Archive for the 'Police' Category

Again.

Guns were drawn, even on small children, when Chicago officers raided a family’s home. Dave Savini is investigating why this happened and how this family will never be the same.

“One guy said you better shut the F up if you know any better,” said Peter Mendez.

Peter was 9 when the trauma began. It was dinner time when Chicago police busted his front door open, invading his family’s home.

“Assault rifles, maybe like a few pistols,” Peter recalled.

His little brother Jack was by his side that night shaking with fear. Savini also spoke with Jack.

Savini: “They pointed a gun at your Dad and your Mom?”
Jack: “Yeah”
Savini: “and then did they point a gun at your brother?”
Jack nodded yes.
Savini: “What was it like when that gun was pointed at you?”
Peter: “It was like my life just flashed before my eyes.”

Mom and Dad say cops screamed profanities at the family as they tore the house apart and ordered them all to the floor at gunpoint.

Savini: “You never thought a police officer would do that to you?”
Peter: “No.”

“I could hear my babies screaming, ‘Don’t shoot my Dad. Don’t kill my Dad. Leave my Dad alone. What did my Dad do?’” said Peter’s father, Gilbert Mendez.

Peter’s dad Gilbert Mendez says his family did nothing wrong and what’s even worse the police had no right to even be there because they were raiding the wrong home and now the Mendez’s say police are trying to cover it up.

The CBS 2 investigators found officers from the 11th district used a search warrant filled with mistakes, even the judge’s printed name as required by police order is missing.

In fact, police tell CBS2 they don’t even have their own copy of the warrant or any record the warrant even exists.

I guess it got their rocks off to point guns at little kids.  And the imperative ” … you better shut the F up if you know any better” makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  What is that – gibberish or “Pig Latin”?

The worst thing of all is that no cops got shot.  Cops getting shot pulling idiotic stunts like this might bring an end to violations of the fourth amendment to the constitution.

News from California:

A former Beaumont cop who blinded a woman when he fired a pepper spray pistol inches from her face during a DUI arrest pleaded guilty today to a misdemeanor charge under an agreement negotiated with
Riverside County prosecutors.

Enoch “Jeremy” Clark, 43, entered his plea to a charge of assault by a public officer, and in exchange for his admission, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office agreed to drop a felony count of assault by a peace officer causing injury, along with a sentence-enhancing great bodily injury
allegation.

The D.A.’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the reasoning behind the plea deal, which was announced during a pretrial status hearing at the Riverside Hall of Justice.

Superior Court Judge John Molloy scheduled a sentencing hearing for Aug. 31. Clark is free on his own recognizance.

The defendant was first tried in May 2014, when a Riverside jury deadlocked 10-2 in favor of convicting him. A retrial started in January 2017, but after less than a week of testimony, Judge Michael Donner brought a halt to proceedings because of defense allegations that the prosecution had not met its obligation to share documents produced during discovery.

Clark could have faced up to four years in state prison had he been convicted of the felony charge and enhancement.

According to Deputy District Attorney Mike Carney, the defendant discharged a pepper gun into the eyes of then-32-year-old Monique Hernandez on the night of Feb. 21, 2012, after he became “annoyed” with her because she wouldn’t comply with his commands to stop resisting arrest.

The woman’s corneas were shredded and her optic nerve irreparably damaged, according to trial testimony.

Carney said Clark was completely unjustified when he pulled the trigger on the JPX Jet Protector pepper spray gun, which discharges propellant at 400 miles per hour. The device was less than 10 inches from Hernandez’s face, and the contents penetrated her eyes, dispersing into her skull, according to the prosecutor.

He said the defendant lied to cover up his actions, telling investigators that he felt his life was threatened and he was “slipping off balance” while holding the gun, causing it to fire prematurely.

The defense blamed Clark’s superiors, inadequate training on the weapon’s use, unclear instructions on how to operate it and other factors for what transpired.

If he wasn’t an “only one,” in other words, if this were me or you, we’d be on the receiving end of felony charged, and we’d be convicted.

Be careful how you use this stuff if you have it.

Randall sends this.

Here we go with backstop again.  The shooting should never have happened.  The officers didn’t know what was behind or around their intended target, and obviously missed.

I don’t want to hear another damn word from the controllers about how armed citizens are a danger to society.  Not … one … more … word.

Dean Weingarten at TTAG:

From post-gazzette.com, 18 July:

Her mother came downstairs and was confronted by a tall man wearing something white on his head, according to the complaint. The man pointed a gun at the mother and told her to lay face down on the stairs.

The two men then tried to drag Ms. Hicks out of the house, she said, at which point her brother, who lives in the adjoining half of the duplex, came to the front door.

The unidentified man shot her brother, Anthony Farley, in the neck.

Mr. Farley returned fire, striking the man, according to the complaint.

While Hicks’s was wounded, he will recover. One of his assailants ended up dead, on the porch. The second attacker escaped.

This incident illustrates a growing problem of criminals impersonating law enforcement officers to gain an advantage over their victims. It was less of a problem when most police officers were uniformed, used official vehicles and fewer “no-knock” raids were made.

