NM: Judge tell police to leave OCers alone

One of the fundamental problems I've seen over my many years, is my fellow cops attempting to enforce laws they know little about, such as gun carry laws.

Most states give very little in the way of instruction to Academy Cadets on gun laws especially carry laws. Why I dunno, but every state I've worked in, including Tennessee does this.

This puts the individual officer (later on) in a position where they see something which to them appears to be illegal, example open carrying, they feel compelled to rush and act so they stop and detain the person.

That person knows the applicable laws because they are a gun enthusiast, who enjoys studying the subject and have no real need to know anything else about the other 25,795 laws. So they take great offense at the officer, his lack of specific knowledge and the situation.

They feel the need to educate the officer who is a type A personality, who feels he/she knows the law better than you and will not listen to anything you say, you become agitated with them, begin questioning their legal standing and we all know how it ends...

Who's fault is it?

I blame the elected officials of this state and every other state where they pride themselves in eroding our God given Constitutional rights each and everyday the legislature is in session.

What do I think needs to happen?

More cases need to be brought before the courts where LEO's are challenged and proved wrong and made aware in grand fashion of their mistakes, so they will not happen again. other officers will think twice before acting on flawed instinct instead of sound legal knowledge and we need to send every anti-gun politician, Police Chief and Sheriff home and let them know exactly why they were handed their walking papers.


That is the only way this problem will ever be corrected.

Originally Posted by TMMT

One of the fundamental problems I've seen over my many years, is my fellow cops attempting to enforce laws they know little about, such as gun carry laws.

Most states give very little in the way of instruction to Academy Cadets on gun laws especially carry laws. Why I dunno, but every state I've worked in, including Tennessee does this.

This puts the individual officer (later on) in a position where they see something which to them appears to be illegal, example open carrying, they feel compelled to rush and act so they stop and detain the person.

That person knows the applicable laws because they are a gun enthusiast, who enjoys studying the subject and have no real need to know anything else about the other 25,795 laws. So they take great offense at the officer, his lack of specific knowledge and the situation.

They feel the need to educate the officer who is a type A personality, who feels he/she knows the law better than you and will not listen to anything you say, you become agitated with them, begin questioning their legal standing and we all know how it ends...

Who's fault is it?

I blame the elected officials of this state and every other state where they pride themselves in eroding our God given Constitutional rights each and everyday the legislature is in session.

What do I think needs to happen?

More cases need to be brought before the courts where LEO's are challenged and proved wrong and made aware in grand fashion of their mistakes, so they will not happen again. other officers will think twice before acting on flawed instinct instead of sound legal knowledge and we need to send every anti-gun politician, Police Chief and Sheriff home and let them know exactly why they were handed their walking papers.


That is the only way this problem will ever be corrected.

My experience was very different than yours. I see postings here all the time that Tennessee cops don’t know the law. I doubt that, but I have never been stopped by a Tennessee cop so I can’t say for sure.

My training by the state academy and ongoing training by our department was exceptional. Does someone come out of the academy and know everything about the criminal code and the vehicle code? No, that’s not realistic. You could have that, but it would require recruiting your cops from law school or after they pass the bar. That’s a price the public is unwilling to pay.

But we did have a system in place to hopefully prevent a mistake.
Rookies were with Training Officers their first year, they were rotated around through Senior Officers and Traffic Officers after that.
There were both Senior Officers and Command Officers available on the street anytime an Officer had a question.
A Command Officer was present in the booking room anytime a prisoner was brought in.
Our charges were simply preliminary charges; the States Attorney’s office filed the actual charges.

That’s a lot of steps to get a bad arrest through.

Sure, innocent people get arrested, searches are made that are questionable, and cops make mistakes. But that is what the Court, Judges and Juries are for.
We see information posted here all the time that is just wrong. There are tons of posts on this forum from people that read the law and think they understand its meaning and intent. Problem is; we don’t have access to case law. That would be like trying to make a Constitutional argument without access to SCOTUS decisions.

