PA state trooper disassenbled my gun during traffic stop

[JenniferG]

For the purposes of this thread, is it the consensus here that if a police officer learns you are a CC permitee and then asks to disarm you for “safety reasons”.... you should clearly state that you do not consent to being disarmed but will not resist. That way, you remove yourself from any liability for any lack of knowledge or training on the part of the police that might lead to an accidental discharge.

Furthermore, if the officer disassembles your firearm, you should request it be assembled in the condition it was prior to it being returned to you.

Any officer worth their salt will know it's safer for him to just leave that firearm in the holster undisturbed. If he removes it and it discharges because of the super duper rounded square flat spring long short reset trigger someone is going to be responsible especially if he forgot to turn all his cameras off.

[Williamsmith]

Any officer worth their salt will know it's safer for him to just leave that firearm in the holster undisturbed. If he removes it and it discharges because of the super duper rounded square flat spring long short reset trigger someone is going to be responsible especially if he forgot to turn all his cameras off.

Agreed, but for the record, LEOs like all professions come in different degrees of competence. Take a net and drop it in and you will get rainbows, browns, brookies and chubs. There are enough documented incidents to make one concerned about blindly handing your firearm to anyone in a uniform and expecting it to be handled and returned in a safe and respectful manner. I only see this getting worse as some law enforcement pushes back against constitutional carry. As the numbers of concealed carriers increase so will the numbers of police interactions and as a simple matter of probabilities......crap will happen.

[Berncly]

Agreed, but for the record, LEOs like all professions come in different degrees of competence. Take a net and drop it in and you will get rainbows, browns, brookies and chubs. There are enough documented incidents to make one concerned about blindly handing your firearm to anyone in a uniform and expecting it to be handled and returned in a safe and respectful manner. I only see this getting worse as some law enforcement pushes back against constitutional carry. As the numbers of concealed carriers increase so will the numbers of police interactions and as a simple matter of probabilities......crap will happen.

Which is again why I think this thing needs to be handled by a gun rights attorney, and used as a catalyst to set a legal protocol for armed interaction with police.
This will protect everyone involved including the police, by setting clearly defined procedure regarding firearms during traffic stops.

[Walleye Hunter]

Which is again why I think this thing needs to be handled by a gun rights attorney, and used as a catalyst to set a legal protocol for armed interaction with police.
This will protect everyone involved including the police, by setting clearly defined procedure regarding firearms during traffic stops.

I wouldn't spend money for a lawyer on that unless someone else was financing it.

[Williamsmith]

The courts are always going to preserve the ability of the police to do anything they deem necessary for their safety including disarming a citizen. They have already defined Terry stops or investigatory pat downs and have no real way to define it further given the nature of circumstances surrounding individual details of a traffic stop. It is something that can only be adjudicated after the fact given the totality of the individual circumstances.

Could you expect all police officers to assume the conceal carry card is evidence of innocent intentions? To me, the deeper observation is the apparent distrust police officers have for conceal carriers and the lack of confidence the conceal carriers have in police intentions, training and common sense.

The only difference between you as a motorist being disarmed or not is the way you interact with the officer and his fear or distrust......or his enjoyment of showing you who has a bigger......

I can see how a Trooper would justify disarming the OP and I could see given that they are most likely very familiar with Glocks that they might take it one step further and disassemble the firearm...and then take it to its conclusion by handing it back in pieces. That’s simply to show who has control of the situation...in essence saying, you might be authorize to protect yourself from the general public but not from me.

All it does is foster I’ll feelings toward law enforcement. I will guarentee that the Troopers involved were not thinking about how bad it would suck if the OP got selected for jury duty for a criminal case they were the affiant in. Or worse, a civil liability case because I’m sure they would never remember this one interaction.

[Remington788]

Which is again why I think this thing needs to be handled by a gun rights attorney, and used as a catalyst to set a legal protocol for armed interaction with police.
This will protect everyone involved including the police, by setting clearly defined procedure regarding firearms during traffic stops.

i would think this is the kind of case that Lawyer Josh would all over.

[Daycrawler]

Which is again why I think this thing needs to be handled by a gun rights attorney, and used as a catalyst to set a legal protocol for armed interaction with police.
This will protect everyone involved including the police, by setting clearly defined procedure regarding firearms during traffic stops.

Clearly defined can be a slippery slope for you me the Police and Courts. PSP should have never taken the OP's gun and even more so never dissasembled it.

[bill gray]

I'd like to add a little ammo to my earlier monkeywrenching post on this thread (#139). At the bottom of the page on this thread is a section called "Similar Threads." One is dated 12-8-11 and is called "State Troopers disarmed me...". Post #8 has a long quote from a 2011 MOEPTC newsletter. It basically says that police should realize that running firearms against the non-registry registry accomplishes nothing. It lists several ways that "unregistered" firearms may be legally by Penna residents (brought in from out of state, inherited, on loan). If that is part of the trainng given to PSP, the troopers did not follow their training to n ru. I wonder what the training, their gold standard and required for certification, says about the safety of handling unfamiliar firearms, how do you require items be placed in the trunk of a car without violating the 4th amendment, how should police regard legally armed citizens who have a lower crime rate than police and possibly other points. I suggest bringing these points up only after PSP leadership has firmly painted themselves onto a corner with contrary positions

[philadelphia patriot]

You can still run the serial number against the reported stolen weapon database.

[Williamsmith]

What aggravates the situation here is that the purpose of the traffic stop was to issue a warning for an inoperable taillight. Although the OP reported that he was questioned about his activities leading up to the traffic stop. So it appears the Troopers may have observed something that drew their attention to him and quite conveniently noticed a taillight out. A simple traffic stop turned into an investigatory detention after the OP was disarmed, questioned, issued a warning and his firearm returned disassembled.

Any Trooper with more than a few years on the job would be familiar with a Glock as they carried .45 GAP Glock Model 37 followed by the Glock 21 in cheaper easier to obtain .45ACP not too long ago. However, negligent discharges or accidental discharges whichever way you want to view it supposedly caused them to change over to Sigs. At least two of these incidents resulted in the death of three innocent people.

Which brings me to my point. If PSP would take Negligent discharge seriously and make it a mandatory immediate discharge from service as policy ....then accidental or negligent discharges by PSP would be unheard of and so would disarming legally law abiding concealed carrying motorists and fiddling around with their handguns unecessarily.