TexasCHLforum.com

The Annoyed Man wrote:

i8godzilla wrote:

Jumping Frog wrote:

i8godzilla wrote:I know you are required to show your CHL, if armed, when asked for ID. However, in your automobile you are not carrying under the protection of your CHL--MPA covers you. Where in the law does it require you to:

1. Inform the officer you are armed?
2. Submit to a search and seizure?

That is a no-win path to walk down, I believe. Seems to me that once your license comes back as being a CHL, it is reasonable for the officer to ask if you are armed. If you lie, police officers are pretty good at spotting deception and lying to a police officer is in itself a crime. If you answer truthfully, now you have not given him your CHL when he asked for identification which is required by law even if there is no criminal penalty. (Note that carrying under MPA does not relieve you of the duty to provide the CHL when asked for ID.) In either scenario, there is a good argument that you have just created "reasonable articulable suspicion" (RAS) which applies during Terry stops.

With RAS, he doesn't even need state law for that. The Supreme Court has already laid out a number of cases dealing with police stops.

Once the Officer has stopped the vehicle, the SCOTUS has said that certain actions on the part of the police are permissible under the 4th Amendment.

- Pennsylvania v. Mimms (1977) – SCOTUS said that an Officer can order a driver out of the vehicle without any other justification other than the concern for the Officer’s safety: “The order to get out of the car, issued after the respondent was lawfully detained, was reasonable, and thus permissible under the Fourth Amendment. The State's proffered justification for such order -- the officer's safety -- is both legitimate and weighty, and the intrusion into respondent's personal liberty occasioned by the order, being, at most, a mere inconvenience, cannot prevail when balanced against legitimate concerns for the officer's safety.” http://supreme.justia.com/us/434/106/case.html

- Maryland v. Wilson (1997) – the SCOTUS extended Mimms to the passengers of the vehicle as well. They said: “On the public interest side, the same weighty interest in officer safety is present regardless of whether the occupant of the stopped car is a driver, as in Mimms, or a passenger, as here. Indeed, the danger to an officer from a traffic stop is likely to be greater when there are passengers in addition to the driver in the stopped car. On the personal liberty side, the case for passengers is stronger than that for the driver in the sense that there is probable cause to believe that the driver has committed a minor vehicular offense, but there is no such reason to stop or detain passengers. But as a practical matter, passengers are already stopped by virtue of the stop of the vehicle, so that the additional intrusion upon them is minimal.” http://supreme.justia.com/us/519/408/

Many people are under the misconception that a “search” of a vehicle requires PC. That not exactly correct. A limited search or “frisk” is permissible without PC under certain circumstances. In the case Michigan v. Long (1983) http://supreme.justia.com/us/463/1032/case.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;, the SCOTUS stated that an officer could search the lunge area of the vehicle (passenger compartment) for weapons if there is RAS that there is a weapon readily accessible in it. This decision goes hand in hand with the landmark Terry v. Ohio (1968) http://supreme.justia.com/us/392/1/case.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; decision which allows the frisk of a person for weapons based on RAS. The requirements set forth in Terry apply to the Long decision. The Officer must:
- Have articulable facts that the person could be armed
- Limit the search to areas in the vehicle which could readily conceal a weapon (i.e., they couldn’t search a film canister – which is commonly used to carry narcotics)

Being the Devil's advocate...............

Why do we have to give up are rights under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments when exercising our Second?

Being God's advocate...............

Because a cop has as much right as you or I do to reasonably expect to survive the day and go home to his/her family. Unless someone is an LEO, most people's jobs don't require them to confront other citizens from a position of authority in which said confrontations are routinely freighted with a degree of potential violence, and in which the other party to the encounter may be willing to do violence to prevail. You or I aren't going to shoot a cop over a speeding ticket, but some other whack-job certainly might. You or I might not be a threat to the cop's existence, but the next guy who comes down the pike may be nuttier than an outhouse rat and armed to the teeth. The cop has no way of knowing which you or I are going to turn out to be until some time after the initial contact. He has a vested interest in making that determination as early into the encounter as reasonably possible.

Because of this potential, I actually admire very much those cops who, once informed, can dismiss it as something they need to worry about. Also because of this potential, I can also understand it when a cop feels the need to disarm someone before proceeding with and concluding their encounter. I would prefer they didn't. I would prefer that they trust me to be a good citizen. But I'm not going to get bent out of shape over it because it is small potatoes, and my rights notwithstanding, I am willing and able to make concessions in the name of common courtesy.

And lest this be taken as some kind of weak-sister acquiescence, I am completely unwilling to submit to a government mandate that I be permanently disarmed and permanently give up my right to keep and bear arms; and I am completely unwilling to submit to a government mandate that I no longer have any 4th and 5th amendment rights. I am happy to die for the maintenance of those rights. But wisdom and common courtesy during an individual police traffic stop is not the same thing as a general and permanent surrender of one's rights; and the wise and courteous person will recognize that and not make it into some kind of personal drama. I can't stand drama. And if someone really gets their nose bent out of joint because a police officer politely disarms them during a traffic stop, I would suggest that A) perhaps you have pride issues; and B) pride goeth before the fall.

The Annoyed Man wrote:

Purplehood wrote:I handed him my DL and CHL. There was absolutely no discussion of my weapon. It was simply a non-issue with him.

My practice is to never announce that I am carrying. I hand them the DL and CHL and leave it at that. My gut-feeling is that by making an announcement, the LEO probably felt that it was best to disarm you while training the newb.

Ditto. I hand the officer both IDs and then let him/her decide how he/she wants to handle it. This has only happened maybe 3 times, and only 1 of those times was an actual traffic stop. I've never been disarmed by a cop, and. I've only been asked once where the gun was (a Maxpedition Fatboy-S carry bag at the time), and that officer simply asked me to not reach into the bag during the stop. OTH, I tend to fly below the radar, and my physical appearance and vibe (white haired, overweight, late middle aged/approaching "senior division," relaxed and calm, slightly bemused expression, foolish grin) probably don't make the cop's spidey sense tingle. Your own attitude has a lot to do with how well things are going to go. If you display overt resentment at being stopped, you're just asking to be disarmed, not to mention other potential troubles. In the grand scheme of things, getting pulled over by the police for some traffic violation or other is pretty small potatoes—certainly not something to get upset and bent out of shape about—and almost entirely avoidable if one simply follows the law while driving. The older I get, the less interested I am in making either my day or anyone else's, harder than it needs to be. (...Which is why you never pick a fight with an old man. If he's too tired, he'll just have to shoot you.)

All of that said, if a cop wants to disarm me, he or she might be silly for wanting to do so, but this really is small potatoes. My first question is going to be, "how do you want me to proceed with this?" When it's over, I get to recover my "precious dignity"—which, truth be told, isn't that precious to me anymore, having been humbled by life's hard knocks—and both the officer and I get to go home to our families at the end of the day. That's all that really matters.

Life's too short to dance with an ugly partner.

Pawpaw wrote:No, it is not his prerogative. His authority to disarm is both defined and restricted by GC §411.207. That is why I quoted the relevant paragraph above.

That it obviously did not bother you is fine. It would bother me to no end. The officer needs a little more training, IMHO.