{"id":11365,"date":"2016-02-01T07:16:47","date_gmt":"2016-02-01T13:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=11365"},"modified":"2016-02-01T07:16:47","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T13:16:47","slug":"conneticut-state-police-and-open-carry-gotta-cover-our-ass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/02\/01\/conneticut-state-police-and-open-carry-gotta-cover-our-ass\/","title":{"rendered":"Conneticut State Police and Open Carry: &#8220;Gotta Cover our Ass&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>I typically do not post &#8220;protest&#8221; videos on my blog because often the video do not tell the whole story and are sometimes heavily edited and cut to show a certain &#8220;agenda&#8221;&#8230; but this video is different. The illegal actions of the cops are not just &#8220;inferred&#8221; in the video, they are plain and evident through audio of the cops talking to one another trying to figure out how to frame this poor guy. Throughout this video I kept thinking to myself how easy all of this could have been avoided if the cops only knew how to turn OFF a camera!! I guess one of the lessons involved beside the obvious is if you are going to protest, buy a camera that is complicated to turn off!! In the 21st Century, you can bet somebody is always watching or recording!-SF<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"&quot;Gotta Cover Our Ass.&quot; - Connecticut State Police\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Aizm05nCVkE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>The First and Second Amendments protect and reinforce each other.<\/p>\n<p>In a free society, there is always pressure to expand the power of the government to suppress freedom of speech.\u00a0 Those in power, for the last 100 years, have been infringing on our right to bear arms, and claiming that those who support the Second Amendment are kooks, in an attempt to suppress our First Amendment rights.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>With the voice provided by the First Amendment and the Internet, brave activists have been rolling back those attacks on the First and Second Amendments, and have been winning important victories.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Michael Picard is one such activist in Connecticut.\u00a0 It takes a brave man to stand up to several Connecticut State Troopers, and calmly and rationally demand his rights.\u00a0 It takes more guts to decide to continue the fight in court, when an easy out is offered.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the words of Michael Picard:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"tr_bq\"><p><em>Back on Friday, September 11th, 2015, in West Hartford, CT, I was illegally detained, frisked and searched, and my gun, permit and camera were seized, I was threatened with arrest for interfering (apparently, freedom of speech passes for interfering), and the Connecticut State Police fabricated a story, on camera, to trump up the charges because they needed to charge me with something (\u201cLet\u2019s give him something.\u201d) to cover their ass (\u201cGotta cover our ass.\u201d), charging me with \u201ccreating a public disturbance\u201d for legally open carrying my firearm and \u201cnegligent pedestrian\u201d for legally holding up a sign on public property, as well as being threatened with arrest (again) if I did not pay the fine. I was detained for 40 minutes and charged for nothing more than legally open carrying and holding up a sign on public property. I never touched my gun once and I am a legal gun owner. My lawyer and I went to the first court appearance back on Thursday, January 14th, 2016, where the prosecutor offered a $25 fine, in lieu of the original $300 fine, to make the case go away. I rejected the deal because I did nothing wrong. As of now, the prosecutor has not dropped the case despite having video evidence of police misconduct. The trial date has been set for Monday, April 25th, 2016, at 9:30am, at the New Britain courthouse (20 Franklin Sq., New Britain, CT).<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The video speaks for itself.\u00a0 I found particularly chilling the words of an Unidentifed Trooper:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"tr_bq\"><p><em>\u201cAnd then claim that, um, in backup, we had multiple people,um, they didn\u2019t want to stay and give us a statement, so we took our own course of action.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There are several felonies in that statement.\u00a0 It shows how far down the path to a police state we have gone. There is obstruction of justice.\u00a0 There is conspiracy.\u00a0 There is denial of rights under color of law.\u00a0 And, I am not a lawyer.<\/p>\n<h3>Sure, the police have a tough job.<\/h3>\n<p>But it is not too much to ask that they follow the rules. If the rules are too complex for them, they are far too complex for those who are not lawyers, and need to be rolled back.\u00a0 It appears to me that Michael did not break any laws.\u00a0 He is an activist.\u00a0 In our litigious society, he has to be very careful that he does not break the rules.\u00a0 He knows he has a target on his back.\u00a0 The police did not like what he was doing, but even they admitted that what he was doing was legal, on the video.<\/p>\n<p>If the prosecution is smart, they will cut a deal now, including a cash settlement and retraining for the police department.\u00a0 It is likely to be the cheapest that they will get out of the situation.<\/p>\n<p>Think of yourself on a jury, in Connecticut, not that far from where the Freddie Grey incident occurred.\u00a0 Consider listening to the police discussing how they will concoct charges against you.\u00a0 It might not happen.\u00a0 In Detroit, a judge ruled that such video, from a <a href=\"http:\/\/gunwatch.blogspot.com\/2015\/01\/miopen-carrier-accused-of-concealed.html\">dash cam, could not be seen<\/a> by jurors.\u00a0 In that case, the jury found the open carrier not guilty, very quickly, without the dash cam video.\u00a0 But Connecticut is not Detroit.<\/p>\n<p>We need activists to keep the police honest.\u00a0 Digital recorders and the Internet are helping make that happen.\u00a0 The police could simply have ignored Michael and done nothing, as it appears they should have done.\u00a0 Or, they could have calmly approached him and asked what he was doing.<\/p>\n<h3>Instead, the video shows that they concocted a scheme to harass Michael with false charges to <em>\u201cCover their Ass\u201d<\/em>.\u00a0 It is a grave miscarriage of justice, and it should not be tolerated.<\/h3>\n<p>The police work for us.\u00a0 We are not their servants or their serfs.\u00a0Even in Connecticut.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a92016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included. \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/gunwatch.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Link to Gun Watch<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Read the Original Article at <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ammoland.com\/2016\/01\/ct-police-gotta-cover-our-ass-on-open-carry-video-2\/?utm_source=Ammoland+Subscribers&amp;utm_campaign=4c3c46e519-Monday_Morning_Email&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_6f6fac3eaa-4c3c46e519-20724777#axzz3yv1VlTRs\">Ammo-Land<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I typically do not post &#8220;protest&#8221; videos on my blog because often the video do not tell the whole story and are sometimes heavily edited and cut to show a certain &#8220;agenda&#8221;&#8230; but this video is different. The illegal actions of the cops are not just &#8220;inferred&#8221; in the video, they are plain and evident&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[389,74,2086,2045,1405,1928,1635,3553,3712],"tags":[1942,4253,4254,4255,4256,4257,470,1436],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}