Tag: NWA was right

As usual, the police story is mutating in real-time as they attempt to concoct a rationale to defend firing 71 shots at a Marine who didn’t know they were police and didn’t fire a shot at them in the midst of a “shootout” at his home.

Deputies serving a search warrant on Tucson’s south side shot and killed a 26-year-old man Tuesday morning after he fired a rifle at them, officials said. At about 9:30 a.m. the Pima County Sheriff’s Department SWAT team arrived at the residence in the 7100 block of South Redwater Drive, said Deputy Jason Ogan, a Pima County Sheriff’s Department spokesman.

Jose Guerena was inside with his wife and their 4-year-old son when he fired at deputies, who had entered the home, Ogan said. It was unknown if the woman and child were in the same room as Guerena. Guerena fired his AR-15 rifle at the deputies who were holding up shields, Ogan said. Deputies fired back, killing Guerena, Ogan said.

Wait a minute… it turns out there wasn’t actually a shootout.

“What they (SWAT members) did see clearly is this guy went into a crouching position, almost on his knees, brought up an AR-15 assault rifle, pointed at the officers and said, ‘I’ve got something for you,’ O’Connor said, referencing Guerena’s alleged remarks to the SWAT members.

“At that point, officers immediately began firing on him.”

O’Connor said 72 rounds were fired by officers in just a matter of seconds. Guerena was killed almost instantly, even though he never fired a single shot. We’re told he did have a round in the chamber, but his gun was still in the safety position.”

I think I would have found the police story more credible if they claimed Guerena had said “say hello to my little friend” or “take this, ya dirty rats”. It’s never hard to tell when police are inventing details, because they inevitably concoct dialogue that sounds like an outdated B movie. What trained military man is going to a) not remove the safety, and b) announce his presence prior to firing, if he is outnumbered and intending to engage in combat?

Since the justice system is totally unwilling to hold these out-of-control SWAT teams accountable for their crimes or force them to stop these para-military armed home invasions, it’s time for the armed civilians of America to make one thing very clear to the police of America: if the police will not show due respect for the lives, homes, and families of American citizens, Americans will no longer respect theirs. I suspect the police will suddenly find the ability to avoid “accidentally” killing people by the first time an entire cop family is wiped out by a vengeful relative of a police victim.

The lesson of history is that violence usually provokes reactive violence. The police should be as concerned as anyone about the direction that their relations with the citizenry have been headed for the last 25 years.

Clearly the best and brightest are protecting and serving:

The Dayton Police Department is lowering its testing standards for recruits. It’s a move required by the U.S. Department of Justice after it says not enough African-Americans passed the exam. Dayton is in desperate need of officers to replace dozens of retirees. The hiring process was postponed for months because the D.O.J. rejected the original scores provided by the Dayton Civil Service Board, which administers the test.

Under the previous requirements, candidates had to get a 66% on part one of the exam and a 72% on part two. The D.O.J. approved new scoring policy only requires potential police officers to get a 58% and a 63%. That’s the equivalent of an ‘F’ and a ‘D’.

Why does Dayton need black police officers? Do they have a quota for Asian officers too? How about Turkish ones? Jews? And how is it worth hiring officers anyhow when you know before they’re even hired that they’re going to find the job too intellectualy challenging?

In which the police are astonished to learn that the criminal population isn’t content to sit around waiting for the police to shoot them first:

Authorities are worried a recent wave of police officer shootings may not be a coincidence. In just 24 hours, at least 11 cops were shot around the country.

The most recent incident at a fugitive’s house in St. Petersburg, Fla., left two officers dead and a U.S. marshal wounded Monday. Hours earlier, an Oregon officer was critically wounded after being shot multiple times during a traffic stop.

Monday’s violence followed a bloody Sunday that left an officer in Indianapolis critically wounded during a traffic stop shooting, four officers in Indianapolis wounded after a gunman opened fire in a precinct and two more officers in Washington wounded in a shootout in a Walmart parking lot.

“It’s not a fluke,” Richard Roberts, a spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations, told MSNBC.com. “There’s a perception among officers in the field that there’s a war on cops going on.”

There isn’t an organized “war on cops” anymore than there is an actual “war on criminals” being waged by the police. This is simply the natural reaction to the police unilaterally deciding to militarize their police operations and allow their officers to preemptively shoot people who aren’t shooting at them. It doesn’t take a whole lot of well-covered incidents where police shoot unarmed and even handcuffed men for criminals to realize that they are in a no quarter situation whenever they find themselves facing arrest.

