. That doesn't seem like enough to me. It still sounds like they got upset that he would defy their omnipotence.

gigag04 wrote:IMHO an empty holster is at least reasonable suspicion that an individual may have a handgun. If the officer can articulate that into a reasonable belief that a danger might be present, I think a Terry frisk is fine.

I don't understand this logic. If I'm wearing a fanny pack at school does that give campus police the right to search me for a weapon? I know you are pro-2A, but I just don't understand how you can get from an empty holster to a reasonable belief that a danger might be present any more so than any other time. I don't know what he was protesting, but OC is legal in WY, even on campus. Had his holster not been empty the only problem he would have had was possibly with school rules, but that wouldn't have been illegal and therefore not an issue for the police. I won't call it harrassment, but I just don't understand the reason for the need to search. BTW, there was no mention of him having a concealed gun once arrested. I'm fairly sure they searched him then.