In most towns, you cannot discharge a firearm. You can’t just do some target practice, hunt, or shoot an animal. The reason for this is obvious — there are other people living in close proximity who either may be disturbed by the noise or even hit by stray projectiles. So, to prevent this type of behavior, most municipalities have instituted a code which states that you cannot discharge a firearm within the city limits.

In my town it reads:

No person shall discharge any firearm in the city unless that person is a police officer or citizen acting under necessity.

Of course, the police officers should also only be acting under necessity, so that exception to the rule does not need to be there.

A woman in Kansas City, Kansas has found out that the exceptions to the rule don’t apply to her. Of course, I assume the Kansas City police don’t get tickets for firing their guns in town and that there is some provision to allow for personal protection.

It was early Saturday when Beck says she saw a stranger climbing over her backyard fence. Beck says when he lunged at her, she shot at him with the .22 pistol she happened to be carrying.

Of course, this is just her testimony, but I would think that a stranger climbing your fence and lunging at you would be a good enough reason to think that your safety may be in jeopardy.

The article goes on:

“I’m relieved I had my gun, because if not I don’t know what would’ve happened to me,” said Beck.

So Beck wasn’t at all happy when FOX 4 told her police records indicate she’d been given a summons for criminal use of a weapon.  A KCK Police Department public information officer told FOX 4 that according to their report, Beck told police she fired the weapon into the ground after the man turned to run away – something Beck denies saying.

“If I shot it in the ground, they would’ve found the casing,” said Beck.

Of course, they probably would not bother to look for the casing to prove her story one way or the other. It turns out that the police had been to her house the night before during an attempted break in. At that time, they did not give the impression that they were taking the case seriously. They didn’t even dust for fingerprints. Then, when someone is climbing her fence the next day, it’s no wonder she felt like she had to take matters into her own hands.

As more and more things are becoming illegal (or just now being enforced), we need to begin to change our societal attitude towards people who have been arrested or in jail. Part of this involves changing our first instinct to trust the police story above that of the accused. To be sure, the police have a hard job. They surely get lied to all the time. But, it is still their obligation to make sure they’ve got the right person before days go by and an innocent person is in jail. Cases of mistaken identity do occur.

In Tennessee, a man was arrested and detained for two days after being taken in on a warrant that was associated with a crime that his deceased twin brother committed. He refused to sign the documents because it wasn’t his name on them. This type of thing sounds like the typical bad excuse that a criminal would give, but it turned out to be true in this case. I wonder how many of his friends, neighbors, and associates assumed he was guilty before knowing the whole story.

As usual, the comments on the article are just as interesting as the article itself. In society, we somehow think that being in jail is no big deal — even if you shouldn’t be there. Here’s one telling comment: (grammar and punctuation copied from the original)

Oh pullleeeeeeeeez! He wasn’t tasered, or beaten to a pulp, just his scumbag, now deceased twin brother used HIS name when he got arrested previously, but it’s CERTAINLY not grounds for any sort of litigation.

Evidently, this person thinks that unjustly being locked in a cage is no big deal. Evidently, it would only be a big deal to him if he was physically abused in some way.

And another interesting perspective: (grammar and punctuation copied from the original)

How many times are the police lied to every day how do they know who is telling the truth. Sometimes making the arrest and letting the system sort out the truth is their only option. Criminals lie all the time saying it wasnt them or it was their brother or dad and sometimes the truth is being told but it is impossible for the cop on the street to know the truth that is what the legal system is for. If the warrant had that guys name on it that is all the stree officer has to go buy.

First of all, nobody is saying that the officer on the street should not have made the original arrest. The warrant was made out in this guy’s name. However, why did he have to spend two days in jail for them to do a simple fingerprint check? In my book, it’s not OK for an innocent person to spend two days in jail (missing work and everything else) while the system “sorts things out.”

The thing I would ask people who hold views like those expressed in these comments is…when does it become a big deal? So, two days with no beating isn’t a big deal. What about three days? Five? Two years? One day with a slight beating? Three days with emotional abuse?

