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From The Mailbag

20 years

orty-three year old, morbidly obese former insurance agent Cedric Bradford Glover, a lifelong resident of Shreveport, Louisiana, was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for a year, from 2007 until 2006, when he became Shreveport's first black mayor. Quite likely, because of his current totalitarian edicts that violate both the Constitution of the United States and the laws of the State of Louisiana, he will also probably be Shreveport's only black mayor—at least for a while.

Glover, who is not a particularly racially-inclusive man, is the treasurer of the Shreveport NAACP. president of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Club, and a member of the Shreveport Black Chamber of Commerce. In the state legislature, Glover was on the Executive Committee of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus. Growing into Shreveport politics, Glover was instrumental in cleaning up the drug-infested, gang-infested black neighborhoods through a very unconstitutional program he developed called Operation THOR—an acronym for Take, Hold, Organize and Return which turned civil rights in Shreveport upside down in order to rid of drug dealers and gang members from black neighborhoods in Shreveport.

Increasing, the American people are turning a blind eye on government's usurpations of their rights, believing it's necessary to surrender a little liberty for more safety. Those citizens would be well-advised to remember the words of Benjamin Franklin who wisely said "...those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." If you could use Google's Wayback Machine and go back in history to Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Stalin's Soviet Union or Mao's China and ask the people under the thumb of dictators if the "safety" they now possessed was worth the loss of their civil liberties—a nibble at a time—not a single one would tell you that the sacrifice of liberty was worth the "enlightened" greater freedom they got under fascism or socialism.

Glover is a member, with growing standing, of Mayors Against Illegal Guns (which means mayors against all guns since gun regulations only regulate legal weapons), an anti-2nd Amendment group headed by New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. Looking at New York and Washington, DC, Glover believes he has a right, at least temporarily, to seize lawful guns in police stops because of: "...the polarizing rhetoric of gun politics on all sides only obscures the tragic reality we see every day on our streets: violent criminals with easy access to firearms." Rhetoric aside, Glover remains adamant that only the police in his city can be armed. To accomplish that he has to create a city ordinance banning firearms that will withstand both a State court and a federal court challenge. For the interim, Glover's police will have to be content with temporarily seizing the legal firearms of a well-armed public, and returning them to their owners after writing their citations. According to Glover, police officers may disarm any civilian at any time, for any reason, and the civilian has an obligation to surrender his weapon willingly, without cavil or question.

When Glover was elected, one of the new mayor's first acts was to implement Operation THOR in the entire city of Shreveport. Middle class white citizens who liked THOR when it was used in the drug and gang-infested minority neighborhoods saw THOR in a new light when Glover implemented it citywide.

Glover decided that the constitutional rights of Shreveport residents were arbitrarily suspended whenever a Shreveport police officer pulled them over. Not just their freedom of movement, but all of their rights. Particularly their 2nd Amendment rights. Glover, who wants to build a personal army of cops, was a godsend to a police department mired in scandal. In 2006, before Glover became the mayor, Darlene Atkins filed a lawsuit against Shreveport police officer Wylie Willis after he put a gun to the head of her son, Dillon Freeman and told him where he would shoot Freeman if any of Dillon's family members came near him. Jasmine Winston filed a lawsuit against the city after Willis beat her with a baton and slammed her face into the pavement. Willis was not the "one bad apple in the barrel" in Shreveport. In 2007, eight Shreveport police officers were arrested on various charges that included perjury, falsify police reports, falsifying tickets, drug charges, and even an online relationship with an underage girl. In Feb., 2008, shown in the video on the right, Shreveport police arrested Angela Garbarino who insisted on her right to "make a phone call."

The Garbarino holding cell video vanished for a period of time. When it finally surfaced, under subpoena, a good portion of it, both sound and image, was edited by the Shreveport police. The alleged beating was gone. From portion of the video where the cop's shirt blocks the screen, the balance of the video was edited out and spliced to the end of the tape where Garbarino is seen lying in a pool of her own blood. Garbarino said the officer beat her up. According to the officer, she fell down. The police officer was fired. He was not charged with assault. Photographs taken of Garbarino shows she suffered a severe beating, including two black eyes, a broken nose and a gash in her forehead that required stitches. The officer who is shown in the video with Garbarino is Officer Wylie Wills. The Shreveport Police Union is still fighting to get Willis' job back.

