Archive for the 'Police' Category

In our discussions about fisking your local Sheriff and his deputies for their views of your rights, especially in the context of working towards constitutional Sheriffs who will prevent agents of the state and federal government from infringing on gun rights, it’s been easy to overlook a very important aspect of your local AO.

In a lot of urban and suburban areas, it’s commonplace to have separated law enforcement duties and authority between the Sheriff and a city or county/city police department.  The Sheriff, under this framework, is responsible for serving warrants, security of the court, juries and the jail system.  The police department is responsible for law enforcement in all other areas.

The pretext for this separation, which likely happened either from a state referendum or a change to state laws, is that the Sheriff, who is an elected officer, can then use his status to show favoritism to those who donated to his campaign, who are his friends, and family.  Conversely, he can punish his enemies.

True enough, this has happened on too many occasions in American history, and where this has been done, the Sheriffs have themselves to blame for it, at least in part.  But this also removes the highest elected law enforcement official from public review and voter approval.  The other side of the sword cuts deep.

I assumed that this is the way Prince William County law enforcement works, since these are police officers, not deputies.

This is a remarkable video, made even more so by the fact that they knew they were being videoed and were still as abusive as they are.  To begin with, photography isn’t a crime, and these officers know it.

They repeatedly make the claim that “we need you … ” normally ending in something like identify yourself.  But the fact of the matter is that no one talks the law or rights.  They don’t really need anything of the sort, they just want to fill out the right paperwork and put another name on a watch list.

They also repeatedly ask his “intent and purpose” with said videography.  Again, that’s not important and isn’t any of their business.  They have no constitutional right to know this information.  They place this in the category of “suspicious activity,” but suspicious activity isn’t a crime.  His detention wasn’t a legal “Terry Stop,” and the police officers greatly add to their problem later in the video.

When he was asked to remove his face cover, the videographer smartly asked them what they would do if he was a Muslim wearing head/face cover and it was his religious beliefs.  They clearly state that they wouldn’t be able to force him to obey the order, and this is highly problematic because this means they won’t apply the law equally to everyone.  The law is either constitutional or it’s not – regardless of religious views.

They further demand his DOB, which again isn’t based on any real need to know that information outside of putting him on a watch list.  Then they ridiculously claim that he’s “disturbing the peace” since everyone is now watching him, that fact being based solely on the fact that the police stopped him.  The police were the ones disturbing the peace, not him.

The legal problems this police department presents for itself are overwhelming, and if this individual has the money to pursue it, they are in for a legal fight.  Finally, when the individual demands their identification, they claim they are under no obligation to supply that because “we’re law enforcement.”

The arrogance and haughtiness would be staggering if it weren’t for the fact that it is ubiquitous.  I almost know what to expect these days when I view these videos.

The contact information for the department is: policedept@pwcgov.org.

The contact information for the chief of police is: bbarnard@pwcgov.org.

This video is long but interesting.  Before watching, I have a few points to make to the chief of police in Speedway, Indiana.  Yes, I sent you this link, Mr. Campbell.

First, your officers violated the constitution of the United States by detaining him without a crime having been committed.  The original phone call didn’t report a crime, and you had no reason to suspect a crime.  This wasn’t a “Terry Stop,” and you know it.  Check with your DA.  He’ll back me up on this.

Second, the officer on the right in the video is much too emotional for my tastes.  I don’t think he has the temperament for the job.  Additionally, he keeps talking about logic, and I don’t think he understands what he’s talking about.  He should take a college course in logic before doing that again.  They will explain the rules of classical logic, and how presuppositions and axioms are used to produce conclusions, or in other words, how to properly build syllogisms.  The gun carrier you stopped didn’t violate any rules of logic in the video.  He didn’t stumble into any formal logical fallacies.

Third, as to the officer on the left who kept talking about what the gun carrier was trying to “prove,” that’s an irrelevant line of questioning and makes no difference.  It has nothing to do with anything, certainly not why he was being detained.

