Middlesex County Superior Court law clerk, Leslie Anderson mourned the death of a deer while belittling the death of New Jersey state trooper Anthony Raspa
By Bob Walsh
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
June 5, 2015
New Jersey State Trooper Anthony Raspa died on the job on May 30, killed after his patrol vehicle hit a deer and then veered into a tree.
A Middlesex County Superior Court law clerk, Leslie Anderson, posted the following on face book about the incident:
“…that it is sad and heart wrenching for the family members left to suffer the consequences of the Trooper’s recklessness–especially for the deer family who lost a mommy or daddy or baby deer.” She further said that the trooper’s death was “…not that sad and certainly not tragic..” and “…there are people in this country and around the world dying for much less. There is nothing tragic about this. Get over yourself and your sense of entitlement, people.”
Ms. Anderson was suspended for two weeks with pay. She then resigned.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Leslie Anderson got her warped sense of mourning well before she entered law school. Anderson is one of many undergraduate students who have been unduly influenced by the Marxist and other far-left professors that have infested our colleges and universities.
Anderson’s two-week suspension with pay was no punishment. It was more like a two-week paid vacation.
Saturday, June 06, 2015
Friday, June 05, 2015
RESTORING DECORUM TO GRADUATION CEREMONIES CALLED RACIST
Senatobia, Mississippi school superintendent Jay Foster is called a racist for having black family members arrested who disregarded the request to hold any applause until the end of a high school graduation ceremony
Jay Foster, superintendent of schools in Senatobia, Mississippi, is determined to have order at graduation ceremonies. At the beginning of the recent Senatobia High School graduation ceremony, he asked the audience not to scream and to hold their applause until the end, or face ejection.
Several black families disregarded Foster’s request and were ejected from the building. Furthermore, two weeks later, arrest warrants for disturbing the peace were issued for four of the blacks. Now Foster is being accused of racism.
Shaun King of the Daily Kos says:
“At a time where the nation is talking about problems in the United States with mass incarceration and the over-criminalization of society, rarely has such a clear example of African Americans being overcharged for everyday behaviors as this.”
Yelling and screaming like a bunch of fools is everyday behavior? Not where I come from.
When I graduated from high school in 1943, the graduation ceremony was a solemn and respectful one with no applause from the audience until it was over. The same when I got my college degrees in 1952 and 1954.
All that has changed and now graduation ceremonies are becoming a farce. There was so much yelling during the high school graduation ceremonies for my two granddaughters that you could not hear the names being called off for many of the graduates. The same was true during the ceremony when one of my granddaughters graduated from Sam Houston State University a couple of weeks ago.
It's sad for me to say this, but at all the above ceremonies, African-Americans appeared to be doing most of and the loudest yelling, but there were plenty of whites yelling too. At the Sam Houston ceremony there was a black man directly behind me who even started yelling at the top of his voice before the ceremony started. I am estimating that during the ceremony, the names of half the graduates could not be heard because of all the yelling.
Black parents, families and friends, perhaps more so than whites, have every reason to be very proud that their loved one has graduated, whether from high school or college. But that doesn't give them the right to be disruptive at what should be a solemn ceremony. And the same holds true for white families.
I hope Superintendent Foster sticks to his guns. The accusations that Foster is a racist for bringing charges against some of the disrupting noisemakers is pure hogwash! He was merely trying to restore some much needed decorum to graduation ceremonies, and that's not being racist.
Instead of being condemned, Superintendent Foster should be commended!
Jay Foster, superintendent of schools in Senatobia, Mississippi, is determined to have order at graduation ceremonies. At the beginning of the recent Senatobia High School graduation ceremony, he asked the audience not to scream and to hold their applause until the end, or face ejection.
Several black families disregarded Foster’s request and were ejected from the building. Furthermore, two weeks later, arrest warrants for disturbing the peace were issued for four of the blacks. Now Foster is being accused of racism.
Shaun King of the Daily Kos says:
“At a time where the nation is talking about problems in the United States with mass incarceration and the over-criminalization of society, rarely has such a clear example of African Americans being overcharged for everyday behaviors as this.”
Yelling and screaming like a bunch of fools is everyday behavior? Not where I come from.
When I graduated from high school in 1943, the graduation ceremony was a solemn and respectful one with no applause from the audience until it was over. The same when I got my college degrees in 1952 and 1954.
All that has changed and now graduation ceremonies are becoming a farce. There was so much yelling during the high school graduation ceremonies for my two granddaughters that you could not hear the names being called off for many of the graduates. The same was true during the ceremony when one of my granddaughters graduated from Sam Houston State University a couple of weeks ago.
