Archive for the 'Police' Category

Eugene Volokh:

Veteran suffering from PTSD calls suicide hotline, admits to gun ownership, but repeatedly explains he doesn’t have a weapon at the ready. His interlocutor calls D.C. police anyway, who send in SWAT. He surrenders. Police search his home, see nothing concerning in plain view. Hours later, they re-enter, rip the place apart — and (allegedly) leave the stove on and the front door unlocked for two weeks while he’s in jail. D.C. Circuit: The second search violated the Fourth Amendment.

Well, what the hell else did you expect to happen?  The cops were involved.

Take a long look at this picture.

Reason.com:

A group of Detroit police officers executing a narcotics search warrant knocked on Nikita Smith’s door on January 14, 2016. The only fact that both Smith and the officers agree on after that point is that, a short while later, Smith’s three dogs were all shot dead.

What really happened in the moments between could be a costly question for the city of Detroit. In a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in May, Smith says the Detroit police executed her three pit bulls, Debo, Mama, and Smoke, without provocation. Essentially, they acted as a “dog death squad.”

According the lawsuit, Smith tried to tell the officers she was putting her dogs away, and placed two in the basement and one in the bathroom. As the officers burst into the house, Debo slipped back upstairs. The officers shot it as it sat down by Smith. Next, they charged into the basement and shot Mama, who was pregnant and backed into a corner. Finally, they moved onto the bathroom, where Smoke was closed in.

One of the officers cracked the door open, peeked inside, and closed it again. “Should we do that one, too?” the officer asked, according to the lawsuit, before two of them fired through the closed door, killing Smoke.

In the police version of the story, told through reports filed after the raid, the officers received no response when they announced their presence and forced entry into the house. Inside, they encountered a “vicious grey pit bull” that charged at them. It was shot eight times. In the basement, they encountered another “vicious white pit bull” that charged toward them. It was shot five times. According to police reports, the third dog charged out of the bathroom toward the officers and was shot.

However, extremely graphic photos entered into evidence in the case show bullet holes riddling the outside of the door and the dog dead inside the bathroom.

In other news, a concealed handgun carrier recently assisted a cop in the process of being beaten.

ESTERO, Fla. — A passerby shot and killed a person who was fighting with a Lee County Sheriff’s Office deputy on Interstate 75 Monday morning.

Deputy First Class Dean Bardes, a 12-year-veteran, was working a crash at mile marker 126 when the suspect came upon him, causing Bardes to pursue him at high speeds, according to multiple sources.

Bardes and the suspect exited their vehicles at the Corkscrew Road exit and a fight started, sources said. The suspect was armed, Bardes told his supervisors, according to sources.

The passerby, who had a Concealed Weapons License, exited his vehicle and told the suspect he’d shoot him if he didn’t stop beating the deputy, sources said.

After noncompliance from the suspect, the passerby shot the suspect three times, sources said. The suspect later died.

First of all, to appeal to the sense of personal affection of CLEOs for their officers, one has to wonder how long the good people of America will continue this sort of assistance when LEOs are brutalizing citizens in the manner shown above.  This is something you really want to think about if you’re a CLEO.  At some point, the good people of America will begin to think of you as enemies, and if that happens you’re doomed.

But back to the issue of LEOs who have a predilection for the kind of brutality you saw above.  If a LEO joins the force wanting to participate on a SWAT team, that means he wants to perpetrate acts of violence against American citizens.  You may summarily conclude that he is pathological and you should refrain from hiring him.

As a CLEO, if you want to have such a force at hand in order to perpetrate acts of violence against American citizens, you are pathological and should resign your post immediately.  You and your officers are a danger and immediate threat to life and liberty.

Even a cursory reading of Exodus 23:5 and Deuteronomy 22:4-7 teaches us that the good man has regard for the life of his beast.  And not only that, he has regard for the life of other beasts.  That’s why hunters focus so much attention on taking ethical shots in order to prevent the needless infliction of pain.

If the good man has regard for the life of his beast, the wicked man does not.  A fortiori, if he must have regard for beasts in order to be good, he must have that much more regard for the life of humans.  Any man who doesn’t meet this requirement is unfit for constabulary work.