Fourth, the sergeant in the video asking the gun carrier to hand over his weapon for examination is the most nonsensical thing I’ve heard today.  Any man who touches another man’s gun is an idiot.  Any man who asks another man to handle his weapon is risking an ND, and is therefore an idiot.  Any man who handles another man’s weapon (in a case like this) is risking an ND, and is therefore an idiot.  I couldn’t care less if he is an “armorer” or not.  The request was stupid.

Furthermore, the stated excuse for turning over the weapon, “To see if any modifications had been made to it,” was an invasion of his privacy and unrelated to his being detained.  Your officers had absolutely no need to see his weapon.  And finally, if he had converted his weapon into a fully automatic rifle loaded with AP rounds, less than a 16″ barrel on it, and an illegal can attached, it wouldn’t have stood up in court.  I’m not going to waste our time explaining this since it’s all available if you review the Fourth Circuit case of U.S. versus Nathaniel Black (Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department).  Ask your DA.  He’ll back me up on this.

News from Florida.

HOLLY HILL, Fla. – A bullet struck an apartment of a Holly Hill family getting ready for the day on Wednesday.

The bullet came from the rifle of an officer, according to a police report.

Police said around 6:40 a.m. Wednesday officers responded to the Charleston House Apartments in reference to a suspicious incident.

A renter told officers he believed someone shot into his apartment because of a large hole in the wall and the plaster and wood on the floor, according to police.

Investigators said there was a hole in the wall above a door frame in the northeast bedroom of the apartment.

Two kids were in the bedroom getting ready to go to school, according to the report.

“Yeah, my wife was home. She was up, she was getting our kids ready for school and then like a wall in our apartment exploded,” he told a dispatcher.

The dispatcher asked him why it took an hour to call authorities.

“She just told me. She had to get the kids up and to the school bus before it left and she just got back,” he said.

A Holly Hill officer lives above the apartment and he told police he was attempting to move a rifle, according to the incident report.

He told police he was walking with the rifle and must have had his finger inside the trigger guard, according to investigators.

Investigators said he told police he tripped on something and the rifle discharged.

Police said there aren’t criminal charges and the officer was off duty.

The officer is still on regular patrols, according to police.

The department will do a review of the situation, according to investigators.

Yea, that’s important information for a dispatcher to know: ” … why it took an hour to call authorities.”  Not why some dumb ass discharged a round through an apartment wall.

50,000 guns in Richmond, Virginia, not even a single negligent discharge.  One cop with a rifle, a hole in a neighbor’s wall

The best part is that “The officer is still on regular patrols.”  Well good.  We wouldn’t want a cop to go without work, even if he does occasionally kill neighbors by leaving rounds in the chamber, the muzzle pointed in the wrong direction, and the rifle laying where it can be knocked around.

Then again, there’s always the possibility that he didn’t knock it around.  Sympathetic muscle reflect might have caused him to pull the trigger when he tripped.  In this case, that’s another rule of gun safety he violated.

This is a remarkable video.

They’ve bought into the notion of right wing violence.  No such thing is going to happen in Richmond.  Any violence will be at the hands of Antifa, and drama will be courtesy of crisis actors hired by Soros and Bloomberg.

They’re wasting their time on the wrong people.

Ignoramus cop #1 shoots an unarmed, innocent woman, and then tells her “Crawl to me.  Crawl to me.”  Ignoramus cop #2 and ignoramus cop #1 point pistols at the innocent, unarmed woman while she crawls to them, injured.  Ignoramus cop shouts “cuff her.”  While cuffed, she is dragged into another room while ignoramus medic puts some gauze on her wounds and tells her to “put pressure on it.”  He tells her to put pressure on it.

That about sums it up for me, but the rest of the story is here if you care.

Via David Codrea, this amusing report.

DAVIE, Fla. – A Davie police officer accidentally shot himself Friday morning, police said.

