Why, Just Imagine!

"Imagine a police officer responding to a frantic call of someone running through a neighborhood with a gun in hand."

I don't have to imagine. When I was a kid, I used to run through my neighborhood all the time with my cowboy guns and holsters, or my submachine gun squirt gun ("Shoots 50 feet!") that Grandma bought me, or my kid brother's Johnny Seven O.M.A. ("One Man Army").

No one frantically called the cops. No cops frantically blew kids away for doing the same thing they used to do when they were kids.

Who Let the Dogs Out?

"When asked whether he'd been drinking, Wilcox told Officer Bryon Dietzel, "Yes, I had one drink," the Baltimore Sun reported, quoting court records.

"After the officer called for backup, a nearby canine team arrived and Wilcox performed a field sobriety test, which he passed. But when the dog reacted to the car that Wilcox had been driving — which had California plates — the player was asked whether there was anything inside. Wilcox said there was a gun."

Lesson One: STFU

Lesson Two: If you do, they still have you, because they'll use that as an excuse to let the dogs out. And even if the dog hasn't been trained to react to certain stimuli like gunpowder residue, you can bet they've taught it to react to subtle cues so it will bark on command--thus providing "probable cause" to shuck that pesky Fourth Amendment aside.