An idiotic mistake by a Louisiana police officer led to a nearly 24-hour jail stay for a legal gun owner, who's now suing the department for arresting and detaining him without genuine cause.
18-year-old Maddox Livingston was pulled over by New Roads, Louisiana police on earlier this month for a headlight and license plate lights that were burned out. The traffic stop took a turn, however, when Livingston informed officers that he was exercising his right to carry and had a pistol with him.
An office ran the gun's serial number and told Livingston that it had been reported stolen in Florida. Soon the young man was in handcuffs and on his way to the local jail.
There was just one problem: the gun wasn't stolen, and the officer didn't check the gun's serial number. Instead, he ran the pistol's patent number, which allegedly triggered the false flag.
Livingston was booked, fingerprinted, and faced felony charges before his family produced documentation proving the gun was not stolen. He said he repeatedly tried to tell officers they could verify the gun’s legal status.
“You can call my father. You can call the FFL dealer. It will be proved in five minutes. I could be walking home, going to sleep in my bed tonight. They kept saying, oh, we don’t want to hear it,” Livingston said.
The District Attorney’s Office refused the charges and issued a letter to the jail warden calling for Livingston’s immediate release.
Attorney Rob Marionneaux, who is representing Livingston, said the incident highlights ongoing problems with the New Roads Police Department.
“If I were the mayor and I were on the city council, I would abolish it,” Marionneaux said.
WAFB-TV reports that there've been a number of issues with the New Roads PD in recent years, including a police officer arrested on felony drug charges a few weeks ago. Livingston's arrest appears to be the result of incompetence, not maliciousness, but I don' know that intent matters all that much when it still leads to a legal gun owner sitting in jail for most of a day before he's released.
This week Livingston filed a lawsuit against the department and the officers who arrested him (one of whom was the officer recently arrested on drug charges) alleging that he was subject to a false arrest and detention.
The lawsuit argues that Officers Kyle Powell and Quincy Lathers had no probable cause to arrest Livingston for possession of a stolen firearm because they breached their duty to exercise reasonable care in verifying the status of the firearm in question. The suit further claims that the New Roads PD failed to properly supervise the officers in a number of areas, including "failing to train its police officers in the proper procedure to determine if a firearm was registered, lawfully possessed, or stolen" and "maintaining grossly inadequate procedures for reporting, supervising, investigating, reviewing, disciplining and controlling misconduct by Officers."
If I were on the city council in New Roads I'd be looking to settle this lawsuit as quickly as possible. Even if the individual officers escape consequences because of qualified immunity (which is always a possibility), the gross incompetence on display here is a scathing indictment on the department as a whole as well as the individual officers. Running an NCIC check on a firearm isn't exactly a rare thing for police to do, and it makes me wonder if this was truly the first time a New Roads officer made such a bone-headed mistake.
The consequences for Livingston were and are pretty serious. Not only did he have to spend nearly a day in jail before prosecutors refused to accept charges, he's going to have to disclose and explain his arrest to potential employers in the future. Even if Livingston applies to have his arrest expunged, under Louisiana law he's going to end up spending hundreds of dollars in fees and the arrest will still show up on any search by law enforcement going forward.
The New Roads mayor has said Livingston's arrest may lead to "procedural adjustments" after the police department completes its investigation into what happened. I'd say it should also lead to the city cutting Livingston a hefty check for his troubles, and the firing of any officer who was involved in his arrest and detention for possessing his lawfully-owned handgun.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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