The officer was attempting to shoot a dog that charged at him during a non-criminal incident at a home on Southwest 116th Way, Davie police Lt. Mark Leone said.

“When the police officer got to the front door of the residence, the family pet — happens to be a female boxer named Bella — ran right past him and went toward the officer,” Leone said. “The officer was in fear, drew his firearm and fired one shot.”

Leone said the officer’s hand got in the way of the gun’s muzzle.

Home surveillance video shows what appears to be the officer walking back and forth from the home.

Moments later, more police cars arrive — lights flashing — and officers run toward the home.

A short time goes by when two officers are seen walking on the sidewalk, one of them grasping his hand.

He gets to the back of a patrol car and appears to start wrapping something around the wound to stop the bleeding, seemingly frustrated.

Several of the officers gathered around shine their flashlights on the wound. An ambulance arrives and the officer gets in the back before it drives away.

The officer was expected to be OK, as is the dog that was grazed by the bullet, Leone said.

The officer is expected to be OK.  I don’t care.  I want to know how the dog is?

Okay, so let’s cover this in a little more detail.  The dog was doing its job.  It was running to see if there was a threat.  The dog lives there.  The cop doesn’t.  This is what good dogs do.  This is not what good cops do.

The options for the cop would include, but not be limited to, the following: (a) call ahead of time and ask the owner to secure his beasts, (b) carry a dog treat in his pocket (which would be a good thing to do anyway), (c) learn to handle dogs, farm animals and other household pets by volunteering at a local ranch or farm to help feed animals, clean stalls, mate dogs and horses, doctor animals, etc., etc., something I’ve recommended many times before, in which case he probably could have discerned the intentions of the dog or held him at bay with voice commands (d) or finally, if he is highly emotional and feels that he just can’t handle the pressure, he could have used pepper spray rather than [intended] lethal means to stop the dog.

The dog never intended to attack the cop, as evidenced by the broken off [ahem] attack when the cop shot himself.  One more thing: ” … the officer’s hand got in the way of the gun’s muzzle.”  I take it this means he shot his hand?  This would have been a much simpler and grammatically correct way to say it.  When did they stop teaching English in journalism school?

Dean Weingarten writing at Ammoland.

At about 2:30 in the morning of 28 June, 2014, Michael Hicks was at a convenience store in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Hicks had a valid concealed carry permit, and had a handgun in an outside the waistband holster, concealed by his shirt.

Open carry is generally legal in Pennsylvania, but it is not legal to open carry in a vehicle. This limits the practicality of open carry on a regular basis.

Video surveillance of the scene showed Hicks adjusting his shirt, briefly allowing the handgun to be seen before approaching the convenience store. Hicks goes about his business, but minutes later is stopped by police. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania watched the surveillance video and described what happened …

Stop right there.  A law that indicates open carry is legal except in a vehicle is the stupidest law I’ve ever heard.  In North Carolina they want all firearms to be visible (e.g., laid out on car seats in plain view so they can see them).  In South Carolina they want them hidden so that … who knows, they can’t see risks, or some horseshit reason.  The cops across American can’t even get their story straight.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court found that Hicks Fourth Amendment rights had been violated, and there was no legitimate reason for the police to stop him that early morning in June.

[ … ]

The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari on 9 December 2019.

Then there is this extremely important bit of explanation.

For several decades, there has been an assumption in law enforcement circles, backed up by court decisions, that merely the suspicion of a person carrying a concealed weapon was sufficient to allow for a “stop and frisk” of that person.

Law enforcement agencies generally preferred to have that power. I was taught, decades ago, somewhat informally, to always stop and search a suspect if I thought they might have a concealed weapon. I was told, by the officer who was teaching me, that “he had never heard of a judge who threw out the evidence if a weapon was found”.

Well, they were all taught wrong.  Obeying the law is not reason enough to stop a man (i.e., it isn’t a so-called “Terry Stop”), and if you stop a man who you think might be carrying a weapon, you don’t really know, in which case his fourth amendment rights have been violated.