Gosh, if only someone had pointed out the problem of home invaders posing as cops before the cops would begin to choose other options.  And maybe not.  And maybe anyone who conducts a home invasion – anyone – is a criminal.

According to The Washington Post.

Juan Carlos Nazario was sitting on a lakeside bench waiting to play soccer when he heard the staccato popping of gunshots outside Louie’s On the Lake, a popular waterfront grill and pub. He ran to his car to get his gun and moved toward the sounds.

Bryan Whittle was driving with his wife, heading off for a Memorial Day weekend getaway, when he saw a commotion outside Louie’s. He thought someone might be drowning, so instead of turning his truck onto the highway, he barreled into the parking lot to offer help. As he jumped out, what he learned stunned him: There was an active shooter just yards away, and wounded victims were holed up in the restaurant’s bathroom.

Whittle, too, grabbed his gun.

In a matter of seconds, the two armed citizens became self-appointed protectors, moving to take up positions around the shooter, drawing their weapons and shouting for him to drop his. Time stretched and warped. There was an exchange of gunfire. The gunman was hit several times and fell. As Nazario and Whittle converged over the man to restrain him, police arrived. Unsure who was who, officers handcuffed all of the men and put them on the ground as the shooter bled out into the grass and died.

“I was just doing what I was supposed to do,” recalled Nazario, a former police officer who said he now works as a security guard, always has his gun in the car and usually carries it with him.

“I just reacted,” said Whittle, who has served for nearly 20 years in the Oklahoma Air National Guard and works for the Federal Aviation Administration. “There’s a guy with a gun. I’ve got a gun. Stop the threat.”

Though they were loaded into police cars and taken downtown for questioning, they were soon hailed as heroes. They were also called champions of Second Amendment rights, gun-carrying examples of why Oklahoma’s Republican governor should not have vetoed a bill two weeks earlier that would have eliminated the need for a permit and training to carry a gun in public.

Local police also praised Nazario and Whittle, saying their swift response ended what a police spokesman called “a very dangerous situation.”

But police also noted that armed citizens can complicate volatile situations. The first of 57 uniformed police officers arrived just a minute after the initial 911 calls and found a complex scene with multiple armed people and no clear sense of what had happened or who was responsible.

“We don’t want people to be vigilantes,” Bo Mathews, a spokesman for the Oklahoma City Police Department, said in a recent interview. “That’s why we have police officers.”

What?  We have police officers to be vigilantes, not other people?  Is that what’s being said here?

Probably not.  He probably means that we just cannot have ordinary people defending themselves – after all, that’s what the police are for.

Or not.  Yea, surely not.

Perhaps he meant that they didn’t want their officers having to think about the situation when they show up, and just shoot everybody who looks like they might have a firearm without observing proper rules for the use of force and thus have to worry about pedestrian things like backstop and proper target ID.

You can make up your own mind.  Maybe you’ll know what you’re talking about.  He sure as hell doesn’t.

Fox News:

In bodycam footage so stunning it could be mistaken for a Hollywood action flick, a Las Vegas Metro police officer chasing two men in an SUV is seen speeding through Sin City’s downtown while simultaneously shooting out his car’s front windshield and trading shots from his side window during a deadly gun battle.

The two suspects allegedly fled after a July 11 traffic stop conducted by cops investigating the murder of a man near a car wash, FOX5 Vegas reported.

The suspects traded more than 60 shots with police during the harrowing pursuit. The officer behind the wheel, William Umana, can be heard on video yelling “shots fired” multiple times. The chase ended when the suspects crashed into the wall of an elementary school.

Rene Nunez, 30, got out of the vehicle and tried to run upstairs into the school, but the door was locked, Las Vegas Metro police Assistant Sheriff Tim Kelly said.

Fidel Miranda, 23, moved toward the passenger seat of the SUV and started to move it back toward the officer’s cruiser. Police fired on Miranda and he later died at the scene. Nunez, who was also wounded, was arrested and is facing several felony charges, including murder, police said.

The shooting “paints a picture of the dangers these officers dealt with that day,” Kelly said.

“In my opinion, they show a level of bravery, professionalism, heroics, that we come to expect of our officers,” Kelly said. “The officer could have backed off but he didn’t, he stuck with that individual knowing what type of individual he was dealing with.”

So he’s a hero and pistolero.  But tell me after watching the video that he knew his backstop when he was shooting out the window while moving, and especially when he was shooting through the windshield of his patrol unit when the bullet could have been sent at virtually any angle.

Tell me the officer knew he wasn’t going to shoot some little girl or boy walking on the sidewalk.

Foxnews:

A flip of a coin by Georgia cops determined a woman’s fate during a traffic stop in April, body camera footage showed.

The video showed Roswell police officers laughing as they used a coin-flip app to decide whether to detain Sarah Webb during a traffic stop, 11 Alive reported.

Officer Courtney Brown was heard asking Webb whether she knew how fast she was going. Webb apologized and said she was late for work, and Brown asked her to turn off the car and hand over her keys.

“The ground is wet and it’s been raining you’re going over 80 miles an hour on this type of a road. That’s reckless driving,” Brown said.

