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Open carry arrestee San Sayers' charges dropped

cato

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http://www.ohioccw.org/content/view/3887/83/

City of Oregon v Daniel Sayers Dismissed!

Written by Mike Kinsey

Wednesday, 06 June 2007


Ohioans For Concealed Carry has learned through long-time legal representation and friend of the organization, Attorney Dan Ellis, that the case brought against Dan Sayers by the City of Oregon, OH has been dismissed. All property confiscated from Mr. Sayers at the time of his encounter is to be returned.

You may recall that on May 30, 2006, Mr. Sayers was open carrying two handguns while patronizing a Sunoco gas station. He paid for his purchase, cleaned his windshield, and checked the oil level in his car. At some point during this activity, a "concerned citizen" took it upon himself/herself to jump to wrong conclusions and call 911 to report a "man with a gun" even though Mr. Sayers had not done anything threatening or menacing.

Oregon police pursued Mr. Sayers and performed a felony stop, shouted contradictory commands at him, forcing him to exit his vehicle through the window. The officers then approached him at riflepoint while he lay facedown on the pavement.

Thankfully, the prosecutor in this case has wisely dismissed the case. Hopefully cities and towns throughout Ohio will think twice about overreacting to legal carry of firearms reported by nervous citizens ignorant of the law so that other Concealed Handgun License holders will not have to undergo the same dangerous harassment.

You can read more about this incident and all previous stories in the OFCC archives.
 

openryan

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Sounds a bit extreme making him get out of a window.

If people are that uncomfortable about it, and the oc'er has not done anything menacing or has tried to induce panic, blah blah....

Why do they not just take it upon themselves to leave the area?

It is truly unfortunate that so many people have been conditioned to directly correlate firearms with violence. Even though a situation may not present any danger to anyone at all, they still call the police exagguarating the evidence and then felony stops happen -- for no good cause.
 

cato

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Watch the patrol car dash cam. video of the arrest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LoXiZO6G6g



and for more on the initial arrest:

http://www.ohioccw.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3672

No offence meant to my arrested/exonerated Ohio brethren, and I don't support the arrest of course, but Dan was not helped by a sort of "white trash" look; older model car with inoperable doors, two 380's strapped in a double shoulder holster, and bad language during the detention (however unlawful). I do, however,understand his position and would myself be upset if detained and arrested for exercising my constitutional rights.

I hope there is a civil rights law suit to follow.
 

HankT

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cato wrote:
http://www.ohioccw.org/content/view/3887/83/

City of Oregon v Daniel Sayers Dismissed!

Written by Mike Kinsey

Wednesday, 06 June 2007


Ohioans For Concealed Carry has learned through long-time legal representation and friend of the organization, Attorney Dan Ellis, that the case brought against Dan Sayers by the City of Oregon, OH has been dismissed. All property confiscated from Mr. Sayers at the time of his encounter is to be returned.

You may recall that on May 30, 2006, Mr. Sayers was open carrying two handguns while patronizing a Sunoco gas station. He paid for his purchase, cleaned his windshield, and checked the oil level in his car. At some point during this activity, a "concerned citizen" took it upon himself/herself to jump to wrong conclusions and call 911 to report a "man with a gun" even though Mr. Sayers had not done anything threatening or menacing.

Oregon police pursued Mr. Sayers and performed a felony stop, shouted contradictory commands at him, forcing him to exit his vehicle through the window. The officers then approached him at riflepoint while he lay facedown on the pavement.

Thankfully, the prosecutor in this case has wisely dismissed the case. Hopefully cities and towns throughout Ohio will think twice about overreacting to legal carry of firearms reported by nervous citizens ignorant of the law so that other Concealed Handgun License holders will not have to undergo the same dangerous harassment.

You can read more about this incident and all previous stories in the OFCC archives.



Just saw the video.

I think the cops figured out pretty early that Sayers wasn't a bad guy, so it was pretty depressing to see them switch over to figuring out some to rationalize their stop, the extension of the detainment, the pointing of an assault rifle at the detainee:

duty to inform, Rescue Crises (looney bin?), "shut up," "belligerent,""we got aguncall," "put yourself in our shoes,"etc.

Things would have been so much easier for the LEOs to just say: "look, we see the situation now, you're a guy who is legal, we had a job to do and we didit, (ETA)but we apologize because we were too careful/gung hoand we inconveniencedyou. We simply haven't seen anyone OC like youbefore.Sorry."

But the group of cops was simply to pig-headed to realize they were wrong. It's always thatway when someone's paradigm is under "attack." So they "attack" right back. ;)

Sayers was pretty lippy. And some of it probably hurt his case with the LEOs at the scene. But I don't blame him for getting PO'd about haveing an AR pointed at him. Not at all. Thank God for the recording equipment. That may have saved him from getting hurt from "accidently falling down" or something.

I trust that Sayers has some civil recourse against the OPD for endangerment, false arrest andwhatever else was involved.