Remember, it is better for a guilty person to go free than an innocent person to be implicated. If we adopt the reverse view on a large scale, anyone could become a victim of the system.

A woman in Texas was arrested after trying to fill her prescription at a CVS pharmacy.  The woman, Anne Lenhart, explains:

He was like ‘we need to go outside,’ she said. I was on crutches and I had a permanent IV line in my arm. I had a big leg brace. I asked him if it was necessary and he said yes and he rather policingly escorted me out the front door and into the back of a waiting patrol car.

Lenhart was so stunned, she didn’t think to ask the officer questions. The officer explained to her what was going on.

He said, ‘Well we believe that you have forged your pain pill prescription and we are calling your doctor now. But I’ve worked with this pharmacist a number of times and he’s never made a mistake,” Lenhart said.

She was released on bond after spending the night in jail.  At the time of her release, she was charged with obtaining a controlled substance by fraud, a felony. They later dropped the charges after speaking with her doctor. Isn’t that what they were supposed to do in the first place?

Lenhart’s doctor confirmed in an affidavit that he wrote the prescription for her and that he never received a call from CVS asking to confirm the prescription.

Her lawyer believes that the pharmacy may have called the wrong doctor.

Stories like this just go to prove why we need to assume innocence and make the state prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. We can’t assume that people don’t make mistakes.

This probably isn’t the first time that something like this has happened.  But, in Hillsborough County Florida, the county clerk’s computer system is experiencing a major meltdown.  The computer errors may cause people to end up fined and arrested for tickets that they already paid.  The computer is having trouble recording the transactions.  Also, some people are getting charged three times the amount of the fine because the computer charges for the ticket multiple times if you are attempting to pay with a credit card. People whose licenses have been suspended without cause are having to wait for hours and hours to get them re-instated.

Why do I bring this up on Technically, That’s Illegal?  Because government incompetence needs to be documented.  I think fewer people will blindly follow the government if I can show that they aren’t flawless.  If we, as common citizens, tried to blame our computer on our incompetence or our inability to pay the fine, that would not fly.  But, when the government does it, there’s nothing we can do about it, and we just have to deal with it.  Presumably, there will be no reimbursement of work hours lost for people trying to fix the situation that this computer caused.  I also bring it up because people are “getting into trouble” (in terms of hassle, possible arrest, and money lost at work) for following the law and paying their fines.  What a mess!

For our own safety and well being, we have entire government agencies that try to tell us how to eat.  They educate us about food groups and healthy choices.  They make laws requiring inspections and nutrition information labels.  They are even so concerned about our safety with food that they are attempting to ban certain unhealthy foods.  Mayor Bloomberg of NYC recently stated that this was government’s highest duty.  Thank goodness we have them on our side.  But wait!  Also from the same government, we have the Food and Drug Administration, which is tasked with making sure our prescription drugs are safe.  Unfortunately, they’re doing an abysmal job of it.  And now, prescription drug deaths account for thousands of deaths annually.

Then, there are countless more who will eventually have to go through the painful withdrawal process when undergoing detox.

Drug deaths now outnumber car accident deaths, and prescription drugs (not illegal drugs) are largely to blame.  But, this will not stop them from waging the war on illegal drugs and making new laws regulating the fast food industry.

I am definitely not in favor of cocaine use or heroin use,etc.  But, I am also not in favor of regulating one thing (illegal drugs) while pretending the other thing (prescriptions) is totally safe when it’s killing people.

Drivers in Florida have recently been issued tickets for future violations.  The parking tickets were issued for future dates and given on streets in which there are no parking restriction signs.  The best line I’ve seen in a news article in a long time summarizes the problem (referring to a driver, Michelle Cintron):

Cintron got a ticket for parking just two hours in the un-posted three-hour parking zone that was dated next Monday.

That’s so funny that you might think it’s a joke news story.  But, no, it’s completely real.  Rest assured, the local police department is looking into it.