Pearland Texas and Brazoria County Apparently Needs Training on Both Failure to ID and Open Carry


On April 29, 2015, Brazoria County, Texas Deputy Constable Carlos Bustos* approaches an individual who is apparently open carrying a rifle over his back. The individual asked if he was being detained and was told that he was not, but when he attempted to leave was stopped by the deputy. He attempts to leave again and the deputy wants to know if the rifle is unloaded.

Uh, deputy? There is no law that states that the rifle has to be unloaded. And if challenged on it, you can’t turn it around and require that the citizen prove that there is a law which allows him to carry a loaded rifle. You see, in this country, to create a crime, the legislature must explicitly state what the violation is, to notify the public what the law is.

Pearland Police Officer Brown† took the same approach that the weapon had to be unloaded, and upped the ante by informing the citizen that he had to identify himself or he would be arrested for Failure to Identify (at 3:00). Again, this is not correct. A person is under no obligation under Texas law to identify themselves unless they have been arrested. This is clear, well established law.

Then, at about 14:00 in the video, Deputy Bustos claims that the citizen doesn’t have any respect for the law, because he won’t answer the officers questions or comply with their unlawful demands. He really doesn’t understand that to detain citizens, he has to have reasonable suspicion of a real crime, not something that he made up. And at 18:45, Deputy Bustos suggests that the citizen take it up with his legislators, because they “wrote those laws.” Except that the citizen is correct and there is no such law in Texas. Finally, at the very end of the video, Deputy Bustos apologized for his mistake.

*Deputy Bustos appears to be from Precinct 2. Contact information is available at the link.

†The Pearland Police Department contact information is here.

Memorial Day, 2015


Failure to Identify Properly Applied, and Another Sovereign Argument Down the Tubes


A couple of weeks ago, Scott Richardson was stopped by the Addison Police Department for speeding. We pick up when the officer is asking Richardson for his driver’s license and proof of insurance. Richardson then makes a production of the stop.

Richardson apparently believes that the officer doesn’t have the right to stop him, and that speeding is not a crime in Texas. While it is true that you cannot be arrested for speeding unless you refuse to sign the citation, it is not correct that you do not have to identify yourself to the officer who has stopped you for speeding.

Then Richardson starts on the internet sovereign BS that he’s not “driving” because he is not out for a “commercial” purpose. Yeah, that didn’t work either.

So Richardson gets his window busted out and arrested for failure to display driver’s license.

That’s how it is supposed to work.



















Yet Another Houston Officer (Badge 7428) who doesn’t Understand Failure to ID


And here we go again.

This starts off bad from the start.  The officer pulls over and tells our open carrying friend* that “you’re not under arrest, you’re not even being detained.”  OK, so far so good.  So the open carrying guy starts to walk away.  That parts real simple, if a person is not being detained, he doesn’t have to stand and talk to you.

The officer then pulls in front of our guy and comes out of the car with his patrol rifle.  That’s over the top.  Walking away from a consensual stop is now grounds to deploy your rifle?  Then, the officer tells him he can try “this constitutional crap” but that he’s f***ing up right now. (0:45).  Then he asks for ID and when the citizen says he doesn’t have it, the officer wants to know how he is supposed to know if the citizen is a felon or not.

Uh, officer?  Do you have reasonable suspicion that he is a felon?  And how did you get this reasonable suspicion?  Was the kilt some prison gang tartan?  He must be afraid of something, because at 1:15 he tells his back up to “step it up,” which is police slang for increase to lights and siren, get here quick, I need help.  Again, really?  What exactly has he done to make you fear him?

“All I’m asking for is some ID while you’re walking down my street with a gun strapped to your hip.”  Ah, officer?  It’s not your street.  It belongs to the public that you work for, not you.  Then the officer tells him to put the camera on the hood of the squad car, and the officer does good.  He tells him that he can point it in whichever direction he wants and can continue to record.

Of course, the black female corporal then immediately points the camera away from the citizen and the officers. (2:30).  I wonder if anyone has told her about the Dallas officers who were indicted for felony evidence tampering for doing the same thing with their dash cams?   Thankfully the first officer has enough sense to turn it back around as soon as he noticed, a few seconds later.

At 4:14, the officer screws up again though, telling the citizen that he is required to provide ID to the officer.  That’s just not correct, and hasn’t been correct since Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47 (1979), and it is certainly not true under current Texas law, which has clearly established that a person does not commit an offense by refusing to identify himself while being detained.

At 10:52, the citizen asks why he is being detained, and the officer replies that he stopped him for walking down the street with a gun on his hip.  Again, this is not a violation.




At about 11:30, the officer calls the Harris County District Attorney’s Office† and this discussion gets real interesting.  First, the officer realizes that his reasonable suspicion to stop is thin to non-existent and says so.  Second, you can hear the female DA in the background, and she isn’t jumping up and down to throw this guy in jail, because she’s not hearing anything that remotely sounds close to being probable cause.  At one point, while the officer is on hold, he asks the citizen if he understands what the problem is–but the problem is the officer, not the citizen.  When the DA comes back on the line, she tells him that the officer does not have a charge, any charge, that the citizen can be arrested for.

What is amazing is that even after the DA said there is no Failure to ID charge, the officer is still telling the citizen that he has to have ID.  No, officer, he does not have to have ID.  That’s why you couldn’t get a control number, because the citizen did not have to have ID.

The officer’s badge number was 7428.

*OK, first, any guy who wears a kilt with a t-shirt and a straw hat while carrying an AR-15 in Texas is alright in my book, even if I remain skeptical of the wisdom of open-carry.

†To keep officers from making bad arrests, the Harris County DA requires that the officers get a control number before the arrest.  Without a control number, the jail will not accept a prisoner.

Follow-up to Purcell v. Hollenbeck lawsuit









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