Tag: NWA was right

One thing that has always annoyed me about the Hollywood portrayal of police departments, and is something that I mock in passing in the QUANTUM MORTIS series, is the way in which we are supposed to believe that police departments seriously frown upon individual police violating procedures and skirting the law. Is there a single Hollywood cop who hasn’t had to turn in his badge and his gun at one point or another? Or hasn’t been suspended from his job?

The reality is that police are statistically more likely to have sex with a prostitute on duty than to arrest one, are more likely to murder someone and get away with it than be caught and charged with the crime, and are only at the risk of losing their jobs if they violate the code of silence and upset the local police union.

Los Angeles police officers tampered with voice recording equipment in dozens of patrol cars in an effort to avoid being monitored while on duty, according to records and interviews.

An inspection by Los Angeles Police Department investigators found about half of the estimated 80 cars in one South L.A. patrol division were missing antennas, which help capture what officers say in the field. The antennas in at least 10 more cars in nearby divisions had also been removed.

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck and other top officials learned of the problem last summer but chose not to investigate which officers were responsible. Rather, the officials issued warnings against continued meddling and put checks in place to account for antennas at the start and end of each patrol shift.

The police chief simply “chose not to investigate” a series of obvious crimes committed by numerous police officers. It’s totally predictable, so why do we so seldom see that in the movies?

Even on the rare occasions the police are ever charged with murder after killing someone, they get away with it:

Two California police officers who were videotaped in a violent struggle
with a homeless man during an arrest were acquitted Monday of killing
him. It was a rare case in which police officers were charged in a death involving actions on duty….

The video began with Ramos stopping Thomas on July 5, 2011, after the
officer answered a call about a disheveled man jiggling the handles of
car doors in a busy transit center parking lot. Ramos grew frustrated with Thomas, who wasn’t following orders to sit on a curb with his hands on his knees.

Just before the altercation began, Ramos snapped on plastic gloves, made
two fists and then held them in front of Thomas’ face as he said, “Now
see these fists? They’re going to (expletive) you up.”

Cicinelli, who arrived a few moments later, jolted Thomas several times
with an electric stun gun and used the butt end to hit Thomas in the
head and face, breaking bones.

Thomas was taken off life support five days later.

Well, that settles it. If the police are involved, you will get no justice from the legal system. It’s not as if this is a one-time event. It is dangerous to even call the police for help.

A Boiling Springs Lakes, North Carolina family is looking for answers
after local police shot and killed their mentally ill teenage son while
responding to a call for help….Wilsey said
that Vidal had been subdued until the third officer walked in and
the boy became agitated.

“Then all of a sudden, this Southport cop came, walked in the
house [and said]: ‘I don’t have time for this. Tase him. Let’s
get him out of here,'” Wilsey told NBC. After the stun gun
was used on Vidal, Wilsey said the third officer shot him, saying
he was protecting his officers.

“He reached right up, shot this kid point-blank, with all
intent to kill,” Wilsey added. “He just murdered him
flat out.”

It is increasingly looking as if the police in America have declared war on the mentally disturbed.

I don’t have much sympathy for the police, but this account of an unusual traffic offense going full Kafka cracked me up:

There’s an apartment complex in every city that cops just don’t go into without lots of backup. I always imagined it was because those places were littered with armed gangsters, but that’s just a part of it. What really keeps police out of a neighborhood is all the people who absolutely do not give one lonely, mountain-dwelling fuck about the law. Here’s an example:

I was cruising about one night and saw this drunken guy riding a horse through the streets, rolling through every lane, clopping into oncoming traffic. I turned on my lights and tried to pull him over. He decided to run away on horseback. I went after him, with my partner patiently explaining that I’m a moron. The horseman headed for that apartment building, the one our own protocols dictate that any officer who goes inside is always to be accompanied by at least three other officers.

He stopped the horse inside, possibly assuming that no officer would follow him for drunk driving a horse. Well, I sure showed him. We pulled up, and I leaped out of the car to grab the rider. The guy, in keeping with the old joke, immediately assured me that “The horse is sober.”

