The justification from the officer seems to be "I was just following orders."“Is this just because I have a holster on me?” Parten asks the officer after turning over his identification.
“Yeah, it is, because somebody called it in,” the officer replies matter-of-factly.
“You know there's a no-weapons policy out here, but still you want to push it.”
“Uh ... this is a protest,” Parten submits after a short pause, evidently caught
off-guard by the notion that an empty holster might violate the policy.
“Did you get permission to wear it?” the officer queries him.
“I don't need permission to wear it,” Parten replies confidently.
“You need permission from the university.”
“To wear a holster?” he asks with undisguised incredulity.
Standing his rhetorical ground, the officer simply shrugs off the challenge and says, “There's a no-weapons policy here.”
“It's not a weapon.”
“I understand that,” the officer concedes. “Take it up with Dean of Students, then, because y'all are gonna
be written up for disciplinary [sic], and I will put in there your attitude, you understand?”
Assuming a more confrontational demeanor, the officer then turns to Parten and states,
“So I'm gonna ask you one more time: where's the weapon?”
“I don't have it,” Parten tells him. “It's at home.”
Later in the video, though, the first officer calls Parten over after the others have stepped away and acknowledges
that neither of the students had technically done anything wrong, then requests “for your safety as well as mine”
that they be more compliant in the future when officers respond to reports of a possible weapon.
“What you’re doing is not against the rules or the law,” he explains, “but when we get a call thinking somebody
might have a gun, you have to be polite and cooperative, because if you start being difficult, [it looks like] you’re carrying something.
