Confused Cop Fired After Idiotic Arrest - Ep. 7.257

welcome once again to lato's law here's steve lato a couple weeks back a whole bunch of people sent me a story from michigan so steve did you see this this one's crazy it's crazy and i didn't do the story yet because a lot of times as the story starts to unfold i'll be watching it going you know i bet there's more news to come on that one and if i do one too early then i got to do a follow-up and i'd rather just have it all being one bite-sized video so john sent me the update yesterday steve just see this there's been an update in the story and this is from michigan the stories out of the battle creek enquirer trace christensen wrote it and calhoun county sheriff says we were wrong after firing a deputy following an incident january 2nd in springfield michigan springfield so we're talking about an area in the southwest corner of the lower peninsula of michigan over there with battle creek kalamazoo over that way a calhoun county sheriff's department deputies been fired after he arrested a man earlier this month while circulating petitions so the man was going around circulating petitions and someone called the cops on him now here's the thing people often call the police and they see somebody who looks suspicious and then the police show up and unfortunately the police show up they often just escalate things because they're there so when police show up and start asking somebody what are you doing why are you here who are you what's your name show us some id blah blah blah whatever if you're there lawfully you're not breaking the law people will actually go why are you harassing me so this spun out of control but in a strange way sheriff steve hinckley said in a statement friday afternoon that the deputy who was not named was fired following a review of the incident by the department's office of professional standards this is the calhoun county sheriff's department we hold ourselves to high standards of professionalism to the communities we protect when we are right we are right when we are wrong we admit we are wrong on january 2nd we were wrong so you got to respect him for doing this now i understand people say steve they ought to admit when they're wrong but you know something they never do so when someone does it you got to go wow that's cool i respect that on some level it still shouldn't have happened but the fact that they're stepping up and saying we did something wrong and we admit it is a huge step in the right direction it's a huge step on a long walk lauren marshall who is 44 years old was arrested on a charge of resisting and obstructing police after two deputies approached him at the wind tree apartments in springfield where he lives so he lives there and they approached him and the complaint was there's a man soliciting soliciting and you see the word soliciting and solicitation over and over again and this is a great example of idiocy in action someone called the police and either misused a word or the cops misused the word because the word that they used makes no sense in this context so they approached him about possible solicitation and that's kind of like saying we approached him about possible attempt attempt of what solicitation of what so they approached him about possible solicitation what he was doing was he's going around the apartment complex where he lived knocking on doors and asking residents if they would sign a petition to create a tenants association he thought it might be a good idea if the tenants in this apartment complex formed a tenants association that's what he wanted to do ain't no law against that uh one of the deputies questioned marshall because someone complained about a man who was soliciting which the deputy said was a violation if done without a permit so apparently the deputy thought well if you're going to solicit you need a permit to solicit uh hinckley said his own investigation again this is the sheriff showed that marshall was not soliciting that springfield does not have a regulation requiring a permit to solicit so the prosecutor who has shown this incident with the police report and so on dismissed the charges but the charges that the police were seeking a felony charge for resisting and obstructing police and i a lot of people say steve you understand that there's an issue when somebody's arrested for resisting arrest and nothing else what were they being arrested for if they didn't bother charging him with that also so here the man was charged with resisting and obstructing police and it was a felony charge because he was said to be possibly soliciting without a permit and there's no law requiring a permit to solicit whatever that and by the way i'm i'm making fun of it for a reason we'll discuss it in a moment so marshall was arrested after he refused to provide the deputy identification so remember the man's not driving the car he's on foot walking around and a police officer goes let's see some id he goes no they arrested him and charged him with a felony [Laughter] i'm only laughing because it's idiotic he spent the night in the calhoun county jail meanwhile his two children who were with him so there's a man and his two children going door to door going would you like to sign a petition so the the police let the children go back to their home because they lived in that apartment complex the sheriff says transparency and honesty to our community is the foundation to all of our success the conduct and actions in this case in which mr marshall is collecting signatures does not represent our commitment to our community the actions that mr marshall took that day of circulating a petition are protected by our constitution and yes they are while some ordinances and communities prohibit vendors from selling items without