My own $0.02. This guy was clearly trolling for a confrontation.
This guy open carries and
records himself doing it all the time. The overwhelming majority of his recorded contact with cops is friendly, calm, and give-and-take. I posted a
video here earlier in the thread of an encounter he had with two cops that went quite well.
In the case of the video in the OP, I really think you have it exactly backwards. The cops were clearly the ones who started the confrontation. One asked him, "So what's your purpose for carrying a sidearm?"
He answered, "It's my legal right to."
The cop said in response to that, "So you're going to be difficult."
Those were the first words uttered between the guy and the cop who was doing the talking at the start. From first contact, and first word, to a conclusion that the guy was being
difficult for exercising his God-given rights, took all of 15 seconds. In less than a minute in, the second cop barked out the order, "Quit talking!" The cops showed up with a preconceived chip on their shoulders. The guy wasn't doing anything wrong, and as the other video I linked to shows, if they had shown up and just talked to him like a human being, it wouldn't have been any kind of incident at all, and he would've still posted the video on YouTube just to show how great the cops were in whatever town he was in in the OP video.
I would have handled the situation this way. Approach and inform him of why I was making contact with him and ask for ID and to inspect his firearm. If he says no, well, have a nice day, and leave. Condition corrected.
I don't follow you here. How is the "condition corrected" if he refuses to let you inspect his firearm? And why would you ask to inspect his perfectly legal property anyway? And under what authority would you ask to see his ID if you have no reasonable suspicion of a crime either being committed or about to be committed?
If he started complaining about being "harrassed" by the police for exercising his "constitutional rights" I'd probably tell him the police can't ignore 911 calls and its our job to investigate the call and make contact with him. End of story. Let the dispatcher know it was a citizen lawfully going about his/her lawful business.
Why are the words "constitutional rights" in quotes in the above text? What might it be fair for someone to infer from you separating those words out the way you did?
And why is it your job to make contact with him? He was clearly out in the wide open. You could've observed that he was acting perfectly lawfully and asked Dispatch to call back whoever called in the MWAG report and educate them that the guy wasn't doing anything wrong and, therefore, you had no legal cause to contact him.
I would waste 1/2 a second trying to explain my personal views about open carry. This takes all the wind out of his sails and makes for a forgettable you-tube video.
Did you mean to say you *wouldn't* waste 1/2 a second explaining your views? Regardless, if the first two cops on the scene in the OP had only spent 1/2 a second telling the guy their views, and the rest of conversation wasn't spent barking out orders like "Quit talking!" when they had absolutely no reason to even be talking to him in the first place, chances are, they would've been featured on his YouTube channel as "Met Some Great Cops in..." such-and-such a city.
The cops were clearly at fault for this encounter not going well. The only reason the activist sounds so whiny is because he has a speech impediment that is exacerbated by being scared and/or excited. He explains that on his channel, and I think he mentioned it to the cops in the "good cop encounter" I posted and linked to above.
Blues