Las Vegas Review-Journal:

A Henderson officer suspended after he drove a damaged SWAT vehicle until it caught fire drove at least a mile and a half with sparks shooting from the car.

That is according to the man who called 911 after he followed the smoking SUV to the driver’s gated Southern Highlands neighborhood about 11 p.m. Feb. 27.

“My first thought was a drunk driver or something. It was evident the tire was completely gone on the car. I said, ‘What the hell is this guy doing?’ ” said the man, who asked that his name not be used.

“Hot metal was flying. It looked like something you see in a police chase in a movie where the tire blows and you just keep driving,” he said.

At the time, the caller had no idea the 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe was a $50,000 unmarked SWAT vehicle being driven by 36-year-old Justin Simo, a veteran Henderson officer.

The caller followed the Tahoe north on Southern Highlands Parkway and then east on Somerset Hills Avenue. By the time the driver arrived at the gate to the Interlude development, it was on fire.

“The dude came out (of the car) and said, ‘Can you believe this? My car’s on fire,’ ” the caller said. “I said, ‘Dude, you just drove a mile and a half on a blown tire.’ ”

The driver took several water bottles from the car and tried to douse the blaze, which was spreading from the front left tire to the rest of the vehicle.

By this time, the caller was on the phone with 911 dispatchers.

His conversation with Simo could be heard on a Clark County dispatcher’s recording, released Wednesday:

“Dude, hey! Hey, just let it – get back, get away from that thing dude!” the caller yelled.

He then warned the driver about the Tahoe’s fuel line catching fire before responding to the dispatcher:

“I’m sorry. I’m trying to talk to him. I think he’s drunk.”

Henderson police, which has opened an internal investigation into the incident, said there was no indication Simo had been drinking.

Las Vegas police, which investigated the fire, determined nothing criminal had taken place and did not take an incident report, spokeswoman Laura Meltzer said.

It’s unclear whether Simo was given a field sobriety test or an alcohol breath test. Henderson spokesman Keith Paul said that information would be part of the internal case.

Las Vegas police had been aware of the caller’s suspicions.

“He did say the driver was possibly drunk, right?” a police dispatcher asked on the 911 recording.

“Yeah,” the fire dispatcher responded.

Simo was suspended with pay after a Review-Journal story about the incident was published Monday evening, five days after the incident.

The 911 caller said in an interview Wednesday that he assumed the driver was drunk but only because he couldn’t think of another explanation.

The driver hadn’t been stumbling or slurring his words, but he wouldn’t step away from the burning car, he said.

“He told me there was ammo inside,” he said. “I thought, ‘Why don’t you get a little closer, you moron.’ ”

And thus do they have an inferiority complex, having to ask questions like Is SWAT Still Special.

Prior:

Chicago SWAT Raid Gone Terribly Wrong

SWAT Raids Category

UPDATE: The vehicle this officer drive is a total loss.

Isaac Chase of Guns For Everyone sends this along.  It’s an online petition to let Colorado Governor Hickenlooper know where you stand on proposed gun legislation.

So here is my inner struggle.  My head tells me one thing.  I know that I have second amendment brothers and sisters in Colorado who needs our help.  Therefore, for my Colorado readers I am letting you know that this petition exists.

But my heart tells me something else.  I keep thinking, do it, do it, do it, pass the legislation you pansy-ass liberals.  Bring it.  Get what you ask for and what you deserve.  And let the voters see exactly what they voted for.  There is no better teacher than consequences.

Ammoland gives us this.

Erie, Colorado-based Magpul Industries founder Richard Fitzpatrick is making one thing clear: if Democrats in the state house and senate succeed in passing a high capacity magazine ban, Magpul is leaving the state and taking the $85 million it would have generate for Colorado next year with it.

Fitzpatrick’s company has been making magazines for AR-15s since 1999 and is now “one of the country’s largest producers of magazines and other firearms accessories for gun enthusiasts, law enforcement, and the military.”

He says attempts to restrict the size of magazines and add serial numbers to each one will make production costs untenable in Colorado.

Moreover, with state Democrats pressing for a bill to hold gun manufacturers liable for the criminal misuse of “assault weapons,” Fitzpatrick fears that if Magpul remains within the state and a criminal tapes two magazines together to outsmart the ban, Magpul will be held liable.

