Another (more ridiculous) T-Shirt Incident

Okay, I supported the school sending home the kid wearing the shirt calling Bush in International Terrorist. But in the interest of balance, I'll be the one to post and denouce this incident. This is going a bit too far.

(BTW...please don't use this thread to rehash the one about the school. If you want to do that, go find the actual thread)

=================

Lawyer Arrested for Wearing a 'Peace' T-Shirt
2 hours, 22 minutes ago Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo!

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A lawyer was arrested late Monday and charged with trespassing at a public mall in the state of New York after refusing to take off a T-shirt advocating peace that he had just purchased at the mall.

According to the criminal complaint filed on Monday, Stephen Downs was wearing a T-shirt bearing the words "Give Peace A Chance" that he had just purchased from a vendor inside the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, New York, near Albany.

"I was in the food court with my son when I was confronted by two security guards and ordered to either take off the T-shirt or leave the mall," said Downs.

When Downs refused the security officers' orders, police from the town of Guilderland were called and he was arrested and taken away in handcuffs, charged with trespassing "in that he knowingly enter(ed) or remain(ed) unlawfully upon premises," the complaint read.

Downs said police tried to convince him he was wrong in his actions by refusing to remove the T-shirt because the mall "was like a private house and that I was acting poorly.

"I told them the analogy was not good and I was then hauled off to night court where I was arraigned after pleading not guilty and released on my own recognizance," Downs told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Downs is the director of the Albany Office of the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, which investigates complaints of misconduct against judges and can admonish, censure or remove judges found to have engaged in misconduct.

Calls to the Guilderland police and district attorney, Anthony Cardona and to officials at the mall were not returned for comment.

Downs is due back in court for a hearing on March 17.

He could face up to a year in prison if convicted.

But why was he asked to take off the T-shirt? The article doesn't actually say.

This would never ever happen where I live!

Is it true? Can't Imagine!

Thats plain ridiculous.
No war T-shirts, now no peace T-shirts.
Just plain wrong.
:suicide:

This would never ever happen where I live!

Click to expand...

A statement like this always make me smile. You might as well say, "We're better than you! Na na na na!"

"I was in the food court with my son when I was confronted by two security guards and ordered to either take off the T-shirt or leave the mall,"

Click to expand...

They expected him to walk around the mall with no shirt on? I would have thought that would have breached some sort of code of behaviour.

Originally posted by SirJethro


Downs is due back in court for a hearing on March 17.

He could face up to a year in prison if convicted.

Click to expand...

If this man gets convicted, the American legal system is pretty screwed up! WTH is wrong with wearing a t-shirt like that when you're shopping at the mall?

Methinks there is more to this story than meets the eye, I think a little deeper digging may be rewarded.

I did a little digging and found 3 articles from different sources that say almost exactly the same thing...with little more additional info. I did find the following additional info:

From AP: "Monday's arrest came less than three months after about 20 peace activists wearing similar T-shirts were told to leave by mall security and police. There were no arrests. "

Both father (61) and son (31) were wearing t-shirts. Once said "Peace on Earth" and the other "Give Peace a chance".

Anyway....dollars to donuts the charges get dropped. Nobody is going to prosecute this.

This is like a story in Atlanta a couple years ago when I was living there. A sherrif's deputy ticketed two sets of Girl Scouts for selling cookies in front of Blockbuster. They didn't have a permit. As soon as the story hit CNN those tickets disappeared faster than you can say "samoa".

He will have a nice law suit if the story is as stated, but I suspect there is more to it too.

Advocating peace is never wrong, and I can bearly imagin that the US law prohibits loving peace.... however you never know...

Originally posted by Darkness
If this man gets convicted, the American legal system is pretty screwed up! WTH is wrong with wearing a t-shirt like that when you're shopping at the mall?

Click to expand...

If the man spends a year in jail just for wearing a T-shirt advocating peace, something is DEEPLY wrong with the American legal system.

Was there any mention of accompanying illustrations to the words on the T-shirt I wonder?

Strange that he just 'happened' to be a lawyer!