The American police would be wise to ratchet down their violence and abandon the militarized posing or before too long they’re going to find themselves being hunted down in the same way that the police are hunted in Mexico and South America.

And here the police are always saying that if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide:

Dozens of anti-gang police officers across the city are quitting their assignments over a requirement to reveal personal financial information under strict anti-corruption rules, The Associated Press has learned. Gang units in some of the city’s most violent neighborhoods are being left with multiple vacancies, with officers choosing instead to work regular patrol shifts, Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger said Monday.

That might be an interesting way to end the drug war. Simply impose the same anti-corruption rules on the DEA, the ATF, and the associated divisions of the big city police departments.

Clearly this is evidence that police guns are too dangerous to be permitted to the police:

Robert Butler Jr. walked into Millard South High School Wednesday just before 1 p.m. and signed in to speak to Assistant Principal Vicki Kaspar. It was his second visit to Kaspar’s office that day. The first hadn’t been a pleasant one, the 17-year-old senior slapped with a 19-day suspension for taking part in a Jan. 1 incident where a car was driven across a school football field and track at the school. But on this four-minute visit, Butler had a gun. It was a Glock .40, believed to be the service weapon of his father, an Omaha police officer. Butler shot the 58-year-old Kaspar, mortally wounding her, and then fired on Principal Curtis Case. He fired seven shots in all, the last a missed shot at a school custodian, before fleeing the school by car.

What do you want to bet that we don’t see the usual “guns must be banned” blather after this school shooting? The thing that is so stupid about gun control is that the decades of failure of the drug war make it perfectly apparent that all gun bans are going to do is create a very profitable illegal trade in them… and a lot of them are going to be purchased or stolen from the police and the military.

Once more, a reminder that the police are just as likely to be the enemy as not:

On Dec. 2, Jeremy Marks, a Verdugo Hills High School special education student, was offered a new plea offer by the L.A. County District Attorney: If he pled guilty to charges of obstructing an officer, resisting arrest, criminal threats and “attempted lynching,” he’d serve only 32 months in prison. That actually was an improvement from the previous offer made to the young, black high schooler — seven years in prison….

The first thing to understand is that Jeremy Marks touched no one during his “attempted lynching” of LAUSD campus police officer Erin Robles. The second is that Marks’ weapon was the camera in his cell phone.

The police are simply out of control all around the nation. They clearly believe they are above the law because they are so seldom held accountable for their actions. It is obviously necessary to pass laws in every state making it perfectly clear that recording video and audio of police actions is not only legal, but any attempt by police to resist such recordings being made will be prosecuted.

“[T]he Los Angeles School Police Department’s internal affairs division ‘sat on 16 investigations of police wrongdoing for so long that the officers can’t be punished, even though all were ultimately found guilty of misconduct.'”

It looks like the Minneapolis police department is determined to test its ability to flout the concealed carry law:

Rosenberg was in police headquarters to pick up some documents, and he came packing not only his handgun but a video camera. The video captured Sgt. Palmer confronting Rosenberg about his gun before taking the weapon away with all the decorum of a father scolding his bratty son.

Rosenberg argued he had permission to carry inside City Hall and later filed a complaint against Palmer. Palmer insisted that Rosenberg was violating a court order that bans guns on the premises. The warrant that was issued yesterday for Rosenberg’s arrest agrees with the latter opinion.

Rosenberg says he notified the sheriff’s department of his intent to carry a weapon into the office that day, while the warrant says the sheriff has no record of that.

Notice that the police position depends upon the sheriff having no record of something it doesn’t even openly deny. Which means that they’re doing what the police always do when they’re in the wrong – they’re lying – so I hope Joel has a record of his conversation with them. I recently dealt with a company that swore they had no record of my contact with them; they were trying to bill me for a contract I’d canceled months. They tried to pull the same “we have no record” line and didn’t drop it until I sent them a copy of the email I’d sent them which also referred to the conversation I’d had with them.

Shameless. And here’s an interesting thought. If the police are the servants of the public, why is it legal for the police to lie to the public and illegal for the public to lie to the police? Good luck to Joel. It should be a matter of real pride for him to be publicly declared “Minneapolis’s most rabid gun advocate”.

And yes, fantasy fans, he is THAT Joel Rosenberg.