But the guy was not, and wacky circumstances don’t grant you license to endanger yourself and others while under the influence. I knew I wasn’t getting horse registration off this guy, so I started to book him, at which point this little old lady came up and asked why I was arresting Horse Guy. I began to explain that he was drunk driving, and that horses do count as vehicles under the transportation code, when some random dude ran up and punched the old lady in the head.

Punching little old people is a felony, or at least it should be, so my partner and I chased the assailant through the complex. He vanished somewhere into the labyrinth and was lost to us, so I made my way back to the car, hoping maybe the lady knew who he was. But she had vanished, too. And so had the drunken rider. The horse, however, had been left behind.

No one deals with horses. Animal control didn’t have the right facilities to house one, our station sure as hell didn’t, and not even my sergeant knew what the hell to do with it. I called a towing company and said I wanted a flatbed to move an abandoned horse, and was dismissed as a crank until I pointed out I was using the police-only number and that I did have a goddamn horse that needed to be … impounded. Or something. In the end, we just moved it onto some grass and hoped it knew how to get home.

It’s not that I have any sympathy for the policeman himself. But I can’t help but have some for his partner. Can you imagine how hard it would be to not say “I told you so” afterwards?

The way the authority-drunk New Model Police are behaving these days is making even veteran military policemen nervous:

For the past fifteen years, I have worked every day on the same very small military installation as a contractor. This morning, as I was approaching the main gate, when I started off after the stoplight, I didn’t shift upshift. So, the Goat was just wailing that sweet V8 growl as I approached the gate. About fifty yards from the gate, I slowed down, rolled down my window, and had my ID outside the car as I approached. Usually, there are civilian DoD police at the gate, but this morning, it was manned by a reservist, a 2nd Class Master at Arms—the Navy’s equivalent to Military Police. We had a brief conversation that went, as nearly as I can remember it like this:

PO2: (Snippy) Are you running late this morning?

Me: No.

(At this point, I could instantly see that my answer displeased him.)

PO2: (Scowling) You need to keep your speed down.

Me: I always observe the speed limits when I’m on the installation.

PO2: (Waving me through) You need to keep your speed down off-base, too.

Me: (Starting to drive away) What happens off-base isn’t your jurisdiction.

I got to my office, turned on my computer, and went into the break area to warm up a couple of delicious whole-wheat Eggos. While I was standing in the kitchen, a uniformed DoD police officer walked in and asked me if I owned the Red GTO. When I said I did, he then asked for my driver’s license. I asked, since I wasn’t operating a motor vehicle, if I was required to show it to him. (In CA, you are not required to do so when not operating a vehicle, nor are you required to show an ID otherwise. It’s different on military bases, of course, in that you are required to show an ID).

When I gave it to him, he then began to tell me how bad my attitude was, and how I should be more respectful of the police, what with them having such a hard job and all. I said that, when it came to respect, maybe the gate guard should’ve been a little less snippy. He said they didn’t need me making smart remarks about their jurisdiction, because they have a close relationship with civilian law enforcement, and he himself, had worked for Atlanta PD for fifteen years. I denied driving at an excessive speed when I approached the gate, said that my comment about jurisdiction was completely valid and that did not have the authority to issue traffic citations off-base, and that if they felt they needed to call CHP to give me a citation, they should do so. Otherwise, he should present me with a citation or arrest me for a military-related offense. Failing that, I was uninterested in further conversation. He seemed a bit upset when he left.

About twenty minutes later, two more DoD policemen came into my office….

This guy made two mistakes. Police are like children; they absolutely hate to hear the word no, especially from someone they consider an inferior. If the guy had simply smiled and said “I hope not”, he would have been fine. Then he compounded his error by twice contradicting the gate guard.

Lesson: don’t ever talk back to police or contradict them. Don’t say any more than you absolutely have to. If they start asking you questions, don’t answer except to apologetically tell them you are invoking your right to remain silent as well as your right to record their interactions with the public. You don’t have to actually be recording anything for that to force them to start behaving; it’s actually better if they have no idea where your putative recording device is.

