Illegal search and seizure?

In America? I don't think so. It happens all the time though. The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the ""The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." The search and seizure provisions of the Fourth Amendment are all about privacy. Most people instinctively understand the concept of privacy. It is the freedom to decide which details of your life will be revealed to the public and which will be revealed only to those you care to share them with. To honor this freedom, the Fourth Amendment protects against "unreasonable" searches and seizures by state or federal law enforcement authorities. I respect law enforcement, but I don't respect the games they play with law abiding citizens to get them to slip up and forfeit their rights. Even if the citizen knows their rights, and stand up for those rights not consenting to search or seizure of property, and the officer ignores that request, that my friend is known as oppression.

I want to look at something that happened to an acquaintance of mine. His name is Rich Banks. Rich is a member of the Pennsylvania Firearms Owners Association. He attended a PAFOA open carry dinner in Dickson City, PA. Most attendees of this event (other members of PAFOA) were legally open carrying pistols in plain sight which is perfectly legal in Pennsylvania without a license to carry firearms. You only need a LTCF when carrying concealed.

Well as the dinner progressed a “scared” patron called the police to report men with guns. The police showed up and arrested Rich for failure to identify himself with ID. When you are on foot, you are not required by law to produce ID, nor are you required to produce a license to carry firearms if you are open carrying (except for in a car or in Philadelphia). They arrested him for not consenting to search his person and for failure to produce ID. Many other members apparently were searched without consent or probable cause. After all was said and done, Rich was released when the police could not charge him with anything (he wasn’t doing anything wrong in the first place). The problem is when he denied search and seizure of his property and person, he was arrested. They tried to slap disorderly conduct on him for failing to produce ID, which is not required. And even if it was disorderly conduct is described in the Pennsylvania crime code:

§5503: A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if, with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he:
-engages in fighting or threatening, or in violent or tumultuous behavior;
-makes unreasonable noise;
-uses obscene language, or makes an obscene gesture; or
-Creates a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose of the actor”.

Not producing ID while on foot does not fall under the previous statutes. Since you don’t have to produce ID on foot, just a name if requested, he can’t get nailed for disorderly conduct. If he was not breaking a law in the first place he should have been left alone, plain and simple. The police should have come in and said, nothing illegal is taking place here and away they should have gone. Instead they harassed law abiding citizens for exercising their constitutional rights. Police oppression like this is NOT America. The police need to understand if there is NO probable cause, or no law that has, is or will be broken, a citizen standing up for his rights is NOT grounds for arrest. I for one will stand up in Rich’s legal defense. I am proud he took a bullet for the 2nd, 4th and 5th Amendments of our Bill of Rights. It’s people like him that keep out Bill of Rights alive. Good job man, I would have been in the patrol car with you too.