The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1915-06-30
OPPRESSIVE AND ILLEGAL

Last Saturday a negro named
George Thagard was tried in Judge
Smiths court for carrying concealed
weapons. The jury found him not
guilty.
His arrest and trial was another of
those irritating incidents of which the
people of this county are becoming
weary.
Thagard lives near Orange Lake, is
generally employed on S. Fl. Cats
kills big farm, and is well-behaved,
Woodworking man. He was at the
Orange Springs colored picnic last
week. A deputy sheriff from Ocala
was also present, and with him were
couple of negroes of the class that
nearly every sheriff's office finds nee
essary, or thinks is necessary, to en-
pIoy as spoilers. They are generally
referred to as pimps, and no man who
knows them would accept their UNI
supported evidence for anything. One
of these men told the deputy that
Thagard had pistol. The deputy
arrested Thagard and another negro,
searched them both, but found no pis-
toll. He then went to the house of an
other negro with whom Thagard
made his home and searched it. He
found no pistol, but he brought Thag-
ard to Ocala, where he was kept in
jail two days, but on having his trial
was found not guilty. Besides the in
justice and Inconvenience of his ar
rest, and detention in jail, he had to
pay a lawyer a good-sized fee for a
poor man to represent him in court.
This arrest was not only contrary
to justice and good policy, but many
of the things connected with it were
contrary to law.
An officer has no right to arrest
man without warrant if the man is
behaving himself, unless he has good
reason to believe he has either COM
mitted crime or is about to do so.
/ If an officer arrests man on sus-'
picion of his having a concealed
weapon, searches him and finds no
weapon, he has no right to detain- him,
unless, of course, he knows or strong
Ily suspects the man is criminal.
An officer has no right to search a
mans house without a search war
rant, unless he has good reason to be-
/ lieve the man has Intoxicating liquors
| in his house. It is not against the law
for man to have a pistol in his house
IF it is, 95 per cent of the white men
in the state are breaking it. In enter
! it, even if he had found a pistol, the
/ deputy committed a much greater Of
/ Tense against the law, which he is
sworn to uphold, than the negro
would have committed had he had a
weapon on him.
The arrest, bringing the negro to
Ocala, trial, etc., cost the taxpayers
of Marion county, 95 per cent of them
whites, several dollars in fees. It's
difficult enough for the people of this
county to pay taxes for justice. It's a
rank imposition to tax them for in
j justice.
There are negroes who belong to
the criminal class, and they are num-
erous enough to keep the officers busy.
Its rotten bad policy and rank injus-
tice to interfere with those who are
peaceable and industrious, haul them
off to Ocala, keep them in Jail and
make them pay out of their scanty
wages to keep from going on the
hard roads. And as aforesaid, it is a
rank imposition on the white people
to make them pay for this sort of
policy. 1t keeps the negroes frighten-
ed and irritated, disgusts the white
people and gives the censorious
northern press a reason for some of
the mean things it says about the
South.