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Definitely a "Walt". The cops should have taken reasonable steps to determine his intentions and mental state. Keeping him locked up and trumping ups charges is too much. My perspective as a military cop for 24 years.
I'm also a "Reenactment Walt" by the Arrse definition and often ride my 1942 Harley to events in the area in uniform with a Thompson Submachinegun (albeit a Dummy gun) in the front scabbard. I've never been stopped or questioned.
Some guy went out jogging in Martinsburg, WV in military-looking camouflage clothing, with a rifle slung across his chest. Cops came down on him, busted him, threw him in jail, and got arrest warrants for him. He's still in jail now, facing $50,000 bail.
The kicker?
It was a toy gun. Complete with bright orange plastic tip on the barrel. It shoots little plastic pellets about as harmful as ping-pong balls... only smaller and lighter.
Yet the cops still treated him like the next movie-theater shooter... and they are STILL treating him that way. They searched his apartment, saying they were looking for explosives... even after finding out that the gun was fake. (No explosives were found.)
Oh, and he was "near a school".
Get a map of any normal residential area sometime, and try to find any location that is not "near a school".
The military-style clothing had ceramic plates in some pockets, so (according to the article) they have charged him with "being a person prohibited from committing a violent crime while wearing body armor".
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't ALL persons "prohibited from committing a violent crime"?
If Martinsburg, WV has a law against "being a person prohibited from committing a violent crime while wearing body armor", doesn't this mean simply that everyone is forbidden to wear body armor? Ever?
Frankly, this sounds to me like the cops completely blew it - they went off half-cocked and arrested a guy, only to find he wasn't doing anything wrong at all. And rather than letting him go with a sheepish apology, they started scrambling to find something - ANYTHING - they could pretend he was doing "wrong". There are now five (count them, FIVE) different law enforcement agencies involved in the "case". They have even charged him with TERRORISM, because jogging with a toy gun might have scared somebody somewhere! Somebody more ignorant than cops are normally expected to be, I gather... other than the cops in Martinsburg, WV.
In fact, I have to wonder if this guy did it, simply for the purpose of provoking the local cops into freaking out and acting like complete jackasses.
He succeeded.
Not only did the cops swallow it hook, line, and sinker, so completely that now they can't let it go... but even the newspaper article writer fell for it too. In the article he keeps referring to the toy gun as an "AR-15 training rifle". He never once refers to the actual brand (Airsoft), nor does he ever mention that it was a toy, used in various games, firing small plastic pellets weighing 1/100 of an ounce or less - about as much as a medium-sized snowflake.
Body armor-wearing man apprehended near Martinsburg schools Monday morning
August 20, 2012
By Edward Marshall - staff writer (emarshall@journal-news.net) , The Journal
MARTINSBURG - A man wearing body armor and armed with an AR-15 training rifle, two knives and several unloaded magazines was arrested today after he was seen running in the area of Bulldog Boulevard, police said.
Officers responded to the scene and located the man, later identified as 23-year-old William Everett Alemar, of South Raleigh Street, near the intersection of Silver Lane and Raleigh Street. When Patrolman M. Jones, Patrolman C.M. Richmond and Patrolman First Class E. Herb encountered the individual, he was dressed in full military desert camouflage and a ballistic vest and with what appeared to be an assault rifle across his chest, police said.
All three officers engaged Alemar at gunpoint and ordered him to his knees to be taken into custody.
(snip)
"It's heavy and it looks completely just like an AR-15 other than that red tip on it," Swartwood said.
(Full text of the article can be read at the above URL)
This same state had people voting for a prisoner for POTUS so I put nothing past WV. Of course they now have this to brag about:
But by a school, in full body armor, with what looked like hand grenades?
The guy was either out for his 15 minutes or insane.
Either way, he should have been stopped and arrested for disturbing the peace. Its a fine, a misdemeanor, and people get charged with that for much less.
Pointless to attempt to speak of common sense to those that have none are are far more interest in playing the victim. Personally, from what I am seeing posted on this board and by the actions and words of their Reps I have come to the conclusion that many on the right have lost their collective minds. I miss the rational conservatives I used to discuss issues with many have gone over to the far right and those that are still rational have given up on discussing issues because the far right even screams them down. This thread is another example of how far some of the right have gone over the edge, defending stupid behavior and claiming it is totally acceptable, just so long as it is one of theirs performing the stupid behavior. I am glad the police did their job and hopefully the man will be evaluated by a mental health worker and given help if he needs it and of-course fined.