Last year Mayor Glover vetoed a police retention plan that included a pay raise for Shreveport police. The proposal, made by a Republican council member, would have cost the city $2 million per year. The plan was designed to stem the loss of good officers over low pay and safety issues. Glover decided the safety issue could be easily solved by empowering the cops. This began by allowing police to temporarily seize any legal and lawful weapon in the possession of Louisianians who are stopped, and permanently seizing any non-permitted weapons in the possession of anyone else. Police officers in Shreveport are told that they possess authority "...that the President of the United States does not have...and that is the ability to suspend your rights." Glover proudly admits that "...this is one of the things I tell each and every police officer who graduates from the Shreveport Police Academy since I've been mayor."

Using the Obama Administration's stimulus money, Glover has now given that message to 90 new cops paid for by the taxpayers of the United States who have been unconstitutionally empowered by Cedric-the-Great Glover to clean up Shreveport and seize every unlawful weapon they find. Permitted weapons are merely "taken into custody" temporarily. The problem with Glover's plan is that the State of Louisiana enacted a "right to carry law" in 1996 that makes it legal for State residents to carry a permitted concealed weapon—without requiring the residents to register their firearms. Under R.S. 40:1379.3(T)(1) residents are granted statewide authority to carry a concealed handgun on their person. Anyone who can legally buy a gun can get a permit to carry. The law excludes rifles and shotguns with modified stocks and/or barrels. The only places excluded from "carrying" under the law are schools (covered by federal law) and churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship (covered by the State law). Having a permitted weapon in your car is legal. Except in Shreveport where Glover insists any gun, permitted or not, posed a veiled threat to law enforcement.

When Shreveport police officers stop a motorist in their jurisdiction, according to Glover, the rights of that citizen are suspended. This includes not only their freedom of movement, but all other rights. The Bill of Rights is temporarily suspended until the cop tells the citizen he or she is free to go. In Shreveport, any stop is grounds for an appropriate inspection of your vehicle (i.e., an unconstitutional search of your vehicle to find anything that will incriminate the vehicle owner). Tail light out? Get out of your car. Inspection sticker expired? Get out of your car. Rolling stop at a stop sign? Get out of your car. Improper lane change? Get out of your car.

On June 5, 2009 when Shreveport resident Robert Baillio was stopped it was, ostensibly, for failing to use a turn signal while making a turn. However, the cop who stopped Baillio was interested only in the National Rifle Association sticker in the rear window of his pickup truck and a second decal that said: "Armed We Are Citizens! Un-Armed We Are Subjects!" A third sticker which depicted various ammo cartridges was captioned: "Celebrate Diversity."

Baillio was on his way home from work that day, about 9:45 p.m., when his wife called and asked him to stop at a local restaurant and pick up a carryout order. He was about a block or so from the restaurant when he saw the flashing lights in his rearview mirror. He stopped. He got out of his truck and walked to back tailgate, stopping in the glare of the cruiser's headlights. Baillio said he did that deliberately so the officer could see he was not carrying a weapon and posed no threat to anyone.

From the front of his vehicle, the cop asked: "Do you have any firearms in your vehicle?" Baillio said the question took him by surprise, but he replied he did, telling the cop that his pistol was between the driver's seat and the console. (Quite obviously if I was a police officer in a "carry" State, that would be the very first question I would ask anyone I stopped, and my hand would be on the butt of my own service weapon as I asked it.).

The officer told Baillio he failed to use his electronic turn signal when making a turning, then without ticketing him for an improper turn, asked for his "carry permit," and directed pointed questions at him about his membership in the NRA, commenting negatively about the bumper stickers on the back windshield of his truck. Because he was not ticketed for his traffic offense (not even a warning ticket), it is reasonably safe to assume that Baillio was being profiled for the pro-gun advocacy on the back window of his vehicle, The search appears to have been conducted to determine if he had any non-permit weapons which could be legally seized as contraband.

The following morning Baillio called the mayor's office to complain about the stop. Surprised he actually got the mayor on the phone, pointed out to Glover that he "..answered the cop's questions honestly and he disarmed me."

"Which would be appropriate and proper action, sir," Glover replied. "The fact that you gave the correct answer simply means you did what you were supposed to do, and that is, to give that weapon to the police officer so he could appropriately place it in a place where it would be no threat to you, to him, or to anyone in the general public...It's something that no police officer...anywhere within this country would defend, or support, or allow."

Confused, Baillio shot back: "Now you lost me there for a second..I'm not sure what you're saying."

"You're not sure of what I'm saying?" Glover replied.

"Well," Baillio said incredulously , "I don't know if my phone broke up, or what, but you're saying that as a citizen, when I'm stopped by a police officer, I don't have any rights?"

