Archive for the 'Police' Category

David Codrea:

“Michael Weinman, director of governmental affairs with the Fraternal Order of Police, said the organization opposes the legislation,” The Canton Repository reports.

“Weinman said firearms training, currently necessitated by the licensing process, should be required of concealed-carry holders,” the report elaborates. “The police union opposes the bill.

“We’re very leery of … what crimes you’d be allowed to carry with,” Weinman is quoted. “Does it open it up for people who assaulted police officers to be able to now carry?”

“The sky is falling,” screamed chicken little.  But it never happens.  It hasn’t happened that way in any state where constitutional carry is part of the fabric of state statutes.

And he is lying partly because they want control, and partly because it’s all about the money.  But I repeat myself.

Guns.com:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously agreed that sheriff’s deputies used reasonable force when in a 2010 shooting that left two wounded.

Falling back on a longstanding objective reasonableness argument in use-of-force case law, the high court overturned a previous ruling in the case of Angel Mendez and Jennifer Garcia, between them shot 15 times by Los Angeles County deputies conducting a search.

Two deputies, Christopher Conley and Jennifer Pederson, were part of a larger force of officers looking for a dangerous parolee when they came across the couple living inside a primitive shack behind the property being searched. Without a warrant or announcing their presence, the officers opened the door to the shack which prompted a napping Mendez, who had a BB gun on his futon that he used to kill rats with, to stand. Conely yelled, “Gun!” and the deputies opened fire, hitting both individuals. Mendez, shot 14 times, had to have a leg amputated while Garcia, pregnant at the time of the shooting and hit once in the back, feared to lose her child.

Citing excessive force and civil rights allegations, the couple sued the county in 2011 in federal court, with U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald in August 2013 granting over $4 million in damages to Mendez and Garcia. The ruling, upheld by the U.S. 9th Circuit on appeal last year, was overturned by the Supreme Court this week.

The deputies, previously cleared after the shooting by the LASD’s Office of Independent Review, used reasonable force as noted by the Supreme Court in an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito for the eight-jurist panel that did not include newly added Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was not part of the court when the case was argued.

The court fell back on the 1989 Graham v. Connor ruling which held that objective reasonableness must be used when determining if excessive force was used by police, with courts basing their decisions on the information the officers had at the time.

What Alito took exception to was the 9th Circuit’s use of the so-called provocation rule to find the deputies liable for $4 million in damages, pinning it on a “murky” connection to a Fourth Amendment violation of search and seizure rights to label it excessive force. The logic of the 9th Circuit’s decision in citing the provocation rule was that the deputies lost their immunity from damages after they entered the shack without a warrant.

While I’m not a legal scholar, with all due respect to the writeup at Guns.com, this is a complex ruling and the Supreme Court is famous for deciding cases within a very limited framework.

The decision can be found here.  Alito had a problem with invoking a Ninth Circuit rule that he believed didn’t apply and could be used for nefarious reasons in the future.  Here is the money quote.

The rule’s fundamental flaw is that it uses another constitutional violation to manufacture an exces­sive force claim where one would not otherwise exist.

But if Alito has destroyed the Ninth Circuit “provocation” rule, in one and the same sentence he has destroyed the notion that there can ever be such a thing as excessive force.  He takes aim at the provocation rule, but in the process he runs roughshod over the specifics of the case where LEOs shot up two people who posed no danger to them because of “information they had at the time.”

Whether they should have had better information is left unaddressed, as it always will be.  Whether the safety of the innocents should be as important (or more important) than safety of the officers is left unaddressed.  Moreover, while the Supreme Court is protected by their own security, Alito doesn’t address the fact that we – the ordinary peasants – simply cannot wait for alleged LEOs to finish their business while we lie around unmoved as I’ve observed before concerning a case of armed men dressed in SWAT uniforms who invaded a home.

