Pa. Patriot ARRESTED at the OC dinner @ The Old Country Buffet in Dickson City 5/9

[mjfletcher]

Originally Posted by DaveM55

Interesting, I guess I really don't understand civil law very well. So what types of verdicts are reached in civil court if not guilty or innocent?

The judge/jury "finds for" the plaintiff or defendant. Basically they just say "I/We believe what this person says more than what the other one says."

[TaePo]

Originally Posted by mjfletcher

The judge/jury "finds for" the plaintiff or defendant. Basically they just say "I/We believe what this person says more than what the other one says."

Another way of saying it is by the preponderance of the evidence. The judge and jury have a lot of leeway in deciding the veracity of stories and any evidence.

Normally, only liability is decided after deciding negligence or if due diligence was not followed. Then amounts can be awarded for damages, court costs and punitive (monetary) damages.

Some punitive damages are like pain and suffering etc. or if the defendent is an unremorseful ignoramus etc.

Also, high awards can come about because a corporation does not 'feel' a 10k judgement times a couple of people per year as say, a couple of 5million dollar awards. If they only payout 1k for a broken arm and only 5 customers a year break their arms on their floors, no big deal. They won't change their procedures to add signage etc. until and unless the damages would be a greater cost than buying signage etc.

IANAL and the laws and limits etc. vary state to state just like small claims court. But this is the basic rundown in general. (I should state that it can turn on legal matters of criminal behavior, too, but the result is not punishment for a crime freedom-wise, but restitution etc.)

[mjfletcher]

Originally Posted by Mtbkski

I was an LEO for four years and never knew OC was legal, till I signed onto this website.

And your right. We (LEO) don't like to be made to look stupid. No one does. Now I got a guy reading me the law off better than I know it. He is telling me stuff that I have no idea if it is true or not. He is making me look pretty stupid, I'll probably get defensive. Is this Wrong? Yep. But I bet I would have copped (pun intended) an attitude too.

Hate to make example of "these poor LEO's". But how many do you forgive before you finally are allowed to stand up and say enough is enough. Apparently they don't think they have to obey the law. More of them think they can enforce the law as they see it. I want to know how many incidents do we have to have before it is OK to do something about it? I think we have reached that point. And the sh*t is about to start rolling downhill and the local LEO's are going to have to learn that OC is LEGAL, and a good law suit will spread the word around PA like wildfire.

That's why I practice what I would say to an officer, and how I would say it, should I ever be stopped once I take up OC (which may be a while yet). I make sure that if the need for such a conversations arises, I'm able to leave the officer 1,000,001 opportunities to "save face" so to speak before the conversation reaches the point where I start quoting statutes, state constitution, state supreme court cases and rulings, etc. I'm completely confident that in an encounter with an uninformed officer, s/he'll be able to "disengage" without looking stupid or foolish and with a little more knowledge than he had to start with, if he chooses to do so.

[mjfletcher]

Originally Posted by LittleRedToyota

that's my issue with these types of cases. of course police officers are going to make mistakes...they are human. (although it is fairly inexcusable, imho, for any officer to not know something as basic as when ID is and is not required.)

my problem is that i rarely hear of cases where the officers or the department admit and take responsibility for it after the fact.

to me, a simple statement like:

"our officers misunderstood the laws regarding open carry in PA and, as a result, took inappropriate action against law abiding citizens. we apologize profusely for this mistake. although we cannot undo what happened, we are going to:

1. send an officer to immediately return mr. banks' unlawfully confiscated pistol to him.

2. train our officers regarding the legality of open carry,

3. train our dispatchers to prompt for further information on "man with a gun" calls and, if the caller does not allege any actual crime is taking place, to inform the caller that OC is not illegal.

4. ask the various media outlets that have covered the issue to publish a letter from us explaining what happened in this situation, how we erred, and that open carry is legal.

5. do everything we can to get MPOETC to include training regarding the legality of open carry as well as to better train officers in regards to the limits of terry stops and ID requirements.

while we cannot undo the past, we sincerely hope these actions will prohibit such injustices in the future as we strive to uphold and defend the rights of law abiding citizens."

if they had issued such a statement and actually followed through on it, i would personally not file a lawsuit or ask for any other punitive issues if it were my rights that had been violated.

but, of course, that is not at all how they reacted. instead, in what seems to me to be an all too typical reaction, they tried to defend and rationalize their illegal behavior while attempting to place the blame on the law abiding citizens.

man up, admit their mistake, take responsibility, and try to prevent it from happening in the future, and i will be more than happy to forgive them. try to justify their mistake and deflect blame, and i say nail them to the wall.

just my take on it.