So now if the Colorado politicians back down, they have let a gun parts manufacturer bully them around.  The liberals couldn’t let that happen, could they?

But that’s my heart speaking.  My head says fill out the petition.  My heart says pass the law and see Magpul run.  Run Magpul run,  see Magpul run.  Hickenlooper sees Magpul run.  Everyone sees Magpul run.  Bye bye, Magpul.

Or perhaps the proper title would have been “You the Extremist and Tannerite.”  David Codrea.

An “Unclassified/For Official Use Only” Federal Bureau of Investigation WMD Intelligence Analysis Section Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center intelligence bulletin issued Tuesday “assesses with high confidence recreationally used exploding targets (ETs), commonly referred to as tannerite, or reactive targets, can be used as an explosive for illicit purposes by criminals and extremists and explosive precursor chemicals (EPCs) present in ETs can be combined with other materials to manufacture explosives for use in improvised explosive devices (IEDs).”

[ … ]

“The term extremists,” the bulletin explains in a footnote, “includes international terrorists, homegrown violent extremists, domestic terrorists, and lone wolf offenders operating in the United States or abroad.” Previous Gun Rights Examiner reports have demonstrated the federal government applies those terms liberally to include groups as innocuous as “preppers” and “Constitutionalists,” among others.

Good Lord.  Seriously?  Really?  Western Rifle Shooters reacts:

Boo!

Tannerite!

Hold me close, Uncle Bob — I’m a-skeered.

Boo!

On a serious note (because the FBI is so unserious these days), note what is not happening in all of this.  The FBI is not chasing down illegal aliens crossing the border.  They are not targeting the Mexican drug lords.  They are not eradicating MS-13.  They are not burrowing down deep into organized crime in the inner cities.  The folks who work in the field offices might get killed doing those things.

No, those things are hard to do.  They would rather wring their hands over “extremists” and Tannerite.  So there you have it.  Your tax dollars at work.

Read it at Examiner.

Bob Owens:

On January 15 I penned Shock the System: Just one example of how the government could lose a civil conflict.

It was a warning of how patriots could selectively shut down the capitols of states and nations by eliminating the electrical substations and residential transformers that service those cities. Though I stated nothing new either tactically or strategically (power stations were always the first targets of bombers and saboteurs dating back to before World War II), the post absolutely terrified the powers that be.

Hershel Smith at The Captain’s Journal referenced that article in Surviving The Apocalypse: Thinking Strategically Rather Than Tactically three days ago, in a continuation of his thoughts on tactics for “lone wolf”operations in a domestic insurgency.

He referred back to a post he wrote almost two and a half years ago, A Terrorist Attack That America Cannot Absorb, which discussed attacks on the main step-up transformers at coal power plants.

Unlike the residential transformers and smaller substations I discussed in Shock the System that would create short-term, comparatively isolated blackouts, the sort of attack that concerned Smith were well-coordinated attacks that would effectively strike a blow against the entire national grid, by knocking-out the system at the points of generation, taking out very rare pieces of equipment that would take years to replace. If attacks took out even a small number of step-up transformers, it would force the entire nation to ration power, and would have a crippling effect on the national economy.

Some people seem appalled at the fact that the sort of attacks that American forces have used so successfully overseas (Iraq’s electrical grid is still in the process of recovering from two wars) might be used against American cities… and that is the exact point both Smith and I were trying to make. Neither of us are advocates of such attacks, as both of us probably have a better idea than the layman of the effect such attacks would have. I’d likely lose several people I love very much who have medical conditions were such an attack to affect this region. these aren’t things we want. these are things we fear.

Smith and I are pointing out the fact that if states or the federal government is willing to push citizens into a Second Revolutionary War over the natural right to self defense, they will feel the wrath of the right of revolution that is the birthright of ever American.

Read Bob’s entire post.  Exactly.  I felt the necessity to make a similar point in one comment I made.

This article does not “promote this plan.” This article acknowledges reality. Confiscatory policies for guns will never work in America because gun owners will not relinquish their God-given rights to bear arms. Next logical step. Gun owners will not stand down confiscation teams day after day after day on their dootsteps. They will find another strategy. The one I discussed here is but one – there are many more, all of them painful and involving “pressure points.”

The best way to avoid a scenario like this (or similar scenario) is for the government to return to constitutional government.

Why don’t people go to work on that?

