Knives - once and for all. LEOs? Lawyers?

[van7559]

a fawk I just cut myself!

[cstone]

a fawk I just cut myself!

How long was the blade? Was the blade assisted, button or lever activated?

Just saying.

[Irving]

Is the fact that there is no such thing as centrifugal force defensible in court?

[ldmaster]

First a story... I had my gun seized as potential evidence in a case that was dropped. I went to retrieve it from Jeffco SO and asked for the ammunition that was in the gun too. The property clerk smirked at me and said that they dont return ammunition EVER. I asked why and he gave me some excuse about not wanting to get shot. So I asked him if it were legal for me to carry openly/loaded and he said yes. With the smirk still on his face, I pushed the backup mag into the gun, loaded it and put it in my holster and smirked right back at him.

Ted Mink is VERY anti civilian in the sense that he doesn't think that we have inherent rights to self-defense, he was an elitist about this back then (only LEO's have the right to carry a gun) back when I had dealings with him and his personality, from stories I have heard, hasn't changed according to deputies and others I've talked to. So the deputy taking your knife and forcing you to go to the SO to pick it up, is PROBABLY an internal policy that Mink set up to mess with people. There is no law that says a temporarily seized item cannot be returned to a person after it has been found that there is no reason to arrest them. Sounds like "Minks Law".

All that being said, I'm LE (but as you have guessed NOT for Jeffco). The state law is pretty generic, in the sense that it mirrors language that came about circa 1968 when a generic set of weapons laws were adopted by MOST states in response to civils rights rioting after the murder of MLK, we owe, in part, many of our weapons laws to a racist knee-jerk reaction to those times. It also gave us the GCA of 1968 (backed by the NRA even) that kept a poor black man in Mississippi from buying an inexpensive rifle from a mail order company in another state, if he wanted a gun he had to buy it from a locally licensed dealer - and you can be sure the color of your skin counted in whether or not they'd sell you a gun to defend yourself from the Klan. The arbitrary length and switchblade thing came with that territory. ARgh, I almost went on a rant there... back on topic...

You don't have to worry too much about state law, what you have to worry about is Municipal Code. And you don't need to be a city or town to have a municipal code, a few counties use them too. Because we are "home rule" city's can and do pass more restrictive laws that are more restrictive than state limits.

You can see if your municipality uses a particularly POPULAR form of municipal code by checking at www.municode.com. They are like Lexis/Nexus in the sense that they actually have copyright to the code, and the municipalities actually LEASE the use of the majority of the code from the company. They also put in the individual codes adopted by various city council's or whatever.

If you do not find your city listed there, it does not mean your city doesn't have it's own municipal code covering you, they might have just written their own.

Why use municipal code? The answer is very very obvious. Money.

Let's say I write a ticket to a driver for a traffic offense and I use a county form to do it. If they are found guilty the fine gets split between the city I work for and the county it was written in. Way back when, in response to municipalities wanting more control over the fine money, the state legislature published something called the "Model Traffic Code" and it was essentially a copy of state motor vehicle laws that a city could adopt and use for it's own court system. It does not, in general, cover commercial vehicle stuff like semi's and hazmat. If you have a ticket issued by a city in Colorado, the citation of the violation will most likely start with "MTC-..." that stands for Model Traffic Code. If you get a ticket from the State Patrol or a regular county deputy, it most likely says, "CRS-..." or Colorado Revised Statutes. The city uses the "model traffic code" to prosecute people in their own municipal court and the city gets to keep 100 percent of the fine money, they don't have to share. MOST city's have adopted copies of most minor crimes (and some major ones) into their municipal code, again, because they get to keep all the money. For some cities, like Denver or Aurora or Lakewood, this fine money is a SIGNIFICANT source of income for the city. The only rule is that the maximum fine is 1000 bucks and/or 1 year in jail.

The City of Denver, for instance, has banned folding knives that can be (and I'm quoting here)

"opened with a flick of a finger".

