-There's no evidence to show he was picking up a hooker. Oh, a lady was talking to a guy in a car through the passenger window, must be a hooker, can't possibly be someone he knew. Back when I was younger I used to stop and talk to people I knew when I was cruising around town. I never had a LEO try to hook me up for soliciting a prostitute. Closest I ever got to that was a Fitchburg LEO telling me and a friend "hey you guys shouldn't be in this parking lot after the lights go out... (the stores had closed in this strip mall and a friend and I were parked alongside one another and just bullshitting) move along please". It wasn't a big deal. The LEO didn't instantly assume we were selling drugs or something similarly insane like that.
-I think this particular LEO hates licensed carriers. I would not be surprised in the least if this was the only time he went full retard on someone with a CCW. This is the kind of LEO that probably disarms every CCW holder he can during a stop, simply because he can. (A FOIA request of complaints against this officer would probably bear my theory out here).
-In the eyes of the law you might be able to levy a weak argument that she was soliciting, but there's no evidence that the guy was a "john" unless cops witnessed money changing hands. Even then that's still only PC unless it was a coordinated sting or something. Why do you think law enforcement goes to great lengths to set up prostitution stings? Because a lady getting handed a wad of cash without the whole contex in play as evidence is not anywhere near enough to secure a conviction. A jury is not going to suck for "bbbbbut we saw him handing her the money!!!" Even the dumbest jury
is going to ask "Well, what was the money for, can you tell us that?" (they obviously can't ask it directly, but it begs the question).
It's none of the cops business what a free person does unless they're actually breaking the law. The most I see here is possibly a traffic citation if the guy was stopped somewhere he shouldn't have been stopped. Even then it's only a civil infraction.
BTW even if the intent was to get the guy to leave (and I'm putting the legal/formal legitimacy of the LEO's ability to do that aside for the moment) I can think of a far more professional way to get the desired behavior out of the interviewee than telling the guy I could shoot him and get away with it (which is basically what this guy did here). Instead of shaking this guy down he could have asked him to move along or something like that.
FTR I'm nowhere near "anti cop". I have friends in law enforcement in different capacities. Most of them would think this guy is an a**h***. The problem with bad cops is that the way the system is set up the good cops are pretty much powerless to do anything about the bad ones, at least if they want to keep their job. (As a fun example of this, look at what that ATF whistleblower is going through, the ATF is trying to/has forced him out, despite the fact of the feds having some whistleblower protection regs on the books). As a generality most LEOs are decent people. It's that 10-20%, or the fully corrupt police departments (say for example, NOPD, or groups like the NY port authority cops) that make the whole lot look bad. The problem is over time the number of bad LEOs are growing, and pushing away good people from the field as a result. The legislators are also enabling bad LEOs by virtue of the legislation they support. It's all the Malum Prohibitum bulls**t on the books that make people hate the police in general. If we didn't have so many laws regulating behavior that doesn't actually directly affect someone, we wouldn't have this problem.
I'll give you a little homework assignment...... go look up "Peel Principles". It was a code of ethics commonly adopted
in British (and subsequently) American law enforcement. Do you think what this LEO did is in alignment with those
principles?
-Mike
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