And I emphasize that there are many other pressure points.  The electrical grid is only one and the example I happen to choose to make a point.  All of this will be far easier for everyone in the long run if the government honors the constitution.

Is that so hard?  Perhaps so.  Abigail Adams, who is one of my heroes, told John, “Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.”

The web site got badly out of date, and we had to go through an update of several versions of WordPress.  In the process, several comments were completely lost.  Several of them were very astute comments too.  To my readers who had comments lost, I’m sorry for the loss of your work.  It wasn’t intentional.

The “About” page needs to be updated, and it is still possible that there are holdover problems.  For example, if you are signed up for e-mail notifications or feedburner notifications and are not receiving them, please send me a note and I’ll look into it.

In the mean time, thanks for your patience.  I sincerely do appreciate all of my readers, and I value your patronage.  I also find some of the comments amusing.  For example, this one got my attention.

Author : Johnny America (IP: 68.228.180.175)

E-mail : johnnyamerica110@hotmail.com
URI    :
Whois  : [deleted]
Comment:
You are one of the stupidest assholes on the Internet, and Jim Hoft
and Bob Owens are on the Internet.

So I sent Bob Owens a note and told him I was a bigger asshole than he was.  It was time to step up his game.  Bob and I came to a mutual understanding.  The interwebz is big enough for all of us to be the best assholes we can be.

I appreciate Bob’s working with me on this.

Kurt Hofman:

NYDN’s Bill Hammond sees fit to lecture gun rights advocates about the need to temper our “blind fury” about the latest infringements on that which shall not be infringed–specifically, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s draconian new gun ban (which Hammond describes as “Gov. Cuomo’s landmark law”). Hammond particularly objects to the notion that the Second Amendment is intended to protect the people’s right to the means of effective resistance against a tyrannical government:

The audience applauded heartily in tribute to the many veterans who were there. But it also loudly cheered the speaker who said, “We need guns to protect us from government.”

Maybe that thinking made sense at the time of the Founding Fathers — who had just succeeded in overthrowing the rule of a monarchy. Back then, ordinary citizens living on the frontier faced the very real threat of violent confrontations with Native Americans or British invaders.

But applying that logic to today — after more than two centuries of stable, democratic and mostly non-tyrannical government — is crazy talk.

Notice the change of subject mid-stream.  From overthrowing the Monarchy to the very next thought, which is “ordinary citizens living on the frontier.”  I’m all for pointing out the utility of firearms, from hunting to self defense to sporting value.  But the doctrine embedded in the second amendment pertains to tyranny, not any of the other utilities associated with being armed.

Kurt responds:

“Mostly non-tyrannical” doesn’t cut it–doesn’t come close, and aspiring “mostly non-tyrants” have no right to be surprised when they find themselves staring down the muzzles of the “mostly non-insurrectionist” people’s guns.

I have no idea whether or not Bill Hammond has daughters of dating age, but if he does, I’m sure he’ll have no objection to them dating “mostly non-rapist” boyfriends.

Right.  Girls don’t get mostly pregnant, a person doesn’t mostly have a job, and I don’t mostly have a dog.  Mostly is a bad descriptor.  If a regime is mostly non-tyrannical, then there is some degree to which it is tyrannical.  That means that the ruler is a tyrant at least some of the time.  It’s as simple as that.  And tyranny is never acceptable.  Not mostly unacceptable – always unacceptable.

I figured this: I write articles for my web site, and I am getting a decent amount of traffic recently (though not as much as I would like), so what more can I do?  I’ll leave it up to everybody else to fill in the gaps.

Until I read David’s web site today.  He shames me, and I’m not sure why I consider him my buddy since he has a way of doing that.  So I tried it with my U.S. Senators.

See how easy that was?  You too can be a five minute gun activist.

Courthouse News Service:

Chicago police terrorized six children in the wrong apartment, demanding at gunpoint that an 11-month-old show his hands, and telling one child, “This is what happens when your grandma sells crack,” the family claims in court.

Lead plaintiffs Charlene and Samuel Holly sued Chicago, police Officer Patrick Kinney and eight John Does in Federal Court, on their own behalves and for their children and children.

The six children were 11 months to 13 years old at the time. Plaintiffs Connie and Michelle Robinson are Charlene Holly’s daughters.