Prior:

Buffalo Police Department, The Dog Butchers, Strike Again

$262K Settlement For Owner Of Dog Killed By Police

Psychopathic Police Chief Kills Caged Dog For Sport

Grieving Texas Dog Owners Want Cops Trained In How Not To Kill Animals

Buffalo Police Department: The Happy Dog Killers

David Codrea: No guarantee that Hillary will be toppled.  No, there isn’t.  And nothing will dissuade the insane collectivists from casting their vote for the bitch, even if she was tried in a court and found guilty of child sacrifice.  But then there is this.

The Clinton Foundation case is headed towards a likely indictment.  Well, I’ll believe it when I see it.  She’s a demon, and indictment is too good for her and as for that matter, her enablers.

Via David Codrea, Sweden is on the brink of disaster and at a breaking point with immigrant violence.  This goes right along with what we discussed about Germany.  It’s all by design.

For more police shenanigans with a gun, see this and this (via David).

A Michigan trucker said a bullet accidentally discharged from a state trooper’s weapon landed “inches from [his] head” Monday afternoon near Troutville as authorities investigated an abduction report.

John Leisenring, 54, said Tuesday the shot hit the sidewalk near where he lay as the trooper tucked the trucker’s right arm behind his back.

What a damn goober.  You or I would be in prison right now.

Want another good deterrent for criminals besides a gun?  Get a big dog.  I’ve told you that you need to do this before, for different reasons.  What’s not to like about having a dog?  Really?  Can you think of a single reason?  If you think you can, then add this little goody to the pile of good things about dogs.  Muslims hate them.  My former Marine, Daniel, loves dogs just as I do.  There were packs of feral dogs in Fallujah in 2007 that would attack humans.  Of course they would – they were starving to death.  Daniel took in one of the strays, medicated and washed it, trained it, and used it on patrols to help in ascertaining when a feral pack of dogs was about to launch an attack (his dog would always provide ample warning so that Daniel could use his SAW to respond to the threat), and the dog would assist with identifying human threats as well.  The Muslims hated the dog.  Daniel loved him.  How rich.

Again I say, why not have a good dog?  They’re worth their weight in gold in situations of threat.

There’s a lot of cool stuff about working on your AR-15 in this article.

WNCN.com:

LINCOLNTON, N.C. (WBTV) — An 11-year-old is in stable condition after she was accidentally shot by her mother, a Lincoln County sheriff’s deputy.

Misty Michelle Flowers, a Lincoln County deputy, was reportedly showing her service weapon to guests at her Loop Road home when she accidentally fired the gun. The bullet went through a wall and hit her daughter in the next room, according to reports.

Lincoln deputies said they were called to the home at 11:23 p.m. and started tending to the girl’s injury. The child was taken to CHS-Lincoln and then airlifted to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte. According to deputies, she was in stable condition after surgery.

Flowers, 38, has been with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office since 2015 and worked for the Catawba County Sheriff’s Office before that.

She didn’t accidentally do anything.  She negligently placed her finger inside the trigger guard and pulled the trigger.

But remember boys and girls, only a law enforcement officer really knows anything about guns.  And only a law enforcement officer can be trusted to carry one on a day to day basis.  And only law enforcement offices have been trained in super secret ninja warrior stress management techniques while operating tactically during tactical operations.

News from Cleveland:

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio – Investigators are trying to determine if any laws were broken when a stray bullet from the gun of an off-duty police officer ended up inside a local day care center.

The incident happened at about 3:30 Monday afternoon when there were children at the center.

“The person was, I believe in their upstairs bedroom when the gun discharged and it went through their exterior wall and then entered into the day care center,” said Russ Balthis, Cuyahoga Falls city prosecutor.

The gun described by police was a 9mm Glock 19.

“My building is brick and the kids were playing and literally it sounded like a loud noise; dust was flying because it came through one wall and then hit another wall and there’s a circle, so it could still be in the circle but I didn’t want to pull anything apart and look for it,” a caller from the KinderCare Learning Center on State Road told police in a 9-1-1 call.

Police Chief Jack Davis said the gun owner is a volunteer reserve police officer in Cuyahoga Falls but a paid patrolman in East Cleveland, where he has been with their department since last December.