Pointless to attempt to speak of common sense to those that have none are are far more interest in playing the victim. Personally, from what I am seeing posted on this board and by the actions and words of their Reps I have come to the conclusion that many on the right have lost their collective minds. I miss the rational conservatives I used to discuss issues with many have gone over to the far right and those that are still rational have given up on discussing issues because the far right even screams them down. This thread is another example of how far some of the right have gone over the edge, defending stupid behavior and claiming it is totally acceptable, just so long as it is one of theirs performing the stupid behavior. I am glad the police did their job and hopefully the man will be evaluated by a mental health worker and given help if he needs it and of-course fined.
As I posted before, if this was just some guy carrying his gun from his car to a gun shop, or from his house to his neighbors, whatever, I'd be madder then hell.
But the guy who did this was a moron. I support responsible gun ownership. I don't get my guns and step out in the middle of my road and start screaming "death to America" although that is my legal right to do so. If the police arrested me for doing that, I'd say I got what I deserved.
Should charges be trumped up? No. Should the guy face felony charges? No, not in my opinion. But picking this obviously disturbed or idiotic individual is not outside of the realm of rational thought. I'd say the police were completely justified in picking this guy up. Rubber gun or not, sounds to me he wasn't in his right mind.
IMHO - The police fell for the trap this guy was creating. Now they are just trying to cover up their foolishness with draconan charges against the jogger. Bureaucracies will do any and everything to avoid the embarassment of being shown to be fools.
FWIW - Back when I was proving to myself and anyone nearby that I couldn't shoot an M-1 rifle worth a damn, I saw a guy riding a motorcycle on I-93 to the range with an M-14 strapped on his back. The cops did not harass him. Or me for having a small arsenel in my car.
Most cops aren't the smartest cookies in the package.... And like I keep saying when things get bad in this country it will be your local police shooting you down in the streets for you using your right to free speech!
Wow......so shoot anyone who may appear unusual to someone who dials 911 to report it? Seriously? Every person who raises the suspicion of another should be shot on sight? In what kind of alternate reality do you reside?
Any injured party, whose person or property was damaged?
Any proof of his consent to not carry toys, dress up, and / or jog?
Was it really failure to get permission from his sovereign master?
That's not the point- This fellow sounds like a nut..Why would you dress up in such a manner and parade yourself about like Rambo- If I was a cop...I would certainly shut this guy down...There is something extremely stupid about this "jogger" - and as we saw with the Colorado shooter- stupid and evil are kin...What are the cops to do? Get used to this guy running around looking like a domestic terrorist and then wait for him to switch the toy for the real deal? Nawh- If a person exhibits eccentric behavior with over tones of potential violence- you snatch the nut up...why wait for the blood to flow?
If they are carrying what looks like a weapon, next to a school, yeah, I think people would have cared.
And we all know what he was trying to do, unless he's insane, he was trying to pose as someone like the movie theater shooting, to draw attention to himself. He'd probably been running around town all week, and finally got the nerve to go by a school with kids, and then the police cared about it.
I'm for responsible gun ownership, not moronic dumbasses trying to prove how big their pecker is by showing their guns to everyone, or whats probably the case here someone trying to get their 15 minutes of fame on TV.
If your kid was in that school, happened to look out the window, they'd probably be a little freaked out by someone in full body armor with what looked like an assault rifle on his back. I take my son hunting all the time, we're going dove hunting here next weekend or so, but even he would have been freaked by some idiot with what looked like an assault rifle running around his school in full body armor.
I had hunting long guns in my car in high school. No one thought a thing about it, other than asking if I had been hunting before school or was I going after.
From the look of the birds eye pic that school is probably a college and it could be ROTC.
I just learned you have shot guns.. No one hunts dove with a BAR
For a few years I had a dog and pony show to assist earnings, where I brought living history to public schools. My last day to do that and earn money by paper contract was the day of Columbine.
I did the show, but i should have sued for breech of contract. I have never contracted to do the show with any 12 NH State troopers.
Looked a bit like this, but I had trade good, tools and weapons which I have here in this pic as well but are not in camera view. People just take pics and give them to me, so I have no controll.
The accused is an Army National Guardsman who was part of a Special Forces unit in Iraq. His father believes he was just keeping in shape for his next deployment.
So this is how we treat those who serve, now? And this persecution is acceptable?!?
The stop was justified. The arrest and subsequent charges weren't.
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