On the recording the officer keeps making the comment that this arrest was in "good faith" and the courts would back him on it. Is there anything to this "good faith" statement or was he just blowing smoke?
Corporal Kimsey's statements leave me somewhat confused as to exactly what his "good faith" was in reference to. At the time there wasn't any suspicion that I had been trespassed from the park (one will note that immediately after the "good faith" statement Corporal Kimsey left to speak with security guard Paul Hanna.) At the time the only thing I could be accused of and that the Supreme Court would agree I was doing was openly carrying a firearm. I'm not going to be the one to say I wasn't since I most certainly was carrying a firearm in an open and honest manner.
I also fully identified myself (not that it's required by state law, but you always want to be cooperative when you're surrounded by a half-dozen, nervous armed men) in a manner that the Supreme Court had no problem with in Hiible v Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada.
Quoting from Wikipedia "In United States constitutional law, the good-faith exemption (also good-faith doctrine) is a legal doctrine
providing an exemption to the exclusionary rule.
The exemption allows evidence collected in violation of privacy rights as interpreted from the Fourth Amendment to be admitted at trial if police officers acting in good faith (bona fides) reliance upon a defective search warrant — that is, they had reason to believe their actions are legal (measured under the reasonable person test).
The rule was established in the two companion cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1984:
United States v. Leon (468 U.S. 902) and
Massachusetts v. Sheppard (468 U.S. 981). The exception permits the courts to consider the mental state of the police officer."
As Corporal Kimsey was not executing a search warrant, it is my gut feeling that Corporal Kimsey heard the phrase "good faith" during some training and latched on to it as a totem to excuse any less than exemplary conduct.