In addition to your felt need to “go home safely at the end of your shift,” we have an equivalent need to be safe in our own homes, to prevent flash-bang grenades from being thrown into our toddler’s cribs, to prevent your reflexively shooting our family dogs, and to prevent street thugs like this from raiding our homes under the guise of being police officers.

You see, we can’t just lay down and let people screaming “police, police, get the fuck on the floor, police, police” … come into our homes without countering those efforts with close quarters battle.  Because they may not be police.”

But in fact the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did just this, i.e., the gave LEOs a pass for shooting an innocent man on bad information because they invaded his home and he resisted, not knowing who the invaders were.  So while the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals beclowned themselves with an idiotic ruling that could make the founders turn in their graves, the U.S. Supreme Court played one-upmanship in the parade of the ridiculous.

For LEOs, it’s okay to shoot a man who poses you no danger if he has a BB gun, as long as the information you have at the time, correct or incorrect, makes you believe you are in danger.  Warrant or no warrant.  It makes no difference.  Alito found that there was no excessive force.  Nothing else matters, and there will never be any recollection of the Ninth Circuit’s “provocation” rule or what Alito said about it.  This is all that matters.

If you were ever waiting on the Supreme Court to come to your aid regarding overbearing and dangerous police actions, you can disavow yourselves of the notion that there will be any aid forthcoming.  You’ve been taken.

U.S. News:

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The sheriff in a rural southeastern Utah county was charged Friday with threatening an employee in 2015 with a rifle, failing to properly carry out an investigation of the incident and then firing the staffer in retaliation. Two of his deputies were also charged.

San Juan County Sheriff Richard Eldredge was charged with one count of felony witness retaliation and three misdemeanors: official misconduct, reckless endangerment and obstruction of justice, the Utah Attorney General’s Office said in a news release.

Chief Deputy Alan Freestone, who ran an internal investigation state prosecutors allege was fraught with missteps, is charged with one count of felony witness retaliation and two misdemeanors: obstruction of justice and official misconduct.

Gosh, I hate it when that happens to me.  I like to point rifles at people all the time and pull the trigger just to see the reaction on their faces.  Most of the time the rifle is unloaded and not cocked.

Hahahahaha … it’s really funny.  Just being boys, they were.  Too bad the dude had to take it so seriously, losing his job over something silly like this.  Hey, just be cool and let boys be boys.  Why do you have a problem with rifles being pointed at you, dude?

Before we get to the main subject of this article, let’s cover an incident perpetrated by Carroll County’s Sheriff’s Office in Maryland.

Gaithersburg, Md. –  The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office is admitting it was a mistake that led to a SWAT raid at a Montgomery County man’s home where he and his family were detained by police.

Israel Orellana has the same name as a man investigators were searching for in a gun theft case. Somehow, Carroll County got a warrant to search the wrong man’s home.

Orellana says he was in his bedroom Tuesday when he heard the noises. He says his mom had friends from church at their home at the time.

“I thought it was my mom’s friends because sometimes they pray and they start dancing,” he said. “So I get up from my bed and I start walking over to my door. And as I’m opening my door, I make eye contact with the SWAT officer and he pushes up against the door with his shield and he slams me against the wall. He starts screaming at me, ‘Stop resisting! Stop resisting!’”

Orellana showed FOX 5 a bruise on his face and scrapes on his arm. He said his hands were tied behind his back and he was taken upstairs to find that his family and his mother’s friends were also detained. He says officers barged in on his 14-year-old sister in the bathroom.

“It was really horrific,” he said. “You feel really helpless during the whole situation. Like you know you’re innocent, you’re telling them you’re innocent, but they just see you as a criminal.”

The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office got the search warrant for Orellana’s home and requested that Montgomery County police execute it. According to the search warrant, a man named Israel Orellana was linked to a home burglary where 20 guns and money were stolen. The suspect in the case was identified in surveillance video and investigators believed that Orellana’s driver’s license photo matched that video.

Both Israel Orellanas live in Gaithersburg.