Probably nodding on his end of the line, the mayor agreed, "Your rights at that point, Mr. Baillio, have been suspended. That's part of what makes the powers and duties of a (...noise on tape...) in fact it's one of the things that I say to each and every one of the police officers who graduate from the Shreveport Police Academy since I've been mayor. You have to understand there is a great deal of power that is vested within...uh...the law enforcement personnel of this country. It's why there is a great deal of responsibility that has to go along with it. That's why I'm very proud based on the description you just gave me. It appears that this particular officer has exercised that power in a very professional fashion. Each of those officers—even the most junior one who is fresh out of the academy...uh...has a power...uh...that I, as the elected mayor of the City of Shreveport...uh...that I do not have. They have a power that the President of the United States does not have...and that is the ability to suspend your [constitutional] rights."

This is what happens when a large American city elects an unqualified person as its chief executive. Cedric Glover should have remained an insurance agent where he could use his personal brand of BS to enrich himself without trampling the Bill of Rights. Lew Rockwell, or whomever it was that said it was right. Cedric Glover would make an excellent despot in a undeveloped third world nation. He would fit well in the company of people like Fidel Castro, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong il or even Barack Hussein Obama—men who believe personal civil rights is a retractable gift from government.

"In answer to [the] question that the officer gave to you of, 'do you have a weapon in the vehicle?' If you had said 'no,' and the officer chose, in the interest of the officer's safety, to secure you in a safe position, and then do an appropriate inspection of your vehicle...and determined that you had, in fact, did possess a weapon, you would be guilty or potentially guilty of [an even] more severe offense."

"Which would be—what?" Baillio asked.

"Failure to b—to...to..." Glover stammered, searching for the best "official sounding" answer, "...honestly answer a question that has been asked of you by a law enforcement officer."

Baillio reiterated, "Well, I answered that question honestly and he [still] disarmed me."

"Which," Glover interjected, "was appropriate and proper action, sir. The fact that you gave the correct answer—it simply means that you did what you were supposed to have done. And that is, to give that weapon to the police office so he could appropriately place it in a place where it would not be a threat to you, to him, or to anyone in the general public."

"Well, you know he still had a gun?" Baillio said, "How is he—"

"Because he's a police officer," Glover interrupted. "As I've just related to you, that police officer has powers, sir, that you do not have. He has powers that I do not have. I'm the mayor of the City of Shreveport. I'm responsible for the entirety of this city, but...I don't have arrest powers. I do not have the power to detain you. I do not have the power to...suspend your rights, sir...but a police officer does....Barack Obama, who commands the military forces of this nation does not have that right."

The dialogue between Glover and Baillio continued for several minutes with neither person conceding their point of view. Finally, seeing the conversation was going no where, Baillio said: "So what you are saying is I give up my rights to keep and bear arms if I'm stopped by the police. Is that correct?"

"Sir, you have no rights when you've been pulled over by a police officer for a potential criminal offense to stand there will your weapon at your side, in your hand, because of your 2nd Amendment rights, sir. That does not mean, at that point, your 2nd Amendment right has been taken away. It means, at that particular point in time, it has been suspended."

Being pulled over for making an illegal lane change (moving to another lane without using a turn signal, or turning a corner without using your turn signal) is now a potentially criminal offense in Shreveport? Or, is it that having a NRA sticker on your windshield a potentially criminal offense, or having a bumper sticker on your rear truck window that says "Armed We Are Citizens! Unarmed We Are Subjects!" is potentially a criminal offense? Or the more threatening sticker which depicted various ammo cartridges and is captioned: "Celebrate Diversity" is more potentially a criminal offense since 'diversity" is a more suggestive word?

"I've never heard of rights being suspended," Baillio said. "This was the first I've heard about it. But, I didn't have [my gun] in my hand."

"Well, sir," Glover said dismissively, "I...I would suggest that you go and talk to folks who appear to be smarter than you and I. Only thing I'm offering to you is that is how law enforcement works, sir."

"Maybe you misunderstood," Baillio said, correcting the mayor, "I didn't have a gun in my hand. It was in the vehicle.

Glover would not concede the point. Agreeing that Baillio had a gun in his car, he added that he could also have possibly had one within reach—where he was standing. It is the stated position of the antigun crowd that guns are the danger, and that people are secure only when all of the guns are taken from the people, and only those in authority are armed.

The mayors of every major urban center in the United States, looking at gun violence statistics, repeatedly ask themselves one question: how do you get rid of guns? Crime and mortality control the gun debate in the nation. Firearms homicides by 14- to 24-year olds increased by 173% between 1985 to 1993 and decreased by 47% from 1993 to 1999. What happened in the 1990s? The liberals, of course, will point to the Bill Clinton enacted Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 with it companion Instant Criminal Background Check System as the reason for the decline of gun deaths nationwide. They, of course, would be wrong since the instant background checks were not instituted by the FBI until Nov. 30, 1998.