P.S. In the video, when the one officer put the AR down on the hood of the squad, pointing crossways into the street (the first time when the mag was still in)...wasn't that poor handling of a weapon? I'm curious as to what others might opine on that.
 

cato

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Well...rights unexercised do not lead a to dropped charges or case law that we then benifit from. God bless the unlawfully arrested!
 

ilbob

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Since OC is/was not all that common where he was doing so, it is not surprising someone dropped a dime on him. It is not surprising the cops investigated the incident.

It is even less surprising that after it became pretty clear that he had committed no crime that the cops went into the mode of trying to make up some kind of plausible excuse for what happened. This is almost a universal response from LE when they screw up, especially when the innocent citizen involved does not display an adequately obsequious attitude.

When I first heard about this, the whole thing almost sounded like he went about trying to get arrested. After I saw the video, and had some time to consider it,it seemed unlikely to me that he was doing anything other than what he is legally entitled to do, and in fact was almost forced to do by Ohio law at the time, unless he wanted to be unarmed.

I would not hold out a lot of hope for a suitable settlement -something that would cause direct, considerablegrief to the officers involved (like a felony conviction). They will skate completely and at best the city will pay some pittance.
 

Mike

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And now that Ohio has full and clear preemption for open carry, this should not happen again - after all, technically, at the time of Dan's arrest, he was in violation of that cities' open carry ban.
 

IanB

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Mike wrote:
And now that Ohio has full and clear preemption for open carry, this should not happen again - after all, technically, at the time of Dan's arrest, he was in violation of that cities' open carry ban.

Thanks for clearing this up Mike. I was under the impression as well that he was in fact breaking the law at the time, but it (the law) has since been fixed (pre-empted).
 

Legba

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Yes, at least pending resolution of Cleveland's challenge to the preemption.

-ljp
 

reefteach

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Cleveland police said they will uphold current Ohio Revised Code, including 9.68, the state preemption. OFCC and the NRA filed a motion to be declared as the defendents in the lawsuit, instead of the state. Cleveland does not want that battle, and filed a motion to dismiss that motion. :D
 

Demarest

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The laws that Ohio's HB 347 blinked out were illegally enacted in the first place. Sadly, we live in a time where they fix this by putting yet another law on the book instead of erasing the ones that exist and punishing those that enacted them.

Also, my doors were not inoperable. When I parked, shifting through Reverse locks all doors. My hands were on the steering wheel in plain view the moment I realized they were there for me. Yet there first instruction was to do something that I was already doing. Meanwhile, they have a full auto rifle pointed at me. Which means that whether I survive or not is dependent on their interpretation of my actions at the time and they already demonstrated they were someplace else if they are commanding me to do something I'm already doing. I tried MANY times to get their permission to take my hand off the steering wheel long enough to operate the electronic unlock to comply. I was never granted that permission. The cause was not inoperable doors but "police" trying to conduct a felony stop with no probable cause in a city they had no authority or reciprocity in from a distance that was not conducive to two way conversation. Hence only a fraction of the things I was saying being heard.

@cato: Welcome to the United States of America. Here, we have the freedom to dress as and drive what we choose. To say that victim was wearing a short skirt displaces the resposibility from the aggressor, which furthers the myth that if we look a certain way, we deserve or even earned to be mistreated by the very people we pay to protect us. Also, you are looking at this from a third person's perspective from the comfort of your home. It's not at all the same as driving down the road as you have tens of thousands of times only to have a policeman stop you out of nowhere, for no reason, and threaten you with full auto. It's not something you plan for. You're welcome for providing all of us with an opportunity to consider just that and plan accordingly. My SPEECH bothered you? Then you'd REALLY hate to see how I'd play it today, knowing now what I didn't know back then.

@ilbob: If you're not surprised that somebody INQUIRED WITH THE POLICE AS TO WHETHER OR NOT WHAT I WAS DOING WAS LEGAL (a LITTLE different from "dropping dime"), then you'd probably be surprised to know that I had been open carrying at that same location for two months. As a delivery driver at the time, this meant two or three stops every week. Including one time that I passed a Toledo policeman. We exchanged "good morning"s and were both on about our days. Which is not speaking of the other places I was open carrying those days. Or present day when I open carry everywhere I go. We SHOULD be surprised that ANY citizen would call the police on ANY citizen that is not breaking the law.

The people of this nation are soundly asleep and it's discouraging to see so many people that SHOULD know better somehow subscribing to the same lullabies as the sheep. I feel sorry for those that don't realize what it means to be a citizen of the United States.
 

Legba

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Want me to kill this guy, Dan (the real Dan)?

-ljp

legal disclaimer: This is not an offer for assassination services, either expressed or implied, merely a solicitation of an opinion as to whether the actual party known by such name and for such case as is referenced in this section might wish this jerk to come to a bad end in principle.
 
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