Archive for the 'Police' Category

News from New York.

What price for violating all of the rules of gun safety in one encounter?  If you’re someone normal like you or me, we go to prison for a very long time.  If you’re with the NYPD, there is no price.  It’s a payment of $2.75.

News from Colorado.

Projectiles were still lodged in the walls. Glass and wooden paneling crumbled on the ground below the gaping holes, and inside, the family’s belongings and furniture appeared thrashed in a heap of insulation and drywall. Leo Lech, who rented the home to his son, thought it looked like al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s compound after the raid that killed him.

But now it was just a neighborhood crime scene, the suburban home where an armed Walmart shoplifting suspect randomly barricaded himself after fleeing the store on a June afternoon in 2015. For 19 hours, the suspect holed up in a bathroom as a SWAT team fired gas munition and 40-millimeter rounds through the windows, drove an armored vehicle through the doors, tossed flash-bang grenades inside and used explosives to blow out the walls.

The suspect was captured alive, but the home was utterly destroyed, eventually condemned by the City of Greenwood Village.

That left Leo Lech’s son, John Lech — who lived there with his girlfriend and her 9-year-old son — without a home. The city refused to compensate the Lech family for their losses but offered $5,000 in temporary rental assistance and for the insurance deductible.

Now, after the Leches sued, a federal appeals court has decided what else the city owes the Lech family for destroying their house more than four years ago: nothing.

On Tuesday, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit unanimously ruled that the city is not required to compensate the Lech family for their lost home because it was destroyed by police while they were trying to enforce the law, rather than taken by eminent domain.

The Lechs had sued under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, which guarantees citizens compensation if their property is seized by the government for public use. But the court said that Greenwood Village was acting within its “police power” when it damaged the house, which the court said doesn’t qualify as a “taking” under the Fifth Amendment. The court acknowledged that this may seem “unfair,” but when police have to protect the public, they can’t be “burdened with the condition” that they compensate whomever is damaged by their actions along the way.

“It just goes to show that they can blow up your house, throw you out on the streets and say, ‘See you later. Deal with it,’ ” Leo Lech said in an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday. “What happened to us should never happen in this country, ever.”

Leo Lech said he is considering appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. Police must be forced to draw the line at some point, he said — preferably before a house is gutted — and be held accountable if innocent bystanders lose everything as a result of the actions of law enforcement.

In a statement to The Post, a spokeswoman for Greenwood Village said the city never refused to help the Lechs, saying the family was “very well insured” and refused the $5,000 assistance for out-of-pocket expenses before insurance kicked in. The spokeswoman, Melissa Gallegos, applauded the 10th Circuit’s ruling.

“The house was being used as a barricade, and the damage done to it was to remove the barricade and get the gunman out without any loss of life,” Gallegos said. “That is not a use of another’s property under eminent domain, but a use of another’s property during a police emergency.”

In June 2015, the standoff at Lech’s suburban Denver home captivated and alarmed the public, as their house at the end of the street, one located by a baseball field complex and a park, suddenly turned into a quasi-war zone.

The suspect, Robert Jonathan Seacat, had stolen a shirt and a couple of belts from a Walmart in neighboring Aurora, Colo., and then fled in a Lexus, according to a police affidavit. A police officer pursued him in a high-speed chase until Seacat parked his car near a light rail station, hopped a nearby fence leading to the interstate, and then crossed five lanes of traffic on foot. He climbed the fence on the other side — and then, shortly thereafter, came upon the Lech residence.

A 9-year-old boy, John Lech’s girlfriend’s son, was home alone at the time, waiting for his mom to return from the grocery store, Lech said. He told police he was watching YouTube videos in his room when he heard the alarm trip, according to the affidavit. He emerged to find a man walking up the stairs, holding a gun. “He said, ‘I don’t want to hurt anybody. I just want to get away,’ ” Lech said. Minutes later, the boy walked out of the house unharmed.

Seacat then began searching the house for car keys. But by the time he got in the car parked in Lech’s garage, police had pulled into the driveway. Seacat fired a shot at them through the garage, the affidavit says.

Thus began the 19-hour standoff.

“They proceed to destroy the house — room by room, by room, by room,” Lech said. “This is one guy with a handgun. This guy was sleeping. This guy was eating. This guy was just hanging out in this house. I mean, they proceeded to blow up the entire house.”

SWAT officers attempted to enter the home on one occasion but retreated after believing they heard Seacat fire several rounds. After other tactics, including tear gas, robots and police negotiations, repeatedly failed, SWAT officers tried again to enter the home at 8:21 the next morning. They found him holed up in a bathroom with a stash of drugs, where he was disarmed and arrested.