It’s probably not a bad idea to have a copy of the relevant recording law or statement by local public officials about the legality of such laws in your jurisdiction laminated in your wallet which you can hand them along with your ID.  Below are the laws that govern 20 different states. If anyone wishes to provide information on the rest, I will put them all together in a summary post, complete with the relevant legal citations for printing out and carrying.

The U.S. Courts of Appeals have recognized the
First Amendment right to record the police and/or other public
officials:

MA, ME, NH, RI

• First Circuit Glik v. Cunniffe,
  655 F.3d 78, 85 (1st Cir. 2011) (“[A] citizen’s right to film
  government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the
  discharge of their duties in a public space is a basic, vital, and
  well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment.”); Iacobucci v. Boulter,
  193 F.3d 14 (1st Cir. 1999) (police lacked authority to prohibit
  citizen from recording commissioners in town hall “because [the
  citizen’s] activities were peaceful, not performed in derogation of any
  law, and done in the exercise of his First Amendment rights[.]”).

IL, IN, WI

• Seventh Circuit ACLU v. Alvarez,
  679 F.3d 583, 595 (7th Cir. 2012) (“The act of making an audio or
  audiovisual recording is necessarily included within the First
  Amendment’s guarantee of speech and press rights as a corollary of the
  right to disseminate the resulting recording.”).

AK, AR, CA, HI, ID, MO, OR, WA

• Ninth Circuit Fordyce v. City of Seattle, 55 F.3d 436, 438 (9th Cir. 1995) (assuming a First Amendment right to record the police); see also Adkins v. Limtiaco,  _ Fed. App’x _, No. 11-17543, 2013 WL 4046720 (9th Cir. Aug. 12, 2013) (recognizing First Amendment right to photograph police, citing Fordyce).

AL, FL, GA 

• Eleventh Circuit Smith v. City of Cumming,
  212 F.3d 1332, 1333 (11th Cir. 2000) (“The First Amendment protects the
  right to gather information about what public officials do on public
  property, and specifically, a right to record matters of public
  interest.”).

ILLEGAL TO RECORD POLICE

MN Ramsey County
TX Senate Bill 897 introduced, but not passed.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that some police are being intentionally trained to commit murder under the color of law:

Robert Cameron Redus was shot dead by officer Carter at 2 a.m. for nothing more than making a sarcastic remark toward the officer who pulled him over for speeding.. According to the police report, local KSAT News explains that witnesses affirmed that the cop literally “emptied his gun” into the student without warning.

“I didn’t hear him say anything like, ‘Get down on your hands and knees,’ you know?” one witness explained, “I didn’t hear him say anything. He just started shooting. He emptied the gun on him… Boom, boom, boom.Six shots — five or six.”

Mohammad Haidarasl also witnessed the murder, saying that Redus’ last words were “Oh, you’re gonna shoot me?”

Redus couldn’t believe officer Carter would actually go that far, but Haidarasl added that the cop kept yelling “Stop resisting, stop resisting,” even though it was clear Redus was offering no physical residence, only sarcastic comments.

In addition to the small problem of the cop murdering the young man for the non-crime of being disrespectful, what is worrisome is the way the cop was deceitfully and repeatedly shouting “stop resisting” even as he fired his weapon.  This is a tactic meant to allow the police to claim a shooting is justified even when it isn’t; it is so deceptive that those who are training the police to attempt to deceive the public in this manner bear a moral responsibility for the citizens who are subsequently murdered by the police.

At this point, it is abundantly clear that the police are not going to control themselves. Their refusal to submit themselves to the very laws they are employed to uphold means that only the only hope for redress for the families of the victims is to take vengeance into their own hands.

The police love to talk a tough game. But have you noticed that they significantly change their tune when the public stops respecting their badges? If the police are going to rely upon their guns instead, well, perhaps they should keep in mind that the public has a lot more of them.