“There was an off-duty East Cleveland officer who was unloading a gun or somehow doing something with his weapon, I believe unloading it, from what I heard, had an accidental discharge the bullet, traveled outside of his home through a wall at a day care and got lodged in the opposite wall of the day care,” said Davis.

Okay, let me help you a bit Mr. Davis.  The officer put his finger inside the trigger guard and pulled the trigger.  I’m glad I could be of help.

Barney, give me the gun and bullet.  Hand it over.

News from Virginia:

It was late on a Saturday night, and Elena DeRosa and her husband were watching TV in their southwest Roanoke County home. Suddenly their dog was going nuts. Seconds later the doorbell rang, and there was loud pounding on their front door — boom, boom, boom.

Because nobody they know ever uses that entrance, the couple feared they were targets of a home-invasion robbery. They’d read about one of those in Roanoke County just the week before, she said.

So DeRosa and her husband (whom she asked me not to name) went for their handguns. He was out the side door, armed, before she got to her gun. As she grabbed it, a bright light beamed into their sunroom.

Then the shouting began, DeRosa said. Someone ordered her out of the house. The light was in her face. The next day, this is what she wrote on her blog, in a post titled “My Life Matters.”

“Whoever it is, they are not lowering the light so I look away from it and see my husband to my left staring down the barrel of a gun while a cop shouts to him to put his hands on his head. WTF? The light gets lowered as I’m being yelled at to step out of the house, and for the first time I see cops, many, many cops all over my yard, guns pointed at me and my husband.

“I quickly put my [handgun] on the shelf inside and step out to the shouting, ‘Put your hands on top of your head, hands on the head!’ while three of them advance on me, their guns drawn and pointed.”

Geniuses, each and every one.  I reckon no one has ever heard of independent verification or QV&V (quality verification and validation to ensure the accuracy, fidelity and veracity of your information).  Guns drawn, people muzzle flagged, and innocent people put at risk, and had there been a home invasion by gang bangers, the poor folks inside wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.  Oh well, Justice Breyer says we don’t have a right to self defense anyway, because, “the children.”

Remember, boys and girls.  Only cops can commit the crime of home invasion, because they are just like you, only better and more special.  It’s illegal for you to do this.

Statesman:

Continuing his efforts to champion law enforcement since five Dallas officers were shot to death in July, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced Wednesday that he will press legislators to provide all 59,000 Texas patrol officers with a bulletproof vest capable of stopping high-caliber rifle rounds.

Early estimates place the cost at $15 million to $20 million, Patrick said, vowing to fight for the money in the 2017 legislative session despite a tight budget thanks to depressed oil and gas prices.

Oh my.  Do you think he understands that he’s talking about sending every cop out every day with hard shell SAPI plates and tactical vest plate carriers?  Wouldn’t that be a sight in Texas heat?  Sort of like it was with Marines running around Fallujah in 120 degree weather with full body armor on.  We’d have officers passing out everywhere, unable to get into and out of their patrol vehicles, knees crumbling from the stress, and unable to pass the physical with the additional weight of the vests.

Do you think someone needs to talk to him in private?  Or perhaps not.  Let’s see how this little experiment goes, shall we?  Everyone in favor, say aye?

News from California:

A gang member used armor piercing-bullets and an AR-15 to kill two Palm Springs police officers in a planned “ambush” on Saturday, said Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin in a press conference Wednesday.

John Felix, 26, shot an assault rifle through the front door of his house, killing Officers Jose “Gil” Vega and Lesley Zerebny and wounding a third officer – all of whom were wearing bulletproof vests. Felix was captured early Sunday morning after a 12-hour standoff with police and SWAT teams.

Felix has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder, with enhancement filed on each charge for the use of body armor and armor-piercing bullets.

Because most journalists write at the fifth grade level (intentionally and by design), we don’t know what this means.  I suppose it means that he used green tip ammunition.

But it really doesn’t matter.  I’ll wager that the cops were using SAPI plates, and so Kevlar won’t stop either green tip or frangible 5.56 mm ammunition.  But leave it to the police to make it sound like something other than what it is.  Someone killed cops.  The ammunition he used is irrelevant, and the cops know that.  This event was used to make an unrelated point.

