Hats off to New Smyrna Beach, FL LEO


h2ojunkie

New member
I was in FL last week for bike week. As you can imagine it can be quite a rowdy crowd.

LEO presence was very high just about everywhere during the 7 days I was there.

One we arrived and set up camp, we unloaded the bikes from the trailer and headed over to the gas station to fill up. As I pull in to the gas pump on the bike, I notice a couple of motorcycle LEO hanging out in the lot.

I turn of the bike, and I'm about to get off the bike to go in and pay for the fuel when one of the officers approaches me. As soon as he arrives at my side I discretely tell him I'm carrying and have a permit (not sure of the requirement to inform laws in Florida since I'm from Nevada, so when in doubt I take the safe route and just inform LEO to be safe).

The officer politely replies "I know" and asks where my permit is. (apparently my weapon was printing through my shirt as a result of being seated on the bike as I carry in the 8 o-clock position).

I inform him my permit is in my right front pocket, he asks me to see it. Takes a quick look at it, hands it back to me and says "Oh, you're carrying on a Nevada permit under reciprocity", to which I respond "Yes". He then lets me know that he wanted to check because a lot of the "bike week crowd" carries illegally.

The LEO hand back my permit and says "Enjoy your stay in FL".

I know this is a long story to basically report a non-event. But I have to give credit where credit is due. This officer was polite, professional, discrete, and a pleasure to deal with.

He did not ask to disarm me, did not make any type of scene what-so-ever. Not a single person at the gas station (and there were quite a few) had any idea at all what the office and I were talking about.

My hat is off to this LEO. If only all encounters could be this professional.

After I got done fueling up, I went over and took a minute to thank him for his professionalism so that his partner could hear my compliment.

P.S. I carried everywhere I went for my entire stay at bike week. I'm sure my weapon had to print more than once during my stay, after all it's hard to prevent it 100% of the time when sitting on a motorcycle with the wind blowing your shirt around. This encounter was the only one I had the entire stay in Florida.
 

Great post....We need to know when an LEO is doing a great job. Might I suggest that you send a letter to the department telling them what an outstanding job their officers were doing during bike week. If you can recall his name let them know how professional and polite this officer was. The letter would go into his file and might be able to help him at a later date.
 
It's refreshing to hear about LEO's doing their jobs well.
You hear so much in the media about LEO's being corrupt, unfair, and gestapo like. I'm glad when I hear of the ones that are polite and courteous. Thanks for the post.
 
Theres lots of great cops out there

Most Florida and New Hampshire cops are excellent, and deserves lots of respect
sorry I can't say the same about a lot of Mass. cops I encountered
 
Thats GREAT!!! but what sux is that you went to Bike week and I didn't!! I am Jealous!..one of these days I will make it..
 
Thanks for posting. I think most cops do not have a problem with concealed carry. We often just hear the bad things that happen. It's nice to hear a good encounter.
 
sounds like everything went really smoothly. that's a good thing. did he not even ask you to try to keep it more concealed? good encounter!
 
I live in Daytona, most of the cops here in FL (aside from some of the metro areas) are pretty laid back about stuff like that. Glad it was painless.
 
did he not even ask you to try to keep it more concealed?

No, he didn't mention it at all.

My guess is that it wasn't printing all that bad. They were just specifically on the lookout for people carrying illegally since he made the comment about "a lot of people carry illegally at bike week".

This officer's only concern was that I had a permit. He didn't even seem to assume I didn't have one at first. In fact he seemed to assume I was LEO, most likely because my first words to him were "I'm carrying".

I don't want to imply he was uncautious in any way putting him self at possible risk when he approached me. After all, he did approach from behind on my left side (the side I carry) as to be sure I was at a tactical disadvantage. But he remained polite, professional, and was conscious about not wasting my time.

He simply asked to see the permit, then went on his way.
 
Excellent...Always like to hear the good stories. This happens a good 95 percent of the time. That almost requires a complement letter to the department. Its good to comment when good things happen as much as when bad things happen. Chalk another one up to our friends the good guys!!!
 