Don't hop on how that's terribly vague - it IS vague. Officers in many jurisdictions can/will charge you with something simply because while they will SAY there is not a "quota" having to do with tickets, if an officer isn't "productive" he gets into trouble - how to tell if a cop is productive? How many municipal code tickets has he written? Don't break the law, and if you are legal in your locality, it doesn't mean that if you walk into downtown denver with your 4 inch folder you will still be legal. This was part of the big stink about CCW laws, in that Denver claimed that they could restrict CCW further than the state did, there was a big court battle over this - think "preemption". So while you're good with your pistol after they lost, nobody is going to pass a "Universal Knife" act and fight the same battle for your pocketknife.

I've always thought that there should be a section in the POST training currriculum that addressed municipal code, but there's not. County deputy sheriff's generally are ignorant of municipal code and it's ramifications (because they use the county court for their tickets). A municipal code violation for assault is CALLED a "code violation" (like a lawnmowing ticket) but it's reported the same to the CBI and FBI as a violent crime.

And in case you're wondering, YES, you can get a "ticket" for something like burglary - without being arrested and booked. Doesn't mean you dont go to court ultimately, but you dont get booked, which also means the officer doesn't have to waste two hours processing you at the jail, he can move on to write more cash producing tickets for his city. It also affects the FBI's crime index - careful tweaking of WHAT you charge someone with and your crime stats go down. One great variance with state code is the assault statute. According to state law there is no such thing as "battery" there is only assault, the intent or stated intent to harm someone is generally covered under "harassment". But in most muni codes you're find an "assault and battery" definition. Assault being the attempt or stated intent to do harm, and battery being the actual harm. I hate that by the way, threatening to "kick someone's ass" is actually assault... We get these definitions via the municode.com team, culling only the finest and picayune of the laws from major city's, we get them in a nice lump sum that isn't even addressed in state statute.

Don't count on the kindness of a cop in a city keeping you out of trouble just because you are a "good guy" - that spyderco police model you carry? It's considered an illegal weapon, and can be worth up to $1,000 to the city that prosecutes you for it's possession. Then you're stuck with a "weapons violation" and the sheriff pulls your CCW. Don't risk it.

[Byte Stryke]

ldmaster,
you me and OneGuy67 need to go have a Beer at the old man in Broomfield one evening.
you sounds as pessimistic as I do.

OK, Almost as much as I do

[Clint45]

The City of Denver, for instance, has banned folding knives that can be (and I'm quoting here)

"opened with a flick of a finger".

That is the first I've heard of this.

By that definition, any folder with a thumbhole or thumbstud (roughly 80% of all lockblades) would be subject to said ban, regardless of blade length.

Do you have a link or could you please cut and paste the statute in this thread? Thanks.

[TDYRanger]

Don't count on the kindness of a cop in a city keeping you out of trouble just because you are a "good guy" - that spyderco police model you carry? It's considered an illegal weapon, and can be worth up to $1,000 to the city that prosecutes you for it's possession. Then you're stuck with a "weapons violation" and the sheriff pulls your CCW. Don't risk it.

Thanks for putting it so succinctly (It's the money stupid... basically). At the end of the day it's always about the money, safety second.

It really makes me want to kick someones as..... whoops don't want to assault anybody

IDMASTER; you sound like you take your seriously, and you put a lot of thought into what you do. Thanks for the hard work

[ldmaster]

I did put a link... Do the legwork! But you did say thanks, so.....

Sec. 38-119. - Certain knives unlawful.

(a)
It shall be unlawful for any person to sell, display, use, possess, carry or transport any knife or instrument having the appearance of a pocket knife, the blade of which can be opened by a flick of a button, pressure on the handle, or other mechanical contrivance.

(b)
Any such knife is hereby declared to be a dangerous or deadly weapon within the meaning of section 38-117.

(c)
In addition to any other penalty imposed by lawful authority, every person convicted of any violation of this section shall be required to forfeit any such knife to the city.

(Code 1950, § 845.3)

And then from the dictionary, the definition of "contrivance" - "a clever plan, or trick".

I am aware of one person who was convicted of carrying his kershaw blur, notice how this section doesn't have a maximum length requirement? This means that something as small as a chive can be unlawful. His total fine was 570 bucks. He said at trial he challenged the cop to prove it was a "mechanical contrivance" and the judge ruled that the simple demonstration of one finger opening the blade was enough, that the original intent was to cover knives that were meant to be opened with one hand.