It's sad for me to say this, but at all the above ceremonies, African-Americans appeared to be doing most of and the loudest yelling, but there were plenty of whites yelling too. At the Sam Houston ceremony there was a black man directly behind me who even started yelling at the top of his voice before the ceremony started. I am estimating that during the ceremony, the names of half the graduates could not be heard because of all the yelling.
Black parents, families and friends, perhaps more so than whites, have every reason to be very proud that their loved one has graduated, whether from high school or college. But that doesn't give them the right to be disruptive at what should be a solemn ceremony. And the same holds true for white families.
I hope Superintendent Foster sticks to his guns. The accusations that Foster is a racist for bringing charges against some of the disrupting noisemakers is pure hogwash! He was merely trying to restore some much needed decorum to graduation ceremonies, and that's not being racist.
Instead of being condemned, Superintendent Foster should be commended!
BIG, REALLY REALLY BIG C0CAINE BUST
A multi-agency task force’s seizure of 306 kilos of cocaine began with a traffic stop in the San Bernardino County desert town of Victorville and ended at a house in the Los Angeles County city of Santa Fe Springs
Officers from the Los Angeles Interagency Metropolitan Police Apprehension Crime Task (LA IMPACT) Force, a multi-agency group, seized 306 kilos (674.6 pounds) of cocaine that is believed to have been supplied by Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa drug cartel.
The first bust Tuesday evening resulted from a month-long investigation by L.A. IMPACT and began when officers from the task force observed a drug exchange in a strip mall in the Santa Fe Springs area of Los Angeles County. They then followed a vehicle and had the California Highway Patrol stop it in the San Bernardino County desert town of Victorville. 50 kilos (110 pounds) of cocaine were seized from the vehicle and Eligio Alvarez Manriquez, 24, Jose Manuel Lopez, 22, and Cintia Ferro Barazza, 24, all of Victorville, were arrested.
A further investigation led them to a house in Santa Fe Springs Wednesday where 256 kilos (564 pounds) of cocaine were seized and Eddie Perez, 41, and Jose Garcia Samano, 39, both of Santa Fe Springs, were arrested. A woman from the house was questioned and then released, and three children were taken into protective custody.
It is estimated that the 306 kilos of cocaine has a street value of $35 million. Authorities called it the largest cocaine bust in California in recent memory.
To all the officers involved in this case: Good Going Guys!
Officers from the Los Angeles Interagency Metropolitan Police Apprehension Crime Task (LA IMPACT) Force, a multi-agency group, seized 306 kilos (674.6 pounds) of cocaine that is believed to have been supplied by Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa drug cartel.
The first bust Tuesday evening resulted from a month-long investigation by L.A. IMPACT and began when officers from the task force observed a drug exchange in a strip mall in the Santa Fe Springs area of Los Angeles County. They then followed a vehicle and had the California Highway Patrol stop it in the San Bernardino County desert town of Victorville. 50 kilos (110 pounds) of cocaine were seized from the vehicle and Eligio Alvarez Manriquez, 24, Jose Manuel Lopez, 22, and Cintia Ferro Barazza, 24, all of Victorville, were arrested.
A further investigation led them to a house in Santa Fe Springs Wednesday where 256 kilos (564 pounds) of cocaine were seized and Eddie Perez, 41, and Jose Garcia Samano, 39, both of Santa Fe Springs, were arrested. A woman from the house was questioned and then released, and three children were taken into protective custody.
It is estimated that the 306 kilos of cocaine has a street value of $35 million. Authorities called it the largest cocaine bust in California in recent memory.
To all the officers involved in this case: Good Going Guys!
Thursday, June 04, 2015
HE NOW SHE?
If you look at Jenner’s photo shots in Vanity Fair, what you see is a glamorous woman. I'm sure that without a ton of make-up and considerable air -brushing, those glamor shots would have shown an ugly ‘woman.’
I see Jenner chose the first name of Caitlyn. I thought Brucella was more appropriate. Aah well.
Bruce Jenner was married three times and had two children with each of his three wives. I don’t see where he had a gender identification problem until he got mixed up with the Kardashians.
I’ll believe Caitlyn is a woman when Jenner can get pregnant.
I see Jenner chose the first name of Caitlyn. I thought Brucella was more appropriate. Aah well.
Bruce Jenner was married three times and had two children with each of his three wives. I don’t see where he had a gender identification problem until he got mixed up with the Kardashians.
I’ll believe Caitlyn is a woman when Jenner can get pregnant.
