If it's the story I'm thinking of, GP has the details a little mixed up. But it's been a few years since the story broke so that's understandable. The issue wa

If it's the story I'm thinking of, GP has the details a little mixed up. But it's been a few years since the story broke so that's understandable. The issue was the knife itself being illegal in New York -- a knife that could be bought at almost any hardware or art supply store in the city. Concealed or not, the guy was violating a poorly written law meant to criminalize switchblades in the mid 20th century. But cops had been using it to arrest African American men if they saw the telltale pocket clip while stopping them for something else. They classified this certain kind of utility knife as a "gravity knife", even though it wasn't. The law outlaws knives opened with a flick of the wrist, and it took a cop five tries to flick one open in court once because they aren't designed to be opened that way. But that one time was all it took. To bring this back to the original question: in a just world, an arrest for owning one of these knives -- again, one that you could buy at any hardware store shouldn't violate someone's probation. Neither should jaywalking, something I do countless times a day.