“Stop resisting.”  Compliant sheeple, citizens are expected to be.  Shooting home invaders isn’t considered a right of citizens, and it’s questionable what a jury would have found, but there is no question that the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would have given the cops a pass had they shot the man if he had in fact resisted.

This all put citizens in a dangerous position.  Men need to protect their families, and single women are even more vulnerable in this calculus.  The reason is clear.

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Police are trying to catch a group of armed robbers who pistol whipped a couple inside their condo while wearing fake SWAT uniforms.

“I think it made us hesitate enough to give them the jump on us,” Brad Ouellette said. “Just oh, SWAT, maybe the wrong house, what are you doing here?”

The masked men got away with three Rolex watches and five guns. They are also accused of inappropriately touching Ouellette’s wife.

“This reminded her of something she would see in Colombia,” he said. “She never thought she’d see it in America.”

Never forget those words.  “I think it made us hesitate enough to give them the jump on us.”   As I said before concerning armed invaders and the proliferation of police SWAT raids, “For those of you who are LEOs, do you understand?  Does this ring any bells with you as home owners and family members?  Does it make any sense to you that this is number 18,399 on the list of reasons not to conduct home raids, even if they are intended to find evidence of wrong-doing?

Well, does it?  I hope a LEO weighs in, because it’s crystal clear to me and most readers.  In addition to your felt need to “go home safely at the end of your shift,” we have an equivalent need to be safe in our own homes, to prevent flash-bang grenades from being thrown into our toddler’s cribs, to prevent your reflexively shooting our family dogs, and to prevent street thugs like this from raiding our homes under the guise of being police officers.

You see, we can’t just lay down and let people screaming “police, police, get the fuck on the floor, police, police” … come into our homes without countering those efforts with close quarters battle.  Because they may not be police.”

The proliferation of military tactics into ordinary policing work in America was first promoted by progressives fighting a war on drugs, but the police-worship is possibly even worse among the “law-and-order” neocons who also happen to be some of the most virulent Northeastern gun controllers.

This is all setting up a national confrontation between the police and those who are being policed, and whether those who are setting all of this up actually understand the hazard this creates for themselves as well isn’t clear.  What is clear is that this is bound to get much worse before it ever gets any better.

But you simply cannot lay on the floor waiting for your door to be busted down because the home invaders might be police.  No honorable man can do something like that, any more than an honorable man can bust doors in and point guns at other people just because a judge says so.

Via Guns.com, where a robust discussion is occurring over post-Katrina gun confiscations in the comments, comes this bit of history.

THEY didn’t stop serving when hurricane Katrina trashed New Orleans, and they defied looters by turning their bar into a fortress, with a shotgun-wielding transvestite as sentry at the door.

But on Thursday, regulars at the Kajun Pub regretfully drank a final toast to their life in the Big Easy, and bowed to authorities’ demands that they turn their backs on their stinking, wounded city.

It took a heavily armed team of US marshals, who confiscated their weapons in a late-evening raid that ended with a barman in jail, to break the resistance of owner Joann Guidos.

The videos include Louisiana National Guard, local LEOs, and others.  Above we learn that some of the “others” were federal marshals.

As regular readers know, more than two years ago I had sent a FOIA request to the Louisiana National Guard to determine who issued the arming orders for the National Guardsmen on patrol through Louisiana.  To date I have heard nothing back from them even after calling the governor’s office.  My bet is that arming orders were never issued and magazines were empty.

If this is true, it means that federal agents actually conducted all of the gun confiscations.  It’s really too bad that federal agents didn’t die during those raids.  It would have brought attention to infringement of God-given rights, and it may have been the only thing that would have.

Some weapons were returned to owners rusted and broken, others never got their weapons back.  All of them were left defenseless in the face of armed looters by men who don’t care and would just as soon see the people perish as to recognize their rights.  “Just obeying orders, ma’am.  Just obeying orders, sir.”