But I said this before and I will say it again, we are protected from bad cops. We do have recourse. Most departments of any size have a citizen complaint process. The small departments that don’t can be handled by the County Sheriffs Office or the TBI. Complaints on an internet forum are nothing more than entertainment and are only one side of the story.

You say here you are a Police Officer. Then you know better than anyone there are two sides (sometimes three) to every story. And sometimes you wonder if those people are even describing the same incident.

You imply that Officers on your department don’t have accountability. That’s a shame; maybe you could do something to change that.

I agree with TMMT. I myself have been guilty of enforcing laws I knew little about, and in the end, turned out I was wrong, and I felt like an idiot.

However, I busted my ass improving my knowledge, any chance I got I studied. I was not made to study, I was not required to study, I just realized how important my job was. Within my first year working, I had guys that had been working law enforcement for 30 years asking me advice on certain laws.

I'm not bragging, I'm just illustrating that it is up to the individual officer to obtain knowledge of the law. And if that officer is complacent with his knowledge, you're going to have issues arising like the ones brought up in this thread.

I say this to echo what TMMT stated, too many stupid laws written by politicians trying to please the sheep. I dare say it's impossible to know all of your states penal codes.

Dave, I know that the bigger departments have checks in place to prevent bad arrests, as well as a manner in which officer are taught what they did not learn in the academy. I'm guessing a lot of the problems come from the smaller departments that don't have these checks in place.

I know I came from a very small department and we lacked those sort of checks.

Good post TMMT

In TN an agency can hire and officer and doesn't even have to send them to the academy for a year. Now I'm sure Nashville (who has their own academy) and Memphis may not put officers like that on the street, but the majority of other places do.

So at any given time there are several officers out there around the state that have basically had NO training in what the laws are, other than what other officers have just told him.

In smaller departments, they are lucky if another LEO is on duty period, let alone riding with a training officer for a year.

Also gun laws are fairly simple in IL right?...No citizen can carry a handgun period. So not a lot of finer details to know.

The reason more citizens don't make complaints is they can put their complaint if file 13 about as quick as the department can.

TMMT & Dropkick Murphy bring up some interesting points about training.

While I am not a police officer (I'm an armed security guard), I took it upon myself to learn as much as I could about the laws that I could be enforcing on behalf of my client and how to make a proper arrest should the need arise (like it did today).

Is there anything that those of us with special interests (like being gun nuts ) can do to help police officers gain the correct knowledge on laws that keeps everyone out of court? I'd prefer that the good police officers not be punished for ignorance of the law, and I'd prefer that law abiding citizens not be arrested for legal activity.

Again, I wish to state, that to my knowledge, there isn't a problem of this nature in Nashville. I have heard of an occasional "color of law" command of cover up in some of the surrounding counties, but I have not heard of any arrests.

Interesting thing popped into my head as I read this:

<<Sure, innocent people get arrested, searches are made that are questionable, and cops make mistakes. But that is what the Court, Judges and Juries are for. >>

While it is a good and necessary thing that these are in place, should not the real goal be to improve the system so that these "fixes" are eventually not needed - or at least, are needed less and less frequently? Yeah, I know that sounds like applying Quality Process Improvement theory...I guess it is. But it does seem to apply here.

One important question, then: in instances where Court, Judges and Juries end up being a "remedy" for a mistake, are there feedback mechanisms in place to disseminate that learningto a broad audience so that future "mistakes" can be avoided? And is there a way (some sort of specfic performance measure, maybe) to see if that method of dissemination is effective? From comments RE smaller departments, it sounds as if any learning that may occur during the process may not get outside of the silo in which it originally occured..

There is no mechanism in place, it all falls back upon the state and its failure to train law enforcement adequately, which Tennessee is horribly guilty of.

Some departments, larger departments have Instructors who put together monthly training letters which may address a specific court ruling, but two things need to happen for that "method of dissemination" to be effective.

First the one putting the memo together must write about it and in a manor that a can be easily comprehended.

Next the end user must read it thoroughly, comprehend it, retain it and apply it.