“I’m so sorry,” Webb replied.

Brown returned to her police cruiser to talk with fellow officers about whether to arrest Webb or just give her ticket.

“What do you think?” Kristee Wilson, a responding officer, was heard saying.

Brown said she “didn’t have speed detection,” but the other officer pointed out that the body camera recorded her cruiser’s speed, which would have shown how fast she was going to catch up to Webb.

Brown was then heard saying, “Hold on,” as she opens a coin-flip app on her phone. Wilson suggested that heads should mean arrest and tails should mean release. Brown agreee (sic) and flipped the coin in the app.

“A [arrest] head, R[release] tail,” Wilson said.

“OK,” Brown replied.

“This is tails, right?” Wilson asked.

“Yeah, so release?” Brown responded.

“23 [the police code for arrest],” Wilson replied.

“Michael Jordan?” Brown said while laughing. “All right, so I’ve got too fast for conditions, reckless…”

So one thing I’ll point out is that pointing to your own speedometer, or saying that you “had to drive so-and-so MPH to catch up” has no bearing on anything at all, and jurors who believe that are idiots.  Catching up to a car isn’t the same thing as driving the same speed as the other car.  I trust that I don’t have to perform calculus to demonstrate that.

Second, it appears as if this is the same thing we’ve seen before, i.e., hiring the lowest common denominator pathological morons to perform LEO duties.  In this case it’s a little different in that these are “mean girls” back in a high school lunch room who didn’t happen to like the person they stopped.

Justice in Amerika.

David Codrea:

Before judging him for that, consider the environment that is New Jersey. Then consider the overwhelming force the state can bring to bear, and its predisposition to using it, especially if it’s to enforce citizen disarmament. It’s easy to anonymously declare “Molon Labe” on the internet. In meatspace, resistance is more effective when the aggressor doesn’t get to dictate the time and place, especially if that place is your home and you have family inside.

Oh sure, I’ve got that.  I’m not sure if and when he’ll ever get them back, though, or how this ends.

Throwing down with a SWAT team in your front doorstep isn’t a good option.  When it comes to it, 4GW will be necessary to end this infringement.

In the mean time, I’m not sure why any thinking man would choose to live in New Jersey.  As for the cops, they are swine.  Every one of them who participated in this, and all of their colleagues back at the station since they allow this sort of thing to happen.

I guess that includes all of them since I folded in both the participants and the non-participants.

Via reader Randall, WBTV:

GASTONIA, NC (WBTV) – A woman was seriously injured following an officer-involved shooting in Gaston County late Sunday night. 

According to the Gastonia Police Department, officers were looking for Jarvis Lynn in the area of  Gray Street around 11:30 p.m. A warrant states officers received a call about a noise disturbance in the area. Police said Lynn had a pistol at the time of the shooting.

That’s when officers reportedly shot Lynn’s sister, in an attempt to shot Lynn, officials say.

Gaston County EMS said the woman was taken to CaroMont Regional Medical Center with life-threatening injuries but, police say, she has since been released from the hospital.

The N.C. State Bureau of Investigation is investigating the shooting.

The officer who shot the woman has been placed on administrative leave with pay pending the outcome of the investigation which is standard practice. The woman is not facing charges.

Lynn was charged with refusing to follow officer’s commands, assault, breaking and entering, larceny and damaging property. He had previously been convicted in 2011 on drug charges.

Oh dear.

Minutes down the road from me.  Folks, it appears as if the LEO was the most dangerous person that night.  You just cannot discharge a weapon unless you know your backstop.  End of discussion.  You just can’t do it.  You can tackle, you can throw your body around, you can use OC spray, you can call for backup, but you cannot discharge your weapon when other people are around.  It’s dumb.  It’s dangerous.  It shouldn’t be done.

Gun owners know that.  Why doesn’t the police?  Also, I’m not sure the article is correct.  This might be the Gaston County Police rather than the Gastonia Police Department.

Via TCJ Western correspondent Ned Weatherby, this sad, sorry tale.

Newly released body camera footage shows Las Vegas police officers pausing for several minutes in the hallway of the Mandalay Bay hotel — as mass shooter Stephen Paddock guns down 58 people on the floor directly above them.

“Holy sh-t that’s rapid fire,” officer Cordell Hendrex utters in the chilling video, reacting to Paddock’s gunfire — which he later described as “like thunder all around and above us,” according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The officer and his first-day trainee, Elif Varsin, stayed on the 31st floor for four-and-a-half minutes, even as they heard the shooter’s position reported as “the 32nd floor, room 135.”

“I’m inside the Mandalay Bay on the 31st floor,” Hendrex says in the video. “I can hear the automatic fire coming from one floor ahead, one floor above us.”

In a report, he later wrote that he “froze right there in the middle of the hall” after being terrified.

Eh, whether it’s a column or patrol car in Florida or hotel floor in Las Vegas, I’m just glad the cops had something to hide behind and that they went home safely at the end of their shift.  Officer safety first, of course.

And if things like this don’t dissuade you from the belief that the cops are there to protect and defend you, then you believe in fairy tales, myths and children’s story books.