Never forget.  Never let it happen to you.  The federal agents confiscating weapons were criminals, conducting illegal search and seizures, guilty of theft, assault with deadly weapons, harassment, trespassing, and breaking and entering.  Each and every one of them deserved to die.  For the record, declaring “martial law” means nothing concerning your constitutionally recognized rights.  It is precisely in times of crisis that your rights matter the most, and the founders didn’t exempt hard times for the recognition of rights.

The Post And Courier:

Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen wants to stop the General Assembly from enacting a law that would allow gun owners to carry their guns concealed or openly without having to get a permit, and he’s enlisted area residents to help him get the job done.

[ … ]

Mullen says the law would make it more difficult for law enforcement employees to do their jobs since they wouldn’t be able to question people only for openly carrying their weapons.

“People are going to be calling us and wanting us to intervene, and we’re going to have to tell them because of the law, we’re not able to do that,” he said …

“At least we know when were dealing with a concealed-weapons carrier, they’ve gone through a background check and gone through training,” he said. “And it creates another opportunity for small situations, verbal altercations or minor disagreements, to lead to serious injuries or even death.”

Dramatic, yes?  Altercations, even death!  The problem is that he’s lying.  As a long time resident of a “Gold Star” traditional open carry state, I know that nothing of the sort happens.  And chief Mullen knows all of this too, but like LEOs everywhere, he wants to maintain control and the revenue stream that comes from gun permitting.  Mullen shouldn’t look at it as if he isn’t “able to intervene.”  He should look at it as an opportunity to educate the public on the rights of citizens of South Carolina.  He would rather intervene, since he is an old school collectivist.

Next up, Alabama LEOs.

Treadaway said an example of how the permit requirement is an important tool for law enforcement came last week when Birmingham police stopped a pickup with no headlights on. The officers noticed an AR-15 on the back seat, which was not illegal, Treadaway said. The driver admitted to having a pistol in the truck and did not have a permit for it.

That led to his arrest and a search of the truck, which turned up two pipe bombs and illegal drugs, Treadaway said.

“That’s a prime example that if this law passed, the concerns of law enforcement is that tool would be taken away,” Treadaway said.

It all sounds so dramatic, yes?  Except it wasn’t the lack of a permit that tipped the LEOs off to something else in the automobile, it was the willingness of the perpetrator to confess on the spot that he had a pistol in the truck.  Actually, if he had run his headlights, he never would have been stopped to begin with, so none of this has anything to do with permitting or open carry.

You can take it as an article of faith, that when asked about constitutional carry, LEOs everywhere will come up with the most dramatic excuses for why it’s a bad thing and will lead to blood in the streets and difficulty to maintain law and order.

Except that the history of open carry states shows that they’re lying every time.  So why ask them at all?  Ignore the LEOs when considering the rights of citizens.  After all, they aren’t constitutional scholars.

Someone named Bob Cesca wrote as idiotic an article at Salon as you will ever read.  That’s not what interests me.  What does interest me is the comment thread, in which Jason Koskey says this.

Because we empower them to take lives. They are one of the few professions entrusted with such an awesome responsibility.

It’s simply a matter of fact that guns are offensive. Yes, you may successful shoot someone before they shoot you. That’s still offence, not defence. Guns have no defensive properties.

He’s referring to LEOs here with regards to his comment.  We “empower them to take lives!”  Forget for a moment that if guns have no defensive properties (?), LEOs would have no business carrying them to begin with.

Or perhaps that presupposes the consequent, or begs the question.  Perhaps Jason believes that cops need guns not for self defense, but only in order to do society’s bidding to take lives.  Forget due process, forget equal protection.  LEOs take lives.  That’s their purpose according to Jason.

This is a stark reminder concerning what collectivists think, and how far they’ve gone down the road to statism and serfdom.  That in Tennessee versus Garner the Supreme Court said that LEOs can only use firearms in self defense (and not to fire on someone like an escaping prisoner) is irrelevant.  That the SCOTUS said that cops have weapons for the very same reason civilians have them, i.e., personal protection, doesn’t matter to Jason.