TEXAS EXECUTES INNOCENT MAN, HE SAID
67-year-old Lester Bower Jr. was executed Wednesday after 30 years on death row claiming he was innocent of four murders with his last words
Lester Bower Jr. was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1983 murders of B&B Ranch owner Bob Tate, 51, Grayson County Sheriff's Deputy Philip Good, 29, Jerry Brown, 52, a Sherman interior designer and Ronald Mayes, 39, a former Sherman police officer. Prosecutors said Bower killed Tate at his ranch near Sherman to steal an ultralight aircraft Tate was trying to sell and killed the other three when they unexpectedly showed up at the scene, a hangar on the ranch.
Bower maintained his innocence to the bitter end. He had no criminal record and no physical evidence linked him to the murders, although parts of the aircraft were found at his Arlington home.
He came within hours of being put to death six times, thanks to numerous appeals filed in his behalf.
While strapped on the death chamber gurney, Bower’s last words were: “Much has been said about this case. Much has been written about this case. Not all of it has been the truth. But the time for discerning truth is over and it's time to move on.” 18 minutes later he was pronounced dead from a single dose of pentobarbital.
Unlike appeals in states that rely on a three-drug execution cocktail, Bower’s last minute appeal did not argue that the use of pentobarbital could subject him to excruciating pain in violation of the 8th amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Texas has held a number of executions using only pentobarbital, and all of them resulted with the condemned prisoner falling asleep unremarkably, thus muting any question about this type of single dose execution.
Lester Bower Jr. was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1983 murders of B&B Ranch owner Bob Tate, 51, Grayson County Sheriff's Deputy Philip Good, 29, Jerry Brown, 52, a Sherman interior designer and Ronald Mayes, 39, a former Sherman police officer. Prosecutors said Bower killed Tate at his ranch near Sherman to steal an ultralight aircraft Tate was trying to sell and killed the other three when they unexpectedly showed up at the scene, a hangar on the ranch.
Bower maintained his innocence to the bitter end. He had no criminal record and no physical evidence linked him to the murders, although parts of the aircraft were found at his Arlington home.
He came within hours of being put to death six times, thanks to numerous appeals filed in his behalf.
While strapped on the death chamber gurney, Bower’s last words were: “Much has been said about this case. Much has been written about this case. Not all of it has been the truth. But the time for discerning truth is over and it's time to move on.” 18 minutes later he was pronounced dead from a single dose of pentobarbital.
Unlike appeals in states that rely on a three-drug execution cocktail, Bower’s last minute appeal did not argue that the use of pentobarbital could subject him to excruciating pain in violation of the 8th amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Texas has held a number of executions using only pentobarbital, and all of them resulted with the condemned prisoner falling asleep unremarkably, thus muting any question about this type of single dose execution.
Wednesday, June 03, 2015
BLACK AMERICANS KILLED BY POLICE TWICE AS LIKELY TO BE UNARMED AS WHITE PEOPLE
Guardian analysis finds 102 people killed by police so far this year were unarmed, and that law enforcement agencies are killing people at twice the rate calculated by the U.S. government
By Jon Swaine, Oliver Laughland and Jamiles Lartey
The Guardian
June 1, 2015
NEW YORK -- Black Americans are more than twice as likely to be unarmed when killed during encounters with police as white people, according to a Guardian investigation which found 102 of 464 people killed so far this year in incidents with law enforcement officers were not carrying weapons.
An analysis of public records, local news reports and Guardian reporting found that 32% of black people killed by police in 2015 were unarmed, as were 25% of Hispanic and Latino people, compared with 15% of white people killed.
The findings emerged from a database filled by a five-month study of police fatalities in the US, which calculated that local and state police and federal law enforcement agencies are killing people at twice the rate calculated by the US government’s official public record of police homicides. The database names five people whose names have not been publicly released.
The Guardian’s statistics include deaths after the police use of a Taser, deaths caused by police vehicles and deaths following altercations in police custody, as well as those killed when officers open fire. They reveal that 29% of those killed by police, or 135 people, were black. Sixty-seven, or 14%, were Hispanic/Latino, and 234, or 50%, were white. In total, 102 people who died during encounters with law enforcement in 2015 were unarmed.
The figures illustrate how disproportionately black Americans, who make up just 13% of the country’s total population according to census data, are killed by police. Of the 464 people counted by the Guardian, an overwhelming majority – 95% – were male, with just 5% female.
Steven Hawkins, the executive director Amnesty International USA, described the racial imbalance as “startling”. Hawkins said: “The disparity speaks to something that needs to be examined, to get to the bottom of why you’re twice as likely to be shot if you’re an unarmed black male.”
Relatives of unarmed people killed by police in high-profile incidents during the past year – including Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tony Robinson and Walter Scott – described the Guardian project as a breakthrough in the national debate over the use of deadly force by law enforcement.
