Knives - once and for all. LEOs? Lawyers?

[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.