I'm from FL...most cops here seem to be pretty cool about it overall. Generally speaking, people in the law enforcement community don't tend to vote Democrat.
 
Back in the early 70's I lived in Port Orange, near Daytona, right on rt 1. I had a 428 Cobra Jet Mach 1, and one night had just left a girl friends about midnight or later. It was a gorgeous night, and I had the windows down, the tunes on and there is a stretch of road between New Smyrna and Prt Orange, along Rose Bay where there's just NOTHING there. so as I passed the airport heading into that strip, I put the loud pedal down and unwound the 428. I was well over 100 mph for a while, but knew the road well, and that there was a residential area ahead, for which I slowed down to the 35 MPH limit way ahead of time.

So as I'm appraoaching the trailer parks and small businesses I see there flashing lights about a mile back. As the cruiser gets close I pull into the right lane to let him go by, and he pulls in behind me with red and blue lights, high beams flashing, yelling on the PA to pull over. It was one of those "Who... ME?" moments. :laugh:

So a deputy comes up to my window screaming at me "Why didn't you pull over!" and I answwered that I pulled over as quickly as I could. And he says "I MEAN TEN MILES BACK!" :mad:

I told him I didn't know he was chasing me ten miles back or I would have. He was driving a 390 Ramble Scrambler which I guess the Sheriff was pretty proud of, and he got toasted by a yankee in a Mustang who never knew he was being chased. :sarcastic:

anyway. He was pretty good. He said "I'll write you up for under 100 MPH so I don't have to arrest you. I thanked him and paid the fine. :hang3:
 
Back in the early 70's I lived in Port Orange, near Daytona, right on rt 1. I had a 428 Cobra Jet Mach 1, and one night had just left a girl friends about midnight or later. It was a gorgeous night, and I had the windows down, the tunes on and there is a stretch of road between New Smyrna and Prt Orange, along Rose Bay where there's just NOTHING there. so as I passed the airport heading into that strip, I put the loud pedal down and unwound the 428. I was well over 100 mph for a while, but knew the road well, and that there was a residential area ahead, for which I slowed down to the 35 MPH limit way ahead of time.

So as I'm approaching the trailer parks and small businesses I see there flashing lights about a mile back. As the cruiser gets close I pull into the right lane to let him go by, and he pulls in behind me with red and blue lights, high beams flashing, yelling on the PA to pull over. It was one of those "Who... ME?" moments. :laugh:

So a deputy comes up to my window screaming at me "Why didn't you pull over!" and I answered that I pulled over as quickly as I could. And he says "I MEAN TEN MILES BACK!" :mad:

I told him I didn't know he was chasing me ten miles back or I would have. He was driving a 390 Ramble Scrambler which I guess the Sheriff was pretty proud of, and he got toasted by a hippie gear head yankee in a Mustang who never knew he was being chased. :sarcastic:

anyway. He was pretty good. He said "I'll write you up for under 100 MPH so I don't have to arrest you. I thanked him and paid the fine. :hang3:
 
I don't know what it is about this website but approaching 100% of the time when I submit a post, it returns a message that I have to wait 29 seconds to post again, like for some reason the CMS software stack is interpretting two distinct attempts to post. First time it did that, I assumed a previous post was interfering with a quick post in a different thread, so I waited and resubmitted, only to realize I now had two identical posts, just like OldOwl does here.

Maybe the admins could look into that. I'm running Slackware 12.1/linux 2.6.24.7-smp/GSB 2.22.1/Firefox 3.0.5

Edit: Just now, I got this from a single click of the Post Quick Reply button:

The following errors occurred with your submission:

1. This forum requires that you wait 30 seconds between posts. Please try again in 30 seconds.
 
Theres lots of great cops out there

Most Florida and New Hampshire cops are excellent, and deserves lots of respect
sorry I can't say the same about a lot of Mass. cops I encountered

I can agree to that 1130% with Mass cops. Yes there are good and bad everywhere however in PRMA, I seem to always find the ones who are anti youth and have to show that they are "in charge". Anyways, good story, glad to hear everything worked out!
 

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