As I have written on numerous occasions, the police are both lawless and unaccountable. One wonders how they can be considered to be “law enforcement officers” when they demonstrate so reliably that they have no idea what the relevant law is:

Sergeant William Palmer, the Minneapolis Police Department Spokesman, is under investigation for assaulting Joel Rosenberg, a local self-defense activist, in the waiting room of the office of Timothy Dolan, Minneapolis Police Chief. this afternoon, at approximately 130PM.

Rosenberg and his wife, Felicia Herman, had arrived at the office by previous arrangement with the suspect, Palmer, to examine the first of several Minnesota Government Data Practices Act responses that Rosenberg has submitted to the MPD and the City of Minneapolis. In addition to his responsibilities as police spokesman, Palmer is also the MPD’s Data Practices Officer.

When Rosenberg removed his jacket, revealing one of the two lawfully-carried handguns on his person, Palmer leaped at him, laid hands on him without lawful authority or Rosenberg’s consent, and removed one of Rosenberg’s pistols, “sweeping”, or momentarily pointing it, at Rosenberg as he moved to unload it.

“Palmer did not commit a further assault by patting me down,” Rosenberg said. “If he did, he probably would have found the snubnose revolver in my right pocket, and threatened me with that, too.” Rosenberg smiled. “He took one of my knives, too, but missed two others.”

Palmer admitted, in front of Rosenberg, two witnesses, and a video camera, that he had done so out of a belief that it was somehow unlawful for Rosenberg, a permit holder, firearms instructor and the author of Everything You Need to Know About (Legally) Carrying a Handgun in Minnesota to carry in Minneapolis City Hall, and threatened Rosenberg with the loss of his carry permit — something that Palmer has neither the authority to threaten nor to do — and with arrest.

Rosenberg responded, “I will not resist arrest, sir,” and attempted to advise Palmer that Minnesota Statute 624.714 not only permits Rosenberg to carry his firearm there, but that Subd. 23 of that statute says (emphasis added):

No sheriff, police chief, governmental unit, government official, government employee, or other person or body acting under color of law or governmental authority may change, modify, or supplement these criteria or procedures, or limit the exercise of a permit to carry.

“It’s really very simple,” Rosenberg explained. “Bill had no right to touch me at all, much less grab my gun, much less point it at me, even momentarily. I expect that the HennCo Sheriff’s Office will investigate, and act according to both the facts and the law. And that’s not the only crime Bill committed today, in that act. He really needs to obey the law that he is sworn to enforce and uphold. Whatever that was today, it was not ‘To Protect’ nor ‘To Serve.’ It’s not for him to make up the law as he goes along.”

Rosenberg immediately proceeded to the office of the Hennepin County Sheriff, where he filed a criminal complaint with Detective Bill Gottwaldt, who has promised Rosenberg a fair and impartial investigation.

And yes, it’s THAT Joel Rosenberg, the science fiction author and straight shooter. I’m sure we all expect Officer Palmer to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and punished accordingly.

I wrote in the discussion that followed my previous post on the police shooting of the Pace University football player that we would be able to tell if the police were lying about committing murder or telling the truth about defending themselves on the basis of the eventual availability of the video evidence. Needless to say, I’m astonished that, in yet another amazing series of the sort of coincidences that somehow surround police shootings, all of the cameras in all of the squad cars tragically happened to malfunction at the very moment when Danroy Henry was shot and killed.

Video cameras in squad cars were “not operational” when police officers shot and killed a college football player during a disturbance outside a bar, prosecutors said in a document released Tuesday. The Westchester County District Attorney’s Office filed the document in objecting to a request from a lawyer for the student’s family to view audio and video recordings of the shooting. Danroy Henry, 20, a Pace University student from Easton, Mass., was killed Oct. 17 as he drove his Nissan near the bar in Thornwood near the university campus.

If you still believe that the police in the United States are subject to the law at this point, you are either not paying attention or you are willfully stupid. This is no longer a matter for debate. And since the politicians are unable to keep the police under control, the long-term solution is for the state constitutions to be amended ordering the complete disarming of all state and local police except for specially trained, non-militarized, non-SWAT teams who are answerable to scrutiny and prosecution by the state supreme court when police shootings take place. Armed Americans are not only capable of defending themselves from the criminally inclined, they can do so much more safely without the lawless “service and protection” of the armed police forces.

As long as the police refuse to be held accountable by the laws and conspire to protect the murderers and lawbreakers in their midst, they cannot be trusted with lethal weapons in public.