The complaint states: “On November 29, 2012 in the early evening hours Charlene Holly was in the first floor apartment at 10640 S. Prairie in the front room helping minor Child #1, Child #2, Child #4, and Child #5 rehearse songs for their church choir. Charlene was also caring for Child #3, who was 11 months old. Child #6 was in the upstairs apartment alone.

“Charlene and the children heard a loud boom outside and a voice cry out ‘Across the street!’

“Defendant Officers John Doe 1-8 burst through the door to the first floor apartment dressed in army fatigues and pointing guns at Charlene and the children. The officers yelled at Charlene and the children to ‘Get on the ground!’ The officers referred to Charlene and the children as ‘m—f—ers’ numerous times.

“Afraid of the guns being pointed at them, Children #1, 2, 4, and 5 ran to a back bedroom in fear of the officers. In response to the defendants’ order to ‘Get on the ground!,’ Charlene got down on the floor. A defendant Officer told Charlene to ‘Put the baby down’ so Charlene set Child #3 down beside her. The officers yelled at Charlene to get Child #3’s hands where they could see them.

“After attempting to show the officers that the eleven-month-old’s hands were empty, Charlene asked the officers ‘What is this about?’ To which they replied ‘Shut the f— up.'”

Samuel Holly says he asked the police what they were doing, and called the 111th Street police station asking for a “white shirt” to come explain the situation, but no supervisor ever came to the house.

“Charlene continually asked what the purpose of the detention was,” the complaint states. “Finally, an officer produced a warrant and handed it to Charlene. The warrant was for an individual named ‘Sedgwick M. Reavers’ and the premises listed was ‘The second floor apartment located at 10640 S. Prairie Ave. A yellow brick two flat building with the numbers 10640 on the front of the building.’ In other words, the warrant clearly identified the proper location as the second floor apartment. Charlene, Samuel, and the children were in the first floor apartment.

“As the officers were detaining Charlene, Samuel, and Children #1-5 in the first floor apartment, they also proceeded to the second floor apartment, where Child #6 was home alone. Child #6 was 13 years old at the time of the incident.

“The officers approached Child #6 in a bedroom and turned out the lights. They began flashing red lights at the child, calling him ‘m-f—er,’ placing him in plastic handcuffs and telling him ‘I started to Tase your grandmother and cousins’ and ‘This is what happens when your grandma sells crack.’ Child #6 begged the police not to hurt his family in the apartment below and stated that his grandmother did not sell crack.”

The man named in the warrant, Sedgwick Reavers, “was sitting in a squad car outside of 10640 S. Prairie throughout the entire incident,” according to the complaint.

The family claims that “the following day Charlene discovered the family dog, Samson, not in the basement where the family kept him, but in an upstairs laundry room. Samson could not have reached the laundry room without human assistance. On information and belief, defendant Officers dragged and choked Samson from the basement with the dog pole and left him in the upstairs laundry room unattended, where he died.”

Let’s deal with this in two phases.  First, the training and tactics.  As shooters, remember our rules for safety, trigger discipline being among the top rules.  This is true for police and SWAT team members as well.  It’s true because of sympathetic muscle reflexes.  An example of this kind of bumbling stupidity is the death of Mr. Eurie Stamps, where the police officer stumbled over the top of his prone body (Mr. Stamps had done what he had been told to do and gone to the floor), and in so stumbling, the officer – whose finger was on the trigger of his rifle – squeezed the trigger and killed Mr. Stamps.  Mr. Stamps was innocent of all wrong-doing.  The name of the officer is Paul Duncan.  His first thought when he killed Stamps was, Jesus, was that my rifle?”  And it was, and Mr. Stamps is dead.

Now.  Let’s discuss something that most people don’t know about Marine Corps training.  My son was a SAW gunner in the 2/6 infantry, Golf Company, 3rd Platoon, during the 2007 combat tour of Fallujah and the pre-deployment workup.  The senior Marines had experienced a tour of Iraq, and wanted their SAW gunners to have a round in the chamber, bolt open (the SAW is an open bolt weapon anyway), and finger on the trigger.  They had seen combat and they wanted their SAW gunners with zero steps to shooting.  Their lives depended on it.  They also did CQB drills with live rounds, along with squad rushes.

