CoonDog
Regular Member
imported post
Edit: PICS on Page 2
OC'd for an hour at the Farmington Hills Tea Party right next to city hall and the police station, along Orchard Lake Rd just south of 11 Mile. I wore a sign from my neck that said, "Reinstate Allodial Title", and had on a red shirt, blue jeans, and a white sign: red, white, and blue. This was my first OC outside of the neighborhood, so I was a little apprehensive to say the least. I used my voice recorder and took a few pictures. I knew going in that there would be a police presence and, sure enough, there was both an officer on foot and one in his vehicle next to the burb impeding traffic in the right-hand lane facing southbound.
Before I go on, let me say this, and only because I consider enactment and enforcement of traffic policy a gross violation of the purpose of government. I don't know for sure why the patrol car was there...perhaps to keep people out of the street(?), but there were a LOT of mouthed WTFs from passing drivers as they had to funnel into the left lane to get around the cruiser. In addition, the officer's secondary goal appeared to be to type in as many passing license plates as possible. I made a mental note that since the parking was just past him in the public lot behind city hall, he would have had a chance to type in the plates on every automobile that parked there for the event, in effect monitoring the activities of private citizens.
Ok, so let me continue. I had been thinking quite a bit about the idea of "looking forward" to my first LEO encounter as a way of dealing with the anticipation, so right after I arrived and took a couple of crowd photos (100+ people?), I stopped to talk to the LEO on foot to get it out of the way, assess FHPD's attitude toward open carry, and to demonstrate that I wasn't a threat, terrorist, or general crazy person. As an aside, I don't think she noticed I was carrying while we were speaking, but may have noticed as I walked away. Here's the transcript of the conversation (from recording and, wow, is it time-consuming to transcribe from audio), but be forewarned, I'm not much of a public speaker.
[Edit: conversation begins at roughly 03:56 minutes into the recording]
[Edit: conversation ends at roughly 05:30 minutes into the recording.]
All in all, it was a very pleasant and cordial conversation. I'm disappointed that I didn't get the officer's name and also that she declined to read the MIOC pamphlet. Also, the FHPD apparently haven't been instructing their officers in OC, so I'll have to send them a full info packet.
After that, I walked up and down in the crowd a little bit and even stood kind of close to the patrol car for a minute. At one point, the patrol officer exited his vehicle and talked to the other oficer I just spoken with, but I have no actual reason to think MWAG was the subject matter. From the crowd, I did hear a few "hey, look at that"s and made smiling eye contact with a few people. I'm usually smiing, btw. I overheard one lady saying "holster show off", but it didn't come out on the recording.
Then, I crossed to the median and stood with some folks there who were actively trying to get as many honks as possible. I would have been visible to pretty much the entire crowd at this point. If anyone were in condition yellow, they would have seen me. Don't know how many conditions white folks noticed, but the folks on the median with me did. I even talked to one for a minute, a guy on a Segway, but it was in regard to my sign. At this point, I was one lane away and exactly even with the patrol car's window and clearly visible to the patrol officer for 15 minutes or so, although my weak side was to him most of the time. If he noticed me, I guess my coffee-drinking, sign-wearing persona didn't scream "threat" because he didn't come talk to me.
For the day, I fielded several questions about my Tea Party sign, but only one individual spoke to me specifically about carrying. This gentleman was a member of the South Oakland Area Republicans (http://www.soarclub.com) and gave me his card. We discussed OC a little, including state preemption and restricted areas. I gave him a pamphlet.
Overall, I have to say that I wasn't very proactive in getting the message out regarding OC, likely because I was extremely self-conscious and it started getting to me. I intended to head over to the Northville tea party, but by that point, my mojo had run dry so I called it a day. In total, I only handed out 1 pamphlet, made 1 LEO contact, but there were likely several dozen people, if not more, who saw me OCing.
Add: I didn't see any other OC'ers.
