As a benefit to the firearms forum community, I took it upon myself to contact a police officer I know regarding the Canton, OH CCW stop. He is a training officer for regular officers and SWAT for over a dozen years, and also currently teaches the CCW class in Ohio. He gave me permission to quote him on his response when I told him I wished to get an official answer back to the readers of the forum.
First off, my officer's response about the Canton, OH officer's behavior: "He's an a$$hole. However, law enforcement has a failure rate of 2-3% (officers like the one in the video) and corporate America has a failure rate of 25%, so police recruiting is doing about 10 times better than the business average. The problem is we hire humans, and there will always be some failures that slip through all the screening that we do. The good news is that they will eventually do something like the officer in the video and be fired for it."
Next, as far as immediate notification of CCW: "The first words out of your mouth should be "I have a CCW" as you hand BOTH your CCW and your license to the officer. Keep your CCW with your license so you can draw them as one and hand them with the CCW on TOP. Do not start with, 'Officer' or 'Hello' as this gives a chance for the officer to interrupt you. If you are still told to shut up, you should keep your license and CCW held out towards the officer and comply with his instructions. You can only do the best you can under the circumstances."
Final notes from my officer: "I hope everyone will remember that this is a training problem with the officers and 97-98% of the time will NOT happen! I am adding this video to my officer training set as an example of how not to handle a CCW stop and the perfect way to get fired. If you are unlucky enough to be stopped by someone like this officer, do exactly what the driver in the video did - stay cool, agree with the officer, follow his commands, and settle it the next day with attorneys and his superiors."
On my phone call to my officer, he said that the communication center in Ohio should always inform the officer that the tag they are pulling over is attached to a person who has a CCW, so in Ohio, the officer should already know. But this doesn't relieve your duty to inform. When you inform, you basically show the officer that you know the law and intend to comply, which means you are law-abiding and are probably not going to pull the weapon on him. It's a courtesy for the safety of the officer. However, in my officer's own words: "We are trained police officers. We are supposed to treat every stop as if the driver and passengers are armed. It should not surprise an officer that you are carrying and he definitely shouldn't over-react like the officer in the video."
I hope this clarifies it for some people and puts some answers to the grey areas. If you have any questions that still exist, especially for Ohio CCW carriers, post them in response to this and I'll pass them along to my training officer for his comment.
Great advice, and nice to get a LEO's perspective! Thanks!
I think the part of not starting with "Officer, ..." or "Hello, ... " and simply blurting out "I have a CCW" FIRST is the best advice as I personally would have started out in conversation mode just out of habit.