When the Lech family was allowed back on the property to retrieve their belongings, they were aghast at what they found.

John Lech, his girlfriend and her son moved in with Leo Lech and his wife, who lived 30 miles away, requiring John to change jobs. The $5,000 offered by the city “was insulting,” Leo Lech said.

His expenses to rebuild the house and replace all its contents cost him nearly $400,000, he said. While insurance did cover structural damage initially, his son did not have renter’s insurance and so insurance did not cover replacement of the home’s contents, and he says he is still in debt today from loans he took out.

“This has ruined our lives,” he said.

Gallegos stressed that any large expenses Lech incurred are because he chose to do more than necessary, and chose to “repour the foundation that wasn’t damaged, and [build] a bigger better house where the old one stood.” Lech insisted starting from scratch was necessary.

Previously, police have defended their actions during the standoff.

“My mission is to get that individual out unharmed and make sure my team and everyone else around including the community goes home unharmed,” Greenwood Village Police Commander Dustin Varney said in 2015, KUSA reported. “Sometimes that means property gets damaged, and I am sorry for that.”

I think you’re a liar.  I don’t think you’re really sorry.

But take note, dear readers.  You’re never in more danger than when the cops are around.  And remember, they aren’t out to protect your safety.  They only care about making their arrest and going home safely at the end of their shift, regardless of what happens to you.

But then, that’s being redundant.  This one comes to you via reader Ned.

I don’t know which Shelby County this is (there are two of them).  But whichever Sheriff is to blame, his boys need retraining.

This isn’t a “Terry Stop.”  No one to whom he is talking is suspected of a crime.  The gun owner isn’t breaking any laws.

And I’ve pointed out before that if a cop issues a command to touch your firearm, that’s no different than him touching your firearm.  Both actions are idiotic.  Nothing anyone could do (except the cops unholstering their weapons and pointing them at someone, which they do with regularity) could possibly make the situation more unsafe than for someone to have to touch their weapon.

Negligent discharges could occur, misinterpretation of intent could occur, and unfamiliarity with the weapon design (if the cops are handling the weapon) could cause a discharge and injure or kill someone.

And by the way, that command issued at the end of the video, “Sir, come back here,” was an unlawful command.  I suggest come retraining in the case of Nathaniel Black before the Fourth Circuit.

The good.

TALLAHASSEE – Floridians would be able to carry guns openly in public without a license under a bill filed Tuesday by state Rep. Anthony Sabatini.

It’s good to see this come up again.  Cheers to the brave Congressman who submitted this bill.  And for the bad news?  This has a snowball’s chance in hell of passing.  Florida is a misplaced Yankee state.  And for the really bad?

PALM BEACH, Fla. — Right now there’s a push to add restrictions to a current law that allows gun owners to open carry in Florida under certain circumstances. This comes after a recent demonstration of gun advocates openly carrying their rifles and guns on the Royal Park Bridge leading into Palm Beach.

Michael Taylor was one of those gun owners.

“We’ve demonized firearms to a point where we need to un-demonize it,” he Taylor with Florida Carry said.

Taylor who said he started to exercise his open carry right while fishing after he was almost robbed under a bridge one early morning.

“Ever since that day I’ve been open carrying,” Taylor said.

In March, he and a group of other gun owners demonstrated their rights by fishing on the Royal Park Bridge also holding American flags and flags in support of President Donald Trump. Citizens who saw shotguns and AR 15s called 911.

Training and Community Relations Coordinator Michael Ogrodnick at the Palm Beach Police Department said it is the duty of officers to respond and find out what the intent of the gun owners is. He said all of the officers are trained and know the law. The issue he believes is that the statute as written allows for gun owners to open carry while or on the way to or from hunting, fishing, or camping regardless of what’s around those areas.

“We believe the spirit of the law was for someone who was hunting, fishing, camping, in a rural area, a fishing hole, out on a lake, not in a Downtown commercial area in West Palm Beach walking over to the barrier island of Palm Beach,” said Ogrodnick.

Palm Beach Police Chief Nicholas Caristo has written a letter to Senator Bobby Powell asking that the introduce an amendment to the wording of the current law.

“The chief has requested that the legislation just be amended to read that within the 1500 feet, Birdseye view of a school, house of worship, guarded beach, or government building, people exercising their second amendment right not open carry within that distance of those buildings,” said Ogrodnick.

I bolded it.  He’s lying.  There is no such duty, and he knows it, but 99.999% of the idiot voters and politicians will believe him.

Leave it to LEOs to muck up the situation rather than making it better.  That’s their specialty.  It must be in their procedures somewhere.  Or perhaps just in their DNA.

By the way, speaking of misplaced Yankee states, with all the crap going on in South Carolina, I’m beginning to wonder if it isn’t a misplaced Yankee state too.  Say, what’s going on at the S.C. open carry front?  Nothing?  Like I had suspected?  All of it just for show, opposed at every step by the cops and politicians?

Big brother is watching you (from a reader).

Border Patrol’s electronic eyes will spot you long before you spot them.

If you walk along the United States border in remote stretches of New Mexico desert, or in the grasslands between North Dakota and Canada, you might not hear the buzz of what could be flying above you: A Predator drone — the same vehicle that has been outfitted to drop bombs over Afghanistan and Iraq. From five miles away, the drone’s cameras can see so well they can tell if you’re wearing a backpack.

If you’re in the Florida Keys, you may be spotted by an altogether different set of eyes in the sky. Up 10,000 feet in the air, a football field-sized zeppelin floats with an array of cameras, sensors, and radar systems so sophisticated that it can track every car, aircraft, and boat within a 200-mile range.

And if you’re near the deserts of southern Arizona, it won’t be hard to notice the 160-foot towers that rise up from the sandy landscape, equipped with advanced thermal imaging that can sense your exact movements from over seven miles away.

Because large portions of the border are so remote, and because U.S. citizens seem more willing to endorse surveillance programs that specifically target non-citizens, American borderlands have become a testing ground for cutting-edge surveillance tech.

Even as privacy hawks on the left and the right warn about the government’s embrace of surveillance tech, it’s been impossible to stop the fast-accelerating development of new infrastructure. President Donald Trump and Democrats in Congress might clash over the need for a border wall, but there’s a growing consensus in Washington that the country needs a “virtual wall.” The terms for this concept vary: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls it a “technological wall”; other members of Congress have adopted Silicon Valley lingo and refer to it as a “smart wall.”

Jeffrey Tucker, the editorial director at the libertarian think-tank American Institute for Economic Research, says that people who would otherwise have a knee jerk reaction against federal overreach suddenly acquiesce when the government develops enormous power in the name of border security.

That’s because there’s something wrong with shooting invaders that cross our borders (Democrats don’t get their voters, and big-corp Republicans don’t get their workers).  But there’s nothing wrong with using a testing ground for more control over the peasants.

Like you and me.

Their thirst for omniscience and omnipresence is unquenchable.

Oohhh … they were told there was a gun involved.  So what?  A man has the right to carry a gun on his own property.  This one comes from reader and commenter Ned.

By the way, “You’re under arrest for resisting arrest.” It’s called a tautology. But those cops would have had to go to school to learn that.

Via David Codrea, who posted this some time ago, this goes along nicely with our previous post. I have immense respect for the shop fellows who confronted the thugs. The cops are just swine to me.

WiscoDave sends this.

A Greenville County deputy who shot a Simpsonville homeowner through his front-door window has been cleared of criminal wrongdoing.

The State Law Enforcement Division investigated the shooting and submitted findings to the state Attorney General’s Office, which recommended that no criminal charges be filed against Deputy Kevin Azzara.

“It is my legal opinion that the officer used lawful force under the circumstances. As such, we are not recommending initiation of criminal charges against the officer,” Jerrod Fussnecker, an assistant attorney general, wrote in a disposition letter to SLED that was obtained by The Greenville News.

The man, Dick Tench, plans to file a lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Office, his lawyer told The News on Wednesday.

“He wants to seek justice and if it was up to Dick, this officer would no longer be on the force,” Ashmore said Wednesday. “Dick wants to tell his story and wants his story to get out, and one day that will happen in a jury trial setting.”

Yea, we talked about this, and we all knew nothing would come of it.  If it were up to me, this officer would be in prison awaiting charges on assault with a deadly weapon, intent to inflict bodily injury, trespassing, and attempted manslaughter.

But as you know, there are two sets of rules: one for us, and one for “the only ones.”  And they wonder why everyone hates them.

Via WiscoDave, this disturbing report.

Four seconds.

That’s all the time it took for the two police officers assigned to check on Plack to decide to use lethal force against her (both cops opened fire on the woman), rather than using non-lethal options (one cop had a Taser, which he made no attempt to use) or attempting to de-escalate the situation.

The police chief defended his officers’ actions, claiming they had “no other option” but to shoot the 5 foot 4 inch “woman with carpal tunnel syndrome who had to quit her job at a framing shop because her hand was too weak to use the machine that cut the mats.”

This is what happens when you empower the police to act as judge, jury and executioner.

This is what happens when you indoctrinate the police into believing that their lives and their safety are paramount to anyone else’s.

Suddenly, everyone and everything else is a threat that must be neutralized or eliminated.

In light of the government’s latest efforts to predict who might pose a threat to public safety based on mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data such as FitBits and Apple Watches and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA, the “Health Advanced Research Projects Agency”), encounters with the police could get even more deadly, especially if those involved have a mental illness or disability.

Indeed, disabled individuals make up a third to half of all people killed by law enforcement officers.

That’s according to a study by the Ruderman Family Foundation,  which reports that “disabled individuals make up the majority of those killed in use-of-force cases that attract widespread attention. This is true both for cases deemed illegal or against policy and for those in which officers are ultimately fully exonerated… Many more disabled civilians experience non-lethal violence and abuse at the hands of law enforcement officers.”

Then at the expense of sickening the readers, the author goes on to list these awful incidents.

For instance, Nancy Schrock called 911 for help after her husband, Tom, who suffered with mental health issues, started stalking around the backyard, upending chairs and screaming about demons. Several times before, police had transported Tom to the hospital, where he was medicated and sent home after 72 hours. This time, Tom was tasered twice. He collapsed, lost consciousness and died.

In South Carolina, police tasered an 86-year-old grandfather reportedly in the early stages of dementia, while he was jogging backwards away from them. Now this happened after Albert Chatfield led police on a car chase, running red lights and turning randomly. However, at the point that police chose to shock the old man with electric charges, he was out of the car, on his feet, and outnumbered by police officers much younger than him.

In Georgia, campus police shot and killed a 21-year-old student who was suffering a mental health crisis. Scout Schultz was shot through the heart by campus police when he approached four of them late one night while holding a pocketknife, shouting “Shoot me!” Although police may have feared for their lives, the blade was still in its closed position.

In Oklahoma, police shot and killed a 35-year-old deaf man seen holding a two-foot metal pipe on his front porch (he used the pipe to fend off stray dogs while walking). Despite the fact that witnesses warned police that Magdiel Sanchez couldn’t hear—and thus comply—with their shouted orders to drop the pipe and get on the ground, police shot the man when he was about 15 feet away from them.

In Maryland, police (moonlighting as security guards) used extreme force to eject a 26-year-old man with Downs Syndrome and a low IQ from a movie theater after the man insisted on sitting through a second screening of a film. Autopsy results indicate that Ethan Saylor died of complications arising from asphyxiation, likely caused by a chokehold.

In Florida, police armed with assault rifles fired three shots at a 27-year-old nonverbal, autistic man who was sitting on the ground, playing with a toy truck. Police missed the autistic man and instead shot his behavioral therapist, Charles Kinsey, who had been trying to get him back to his group home. The therapist, bleeding from a gunshot wound, was then handcuffed and left lying face down on the ground for 20 minutes.

In Texas, police handcuffed, tasered and then used a baton to subdue a 7-year-old student who has severe ADHD and a mood disorder. With school counselors otherwise occupied, school officials called police and the child’s mother to assist after Yosio Lopez started banging his head on a wall. The police arrived first.

In New Mexico, police tasered, then opened fire on a 38-year-old homeless man who suffered from schizophrenia, all in an attempt to get James Boyd to leave a makeshift campsite. Boyd’s death provoked a wave of protests over heavy-handed law enforcement tactics.

In Ohio, police forcefully subdued a 37-year-old bipolar woman wearing only a nightgown in near-freezing temperatures who was neither armed, violent, intoxicated, nor suspected of criminal activity. After being slammed onto the sidewalk, handcuffed and left unconscious on the street, Tanisha Anderson died as a result of being restrained in a prone position.

And in North Carolina, a state trooper shot and killed a 29-year-old deaf motorist after he failed to pull over during a traffic stop. Daniel K. Harris was shot after exiting his car, allegedly because the trooper feared he might be reaching for a weapon.

Good Lord.  Am I going to have to  write something to the cops about how to communicate with people and how not to be terrified of everybody they see, sort of like I did for cops and animals?

I said if their daddy had raised them without ever teaching them about how to raise dogs, handle horses and livestock and doctor animals, his daddy was a failure and that problem should be ameliorated immediately by volunteering at a farm or ranch.

Now look where we are.  We’re going to have to make cops volunteer in kindergarten classrooms and assisted living centers to learn the nature of people.

On second thought, we don’t want any negligent discharges to kill people, and we don’t want the morgue to be filled with children and the infirmed.  So hold that idea in abatement.  I’ll have to come up with something more clever.

And still not get paid a single penny for it as a police consultant.

Via David Codrea, this wicked man has ruined many lives.