Archive for the 'Police' Category

Only the best and brightest for cops in Tennessee.

A Collegedale police officer’s department-issued AR-15 was fired inside the City Hall building last week.

Officer Josh Booth was in the department’s armory at around 9 a.m. when he was “starting to look” at Sgt. Burlon Hayworth’s department-issued AR-15 assault weapon.

The weapon had already been taken apart when Booth received it, Booth wrote in an incident report.

“I attempted to do a weapon check,” he wrote.

But due to a rusted bolt, he was unable to clear the chamber.

Booth then started to put the weapon back together, and as he pushed the pieces together, “it caused the weapon to fire a round that was in the chamber,” Booth wrote.

“The round went through the wall, and into the squad room and hit a cabinet where it was stopped,” he added.

So many failures.  Rusted bolt.  Chambered round.  Handling firearms away from the range like that, or away from at least gunsmiths who could have done this safely.

I suspect the firing pin was protruding out of the bolt and he slapped the upper and lower together with enough force to cause at least a light primer strike.

Only the best and brightest.

This is an amazing video.  Watch it all.

As best as I can ascertain, the special agent was investigating corruption in the Franklin County Sheriff’s department.  It appears that the deputy in question wrote a ticket, and then rescinded it because the person to whom the ticket was issued was politically powerful, wealthy, or otherwise connected.

The FBI was investigating that (I would surmise, among other things).  He called the deputy’s cell phone and chose a time and place to avoid letting the Sheriff’s office know about the investigation.  Makes sense to me.

What happens next is … well, just watch.

USA Carry.

In what the Dallas Police Department is calling an expansion of alternate reporting methods, they are amending their response protocols to limit officer contact with the public for non-emergency and property-related offenses. They say that this will not affect their responses to crimes against persons and other “High Priority Calls”.

Instead of officer responses, victims are being asked to use the Dallas Online Reporting System and click on the “File a Police Report Online” tab. The Dept says that an investigation will be conducted just as if an officer had taken the report at the scene.

Among the low-level crimes affected are Burglary of a Motor Vehicle, Criminal Mischief, Reckless Damage, Shoplifting, Property Theft (Auto Accessories), and similar.

As a reminder to regular readers, and a brief primer for new readers, the police are under no legal obligation to protect anyone.

Castle Rock v. Gonzalez

Warren v. District of Columbia

DeShaney v. Winnebago County

For home invasions, I cannot offer legal advice, but it’s not a safe bet that the invaders are only there to steal property.

And just a reminder – never talk to the police.  That’s your lawyer’s job.

NY Daily News.

Wait!  You mean that cops can’t be trusted at crime scenes?

But the most interesting part is that cops know when to shut up.  ” … he refused to discuss, on the grounds he might incriminate himself.”  If you are ever accosted by police, you should claim the fifth too.

We covered the behavior of the cops in Olmos Park, Texas, and the open carry rally there.  There is development.  This video was shot soon after the rally.  Watch all of it.  The cops run like scared rabbits when the light of photography shined on them.  Cops don’t like photography.  It tells the truth, unlike them.

News from Kansas.

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. – A trailer violation lead police to enter a home leaving a Leavenworth family upset after they say the incident scared their child.

Robert Ennest wants to know how a call for an illegally parked trailer turned into Leavenworth police drawing firearms and letting themselves in a house when the owners were not there.

Ennest said his 12-year-old daughter was the only one home. They believe she was outside with neighbors when police were scoping out the property.

“It’s traumatizing that my little girl’s home and I’m not there,” Ennest said. “Now she’s scared. She called me crying.”

Police said the officers’ intentions were good. They said officers knocked on the door and the door opened.

Ring Doorbell Footage suggests a different story. In the video, you can hear a doorknob twist and the officer knock.

Earlier that morning, video footage shows the family doubled checked to make sure that door was shut tight.

After failing to get in touch with the owners, police said the officers made a judgment call and went inside the house to see if someone was hurt.

Ennest said that decision put his daughter in distress.

“It made me angry because I support the police and they’re here to help, but there’s no reason to enter into somebody’s residence with their weapons drawn for no reason,” Ennest said.

Police said it’s protocol to have their weapons out while searching a home or business.

Ennest said officers also tracked mud throughout the house — on carpets, clean laundry and bedding.

His family spent the whole night sanitizing. their home because their son, who is fighting cancer, can’t afford to get sick.

“His immune system is not up for that,” Ennest said.

Let’s see: reckless endangerment, trespassing and assault with a deadly weapon.  That should about cover it.

Well, you’re not in Kansas any more, Dorothy.  Maybe from now on you won’t be so quick to “support the police” and believe “they’re here to help.”  The .gov is never there to help you.  That isn’t their mission.

Independent journalists trying to keep the government in line are the equivalent of “Antifa” according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Department.

Hicks, losers and crybabies. I’m talking about the cops.

