Thank you for coming in yesterday to "vent" about your contact with our officers. I would like to set a few things straight and to assure you that you are not being singled out nor are we somehow going to damage your property or give you a valid reason for a law suit. Our officers are aware and have been trained recently about the Open Carry issue and your Constitutional right to bear arms.
 
Our community, including our police force, is not and probably never will be at ease with people walking around with a gun or any other instrument capable of inflicting deadly force. (My emphasis, I wonder what other civil liberties the OPD are uncomfortable with?  I asked this question and it was ignored) You are right in your opinion that mere calling 911 to report a person openly carrying a weapon does not, in and of itself, meet the legal thresholds for violations of RCWs 9.41.270 or 9.41.300. This has been ruled upon by our State Supreme Court and other courts around the country.

I wrote back,and also addressed a letter to Mayor Foutch.  I addressed some issues brought up about the stop, and made a formal complaint on several matters.  I also asked for a meeting with Mayor Foutch, Lt. Wilson and Chief Michel.

After some strong emails from me, and some very strong outpourings of support on another website I got this email this morning.

Lets take a deep breath and come together around the issues you have raised. I want you to relax somewhat and trust that we will be addressing your concerns about Officer O'neill's contact with you.
 
As for your concern about the police officer that allegedly pointed his gun at you. The answer to your concern is that a police officer had his gun out and it was "at the ready" as we put it. The officer's gun was not pointed at you and was held close to the officer's chest pointed in a downward position. This "at the ready" position is not easily observable by the public, allows the officer to use his weapon quicker if need be and was done as a precaution given the fact that you were still armed and was about to be disarmed by the other officer at the scene. The officers at the scene were: Officer O'Neill, Officer Schaeffer and Officer Beckwell. All are experienced officers and all were trained as of late on the Open Carry instructive that I forwarded to you.
 
I will be conducting an internal investigation now that you have raised this incident to an official complaint. As I said before all officers will treat each situation somewhat differently but all are expected to be professional and courteous. I'll get back to you to schedule an interview later today. In the mean time, in my opinion, your request to have a "broader" audience on the Open Carry issue is not necessary nor likely to satisfy your ultimate goals. I do not recommend our City executives and coucilmembers to weigh in on this issue.
 
Finally, your comments about the email I sent you have not been taken defensively. I understand your concerns. If I left you with any impression that you should be concerned about my objectivity or department member's professionalism I apologize for that. It was never my intention to do so. 

I was worried about some of the statements he made in the first email such as talking about being shot, and the "uncomfortable with..." statements.

I will consider sharing the complete emails and my replies to them with people.  PM me if you are interested.  

...I has no idea that OC was legal.

By the way, what kind of slacks were they...?

I want to say first that I support your constitutional rights.  You shouldn't have been treated that way by the police.

However, I can certainly sympathize with the comment about people not being at ease with your practice of OC.  While I appreciate your description of how you carry yourself when carrying a gun, I cannot agree with a (quite a while back) previous comment of yours about guns being "good clean fun".  I've seen way too much of what happens to the body of a person when they are shot with one.  Whenever I see a gun, a bunch of ugly memories surface in my mind.

There's nothing clean or fun about a gun shot wound.  Larger calibers cause a path of tissue trauma that extends well beyond the width of the bullet.  Smaller calibers often richochet inside of the body so that you cannot tell exactly which organs have been affected.  Wounds to the chest usually pierce the lungs, causing a sucking of air and blood through the opening, which causes a horrible crackling sound.  Wounds to the head smell bad, and sometimes the trauma causes the brain to swell and push out a bit through the opening.  I'm not even going to get into the reactions of friends and family members.

I do hope that you are sensitive to the emotional impact that your open carry can have on the people around you.  There are a lot of people around who have been affected by gun violence.

The Canaanite's Call

OK....I'm in my bank doing business.  In walks someone wearing a weapon - totally legal.  All of a sudden the weapon is drawn (carrier THOUGHT someone was robbing the bank because of a raised voice or some screamed because they poured hot coffee on their hand) and I get killed because this person drew his legal weapon and accidently discharged it.

Someone please explain MY rights as a citizen.  It seems the weapon carrier has more rights than me.  Afterall, it was just an accident.

I'm dead, regardless.

Based on O'Neill's logic "if people are bothered then it's illegal" then people should be able to call 911 because three or four black kids are hanging out at the bus stop. Or because a Hispanic locksmith is trying to open a car. Some people unfortunately fear or hate those cultures and just seeing four of them gathered in a group makes them uncomfortable. In fact Tammy once witnessed a woman approach either IT security or a cop about a group of black kids standing around the Java Flow. The woman asked him to do something about those kids who were (her words) "being hooligans".