Only one point I have a small issue with. After informing the caller that OC is legal, they should still send an officer to check it out and inform the caller that they are doing so. S/He can walk in, look around, take in the scene, and then leave when s/he sees nothing is wrong. "They called, we came, nothing to see, we left." They did their job, the caller saw them doing their job, the caller had it reaffirmed that nothing illegal was going in. No harm, no foul, and someone got a little education.

[LittleRedToyota]

Originally Posted by mjfletcher

Only one point I have a small issue with. After informing the caller that OC is legal, they should still send an officer to check it out and inform the caller that they are doing so. S/He can walk in, look around, take in the scene, and then leave when s/he sees nothing is wrong. "They called, we came, nothing to see, we left." They did their job, the caller saw them doing their job, the caller had it reaffirmed that nothing illegal was going in. No harm, no foul, and someone got a little education.

i could certainly live with that. and i could see why the police dept would want to do it as a CYA measure.

[ThomasJ]

Originally Posted by DaveM55

Sorry normanvin I wasn't trying to single you out, please accept my apology. It's just the trend of this thread has such a blood lust mood to it.

Hardly surprising when people's rights are trampled upon by police-state actions and under tyranny of government, don't you think?

[Lysander]

Originally Posted by DaveM55

Interesting, I guess I really don't understand civil law very well. So what types of verdicts are reached in civil court if not guilty or innocent?

Originally Posted by mjfletcher

The judge/jury "finds for" the plaintiff or defendant. Basically they just say "I/We believe what this person says more than what the other one says."

It's worded (or, around here...) a little fancier than that, but that's pretty much it.

"Hereby Ordered, Adjudged, and Decreed that Defendant owes to Plaintiff X number of dollars, including interest from (date interest is to start; if awarded at all), and

Further Ordered Adjudged and Decreed that Defendant is to stop doing Y, and

Further Ordered Adjudged and Decreed that Plaintiff be awarded it's costs and reasonable Attorney's fees (which might not be the entire bill, those two are usually separate things)."

Or something like that. But "We hereby find the Defendant GUILTY" usually isn't done in a civil trial.

[ThomasJ]

Originally Posted by DaveM55

Again they haven't been found guilty in a court of law. You've already tried, convicted and excessively punished them. Where is the justice in that?

Innocent until proven guilty only exists for the government since only the government has the power to take away someone's life, liberty, and property. I am not bound by "innocent until proven guilty," and neither is anyone else. The moment OJ killed his wife, he was a murderer; the moment Michael Jackson molested a child, he was a molester, regardless of what verdict a jury reached and regardless of any outcome of a trial or plea, and I will call them such. These cops are guilty.

[Lysander]

Originally Posted by ThomasJ

Innocent until proven guilty only exists for the government since only the government has the power to take away someone's life, liberty, and property. I am not bound by "innocent until proven guilty," and neither is anyone else. The moment OJ killed his wife, he was a murderer; the moment Michael Jackson molested a child, he was a molester, regardless of what verdict a jury reached and regardless of any outcome of a trial or plea, and I will call them such. These cops are guilty.

Civil Trial =/= Criminal Trial.

I'm not arguing with the sentiment, but even where the Federal Judge issues an Order against the cops in this case (that is, in the Plaintiff's favor), and the cops lose all appeals (or the appeals aren't given cert), it's still a Civil trial.

Or, to use the OJ trials - the Civil Trial found him legally responsible to pay the damages awarded - but it did not legally undo the finding of not guilty in the Criminal trial.

(Don't take this as arguing in DC's favor - I'm trying to keep the terminologies straight.)

[mjfletcher]

Originally Posted by LittleRedToyota

i could certainly live with that. and i could see why the police dept would want to do it as a CYA measure.

I think everyone can live with that. The caller gets a response, the OC'er doesn't get hassled, everyones happy that the police are doing their job the way they're supposed to.