And what’s the issue with the use of “body armor?”  What was he wearing – Kevlar or hard shell armor?  Is that illegal in California?

Reason:

A Hennepin County (Minn.) drug squad — known as the Emergency Services Unit (ESU) — conducted a pre-dawn no-knock raid on a house in North Minneapolis one morning in November 2015. They were looking for Walter Power, who they suspected of being a marijuana dealer. To search the home they believed Power to be sleeping in, they brought a force of between 28-32 officers, most clad in riot gear and carrying rifles, accompanied by a sniper seated atop a Ballistic Engineered Armored Response (BEAR) vehicle.

Why did law enforcement officials feel they needed to display a show of overwhelming force that would be intense even in a foreign occupied city? Because the primary resident of the house, Michael Delgado, was a registered gun-owner with a license to carry.

Convinced of the potential danger posed to officers when raiding a house with an armed occupant, Hennepin County District Judge Tanya Bransford signed off on the no-knock raid, but later told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that she did not know a platoon of up to 32 officers would be deployed to search the house, or that they’d throw flash bang grenades through the windows in addition to knocking down doors.

The raid resulted in the arrest of Power — the suspected marijuana dealer — for “fifth-degree drug possession,” the lowest possible drug charges on the books. Even this modest charge would be dropped after Judge Bransford declared the raid unconstitutional in a ruling last summer, arguing that Delgado and Power had been subject to unreasonable search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Bransford wrote in her ruling “that the types of militarized actions used in this case seem to be a matter of customary business practice,” which she found troubling.

Like most of the U.S., Hennepin County has increasingly relied on SWAT teams to serve warrants. According to the Star-Tribune, its ESU deployed 71 times last year, which is more than double its annual usage from a decade prior. A 2014 study by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found that on a national basis, SWAT teams were only used “for hostage, barricade, or active shooter scenarios” in seven percent of all deployments, while 62 percent of SWAT raids were to search for drugs.

The executive director of the Minnesota Sheriff’s Association, Jim Franklin, was quoted by the Star-Tribune as saying of Bransford’s ruling, “My question to her is: Are you going to attend the dead cop’s funeral?” Franklin’s argument is essentially that without the use of such violent and destructive tactics, officers’ lives would be at risk.

Why didn’t uniformed officers go up to the door in the day time and knock?  Oh yea.  They wanted that “evidence.”  Okay, so why didn’t they stake out the home and wait until he left, go into the home to get their evidence, and then arrest him in the driveway?

Because they wanted to be all tacticool and bad ass.  They wanted to play soldier-boy without the commitment.  As for the judge, she knew.  She knew everything.  She’s throwing a red herring in your face now because it looks bad.  She could have asked the same questions I’m asking.  It makes no difference whether they used 30 officers or three.  They conducted an armed invasion of another man’s home and are at a minimum guilty of breaking and entering, as well as reckless endangerment.

Jim Franklin is also lying.  If he was concerned about officer safety, he wouldn’t be advocating these kinds of ridiculous raids to begin with.  He would be advocating exactly what I did, i.e., stake the home out and arrest him in the driveway.

Both judge Bransford and Jim Franklin are liars.

Daily Herald:

The Chicago Police Department for the first time will ask the public to comment on proposed changes in how officers may use force against people suspected of crimes — proposals that already are worrying some officers, such as restrictions on when to draw a weapon.

Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson has sent a memo to officers giving them highlights of the changes.

Among the most controversial proposals among the rank-and-file is for officers to keep their guns in their holsters “unless there is a reasonable belief that such action is necessary for the officer’s safety or the safety of others,” several officers told the Chicago Sun-Times on Friday.

One sergeant said he was worried the restriction could prompt officers to second-guess themselves in potentially dangerous situations in which they might have drawn their guns in the past.

I would have thought that this would have been fairly uncontroversial, but then again I guess I just have an exaggerated sense of equity and fairness.  If I can’t do it, and I expect that others can’t unholster their weapons towards me, then cops shouldn’t be able to do it either.  And there is that whole Tennessee versus Garner thing.