Cops are empowered to take lives according to Jason.  Pity the fool who turns to the state for his well being.  The state cares nothing for him or his life.

Regarding Cops Given Pass For Shooting Innocent Man In His Own Home, a reader wrote in an corrected me concerning a word in the post.  I faithfully reproduced the sections of Bob Unruh’s article, and correctly discussed the Lake County Police and their actions, right up until I confused the issue with Lake City Police, which is something entirely different.  I have corrected the original post.  I regret the error.

Bob Unruh:

Reason:

Exiting my apartment building yesterday, I noticed a pair of armed, SWAT-vest wearing law enforcement agents overseeing a crowd of people moving boxes and furniture. Coming closer, I could see that the agents were U.S. marshals. The people helping with the move were mostly in matching neon T-shirts and there were at least a dozen of them, despite relatively little in the way of things to be moved. It turns out both strange details can be accounted for by one thing: the U.S. Marshals Service’s involvement in Washington, D.C., tenant evictions.

It’s standard practice for U.S. marshals to preside over D.C. evictions, in the same way that sheriff’s deputies might do in other areas. That’s because it falls to U.S. marshals to serve and carry orders of the Superior Court for the District of Columbia, including “Writs of Restitution that are issued for the recovery by eviction of tenants.” The U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia also sets the rules for the process of physically evicting tentants.

This winds up weird for a number of reasons. First, let’s consider the impact on evicted tenants. Being evicted is tough enough without the public embarrassment and intimidation of having it made into a spectacle complete with rifle-wearing U.S. marshals in SWAT vests and a baseball team’s worth of mandated movers. And the potential for escalation of hostilities, violence, and (should anything get out of hand) criminal penalties are always greater when you throw armed federal agents into the mix. Sure, some sort of security during evictions might be necessary, but in most cases it could probably be handled better by building security staff or community police than people primarily trained for things like federal-prisoner transport and apprehending fugitives.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of D.C. recently filed an official complaint against the U.S. Marshals Service related to the 2015 eviction of Donya Williams and her 12-year-old daughter. Williams alleges she was naked when multiple marshals burst into her room and barely let her dress before shuffling her out. “And I’m sitting there just shaking, just trembling and I’m saying, ‘please just give me a minute to get dressed because I don’t have on anything,” Williams told local ABC affiliate WJLA.

“There is not even a plausible safety justification for that,” ACLU attorney Scott Michelman said. “It’s just humiliating and it’s wrong.”

But hey, the upshot is that the Federal Marshals get an easy day of it, get to wear body armor and be all tacticool, and get to tote rifles like they’re really somebody.  Normally you have to be on a SWAT team somewhere and shoot up people and homes for marijuana cigarettes for that kind of rush.  And for these guys, they get to see naked girls to boot.  From their perspective, what’s not to like?

But not all is well in Shangri La.

… the marshals will call off the whole thing the day before if weather forecasts call for a 50 percent or greater chance of precipitation within the next 24 hours or temperatures below 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

Requiring so many bodies to show up for moves that may be canceled last minute (and may or may not actually require that much manpower) has lead to some perverse business practices. Rather than being able to rely on regular movers (who may charge per worker provided and have strict penalties for last-minute cancellations) or volunteers from local nonprofits (who could actually benefit from or hold on to leftover possessions but may prefer to do the job with less workers in more time), landlords often contract with companies that specialize in evictions. In turn, these companies keep costs low by relying on a roving cast of day laborers, often recruited outside D.C. homeless shelters, and—according to a recent investigation from the Washington City Paper—often refusing to pay what they initially promise or failing to provide workers with basic amenities like water.

Well, giving the federal government an assignment is the most reliable way to ensure that it gets fucked up.  But remember boys and girls, law enforcement is there for our protection and well-being.