Man arrested for 'peace' T-shirt
(Via Adam)
When people are allowed to wear anti-war T-shirts in a mall- then and ONLY then will we know that the terrorists have won. Yes, that's right; when T-shirts are outlawed, only outlaws will wear T-shirts.
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 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.
That's right. Downs wasn't soliciting on private property. He wasn't carrying a gun. He wasn't selling drugs. He was wearing a T-shirt, which no one else would likely have noticed if mall management hadn't acted like total jackasses. Now Downs has a cause and a case, and the security guards look like the self-important power-trippers that they are. Nice going, eh?
I smell LAWSUIT....
UPDATE: Now the mall just wants the whole thing to go away quietly. Nice try, dickweeds....
