A Maine man ran into a quandary with police after they received calls he had a pistol tucked into his pants and confronted state tree trimming contractors who had arrived on his property.
The Morning Sentinel reported that when Michael Smith of Norridgewock heard a work crew moving in with equipment Tuesday morning, he went outside to tell them to get lost. He didn’t have a shirt on when he stepped out, as the story goes — and though the crew said OK, one of the workers thought he saw a gun jutting out the front of Smith’s pants.
They called the cops, and police arrived at Smith’s front door minutes later with a megaphone, telling him to come out.
What the Maine State Troopers ended up seeing was that Smith indeed had a gun on him — a tattoo of one.
Smith cooperated with police, telling the paper, “I got plans today. I didn’t want to get shot.”
Maine is a state where “open carry” of weapons is generally allowed without a permit.
“Obviously it was a misunderstanding and he didn’t have a weapon, but we had to respond to the initial report as if he did,” Maine State Police Trooper Scott Duff said.
Smith wasn’t charged with any crime, but was found guilty by a jury of his peers for having bad taste in tattoos, which some say appear to be Nazi symbolism.
(h / t HuffPo)