“Giving this kind of data to the public is a big thing,” said Erica Garner, whose father’s killing by police in New York City last year led to international protests. “Other incidents like murders and robberies are counted, so why not police-involved killings? With better records, we can look at what is happening and what might need to change.”
The initiative was also praised by a range of policing experts and by campaigners who are urging government authorities to make the official recording of fatalities mandatory for all 18,000 police departments and law enforcement agencies operating in the US.
“It’s troubling that we have no official data from the federal government,” said Laurie Robinson, the co-chair of Barack Obama’s task force on 21st-century policing. “I think it’s very helpful, in light of that fact, to have this kind of research undertaken.”
Beginning on Monday, the Guardian is publishing The Counted, a comprehensive interactive database monitoring all police killings in the US through 16 data points including age, location, gender, ethnicity, whether the person killed was armed and which policing agency was responsible.
The Counted logs the precise location of each fatal incident, providing what is the most detailed map of police killings ever published. California, America’s most populous state, has the highest total with 74 fatalities so far this year.
However, an analysis of location data shows that Oklahoma, where 22 people have died through encounters with law enforcement, is the state with the highest rate of fatal incidents per person in 2015, at one fatality per 175,000 people over five months.
Over the weekend, Nehemiah Fischer, a 35-year-old pastor, was shot dead by an Oklahoma state trooper after getting into a fight when told to evacuate his truck in rising flood waters south of Tulsa. Police have said Fischer had a firearm but have not explained whether he was armed during the confrontation.
The database, which will combine Guardian reporting with verified crowdsourced information, has logged 464 police killings for the first five months of 2015. The US government’s record, which is run by the FBI, counted 461 “justifiable homicides” by law enforcement in all of 2013, the latest year for which official data is available.
The vast majority of deaths recorded – 408 – were caused by gunshot. Of the 27 deaths that occurred after a Taser was deployed by law enforcement, all but one involved an unarmed person.
On Sunday, Richard Davis, an unarmed black 50-year-old, died after being shocked with a Taser by police in Rochester, New York. Davis was said by authorities to have run from his truck towards officers with clenched fists after being told to put his hands up following a crash. Relatives said he was a veteran of the US marines.
The Guardian has also identified 14 officer-involved deaths following altercations in custody. The total includes Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old resident of Baltimore whose death from a broken neck sustained in a police van led to protests, rioting and the indictment of six city police officers.
Another 12 people died following collisions with law enforcement vehicles. The family of Bernard Moore, who was 62, are calling for the criminal prosecution of an officer who fatally struck Moore with his squad car in Atlanta, allegedly while speeding without emergency lights or sirens on.
By logging each law enforcement agency involved in the 464 deaths, the Guardian can also now report that the Los Angeles police department, the country’s third largest local police department, has been involved in the highest number of deaths of any local department. This year, 10 people have died in encounters with LAPD officers, of whom five were unarmed.
The Oklahoma City police department and the Los Angeles sheriff’s office were both involved in five deaths, two individuals in both of these jurisdictions being unarmed.
High-profile cases in Los Angeles, like the death of unarmed Charly “Africa” Keunang, shot dead by LAPD officers on 1 March in the city’s homeless district of Skid Row, garnered national attention.
But cases like those of Sergio Navas, an unarmed Hispanic man shot dead by LAPD officers in the same month as Keunang, after police said he stole a vehicle and was chased down, have had less media scrutiny. Navas’s family have launched an excessive force lawsuit against the LAPD and accused them of a covering up the circumstances of the 35-year-old’s death.
The Guardian has also monitored whether mental health issues were identified, either by family members, friends or police following each fatal encounter. In total 26% of people killed by police exhibited some sort of mental illness, with at least 29 cases identified where the person killed was suicidal.
For example, Monique Deckard, a black woman with a long history of mental illness, was shot and killed by police officers in Anaheim, California, after she was accused of stabbing a woman at a laundromat and allegedly charging at officers. Her family had called police just hours before the attack, warning that they could not get in contact with her and that she might be trying to find a gun.
The average age of a person killed by police in 2015 was 37, but The Counted identifies a huge diversity in the ages of those killed.
The oldest, 87-year-old Louis Becker, was killed during a collision with a New York state trooper patrol car in upstate New York. Eighty-two-year-old Richard “Buddy” Weaver was killed by Oklahoma City police after he allegedly raised a machete at an officer who opened fire; neighbors later described Weaver as having schizophrenia.
The three youngest people identified were all 16 years old. A’donte Washington, a black American, was shot dead by Millbrook police officers in Alabama on 23 February during an alleged burglary after the teenager was described as pointing a weapon at arriving officers. His family have questioned the police narrative, while the city mayor described the shooting as “110% justified”.