This awful report came to my attention, and it pertains not just to social media, but to father Google too.

The email arrived on a Tuesday afternoon in January, startling Zachary McCoy as he prepared to leave for his job at a restaurant in Gainesville, Florida.

It was from Google’s legal investigations support team, writing to let him know that local police had demanded information related to his Google account. The company said it would release the data unless he went to court and tried to block it. He had just seven days.

“I was hit with a really deep fear,” McCoy, 30, recalled, even though he couldn’t think of anything he’d done wrong. He had an Android phone, which was linked to his Google account, and, like millions of other Americans, he used an assortment of Google products, including Gmail and YouTube. Now police seemingly wanted access to all of it.

“I didn’t know what it was about, but I knew the police wanted to get something from me,” McCoy said in a recent interview. “I was afraid I was going to get charged with something, I don’t know what.”

There was one clue.

In the notice from Google was a case number. McCoy searched for it on the Gainesville Police Department’s website, and found a one-page investigation report on the burglary of an elderly woman’s home 10 months earlier. The crime had occurred less than a mile from the home that McCoy, who had recently earned an associate degree in computer programming, shared with two others.

Now McCoy was even more panicked and confused. He knew he had nothing to do with the break-in ─ he’d never even been to the victim’s house ─ and didn’t know anyone who might have. And he didn’t have much time to prove it.

McCoy worried that going straight to police would lead to his arrest. So he went to his parents’ home in St. Augustine, where, over dinner, he told them what was happening. They agreed to dip into their savings to pay for a lawyer.

The lawyer, Caleb Kenyon, dug around and learned that the notice had been prompted by a “geofence warrant,” a police surveillance tool that casts a virtual dragnet over crime scenes, sweeping up Google location data — drawn from users’ GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular connections — from everyone nearby.

The warrants, which have increased dramatically in the past two years, can help police find potential suspects when they have no leads. They also scoop up data from people who have nothing to do with the crime, often without their knowing ─ which Google itself has described as “a significant incursion on privacy.”

Still confused ─ and very worried ─ McCoy examined his phone. An avid biker, he used an exercise-tracking app, RunKeeper, to record his rides. The app relied on his phone’s location services, which fed his movements to Google. He looked up his route on the day of the March 29, 2019, burglary and saw that he had passed the victim’s house three times within an hour, part of his frequent loops through his neighborhood, he said.

“It was a nightmare scenario,” McCoy recalled. “I was using an app to see how many miles I rode my bike and now it was putting me at the scene of the crime. And I was the lead suspect.”

There is more at the link.  It actually ended up working out okay for him, but not without some trouble and expense.

Let this be a lesson.  I have used biking apps on my phone for mountain biking trail maps, as well as Waze for navigation in my truck.

I’ve rethought that after reading this article.  Google = Fedgov.  Never forget that.

Recall that one crud, vulgar, obscene Putnam County Sheriff’s Deputy violated a man’s rights guaranteed under the second and fourth amendments by an illegal and unconstitutional detention?

Also recall that we covered the violation of the fourth amendment by Putnam County Deputies about three weeks ago?

The lawyer in these cases has a new video up with more than we linked in the last video.  Watch it entirely.

His name is John H. Bryan, and he’s doing God’s work.  His web site is thecivilrightslawyer.com, and he has a new post up on the current status of the open carry case.

The judges in this case were very dismissive of the Fourth Circuit decision in Black because they just don’t care about the constitution, but I hope he carries this all the way to the Supreme Court if needed.

Further, I’ll say one more time, it never even needed to get to the point of citing Black.  West Virginia is not a “stop and identify” state, and this wasn’t a “Terry Stop.”  The state courts should have struck this all down and reprimanded the Sheriff’s department.

I’ll also say once again that Sheriff Steve Deweese should resign in shame, and remember his contact information: sdeweese@putnamwv.org.

Also remember this man.  prosecutingattorney@putnamwv.org (Mark A. Sorsaia, Office of the Prosecuting Attorney, Putnam County Judicial Building).

The deputies, crooks and thugs they are, are merely following the leadership set before them.  Followers always behave like their leaders.  To the Sheriff, you need to get up in front of your church, beg for forgiveness, ask to be placed under the discipline of the leaders of your church, resign your post, and do something you’re qualified to do, like dig ditches while serving your time in prison.

News from Ohio.

Village Council Members accepted Dorian LaCourse’s resignation in an emergency meeting Sunday.

Mayor Lisa Mear wrote in a letter to the chief when he was suspended last month that the investigation found he bought and sold guns and armor-piercing bullets without village approval or knowledge and created phony purchase orders, inflating the number of officers working in the department to do it.

LaCourse is accused of selling the weapons, which he purchased under his position as the police chief, to other entities, also without the knowledge or consent of the village council, her letter states. Records released Monday show most of the transactions were between LaCourse and Marcum Firearms and Tri-State Gun and Custom Works, both of Indiana.