a permit no law local state or federal prohibited mr marshall from exercising his constitutional rights on january 2nd and as you can imagine any law that did prohibit his constitutional rights would be unlawful on his face as being unconstitutional marshall said friday afternoon things need to change that is a start i'm happy it's messed up that he had to lose his job but something has to happen so he he actually says he's kind of sorry the guy lost his job but then again what he did was bizarre referring to the sheriff's deputy who arrested this man for resisting and obstructing while attempting to solicit he did say he'd like to see the deputy charged with assault and so the question is if there's witnesses to what happened did it look like the man was being assaulted by the deputy and then he goes on to say like i said is not enough but it is a start uh you have to root out all the bad apples for the fruit to prosper hinckley and the undersheriff met with marshall two weeks ago we are reviewing procedure policies and training to ensure our community receives the best service from our departments hinckley said so the man again was going door to door knock on the door it's going would you like to sign a petition i'd like to start a an association for the tenants of this apartment complex someone called the cops and go hey there's a guy going around and he's soliciting he's soliciting so i'm not sure if i got to tell you this i'm not going to break out the dictionaries because the word solicit has got a raft of definitions but in the law solicitation in america generally means one of a few things so we've talked about before about how england's got barristers and solicitors okay and and that's another form of the word solicit that creates solicitor and so in america for instance um if an attorney is going out and trying to drum up business that's referred to as solicitation okay and so an example of a forbidden form of solicitation is let's suppose i heard that there was someone in the hospital who'd been in a grievous accident and i think hey you know if i'm an attorney and i get that case be worth a lot of money so i sneak into the hospital and i sneak into the person's room and just as they come out of anesthesia they go who are you and i go hey i'm steve glate i'm an attorney want to sue somebody that'd be solicitation now the bar and all the ethical rules that attorneys are forced to live by actually describes what an attorney can and cannot do to try to get business but they want to avoid that kind of solicitation that makes attorneys look bad they've all heard the phrase ambulance chasers that's what solicitation leads to so that's one thing solicitation also can refer to somebody who is going out and either seeking or offering to be a prostitute so the question is was this man knocking on doors saying hey you want to sign a petition was he soliciting prostitution i don't think so i don't think so now solicitation can also be to solicit someone to commit a crime so we've all heard that where an undercover cop posing as a criminal in in an internet chat group has someone say hey i'll pay you money to go break the law that's solicitation to commit a crime that is also illegal and then also you've heard the phrase solicitation for charity so someone can come knock on your door would you like to give money greenpeace that is a solicitation that's not illegal but it ought to be i'm just joking but people come knocking your door and ask for handouts do you want to give some money to my charity that's a solicitation for a charity again not illegal and then there is a thing and it it's enshrined in michigan in the walk of the home solicitation sales act where someone comes to your home generally and offers to sell you something and think of the vacuum cleaner sales person who used to go door-to-door you you're knocking your door you go you open the door there's a guy standing with a vacuum cleaner and he goes hey i don't care what brand vacuum cleaner you got i got one right now that'll blow yours away figuratively speaking and it's inexpensive and it's got a great guarantee let me let me demonstrate it'll take five minutes five minutes next thing you know the guy's gonna live for an hour and a half so there's a law in michigan called the home solicitation sales act that protects you in a transaction like that because of the high pressure situation that you're in some people will sign anything to get that guy out of their living room so that's where the three day thing comes from where people know that there's situations where sometimes you got three days to cancel a contract in michigan it's the home solicitation sales act but home solicitation is not illegal it's simply regulated and so in that sense of a solicitor we're thinking of a peddler a peddler in the old days they talked about people who peddled their goods and it simply met somebody who's out literally by themselves trying to sell their stuff they're peddling their stuff so that's another form of solicitation so when someone called the cops and goes hey there's a guy here who's soliciting he's so listening and the cops walk up and go dude we think you're soliciting show us your id is he soliciting as an attorney no is he soliciting to commit prostitution no is he soliciting to commit a crime no is he's listening for charity no is he soliciting for a home solicitation sales act transaction no so why do they keep using that word i don't think that word means what you think it means and that's one of the most annoying things people love a phrase that sounds good conspiracy expectation of privacy i do not consent you can say stuff because it sounds good if you're a poet poetry is where we listen to words that sound beautiful or sound interesting or intriguing or provoke