I'd imagine this would make for good profile for a man in his position to defend himself in such a topical and newsworthy case of this nature.

Exactly, I too was wondering about the possible picture.

If the man spends a year in jail just for wearing a T-shirt advocating peace, something is DEEPLY wrong with the American legal system.

Click to expand...

If he is charged it is not because he was wearing a tshirt advocating peace, it would be because he was asked by the mall security to comply with their wishes or leave their premises and refused to comply with either of these options, despite the obvious OTT nature of the incident, technically he was guilty of trespass by being somewhere he was not allowed by the owners to be.

Kentonio

Uhhh. I suspect there's more to it because I've been totally blind for the past year and a half as a vengeance based, warmonger climate has pervaded this country and the constitution has been increasingly disregarded. Nor have I checked in to CFC every day and seen people who call for peace repeatedly branded as the aides de camp of dictators and terrorists.

That mall ought to never see a dime of American business again.

But i dont see which charge have been retain against him. I guess he just meet 2 stuborn and bullish policeman. I mean, a policeman doesnt have the right to tell you "remove your cloths" in a public area, especialy for political reason.

If i were him, i will institute some legal proceding against those policeman for exhaustion and abuse of authority. Here in Canada we can do that, in USA i dont know. Can you?

I think that's too bad, I mean, he wasnt waering an offensive shirt, was he?

he cant be sent to jail because of that shirt.then what kind of shirts the people can wear?

Originally posted by Tassadar
But i dont see which charge have been retain against him. I guess he just meet 2 stuborn and bullish policeman. I mean, a policeman doesnt have the right to tell you "remove your cloths" in a public area, especialy for political reason.

If i were him, i will institute some legal proceding against those policeman for exhaustion and abuse of authority. Here in Canada we can do that, in USA i dont know. Can you?

Click to expand...

Technically (I'm not defending this incident, just responding to your point), a mall is not a public place. It is a private business. The two obviously had other shirts with them, because they purchased the peace t-shirts at the mall. I'm certain they would not have had to disrobe in public....there are restrooms for that.

BTW...I'm certain the laws regarding private establishments are the same in Canada as they are here. These were security guards, not policemen. They were within their legal rights to do so....but I don't think anyone believes they should have.


Let's all put this into perspective. Here's what happened...we know from the AP story that a few weeks ago the mall asked a large group of peace protesters to leave, and they did so. I'm certain that these security guards (probably because of that) were given some guidelines to make sure the mall wasn't used as a protest site again. That is why he asked them to remove the t-shirt. Again...I'm not defending, I'm just giving this some context which appears to be lacking so far.

Security guard doesnt have the right to institute legal procedure IIRC, they can retain you and call police officer, and only policeman can bring you to courthouse IF THEY HAVE A GOOD REASON, otherwise it is abuse, and the judge will them.


It would be interesting to see, if a mailshope can legaly ban a citizen for wearing a political shirt. I am pretty sure they cannot, they dont have a good reason.

Try this article: Peace T-shirt leads to man's arrest The detials are as follows:
1) They had the t-shirts made at the mall.
2) They wore them.
3) The people around them were causing a scene.
4) They were first asked to remove them, and when they failed to do so were asked to leave the mall, which is private proprety.
5) They were arrested for refusing to leave private property (tresspassing).

While anyone has a right to speak out under the correct conditions and that right is in the cinstitution, it does not supercede the rights of an owner to his property. While you have a right to speak your mind, that doesn't give you the right to come into my house and force me to listen. You have the right to stand at the public street corner and say what you will, but I have the right to have you removed from my property. This also seems to have been a long standing policy of the mall to keep protesters away and maintain a non-political atmosphere.
The fact there there is a sign at the entrance to warn customers is a sure sign. I would not be suprised if these two did not do this in response to the earlier incident.

I personnally think it was silly for either party to let it get that far. The man should have been better informed of his rights, verses the right of the owners. The security for the mall shouldn't have let things get that far, and should probably removed those that were really creating the problem (Those that were silly enough to cause a scene over some words on a shirt). Most likely, the charges will be dropped if the man agrees not to make a big deal out of it.