My son had an ID (if I’m not mistaken it was during training at Mohave Viper).  He tripped and had a sympathetic muscle reflex, squeezing the trigger of his SAW.  He spent an extended period of time in the “room of pain.”  They wanted him trained to overcome that sympathetic muscle reflex (which can be done, but it takes hundreds or thousands of hours of drills).  He spent the time learning to overcome that reflex, and performed well during his tour.  He also tried to teach his “boot” Marines the same way he was trained, but the Marines had begun to change and focus more on cultural sensitivity training and other COIN tools.  He got out of the Marine Corps.

Why am I discussing this?  Because no matter who you are, no matter how much time you spend, no matter how earnestly you wish it, no matter how many directives you write, if you are a SWAT team member, you will never be trained in such a manner.  Never.  You will never be trained like a U.S. Marine who has spent every day for a year and a half in pre-deployment workup to do a combat tour of Iraq.  Because you will never be trained in this manner, your tactics are dangerous, all of the time, and in all situations.  I don’t care how many times you have inexperienced Soldiers spend a week with you doing CQB drills.  With the standdown in Iraq and Afghanistan, they oftentimes know as little as you.  These tactics place people in danger when there are better alternatives.

Now for the next step.  Nor should you be trained like my son.  It isn’t within your province to do this.  The militarization of the police and police tactics in America is an effort to sidestep Posse Comitatus.  It’s a way to have a standing army police Americans rather than have the existing standing army do the policing of Americans.  It’s a typical progressive, statist trick.

The tactics used by the Chicago police are thuggish, brutish, and stupid.  These tactics are stupid when we can revert to old school detective work.  These tactics are dangerous for the people upon whom they are perpetrated.  The officers involved do not have the skills necessary to do the job, and never will.  These tactics should be reserved for only the most extreme situations like in situ armed resistance by known criminals such as Mexican drug gangs.  Finally, these tactics comport with a communist ideology, where the state reigns supreme over every aspect of the life of a nation, and the rights of citizens are trampled underfoot.

The officers who perpetrated this raid should be ashamed.  Chicago should be ashamed, and America should be ashamed to have such teams who perpetrate this wickedness on its citizens.  Extreme violations of rights like this call for extreme measures to stop the violations.  These men have even suppressed the God-given sense of duty to protect and defend women and children.  Rather, they point rifles at them and call them motherfucker.

What would John Adams say if he were here today?

UPDATE: Thanks to Mike for the attention.  Also see comments there.

UPDATE #2: Thanks to David for the attention.

Washington Times:

After years in the shadows, the administration’s secret drone program burst into very public view Wednesday with lawmakers grilling the attorney general over legal justification for targeted killings and Sen. Rand Paul launching an old-style one-man filibuster to demand answers from President Obama.

The Kentucky Republican held the floor for hours, effectively blocking a vote on the nomination of John O. Brennan, whom Mr. Obama has tapped to be CIA director. He said he would relent only if the administration publicly vowed not to target Americans on U.S. soil.

“This is a long, drawn-out day, but it’s to try to get some answers,” Mr. Paul said after he crossed the eight-hour mark late Wednesday evening. “It’s to try to shame the president into doing the right thing.”

Here’s your answer Senator.  Progressives only fake liberalism.  They are statists and totalitarians, every one.  Scratch a progressive, find a Fascist.  They won’t agree to the illegitimacy of killing U.S. citizens because they believe they have the right to kill U.S. citizens.  It’s as simple as that.

Rand Paul is a hero, and anyone in the Senate who doesn’t support his effort is a friend of totalitarians.

UPDATE: And Mike Lee and Ted Cruz are heroes as well.

CNS News:

In his new book, At the Brink, economist and author John Lott Jr., assesses the presidency of Barack Obama and recalls conversations regarding gun laws they had while working at the University of Chicago.

In Chapter Three, Mr. Lott discusses gun-control and takes the reader back to his time at the University of Chicago, where he and then-professor Barack Obama spoke on numerous occasions about guns in America.

“I don’t believe people should be able to own guns,” Obama told Lott one day at the University of Chicago Law School.

Oh yes he does.

“We should restore the ban on military-style assault weapons and a 10-round limit on magazines,” Obama continued. Both of those proposals “deserve a vote in Congress. Our law enforcement officers should never be outgunned on the streets.”

He just wants the right people to have the guns.  Like I’ve said.  Scratch a progressive, find a Fascist.