Geez, I'm going to blather on here again... hold on...


In the not too recent past, I had a conversation with a cop working vice. He had arrested a known prostitute for prostitution again, but didn't actually have any offer of sex for money occur. He did it with a MUNCIPAL CODE definition of prostitution, that defines any "act in furtherance" to be unlawful. The act she committed? She was carrying condoms. That was all. He got his conviction. Folks, like in another thread where I didn't know anything about laws against shooting trees, DOESNT mean that there aren't any laws against that, as was pointed out to me chapter and verse. Police departments call this "using a tool" when they either get a law redefined by their city council to suit their needs, or creative in using the definition to gain an arrest. Municipal code has certain vagaries inherent in it. State law considers municipal code to be somewhat less than state criminal statutes (code), the rules of evidence are basically the same, but the rules of procedure in fighting a municipal code violation are quite curtailed from a defendants point of view. Because the state considers code violations to be, essentially, "not as serious" the strict rules of procedure are "abbreviated" (their wording) to help streamline the process of prosecuting someone for them, after all, it's not like they are being accused of a CRIME, just a "code violation". Except they forget that the "code violations" still get reported to the FBI and CBI and are TREATED as a criminal violation. Oh, and it's possible that your fine will exceed 1,000 - how? When you get charged with mulitiple crimes. Like you get angry at your friend, hit him then take his cellphone to find out what text messages he's sent to your girlfriend, while telling him to sit there and not move or you'd do it again. Let's see...

1. Assault - threatened to hit him
2. Battery - hit him
3. Theft - deprived him of property
4. Misuse of a telecommunications device to intercept a call/text that was not meant for you - obvious
5. False Imprisonment - told him to not get up

That's five separate 1,000 fines. Yippee!!!

Heck, you probably would confess to all that stuff right at the scene - goes something like this: "Yeah, I hit the jerk in the face, he was banging my girlfriend! See? I have the proof! I told him if he moved, I'd kick his ass again." I haven't seen this actually happen, but I do know that training is ongoing in "creative charging". Will some of them be dropped at court? Probably/maybe, the misuse probably and the theft maybe. But I've seen someone convicted of theft for taking their girlfriends cellphone out of her hand and refusing to give it back until the police arrived, so he could "prove" she had been unfaithful.

Folks, it is a dangerous and ugly world out there just to walk about it - and I'm not talking about criminals who would do you harm, either! It's why my advice to "get out of dodge" to people who defend themselves by displaying their weapon is given. So they do the "right thing" and call 911 to report the attempted mugging or assault, tell their side, and get arrested for doing so - even without the bad-guy/victim being present. You just CONFESSED to displaying your weapon in a manner meant to place someone in fear of their life, menacing. Why not "felony menacing"? Because THAT would put your charge in district court, and they like keeping the charges municipal because they're easier to prove AND the city attorney's that prosecute these things are not an independent agency like the district court is, they are beholden to the same folks (the city) for their jobs as you are - so it's sorta cozy, aint it!

You know the process concerning getting a record sealed after a certain amount of time? Works fine for CRS violations, but wait!!! A rule change last year made municipal code violations all but impossible to have sealed. This is according to a presiding judge that I asked the direct question of.

Welcome to Colorado, where's we're trying very very hard to be JUST LIKE Kalifornia!

[Clint45]

I did put a link... Do the legwork! But you did say thanks, so.....

Sec. 38-119. - Certain knives unlawful.

(a)
It shall be unlawful for any person to sell, display, use, possess, carry or transport any knife or instrument having the appearance of a pocket knife, the blade of which can be opened by a flick of a button, pressure on the handle, or other mechanical contrivance.

Okay. I was really worried for a moment, but this does not appear to apply to thumbholes or thumbstuds, per se. However, an "assisted opening" coil spring mechanism which is NOT considered to be a switchblade may well be prohibited under this municipal ban.

[chrisguy]

ldmaster,
you me and OneGuy67 need to go have a Beer at the old man in Broomfield one evening.
you sounds as pessimistic as I do.

OK, Almost as much as I do

LMK fellas - I'm in!

[Hey it's my thread...]