A week earlier, on 14 February, Jason Hendrix, a white 16-year-old was shot dead in a gunfight by Baltimore County police after the teenager murdered his mother, father and sister in Corbin, Kentucky, and drove to Maryland, where he is reported to have opened fire on an officer after a car chase. Six returned fire and killed him.
A month later, on 19 March, black 16-year-old Kendre Alston was shot dead by a deputy of the Jacksonville sheriff’s office in Florida. Police claimed Alston fled from a stolen car and brandished a weapon at the pursuing official who then opened fire. Deneane Campbell, Alston’s mother, claimed in an interview two weeks later she had not been given any further details by police.
Some relatives of people killed by police said they had been unaware of the dearth of publicly available information on police-involved fatalities until their family became affected. Anthony Scott, whose brother Walter was shot dead in April by police officer Michael Slager in North Charleston, South Carolina, said the lack of public information “came as a surprise”.
“I was not informed, I was not aware, I just had an idea these situations were happening in the United States,” Scott told the Guardian. “The public need to know what is happening and be made more informed. With them being more informed they would be able to react differently, in a positive way, to make changes, to make sure some of these things don’t happen again.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Blacks killed by cops are twice as likely to be unarmed as whites? Could it be that unarmed blacks are twice as stupid to attack police officers as unarmed whites?
Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), have introduced a bill that will require all states to report to the Justice Department anytime a police officer is involved in a shooting, including non-fatal ones, or any other use of force that results in death. This looks like a veiled attempt by two very liberal senators to keep cops from shooting people.
By Jon Swaine, Oliver Laughland and Jamiles Lartey
The Guardian
June 1, 2015
NEW YORK -- Black Americans are more than twice as likely to be unarmed when killed during encounters with police as white people, according to a Guardian investigation which found 102 of 464 people killed so far this year in incidents with law enforcement officers were not carrying weapons.
An analysis of public records, local news reports and Guardian reporting found that 32% of black people killed by police in 2015 were unarmed, as were 25% of Hispanic and Latino people, compared with 15% of white people killed.
The findings emerged from a database filled by a five-month study of police fatalities in the US, which calculated that local and state police and federal law enforcement agencies are killing people at twice the rate calculated by the US government’s official public record of police homicides. The database names five people whose names have not been publicly released.
The Guardian’s statistics include deaths after the police use of a Taser, deaths caused by police vehicles and deaths following altercations in police custody, as well as those killed when officers open fire. They reveal that 29% of those killed by police, or 135 people, were black. Sixty-seven, or 14%, were Hispanic/Latino, and 234, or 50%, were white. In total, 102 people who died during encounters with law enforcement in 2015 were unarmed.
The figures illustrate how disproportionately black Americans, who make up just 13% of the country’s total population according to census data, are killed by police. Of the 464 people counted by the Guardian, an overwhelming majority – 95% – were male, with just 5% female.
Steven Hawkins, the executive director Amnesty International USA, described the racial imbalance as “startling”. Hawkins said: “The disparity speaks to something that needs to be examined, to get to the bottom of why you’re twice as likely to be shot if you’re an unarmed black male.”
Relatives of unarmed people killed by police in high-profile incidents during the past year – including Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tony Robinson and Walter Scott – described the Guardian project as a breakthrough in the national debate over the use of deadly force by law enforcement.
“Giving this kind of data to the public is a big thing,” said Erica Garner, whose father’s killing by police in New York City last year led to international protests. “Other incidents like murders and robberies are counted, so why not police-involved killings? With better records, we can look at what is happening and what might need to change.”
The initiative was also praised by a range of policing experts and by campaigners who are urging government authorities to make the official recording of fatalities mandatory for all 18,000 police departments and law enforcement agencies operating in the US.
“It’s troubling that we have no official data from the federal government,” said Laurie Robinson, the co-chair of Barack Obama’s task force on 21st-century policing. “I think it’s very helpful, in light of that fact, to have this kind of research undertaken.”
Beginning on Monday, the Guardian is publishing The Counted, a comprehensive interactive database monitoring all police killings in the US through 16 data points including age, location, gender, ethnicity, whether the person killed was armed and which policing agency was responsible.
The Counted logs the precise location of each fatal incident, providing what is the most detailed map of police killings ever published. California, America’s most populous state, has the highest total with 74 fatalities so far this year.
However, an analysis of location data shows that Oklahoma, where 22 people have died through encounters with law enforcement, is the state with the highest rate of fatal incidents per person in 2015, at one fatality per 175,000 people over five months.
Over the weekend, Nehemiah Fischer, a 35-year-old pastor, was shot dead by an Oklahoma state trooper after getting into a fight when told to evacuate his truck in rising flood waters south of Tulsa. Police have said Fischer had a firearm but have not explained whether he was armed during the confrontation.
