From: Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>
Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 06:26:53 +0800
To: Tim May <cypherpunks@algebra.com
Subject: Re: Police & military access
In-Reply-To: <19970522232331.08458@bywater.songbird.com>
Message-ID: <3.0.2.32.19970523151254.008cce40@mail.io.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 12:53 AM 5/23/97 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>There is a current case involving a cop who is on the verge of losing his
>ability to be a cop because he pled "nolo contendre" to a domestic abuse
>charge a decade or so ago. The local law says that anyone in this situation
>may not have a gun, period. Thus, now that the law has caught up with him
>(no details on how and why this was not known until recently) he may not
>have a gun and thus may well lose his job.

I'm not familiar with local (Santa Cruz, or whatever) ordinances, but a
federal law saying exactly this was passed last year (the "Lautenberg Act",
which was apparently merged into a spending/budget act signed by Clinton on
10/3/96) - my hunch is that the controversy here is over the effects of the
federal law. The scenario you discussed is being played out in police
departments and sheriff's offices all over the country. Legislation has
been proposed this session (but its passage is uncertain to unlikely) which
would exempt law enforcement officers from the (federal) ban on possession
of weapons by convicted domestic violence offenders. 

>This would seem to support Jim Choate's general position. (Though I have my
>own skepticism that many jurisdictions think it is true.)

Jim Choate's messages about cops and "civil rights" suggest that he's not
familiar with and/or interested in the basics of legal research.
Restrictions (and lack of restrictions) related to use of force, power to
arest, possession/use of weapons, etc., are mostly statutory. You can't
find them (or understand them) by starting with only the Constitution, and
then reasoning and deducing things from it.

>From a moral or political perspective, (e.g., what *should* the
relationship between cops and citizens look like) what he writes is
perfectly reasonable. From a legal perspective (what is the law today?)
it's incomplete and thereby misleading. 


--
Greg Broiles                | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell:
gbroiles@netbox.com         | 
http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto.