Archive for the 'Police' Category

Houston Chronicle:

The day after four Houston police officers were shot while serving a search warrant in southeast Houston, Chief Art Acevedo once again called on lawmakers to find ways to reduce gun violence.

“I would express my personal frustration at lawmakers that know we have a public health epidemic in this country we call gun violence,” Acevedo said at a news conference Tuesday morning related to the shooting. “It doesn’t just impact law enforcement. It crushes communities, tears apart families, cuts lives short, every single day.”

Veteran narcotics officers broke down the door of a suspected drug den, armed with a warrant and hoping to arrest heroin dealers operating out of the Pecan Park home. They were met by a hail of gunfire, instead, as one of the suspects inside unleashed a barrage of bullets that wounded four officers, two critically.

Free Thought Project has the scoop.  So let’s stipulate for a moment that there was nefarious activity going on in the home (the evidence doesn’t seem to point that way, it’s more likely a bad tip).  Why wouldn’t any sensible person assume that a home invasion was being conducted for the purposes of handing them flowers and wine?  Why wouldn’t any sensible person shoot the invaders?

Isn’t that something?  Art Acevedo conducts a wrong-home raid, get’s his people shot, and then goes in front of the cameras to pimp gun control.

What a putz.

Law & Crime (and also this from WiscoDave):

Florida man Matthew Crull is free from jail, and he shouldn’t have been there in the first place. He spent 41 days in a Martin County jail, but was released. Crull and 10 other people have been let go from jail because now-former Martin County Deputy Steven O’Leary was accused of falsely testing material as narcotics, leading to their arrests.

Crull told WPTV that he has been in jail before, but for nothing like this.

[ … ]

“I had 92 grams of laundry detergent in my door and that’s what I was falsely charged for trafficking of heroin,” he told CBS 12. He had to miss Christmas with his girlfriend and parents because of his time behind bars.

Martin County Sheriff William Snyder announced in a press conference January 15 that he fired O’Leary. He said that prosecutors first approached deputies about problems with three of the official’s arrests. O’Learly had made 80 drug arrests in his 11 months on probation as a Martin County deputy. The sheriff said that they were reviewing the cases. He told reporters that O’Leary was interviewed, made no incriminating statements, and lawyered up.

Is that what cops do when they fear their own kind – lawyer up?

So where does this poor man go to get those 41 days of his life back?

Yahoo:

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to jump back into the national debate over gun rights after nearly a decade on the sidelines.

The justices agreed to consider a petition backed by gun owners’ groups asking them to strike down New York City’s strict rules for carrying legally owned guns outside the home.

[ … ]

City officials argued that more liberal transporting policies in effect until 2001 were abused. While the policies were intended to allow gun owners to take unloaded guns only to target ranges outside the city, some guns were found loaded, or far from ranges, or on airplanes.

“Unlike golf clubs and musical instruments, firearms present public safety risks that the city has a legitimate interest in protecting against,” their brief to the court said. “Limiting their possession and use in public minimizes the risk of gun violence.”

Slate:

There are good answers to these questions. Right-to-carry laws, like those in Texas, appear to contribute to violent crime and increase homicide rates. Individuals carrying a weapon are more likely to escalate incidents of road rage and domestic conflicts into fatal shootings. Cities and states have a strong interest in curbing individuals’ ability to bring deadly weapons into the streets.

The bolded sections indicate the naïve belief in myths and fairy tales.  The myth is that prohibition effects law-abiding citizens in people who would otherwise be criminals.  The entirety of history runs counter to this myth, but myths and fairy tales die hard.

But the perpetrators (cops) don’t believe the myths.  They just don’t want to give up their “only one” rights.  The real believers are folks like the author at Slate, who must be mistaking the law abiding – who rarely will use firearms due to the knowledge that most prosecutors put another notch in the belt for every law abiding gun owner they can prosecute – for the real danger, i.e, cops.

Cops, who shoot Chihuahuas, invade the wrong home, pull guns on people for no good reason, kill each other in the line of duty, shoot the wrong person, routinely lose their guns, discharge firearms at moving vehicles in a busy intersection, engage in more wrong home raids, aim poorly, shoot unwisely and kill the wrong person, shoot people who are not the intended targets, fight with lawful gun carriers, cause negligent discharges, engage in more wrong home raids, engage in rolling gun battles where they discharge 600 rounds in crowded streets, shoot innocent people, burn toddlers in SWAT raids, lose their guns in dance floor moves, shoot innocent children, engage in more wrong home SWAT raids, have more negligent discharges, shoot heroes who stop shootings, shoot more heroes who stop shootings, shoot kidnapping victims, engage in more wrong home SWAT raids, use their guns like hammers, shoot more innocent people, shoot an innocent man during a SWAT raid, lose machine guns, shoot themselves, pull guns on the wrong people, engage in more negligent discharges, shoot photographers, shoot each other, violate the rules of gun safety, shoot innocent victims, unholster guns in road rage incidents, shoot dogs, kill more innocent people, shoot each other, point guns at each other, shoot more innocent people, engage in more rolling gun battles, have more negligent discharges, throw grenades at babies, shoot people with dementia, shoot their own children, shoot into day care facilities, shoot each other, engage in more wrong home raids, pull guns on seven year olds, shoot more dogs, engage in more wrong home SWAT raids, point guns at each other, violate the rules of gun safety and shoot each other, shoot more dogs, engage in more negligent discharges, shoot more dogs, point guns at each other, engage on more negligent discharges, shoot each other, engage in more negligent discharges, engage in more negligent discharges, kill more dogs, engage in more negligent discharges, engage in more negligent discharges, shoot each other, engage in more negligent discharges, kill more dogs, kill more dogs, engage in more wrong home SWAT raids, kill more dogs, point guns at politicians, fire guns in court, kill more dogs, engage in moe wrong home SWAT raids, engage in more negligent discharges, lose more machine guns, engage in more wrong home raids, engage in more wrong home raids, lose more machine guns, kill disabled war veterans in their own home, shoot each other, shoot more dogs, and I could go on for hours more.

So I don’t want to hear another damn word about gun safety.  Can you grok that?

And by the way just to reiterate what I’ve said so many times before, my rights come from the Almighty maker of heaven and earth, not the constitution.  The constitution is a covenant between men, nothing more.

Via WiscoDave, this sad tale.

An Indiana police officer is in critical but stable condition after she was accidentally shot by her partner while on duty.

The Lafayette Police Department released body camera footage showing Officer Lane Butler, her partner Aaron Wright and a third officer searching a home for a fugitive on January 8.

After the officers failed to find the suspect inside, Butler is seen on camera exiting the home with Wright following behind her with his gun drawn.

Authorities say that’s when a dog inside the home attacked Wright, causing him to fire his gun and strike Butler in the back.

Butler was wearing a bulletproof vest, but the bullet hit right above it in her shoulder.

‘Our conclusion in this incident was this was not a result of an act of negligence, carelessness or otherwise reckless behavior,’ Lafayette Police Chief Patrick Flannelly said at a press conference Friday. ‘It was accidental.’

Police say the dog escaped its cage and attacked Wright from behind. In the video the dog can be heard barking loudly before he fired.

Butler immediately collapsed to the ground outside of the home and the officers in the video can be heard shouting, ‘What happened?’

Body camera footage shows the two officers coming to assist Butler.

Wright runs to flag down another police car responding to the scene and they help Butler inside, who remains conscious throughout.

An ambulance eventually arrives and they as they load her into the back, Butler appears to be going into shock and collapses.

Full body-cam video is at the link.  Don’t take my word for what happened or the things I intend to say about this.  Go watch it for yourself.

Tactically speaking, this is simply the weirdest thing I’ve ever witnessed.  They are traipsing through the domicile with no intent, no method, and no procdure.

They are holding their pistols way up in the air like gang-bangers, and they are using their weapons-mounted lights as assistance to search the home.  Thus, every time they need a light, they have to point their firearms in the direction of interest.  Next, he has his finger on the trigger of the gun, or otherwise, he has his finger on the weapons-mounted light (my Streamlight doesn’t work that way, and for good reason), but the dog scares him, and sympathetic muscle reflexes cause him to discharge his weapons.

They force the wounded cop to walk to his patrol car, learn that an ambulance is arriving, and then force her to walk and drag her to the ambulance in order to get help.  Finally, do you think if you or I had been scared by a dog and had our finger our weapons in ANY situation at all, and discharged the weapon injuring someone else, we would be released without charges?

I’ve said it before, having cops around in the most dangerous thing that can ever happen in your life.  They can’t be trusted with firearms.

Via WiscoDave, KATV.com:

A Faulkner sheriff deputy named Keenan Wallace was caught on camera shooting a small dog while investigating a neighborhood call reporting an aggressive dog.  Initially the County Sheriff was slow to respond to the outcry; then the video went viral on social media.

Also see coverage at The Conservative Treehouse.  The Faulkner County Sheriff’s Department said this.

“We in law enforcement answer calls every day that require split second life and death decisions.”

So what was the threat?  You’d think they were doing MOUT and room clearing in Fallujah.  Here was the threat.

A Chihuahua.  No, seriously.  I’m not making this up.  Community heroes, every one.  We should cheer as they drive down our streets and “protect us.”

KSAT.com:

SAN ANTONIO – A Leon Valley family is suing several law enforcement agencies after authorities mistakenly raided their home in a search for drugs and left them traumatized, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.

On Nov. 14, the suit said, Lucil Basco was on her way to pick up her son from Empower Behavioral Health, which offers clinic-based applied behavior analysis services to learners across the state.

During her drive, Basco was “unlawfully” pulled over for not using “her blinker, her license plate was obstructed, and she did not pull over immediately,” the suit said.

After a search of her vehicle, Basco was given a warning ticket. An hour later, the front door to her home was smashed in and she and her 5-year-old son were met with masked, armed officers on a “narcotics search warrant,” according to the suit.

Authorities placed Basco in handcuffs while they searched for drugs in her home, breaking down two additional doors inside it. The raid was based on “information from a confidential informant,” the suit said.

According to a police report, the informant pointed out Basco’s house as a “stash house” to BCSO deputies and agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration. The report said an entry team knocked and announced their arrival “several times” before forcing their way in to Basco’s home.

A BCSO deputy was later told it was “not the right house” and no drugs were found inside the home, according to the report.

Oh well.  At least the cops got to go home safely at the end of their shift.  That’s what’s really important here.

David Codrea:

An out of state concealed carry permit does not establish sufficient cause to warrant a car search for firearms, a New York judge’s Decision and Order decided Wednesday. Further, the opinion concludes the sworn testimony of the officers involved is not borne out by police video camera and microphone evidence, and a recording from a defendant’s cell phone.

The search wasn’t good, the judges decision to vacate it was.  Read the entire article, as there are many more importanr details.

Now to the really grotesque.

According to the story, Jackson was arrested after a pretextual traffic stop where officers found a baggie of marijuana and detected cocaine residue on his car seat.

Jackson has a long rap sheet and was combative with police in jail, but the encounter crossed into dubious ethical and legal territory when police compelled doctors to perform a medical procedure they saw as unnecessary.

Previous cases like this have resulted in police and hospitals paying out huge amounts of money to settle lawsuits.

Police has the doctors probe the man’s rectum for drugs.  This, after he had already been x-rayed and none had been found.  Any cop or doctor who would do that is a freak.

News from the Northwest:

King County Sheriff Mitzi Johanknecht has agreed to update her department’s use of force policies and pay a man $65,000 in damages after one of her department’s detectives drew his gun on an unsuspecting motorcyclist in a video that went viral last year.

The settlement, which was shared with me by the motorcyclist, states that the sheriff has agreed to implement an order classifying aiming a gun as a “use of force” and requiring that the department to track every single time an officer points their gun at a person. This is already standard practice for many law enforcement agencies across the country, including the Seattle Police Department.

Alex Randall was waiting on his motorcycle for a light to turn green in August of last year when King County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO) Detective Richard Rowe approached him from behind with his gun drawn. Randall had his helmet camera running at the time and captured the tense exchange.

In the widely-viewed video, Rowe can be seen quickly approaching the man from behind with his firearm drawn and without clearly identifying himself as an officer. Randall, surprised by suddenly seeing a gun pointed at him, responds by saying “Oh shit, what are you doing to me?” to which the detective responds “You’re fucking driving reckless. Give me your driver’s license or I’m going to knock you off this bike.”