Edit: PICS on Page 2
OC'd for an hour at the Farmington Hills Tea Party right next to city hall and the police station, along Orchard Lake Rd just south of 11 Mile. I wore a sign from my neck that said, "Reinstate Allodial Title", and had on a red shirt, blue jeans, and a white sign: red, white, and blue. This was my first OC outside of the neighborhood, so I was a little apprehensive to say the least. I used my voice recorder and took a few pictures. I knew going in that there would be a police presence and, sure enough, there was both an officer on foot and one in his vehicle next to the burb impeding traffic in the right-hand lane facing southbound.
Before I go on, let me say this, and only because I consider enactment and enforcement of traffic policy a gross violation of the purpose of government. I don't know for sure why the patrol car was there...perhaps to keep people out of the street(?), but there were a LOT of mouthed WTFs from passing drivers as they had to funnel into the left lane to get around the cruiser. In addition, the officer's secondary goal appeared to be to type in as many passing license plates as possible. I made a mental note that since the parking was just past him in the public lot behind city hall, he would have had a chance to type in the plates on every automobile that parked there for the event, in effect monitoring the activities of private citizens.
Ok, so let me continue. I had been thinking quite a bit about the idea of "looking forward" to my first LEO encounter as a way of dealing with the anticipation, so right after I arrived and took a couple of crowd photos (100+ people?), I stopped to talk to the LEO on foot to get it out of the way, assess FHPD's attitude toward open carry, and to demonstrate that I wasn't a threat, terrorist, or general crazy person. As an aside, I don't think she noticed I was carrying while we were speaking, but may have noticed as I walked away. Here's the transcript of the conversation (from recording and, wow, is it time-consuming to transcribe from audio), but be forewarned, I'm not much of a public speaker.
[Edit: conversation begins at roughly 03:56 minutes into the recording]
[Edit: conversation ends at roughly 05:30 minutes into the recording.]
All in all, it was a very pleasant and cordial conversation. I'm disappointed that I didn't get the officer's name and also that she declined to read the MIOC pamphlet. Also, the FHPD apparently haven't been instructing their officers in OC, so I'll have to send them a full info packet.
After that, I walked up and down in the crowd a little bit and even stood kind of close to the patrol car for a minute. At one point, the patrol officer exited his vehicle and talked to the other oficer I just spoken with, but I have no actual reason to think MWAG was the subject matter. From the crowd, I did hear a few "hey, look at that"s and made smiling eye contact with a few people. I'm usually smiing, btw. I overheard one lady saying "holster show off", but it didn't come out on the recording.
Then, I crossed to the median and stood with some folks there who were actively trying to get as many honks as possible. I would have been visible to pretty much the entire crowd at this point. If anyone were in condition yellow, they would have seen me. Don't know how many conditions white folks noticed, but the folks on the median with me did. I even talked to one for a minute, a guy on a Segway, but it was in regard to my sign. At this point, I was one lane away and exactly even with the patrol car's window and clearly visible to the patrol officer for 15 minutes or so, although my weak side was to him most of the time. If he noticed me, I guess my coffee-drinking, sign-wearing persona didn't scream "threat" because he didn't come talk to me.
For the day, I fielded several questions about my Tea Party sign, but only one individual spoke to me specifically about carrying. This gentleman was a member of the South Oakland Area Republicans (http://www.soarclub.com) and gave me his card. We discussed OC a little, including state preemption and restricted areas. I gave him a pamphlet.
Overall, I have to say that I wasn't very proactive in getting the message out regarding OC, likely because I was extremely self-conscious and it started getting to me. I intended to head over to the Northville tea party, but by that point, my mojo had run dry so I called it a day. In total, I only handed out 1 pamphlet, made 1 LEO contact, but there were likely several dozen people, if not more, who saw me OCing.
Add: I didn't see any other OC'ers.
Although I'd go to federal land if there was any anywhere near here.
