OR:Open Carrier wins Pro Se case Against PD Officer

tl;dr: Sued Corvallis PD officer in federal court for unlawful detainment, won.

This post has been on my mind for some time, and finally I feel that I can share it with you all, as the dismissal of the case was filed today. As you may or may not remember, on October 26, 2011 (ironically the 10th anniversary of the U.S. PATRIOT Act being signed into law) I was illegally detained by Corvallis PD while I was checking my mail. At the time I didn't say much about it because I didn't want my version of the events to be known before I obtained the Corvallis police officer's version of the events. Anyway, here is the (long) story.

I was checking my mail at a little after noon, just like I had done every day. It was a Wednesday and since I worked at home I usually checked the mail right before taking my lunch. I had my Glock 22 in a level 3 Serpa retention holster, the same gun and holster I carried throughout Corvallis pretty much the entire time I lived there. I was wearing jeans, a brown zip-up hooded sweatshirt, a beanie and probably these fingerless gloves that I used to wear all the time when it was cold out. That day the low was an unseasonably cool 26 degrees Fahrenheit, and while it was noon and had warmed up a bit, I had only lived in Oregon for four months and was still used to California weather.

Normally when I would go out in public while open carrying (which I did daily if not multiple times a day), I would carry an audio recorder and an ipod capable of video recording. I had both right next to my front door to grab along with my open carry flyers, but since I was just going to get my mail, a brought nothing with me. This would prove to be a mistake that I would quickly regret. I walked to my mailbox which was on the nearest street corner, about 100 yards away and as I was just about to reach my mailbox I noticed what looked to be a Corvallis PD cruiser coming up the street directly toward me.

While this was disconcerting, I had been open carrying in Corvallis for over four months at that point with no real negative encounters and only one consensual encounter with a Corvallis PD officer. I was a tad worried but I figured he wouldn't care and I'd once again be reassured that Oregon police officers are way more respectful than those in California. As I turned to walk away, it became more and more obvious that the officer had taken interest in me and would at the very least be contacting me. I walked along the dead-end gravel road that I lived on and as I had reached where my residence was and needed to cross the street to go home, I turned to see if the street was clear and here was the Corvallis police officer getting out of his patrol car, maybe 75 feet from me, staring right at me.


More Here on the Opencarry.org forum