The database, which will combine Guardian reporting with verified crowdsourced information, has logged 464 police killings for the first five months of 2015. The US government’s record, which is run by the FBI, counted 461 “justifiable homicides” by law enforcement in all of 2013, the latest year for which official data is available.
The vast majority of deaths recorded – 408 – were caused by gunshot. Of the 27 deaths that occurred after a Taser was deployed by law enforcement, all but one involved an unarmed person.
On Sunday, Richard Davis, an unarmed black 50-year-old, died after being shocked with a Taser by police in Rochester, New York. Davis was said by authorities to have run from his truck towards officers with clenched fists after being told to put his hands up following a crash. Relatives said he was a veteran of the US marines.
The Guardian has also identified 14 officer-involved deaths following altercations in custody. The total includes Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old resident of Baltimore whose death from a broken neck sustained in a police van led to protests, rioting and the indictment of six city police officers.
Another 12 people died following collisions with law enforcement vehicles. The family of Bernard Moore, who was 62, are calling for the criminal prosecution of an officer who fatally struck Moore with his squad car in Atlanta, allegedly while speeding without emergency lights or sirens on.
By logging each law enforcement agency involved in the 464 deaths, the Guardian can also now report that the Los Angeles police department, the country’s third largest local police department, has been involved in the highest number of deaths of any local department. This year, 10 people have died in encounters with LAPD officers, of whom five were unarmed.
The Oklahoma City police department and the Los Angeles sheriff’s office were both involved in five deaths, two individuals in both of these jurisdictions being unarmed.
High-profile cases in Los Angeles, like the death of unarmed Charly “Africa” Keunang, shot dead by LAPD officers on 1 March in the city’s homeless district of Skid Row, garnered national attention.
But cases like those of Sergio Navas, an unarmed Hispanic man shot dead by LAPD officers in the same month as Keunang, after police said he stole a vehicle and was chased down, have had less media scrutiny. Navas’s family have launched an excessive force lawsuit against the LAPD and accused them of a covering up the circumstances of the 35-year-old’s death.
The Guardian has also monitored whether mental health issues were identified, either by family members, friends or police following each fatal encounter. In total 26% of people killed by police exhibited some sort of mental illness, with at least 29 cases identified where the person killed was suicidal.
For example, Monique Deckard, a black woman with a long history of mental illness, was shot and killed by police officers in Anaheim, California, after she was accused of stabbing a woman at a laundromat and allegedly charging at officers. Her family had called police just hours before the attack, warning that they could not get in contact with her and that she might be trying to find a gun.
The average age of a person killed by police in 2015 was 37, but The Counted identifies a huge diversity in the ages of those killed.
The oldest, 87-year-old Louis Becker, was killed during a collision with a New York state trooper patrol car in upstate New York. Eighty-two-year-old Richard “Buddy” Weaver was killed by Oklahoma City police after he allegedly raised a machete at an officer who opened fire; neighbors later described Weaver as having schizophrenia.
The three youngest people identified were all 16 years old. A’donte Washington, a black American, was shot dead by Millbrook police officers in Alabama on 23 February during an alleged burglary after the teenager was described as pointing a weapon at arriving officers. His family have questioned the police narrative, while the city mayor described the shooting as “110% justified”.
A week earlier, on 14 February, Jason Hendrix, a white 16-year-old was shot dead in a gunfight by Baltimore County police after the teenager murdered his mother, father and sister in Corbin, Kentucky, and drove to Maryland, where he is reported to have opened fire on an officer after a car chase. Six returned fire and killed him.
A month later, on 19 March, black 16-year-old Kendre Alston was shot dead by a deputy of the Jacksonville sheriff’s office in Florida. Police claimed Alston fled from a stolen car and brandished a weapon at the pursuing official who then opened fire. Deneane Campbell, Alston’s mother, claimed in an interview two weeks later she had not been given any further details by police.
Some relatives of people killed by police said they had been unaware of the dearth of publicly available information on police-involved fatalities until their family became affected. Anthony Scott, whose brother Walter was shot dead in April by police officer Michael Slager in North Charleston, South Carolina, said the lack of public information “came as a surprise”.
“I was not informed, I was not aware, I just had an idea these situations were happening in the United States,” Scott told the Guardian. “The public need to know what is happening and be made more informed. With them being more informed they would be able to react differently, in a positive way, to make changes, to make sure some of these things don’t happen again.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Blacks killed by cops are twice as likely to be unarmed as whites? Could it be that unarmed blacks are twice as stupid to attack police officers as unarmed whites?
Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), have introduced a bill that will require all states to report to the Justice Department anytime a police officer is involved in a shooting, including non-fatal ones, or any other use of force that results in death. This looks like a veiled attempt by two very liberal senators to keep cops from shooting people.
DRESSING DOWN FOR A WINE AND WHIPPED CREAM DATE CAN BE DANGEROUS
By Bob Walsh
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
June 2, 2015
Dressing down on date night can be downright dangerous to your health. You could ask Samantha Shrestha about it but that would be hard as she is dead.
Jessica Michelle Ewing, 24, was just sentenced to 45 years for the 2014 murder of Ms. Shrestha, who was at the time 21 and a biology student at Virginia Tech. Ewing and Shrestha were having a sexual relationship with Ewing was serious about but it seems that Shrestha was not so much. Ewing invited Shrestha over for a wine and whipped cream date and Shrestha showed up in sweats and a t-shirt, angering Ewing who was wearing a dress.
Shrestha eventually borrowed a dress from Ewing and the two engaged in a friendly whipped cream fight after downing a bottle of vino. As the evening progressed however it was obvious that Shrestha was just an experimental lesbian, while Ewing was the real deal and wanted a solid relationship with Shrestha. So Ewing beat Shrestha, strangled her to death, stuffed her body in a sleeping bag, put her in the back seat of her Mercedes and abandoned the car and body.
The actual sentence is 80 years plus five years for transporting a body illegally, but 40 years will be suspended more-or-less automatically at the half-way point.
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
June 2, 2015
Dressing down on date night can be downright dangerous to your health. You could ask Samantha Shrestha about it but that would be hard as she is dead.
Jessica Michelle Ewing, 24, was just sentenced to 45 years for the 2014 murder of Ms. Shrestha, who was at the time 21 and a biology student at Virginia Tech. Ewing and Shrestha were having a sexual relationship with Ewing was serious about but it seems that Shrestha was not so much. Ewing invited Shrestha over for a wine and whipped cream date and Shrestha showed up in sweats and a t-shirt, angering Ewing who was wearing a dress.
Shrestha eventually borrowed a dress from Ewing and the two engaged in a friendly whipped cream fight after downing a bottle of vino. As the evening progressed however it was obvious that Shrestha was just an experimental lesbian, while Ewing was the real deal and wanted a solid relationship with Shrestha. So Ewing beat Shrestha, strangled her to death, stuffed her body in a sleeping bag, put her in the back seat of her Mercedes and abandoned the car and body.
The actual sentence is 80 years plus five years for transporting a body illegally, but 40 years will be suspended more-or-less automatically at the half-way point.
AMERICA’S SMARTEST PRESIDENT EVER
The Unconventional Gazette
June 3, 2015
There were five passengers on an airplane about to crash. The problem was that there were only four parachutes.
Kim Kardashian, the first passenger, said, “I have my own reality show and I am the smartest and most beautiful woman on TV, so Americans don’t want me to die.” She took a pack and jumped out of the plane.
Then the Rev. Al Sharpton stood up and said, “I am the leader of all the disadvantaged people of color and President Obama always calls on me for advice on matters of race.” He grabbed another pack and jumped out.
Barack Obama then said, I am the President of the United States and I am the smartest president ever in the history of our country. Some even refer to me as the ‘Anointed One.’” So he snatched the pack lying next to him and jumped out.
That left the Rev. Billy Graham and a 10-year-old schoolgirl on the doomed plane.
Billy Graham turned to the girl and said, “I am old and in poor health. You are young and have a long life ahead of you. I have served my God to the best of my ability. I will gladly sacrifice my life by letting you have the last parachute.”
The little girl then grinned and said, “That’s okay Mr. Graham, there’s another parachute left for you. America’s smartest president ever put on my school backpack.”
June 3, 2015
There were five passengers on an airplane about to crash. The problem was that there were only four parachutes.
Kim Kardashian, the first passenger, said, “I have my own reality show and I am the smartest and most beautiful woman on TV, so Americans don’t want me to die.” She took a pack and jumped out of the plane.
Then the Rev. Al Sharpton stood up and said, “I am the leader of all the disadvantaged people of color and President Obama always calls on me for advice on matters of race.” He grabbed another pack and jumped out.
Barack Obama then said, I am the President of the United States and I am the smartest president ever in the history of our country. Some even refer to me as the ‘Anointed One.’” So he snatched the pack lying next to him and jumped out.
That left the Rev. Billy Graham and a 10-year-old schoolgirl on the doomed plane.
Billy Graham turned to the girl and said, “I am old and in poor health. You are young and have a long life ahead of you. I have served my God to the best of my ability. I will gladly sacrifice my life by letting you have the last parachute.”