Rowe has received three road rage or driving complaints against him in the last five years and was placed on administrative leave after Randall posted the video to the Internet, according to reporting by former Stranger writer Sydney Brownstone. In April of this year, Johanknecht suspended Rowe for five days without pay for a lack of courtesy in his conduct.

An internal investigation unit determined last December that the detective had violated some internal policies during the incident but he had not used excessive force because “no actual force was used.”

We had covered this earlier but I hadn’t followed it to conclusion.  This is it, I guess.  The cop is left in the workforce.  He should have been fired and then flogged in the public square, and then put in prison.

The $65,000 is an award paid by the citizens, with the culpable Sheriff and officer bearing no responsibility for what happened.  This isn’t the way to bring accountability.  This kind of settlement will keep encouraging illegal behavior by cops.

Note what the Internal Investigation Unit found: “No actual force was used.”  If you or I had done this, we would have been found guilty of assault with a deadly weapon.  He should also have been tried and found guilty of false arrest, violation of the fourth amendment, kidnapping and threats against a person.

NBC News:

A sheriff’s sergeant who died during a firefight during the Borderline Bar and Grill mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, California, last month was killed by friendly fire, officials said.

Sgt. Ron Helus was hit five times by gunman Ian David Long at the bar but was ultimately killed by a sixth shot from a California Highway Patrol officer’s AR-style rifle, Ventura County Sheriff Bill Ayub said at a press conference Friday.

“This news is extremely difficult for all of us to process and understand,” Ayub said.

Helus was wearing body armor during the shooting but the rifle shot penetrated the vest and struck his heart, according to the medical examiner.

“I can tell you that most body armor worn by municipal police in this country is not capable of stopping rifle ammunition,” Ayub told reporters. “It’s a matter of comfort as well as fatigue for officers to wear heavy armor, day in and day out.”

The highway patrol officer who fired the fatal shot was a 9-year veteran of the department and has voluntarily taken time off, according to a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol.

“The mere thought of something like this happening is devastating to all of us and underscores the difficult and dangerous circumstances law enforcement faces, often with only mere seconds to react,” California Highway Patrol Commissioner Warren Stanley said in a statement.

I grok that is “devastating,” and that it’s “difficult to process and understand.”  Let me ask you a question, Bill.  Is this as “devastating” as news of LEOs under your command threatening to shoot dogs for no good reason, or worse, when LEOs under your command shoot unarmed people?

Or is this only devastating to you when a LEO shoots another LEO?

Via WiscoDave, news from Colorado:

A Colorado police officer who shot an armed Vietnam war veteran in his home after he had just killed an intruder who attacked his 11-year-old grandson will not face charges, the District Attorney said Monday.

District attorney for Colorado’s 17th Judicial District Dave Young said his office has cleared Aurora police Officer Drew Limbaugh of wrongdoing in the July death of Richard ‘Gary’ Black Jr. Black, 73.

Police said that officers believed Black was the intruder and opened fire after he didn’t follow a command to drop his gun. It later became apparent that Black had been protecting his wife and young grandson.

On the night of July 30, police responded to multiple 911 calls from Black’s home reporting a naked intruder who was trying to drown his 11-year-old grandson, CNN reported.

Police heard gunshots as they arrived and entered the property to find Black had just shot and killed the intruder, 26-year-old Dajon Harper.

Officers found the young boy and his father in the bathroom next to Harper’s dead body.

When Black did not respond to multiple requests to drop his weapon, he himself was shot by Officer Limbaugh in his living room and died from his injuries at University of Colorado Hospital.

In a 26-page letter to Aurora Police Department, the DA wrote that there was no evidence that Officer Limbaugh ‘engaged in reckless or criminally negligent conduct’.

That last sentence tells you everything you need to know about LEOs and DAs.  The bolded sentence tells you everything you need to know about what not to do.

Calling the cops while an incident is in progress and you are trying to defend yourself or loved ones is the least safe action you can take.  Someone will die if the cops are called.  This poor man had survived Vietnam.  He couldn’t survive American LEOs.

Defend yourself, call your lawyer, return your firearm to its proper place, and then call 911 for the cops to write the report.

That’s the sequence.  And don’t talk to the police.  Let your lawyer do that for you.