our thoughts but simply to go there's a man here and he's soliciting what's that mean what do you think it means what were they trying to tell the police and that's the problem here in reality someone called the cops and said there's a man here i didn't recognize him and he's knocking on doors the police should have said is he disturbing the peace or is he knocking on doors for legitimate reason did he knock on your door and if he knocked down your door what did he say and if you said yes he knocked on the door asked me to sign a petition when you said yes or no and and acted upon that did he then leave yes okay has he come back no what did he do he went next door okay i'm really sorry but you shouldn't have called 911 not why i did a video a week ago dumb reasons people call 9-1-1 a guy knocked in my door asking us on a petition can you please come and arrest him on a felony account thrown in jail overnight so there were mistakes made here and the first mistake was made by the person who called the cops because you have to ask yourself why are you calling cops again were laws broken there were no laws broken here until the cops showed up and that's the irony of it so unfortunately and i simply mean this in the big picture of things unfortunately a man lost his job over this i'm not saying he shouldn't have lost his job i think he should have but i think that the police if you want to step back or up or whatever angle you're looking at this from and take a big picture look at this you want to look at this and go someone calls the cops and goes there's a guy knocking on doors the correct response is you don't send a cop out there you ask the person why are you calling us why are you calling us so they need to train the people who take the calls to weed out the dumb ones because unfortunately when you send police into a situation like i said at the top you are often going to cause things to escalate by their mere presence because police don't always show up with the mindset that hey we're just here we'll see what's going on then we'll decide what we're going to do because pretty quickly they're asking this guy for identification and arresting him on a felony count of resisting and obstructing but they were called there because somebody said he was possibly soliciting like i said soliciting is not the word that fits anything this man was doing and so if someone calls the police and uses a big word like that and says this man is still listening they should have said soliciting what oh a signature on a petition oh i'm sorry that's perfectly legal did you know that that's what you should have said didn't say it though so unfortunately a man did get fired another man spent the night in jail uh and was hauled away presumably in handcuffs by the police in front of his children and i have enough time to tell you a story i did a a trial a few years ago where a man was arrested uh at the woodward dream cruise and the police had argued that my client had driven recklessly because he had driven around a police barricade and there was a question about where the barricade is placed and whether or not the barricade was intended to keep it from going straight or turning down the side street my client lived down that street and when he went around the barricade another cop came running after my client stopped like what are you doing and they hauled him out of the car and they arrested and put him in handcuffs in front of his kids and we actually had a jury trial on that because that reckless driving my friends is a misdemeanor in michigan which entitles you to a jury so we had a jury trial on that and during my client's testimony and i hadn't testified he he wanted to and i let him he's a great witness and he described being arrested and put in handcuffs held over the hood of his own car with his wife and kids in the car watching all this happen and as he was describing it i very discreetly looked at the jury and the jury was watching him and they were pissed off and they returned a not guilty verdict so fast in that case would blow your mind and i'm not trying to explain whether or not what my guy had done was right or wrong driving around the barricade i don't i don't i don't know that's up to the jury to decide but if i had to guess one of the motivations that my jury had to find my client not guilty was that the police had done that because generally speaking if you ticket somebody you hand them a ticket they go home and the question is if my client drives around a barricade is that reckless driving or is that something else and so most people i think including the jurors would say write the man a ticket and tell him dude next time honor the barricade and give him a ticket for going around a barricade there's actually a ticket for that and instead by arresting him in front of his wife and kids in such a humiliating fashion that i'm convinced that the jury thought you know the cop went so far beyond the pale with what he did i bet he was also wrong with the charge so uh very very bizarre case back then but you know we won so i was good but we were wrong calhoun county sheriff admits it and fires the deputy after the january second arrest of the springfield man in michigan the battle creek inquiry around the story trace christensen wrote it john cena thanks a lot question your comments put them below i'll just talk to you later bye-bye thank you for watching lato's law anyone who says money can't buy happiness doesn't know where to shop

Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 299,232

Rating: 4.906405 out of 5

Keywords: lemon law, michigan lemon law, lemon law attorney, lemon law lawyer, http://www.lehtoslaw.com, steve lehto

Id: 5Z2fed4d3dU

Length: 18min 36sec (1116 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 23 2021