I didn't like how Lt. Wilson suggested you shouldn't have your OC friends meet in Oly for lunch. Also, the vibe I got from reading his emails on your other site was that he was suggesting things like this will always happen in Olympia.

While I still don't have any problems with their reaction to the protesters I can't help but wonder if they were as willing to move in because they assumed that most of those kids would be unarmed. Apparently at last year's protest there was a local Ultimate Fighter who flat out told the cops he would resist if they tried to arrest him and they left him alone to block his street.

If that's true, backing away from an actual threat, or not liking someone who knows the law and is willing to take care of himself, then I can't help but agree (reluctantly or otherwise) that there's a bully-culture inherent in the OPD.

On topic, yet off topic: S6 asked nicely to keep this on one specific topic. I think he's made an effort to learn "how it's done" here, and at least he tries harder than some others. Let's show him the same respect we'd expect him to give to us and start our own post if we want to debate OC or the necessity of guns, alright?

Please give me a second grace. Please give me a second face. I've fallen far down, the first time around, now I just sit on the ground in your way.
Nick Drake

As a very pro-second amendment guy, I find this topic interesting and disturbing. I don’t know what SS is attempting to accomplish, perhaps he can tell us. I personally believe the 2nd amendment is our MOST important right, and I would go to great lengths to preserve it. But I don’t believe what you are doing with open carry has a positive affect on this right.

Shock and awe is not the way to win hearts and minds to the 2nd amendment cause. You have to know your audience, and clearly Olympia is very liberal. Downtown is particularly liberal and that likely means anti-gun. So by walking around, flaunting and using the in-your-face tactic is a bad plan in my opinion. If you want to help the gun culture cause, why not find a way to educate rather than shove it down the other side’s throat? What are you trying to accomplish by open carry? Is there a better way? Remember lots of deranged individuals have killed in schools, malls, churches, etc. by gunfire. Yes it was the individual that did the killing, and the gun shouldn’t be demonized. But people that are either naïve, uneducated, or down right fearful of guns will react to what you are doing. I doubt their reaction will move them towards understanding guns and gun owners.

As for the police response, I don’t see anything wrong with the way the contact went. I do have concern they contacted you solely for open carry. I think it is important to remember that someone generated a call, and the cops have a duty to investigate. Just because an officer had a gun in his hand is no biggie. If the police were pointing their guns at you I would have a problem with that. They have their guns in their hands all the time. It’s good practice for them and their safety to do that on higher risk contacts or calls. You may argue that you weren’t a high risk. But you knew that and they didn’t. You carrying a gun in Oly in plain view, like I mentioned above, is about as odd as Michael Newdow at a Billy Graham concert. Also, we aren’t privy to what the caller said to the dispatcher. Perhaps the caller exaggerated what you were doing. I’m not trying to make excuses for the police. I’m the last one to do that, but we don’t have all the info to develop an opinion on what happened to you.

As to the tactical issue of open carry, I would agree with the cops. You’re at significant advantage to have your gun concealed. The element of surprise works to your advantage in event of a deadly encounter. Further, with open carry someone could develop a plan to disarm you and you wouldn’t know it until the fight was on. And if they come from behind, I’ll bet they could be in control of your gun long before you could even react to the attack.

As a fellow “gun guy”, please don’t hurt the gun owner’s position in this county over a pissing contest with OPD.

Anon Larry, your comment is pure hyperbole. What if's like this are silly.

"We Israelis sacrifice ourselves for our continued existence, our enemies sacrifice themselves for our destruction."--Unknown--

If an officer was rude to me on a traffic stop 3 years ago that would be on topic too? How about if an officer didn't return my wave? Or if it's about their behavior, how about I saw an officer w/o his seatbelt on a couple months ago.

I disagree. Gug has an axe to grind with OPD from the protests. This thread is about open carry. If there is a desire to have a debate in general about OPD's actions, start a new thread and list there.

"We Israelis sacrifice ourselves for our continued existence, our enemies sacrifice themselves for our destruction."--Unknown--

I would agree it has to do with OPD's behavior during the "OC contact". I don't agree it has to do with OPD's general behavior. If it did, then we can talk about every little toe stub they have committed against each and everyone of us over the last decade +. Or if it IS about OPD as you claim, then we should post ANYTHING about OPD? I don't think that is the purpose of this thread.

People seem to have trouble staying on topic here though. Jocularity on blogs is to be expected, but high jacking of threads seems to be common on Olyblog. Below is one example.

http://olyblog.net/whats-hero-you#comments

"We Israelis sacrifice ourselves for our continued existence, our enemies sacrifice themselves for our destruction."--Unknown--

Please give me a second grace. Please give me a second face. I've fallen far down, the first time around, now I just sit on the ground in your way.
Nick Drake