Another Ohio open-carrier hassled

Surprising how some Ohio law enforcement officers continue to hassle those openly carrying, despite the clear legality of same.

Yet another Ohioans For Concealed Carry member experienced harassment from police ignorant of the laws in Ohio regarding open carry.

OFCC member Edwin Farbrother took his eighteen-year-old daughter out for ice cream on her birthday in the evening of Saturday, July 5th, 2008 in the City of Northwood. After being there for approximately ten minutes, a police car roared up and skidded to a stop. The officer approached a man later identified as an off duty police officer (department unknown at this time) who pointed Farbrother out to him. Farbrother knew immediately that the officer was there because he was openly carrying a firearm, and he was correct.

Farbrother immediately informed the officer that he had a concealed handgun license, but the officer was not interested in that. Instead, he immediately began berating Farbrother for openly carrying a gun where children were present, and told Farbrother that he was breaking the law by doing so. The off-duty officer and the uniformed officer continued to argue with Farbrother, despite his attempts to explain that open carry is legal. Soon after, a third officer showed up.

The third officer joined in the conversation again asserting that open carry is illegal and told Farbrother that the Ohio Highway Patrol had lied to him when he confirmed with them that open carry is legal in Ohio. During the conversation, they also allegedly threatened arrest for impersonating a police officer. One officer insisted that if they were responding to a burglar alarm and saw Farbrother carrying a firearm that he would be the first one they would "take down," and that he risked getting "popped". They then informed him that they were letting him go, but if he did it again he would be arrested and they would let the judge sort out who was right and who was wrong.

The initial officer responding to the scene had demanded Farbrother's drivers license, which had recently been issued and was kept in a protective cover. During the conversation, the officer was allegedly witnessed by both Farbrother and his daughter bending the license in his hand. At the end of the stop he returned it broken in half. When Farbrother pointed out the license was broken, the officer shrugged and said, "oh, well."

Farbrother later found out that the officers had gone to a Speedway that he frequents and questioned an employee regarding if she felt threatened by him. She told them that, in fact, she felt safer when he was there. During an earlier incident at Speedway, Farbrother had been involved in a similar incident with one of the officers in this incident, who had told him that time as well that open carry is illegal.

Read the rest here.

The article also has the following update:

Update: Brian Ballenger, law director for Northwood, has contacted OFCC. He said he is well aware of the fact that open carry is legal and wants to work with us to resolve this incident. As he is out of state all of next week, we agreed to pick this up the following week after he gets back.

Hopefully those officers and all others in that jurisdiction will be unequivocally told by those with oversight authority that open carry is legal, and will stop harassing peaceable citizens, because these illegal tactics serve only to destroy the trust between police and law-abiding citizens. And that's not a good thing.