For the hundredth time, this has been dealt with by the Fourth Circuit in the case of Nathaniel Black, who did happen to be wanted for a crime, but who was openly carrying and stopped for that specific reason by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police department.  Open carry is legal in North Carolina.

The Fourth Circuit reached the right conclusion, to wit, Mr. Black’s rights had been violated because he wasn’t doing anything illegal.  It’s high time that police academies start to teach the truth to cops and it’s also high time police departments fill their ranks with thinking men.

Listen, if you’re too much of a dolt to learn and understand the law, or to question idiots who are teaching you falsehoods in the academy, turn in your badge and service weapon and go dig ditches or shovel gravel.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reached the right conclusion.  I guess even a blind squirrel finds nuts from time to time.

Via Instapundit, this ridiculous news from Alabama.

MOBILE COUNTY, Ala. (WALA) — The man who investigators were looking to arrest was already in jail when a task force raided his former home in Wilmer on Thursday morning.

Ann Rylee, a 19-year-old woman who now lives at the home on Old Moffat Road, was shot several times as investigators made their way inside the house. Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran claims that Rylee had a shotgun in her hand and pointed it at officers.

Cochran said, “The entry team was giving her orders, ‘Drop the gun, put the gun down, drop the gun,’ several times over a period of a few seconds.” He continued, “She pointed the gun at one of them and two or three agents fired upon her.”

[ … ]

He added, “If she would not have pointed a gun at the agents they would have determined all that on the scene and would have bid her a good day and thank you very much.”

Well isn’t that sweet.  If she would have just laid down and grovelled, hoping that the home invaders hadn’t been there to rape her and end her life, she would have been spared by the home invaders who ended up shooting her.  Play nice and we might let you live.

Hey fool.  We’ve already told you before why this can’t happen.

… even if they had announced themselves as police, no one can believe them.  We have documented instances where criminals have impersonated police officers and busted into homes.  The only solution to this problem is when someone announces that they are the police, disarm yourself, lay on the floor and beg for mercy.

One may as well never have a weapon for defense of family, home and hearth to begin with under these stipulations, and thus SWAT raids violate a man’s God-given right to self defense, recognized in the second amendment.

These raids also violate the fourth amendment.  The Mobile County Sheriff’s Department later said this.  “The Mobile County Sheriff’s Office, Homeland Security, and US Customs and Border Patrol conducted the raid. Sheriff Cochran said that the shots were not fired by Mobile County Sheriff’s Office deputies.”

I couldn’t care less who fired the shots.  The woman would have been within her rights to have shot them all, assuming they were criminals intent on doing her harm.

So it’s come to this.  Cops believe that during SWAT raids, people who may or may not be the ones they are looking for, should lay on the floor and beg for mercy, completely defenseless against the home invasion.  Such a tactic is sure to invite more criminals posing as cops.  On the other hand, most reasonable people believe a man’s home is his castle and he has a right to defend home and hearth.

So even thought it didn’t happen here, cops will continue to get shot, and they deserve it when using these kinds of tactics.  I don’t shed one tear for cops who get shot conducting home invasions that violate the second and fourth amendments.  Even if not shot during home invasions, cops are increasingly being seen as the enemy.

Go read this report again and tell me why?

AJC..com.

A teenager was hit by ricocheting shrapnel when a North Georgia sheriff’s gun discharged inside a Walmart.

Pickens County Sheriff Donnie Craig was wearing the gun in his waistband when it went off inside the Jasper store Tuesday night, according to the sheriff’s office. The round hit the floor.

Craig and several deputies were attending a “Shop with the Sheriff” holiday event and were standing near the front of the store during the “accidental discharge,” sheriff’s spokesman Capt. Kris Stancil told AJC.com. A 15-year-old boy in a nearby checkout line reported a minor injury, he said.