What caused the dramatic downward spike in gun violence in the United States during the 1990s wasn't due to the efforts of the left to disarm law-abiding citizens, it was due to a myriad of "right-to-carry" laws that began in Texas in 1991 after the Luby's Cafeteria Massacre. On Oct. 16, 1991, a couple days after he celebrated his 35th birthday, George Jo Hennard, Jr. decided to get back at everyone who'd ever wronged him by taking about 100 people with him when he committed suicide. He drove his 1987 Ford Ranger pickup truck through the plate glass window into a Luby's Cafeteria at 12:35 p.m. and opened fire with a Glock 17 and a Ruger P-89 pistol. At 12:51 p.m., after killing 23 people and wounding 20 others—and only after being cornered by police—Hennard shot himself in the head.

Most Americans have seen the video of Suzanna Gratia Hupp, the daughter of two of Hennard's victims testify before Congress. Dr. Gratia Hupp, who owned a handgun, respected the laws of the State which forbade people from carrying concealed weapons and left the gun, which was usually in her handbag, in her vehicle. Gratia Hupp reached for her purse after Hennard shot Dr. Michael Griffith, a local veterinarian, who ran up to the driver's side of Hennard's truck, thinking someone may have had a heart attack and accidentally crashed through the window. When she realized she did not have her gun, Hennard was coming towards them. When he was about 12 feet away, her father, Al Gratia, rushed Hennard in an attempt to subdue him. Hennard shot him. When Hupp's mother Ursula Edith Marie Gratia, crawled over to her husband and cradled him in her arms, Hennard shot her, too. When he turned the gun on Hupp, it was empty. As he calmly reloaded, she escaped. Gratia-Hupp became a "right-to-carry" advocate. Gratia-Hupp served in the Texas legislature from 1997 to 2007. She is recognized, nationwide, as the nation's leading advocate for right-to-carry.

When she concluded her testimony before a US Senate committee debating a ban on assault weapons, Dr. Gratia-Hupp said something that every American needs to understand, because it explains why the left is trying so hard to outlaw the private ownership of guns in the United States. She said: "I've been sitting here getting more and more fed up with all of this talk about these...pieces of machinery...having no legitimate sporting purpose. No legitimate hunting purpose. People, that is not the point of the 2nd Amendment. The 2nd Amendment is not about duck hunting. And I know I'm not going to make very many friends here saying this, but its about our rights...all of our rights...to be able to protect ourselves from all of you guys..." motioning the US Senators on the dais.

Furthermore, when the US Supreme Court ruled on US v Miller 307 US 174 in 1939, Justice William O. Douglas opined on the record that, based on the privileges standardized by the States in the 18th century (which was then, and still is, the superior government of the United States), the general public—not the State-controlled militias—had to be as well-armed as its central government since the people, and the States, viewed the federal government as much, if not more, of a threat to liberty than any foreign intruder on American soil.

Whenever governments fear its citizens, the first thing those in government will do is attempt to disarm its citizenry in order to protect itself from the people. Citizens armed with nothing more threatening than scythes, garden hoes, lawn rakes and pitchforks pose no threat to government, and thus, their voices are muted— which ours are today. Several US cities, like Philadelphia, San Francisco and Shreveport, which have attempted to thwart their State legislatures by banning firearms within their communities have found their local gun regulations overturned since the US Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v Heller. Philadelphia's gun ban was struck down by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1996 during a rash of "carry laws" enacted by state legislatures. The court ruled that no municipality could create laws to supersede laws enacted by the State government. The liberal 9th Circuit Court struck down an ordinance in California's Alameda County that banned gun shows, affirming that the 2nd Amendment applies as much to the States as it does the federal government.

The DC v Heller victory will be short-lived if Obama is able to replace one of the conservative judges, or centrist Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy on the high court with a liberal. And, make no bones about it, Obama is determined to abolish the right of the people under the 2nd Amendment, to own and possess firearms. Shreveport mayor Cedric Glover is convinced he is on the winning side of this argument.

So, if you forget everything else you read in this article: remember this. When you watch the reelection campaign ads of leftwingers for the US House or Senate, and you see the pro-abortion, pro-illegal alien, pro-global warming, pro-global government candidates pretending they are pro-gun by posing in a duck blind or sitting on a deer stand with a rifle or shotgun, or shooting skeets, remember the words of Dr. Susanna Gratia Hupp: "The 2nd Amendment is not about duck hunting...its about our rights...all of our rights...to be able to protect ourselves from [government]..."