Charges Dropped Against Paul Lathrop. His Story-

A friend of mine was arrested at a truck stop.  The incident happened last February.  Paul Lathrop was accused of brandishing a firearm and making terroristic threats.  All charges were dropped earlier this week.  Here is what we can learn.

Paul drives a truck for a living.  He was instructing when this happened.  His student driver was behind the wheel as they moved through a truck stop.  An irate driver who was parked in the lot climbed onto Paul’s truck to yell at Paul’s student.  Paul diffused the situation rather than call 911.  That was a mistake, though no one knew it at the time.

It was a mistake because the irate driver later called police and claimed that Paul threatened him and “waved a silver glock revolver out the window of the truck”.  The irate driver won the race to the phone.  The police therefore considered the irate driver to be the victim.  Video showed otherwise.  The testimony of Paul and his student matched the video and indicated otherwise.  The police only dropped the charges after Paul spent tens of thousands of dollars hiring a lawyer and being dragged through the legal system.  The lawyer had the truck stop video to exonerate Paul.  Here is the important lesson.

The prosecuting attorney in Nebraska would have happily prosecuted and convicted an innocent man.  The only way that justice was done was because a few hundred of us helped Paul pay for his defense.  You only get the justice you pay for.

Thank you to the many people who supported Paul.  We need to have 20 to 30 thousand dollars sitting in the bank to pay for our defense.  If you don’t have those assets, then you should buy “insurance” plans that will pay for your bail and your legal defense.  It is important that you choose a plan that will pay for your defense rather than reimburse you after your trial.  The point being that you’ll have to come up with the $20k out of your own pocket before you would be reimbursed.

Please learn from other peoples’ experience since you probably can’t afford this lesson.  Thank you to the Armed Citizen Legal Defense Network for helping Paul.  The ACLDN did everything they could to help.  They could not write a check because Paul was not a member at the time of the incident.  Paul is a member now.. as am I.

Here are the lessons in brief-

• Win the race to the phone.
• Have self-defense “insurance”.
• Don’t expect “justice” from our legal system.

Here are the podcasts where Paul described the incident, his arrest, his imprisonment, and his defense.

• I wrote about Paul’s arrest and the fundraising drive here and here.
• Listen to the interview with Bob Mayne on the Handgun World Podcast.
• Listen to the interview with Paul Carlson on the Safety Solutions Academy Podcast.

I will link to other interviews as they are released.
~_~_

Rob