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.)
From a moral or political perspective, (e.g., what *should* the relationship between cops and citizens look like) what he writes is
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. 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.