At the time, the teen told deputies he had not been hit and was OK. It wasn’t until later that he noticed a “small cut” that was barely recognizable as a wound from shrapnel, Stancil said.

The shrapnel that ricocheted was about the size of a pencil eraser, he said. The teen reported the injury to the sheriff’s office and went to a hospital for an X-ray.

“At the time of the discharge, the weapon was not being handled and the weapon was secured in the waistband,” the sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post. “Sheriff Craig has stated how thankful he is that no one was seriously injured in the incident. All policy protocols will be followed during the investigation into the incident.”

The gun was a “backup weapon,” the agency said. It is not clear what caused the weapon to fire.

Sorry, but I don’t believe this.  I also don’t believe in gremlins, goblins (except in the halls of congress), the tooth fairy, or the Easter bunny.

Something mechanically interacted with the firearm to cause the discharge.

The Daily Wire.

At least 20 cops in Baltimore, Maryland were arrested, sentenced, or suspended in 2019 for their behavior, a Baltimore Sun report found.

The outlet noted that this was an “ugly” year for the city’s cops, some of whom committed crimes themselves and terrorized residents. In addition to the 20 or so who were punished for their actions, Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby in October presented a list of 305 Baltimore police officers with possible credibility issues.

“We have 305 officers with integrity issues and/or allegations of integrity issues that would in essence put them in jeopardy from testifying,” Mosby said when she presented her list.

Beating a Man “Without Justification”

Former officer Arthur Williams was found guilty of second-degree assault in June based on body cam footage of him beating a man multiple times. The victim received a broken jaw and ribs and spent three days in the hospital. Baltimore Circuit Judge Yolanda Tanner said the attack was “without justification.” Williams was sentenced to 9 months in prison.

Sergeant Charged after Chasing and Arresting Man For Exercising Free Speech Rights

A sergeant was charged with “assault, false imprisonment and misconduct,” the Sun reported, after he chased a bystander who was complaining about how officers were treating a suspect. The bystander committed no crimes, yet the police sergeant arrested him, according to body cam footage. When the bystander asked why he was being arrested, the police sergeant told him: “Just go to jail and take your charge like a man.”

Road Rage

Former officer Michael Gentil was sentenced to five years in prison after he nearly ran over a pedestrian and then pulled a gun on the man after he spilled tea on Gentil’s car. Gentil, according to prosecutors, didn’t yield when the pedestrian was crossing the street. The pedestrian was carrying tea and spilled some on Gentil’s car. Gentil then pulled a gun on him and ordered him to get down on the ground.

Drunk Driving

Former officer Aaron Heilman was found with a blood alcohol level of 0.22 and slumped over in his car in the early afternoon last year. He entered a plea agreement this year. Another officer, detective Kevin Brown, was suspended and charged with driving under the influence.

Perjury

Michael O’Sullivan was sentenced to 15 months in prison – but is still part of the police force, though he has been suspended – for lying in court regarding a criminal case. O’Sullivan claimed he saw a suspect throwing away a handgun while fleeing from cops. It was determined he could not have witnessed the event.

Planting a Toy Gun on Someone to Justify Police Chasing Him

A man was chased by police in 2014 and eventually “run down by an officer’s vehicle,” the Sun reported. To justify police actions, retired police Sgt. Keith Gladstone planted a toy gun on the man. He pleaded guilty and faces up to 10 years in federal prison, according to the Sun.

Gun Task Force Corruption

Eight city officers were “convicted of racketeering offenses for robbing people using their badge,” the Sun reported.

Tasing and Beating a Teenager

Former officer Carlos Rivera-Martinez was dismissed and convicted of second-degree assault and misconduct after beating a 16-year-old in the head and using his taser on the boy after chasing him.

When the state no longer even cares about what Mike Vanderboegh called the mandate from heaven.  And doesn’t care if you know they no longer care.  And no longer makes pretensions about any of it.  And doesn’t care what God thinks about it all.