The little girl then grinned and said, “That’s okay Mr. Graham, there’s another parachute left for you. America’s smartest president ever put on my school backpack.”
Tuesday, June 02, 2015
67 OUT OF 70
The results have been tabulated on a TSA airport screening test and the score is 95 percent
Now if you take a test of 70 questions and get 67 right, you made a score of 95 percent, which is damned good. On the other hand, if you take that test and get 67 answers wrong, you've failed miserably. And that is exactly what has happened with the TSA.
An inspector general's report reveals that undercover agents at airports throughout the country were able to get through TSA checkpoints undetected while carrying mock weapons and explosives 67 out of 70 times. That's a failure rate of 95 percent.
Past tests of the TSA airport screenings have also failed miserably. Billions of dollars have been spent on these screenings, the purpose of which is to protect us from terrorists.
Perhaps our tax dollars would work better if the TSA would adopt Israel's airport security measures. The Jewish state is under constant threat from Palestinian terrorists and their sympathizers, yet their screening system has prevented any hijackers or suicide bombers from boarding planes in Israel. Between 1968 and 1977, Palestinians attempted or carried out 29 plane hijackings, but all the boardings occurred at European or other airports outside Israel.
Now if you take a test of 70 questions and get 67 right, you made a score of 95 percent, which is damned good. On the other hand, if you take that test and get 67 answers wrong, you've failed miserably. And that is exactly what has happened with the TSA.
An inspector general's report reveals that undercover agents at airports throughout the country were able to get through TSA checkpoints undetected while carrying mock weapons and explosives 67 out of 70 times. That's a failure rate of 95 percent.
Past tests of the TSA airport screenings have also failed miserably. Billions of dollars have been spent on these screenings, the purpose of which is to protect us from terrorists.
Perhaps our tax dollars would work better if the TSA would adopt Israel's airport security measures. The Jewish state is under constant threat from Palestinian terrorists and their sympathizers, yet their screening system has prevented any hijackers or suicide bombers from boarding planes in Israel. Between 1968 and 1977, Palestinians attempted or carried out 29 plane hijackings, but all the boardings occurred at European or other airports outside Israel.
Monday, June 01, 2015
FIGHT OVER LAST BBQ’D RIB RACK LEAVES WOMAN WITH FORK IN EYE
When two women at a Muncie, Indiana barbeque got into a fight over the last rack of ribs, one stabbed the other one in the eye with a fork
The Associated Press reports that a Muncie, Indiana barbeque turned into a ruckus Sunday, May 24. It seems as though guest Sabrina Davis, 45, went into the kitchen and grabbed the last rack of ribs. That pissed off the host’s daughter. She and Sabrina got into a fight during which Sabrina stabbed her in the eye with a fork.
Sabrina told the cops that the victim accused her of "taking all the food" and came after her with a knife. She claimed she stabbed the victim in self-defense. Apparently the cops didn’t buy Sabrina’s story because she was arrested on a preliminary charge of criminal recklessness.
Here I’ve always thought us Texans took our barbequing more seriously than anyone else. And that piss-poor excuse of a Muncie BBQ wasn’t even cooked the way real barbeque is supposed to be cooked – slow cooked outdoors in a special BBQ pit with smoke from indirect heat.
The Associated Press reports that a Muncie, Indiana barbeque turned into a ruckus Sunday, May 24. It seems as though guest Sabrina Davis, 45, went into the kitchen and grabbed the last rack of ribs. That pissed off the host’s daughter. She and Sabrina got into a fight during which Sabrina stabbed her in the eye with a fork.
Sabrina told the cops that the victim accused her of "taking all the food" and came after her with a knife. She claimed she stabbed the victim in self-defense. Apparently the cops didn’t buy Sabrina’s story because she was arrested on a preliminary charge of criminal recklessness.
Here I’ve always thought us Texans took our barbequing more seriously than anyone else. And that piss-poor excuse of a Muncie BBQ wasn’t even cooked the way real barbeque is supposed to be cooked – slow cooked outdoors in a special BBQ pit with smoke from indirect heat.
NOW IT’S THE POLICE WHO PROTEST IN BALTIMORE
By Thomas Taschinger
Beaumont Enterprise
May 31, 2015
If you think that things couldn't get any worse in Baltimore after the riots last month following Freddie Gray's death, guess again. Police have responded to the indictment of six officers in that case and the resultant chaos by pulling back. Arrests are way down, with bookings decreasing by 50 percent. Cops are either angry over the indictments or afraid of making another arrest that could end up on the front page. So consciously or unconsciously, they are standing aside instead of charging in.
Not too coincidentally, crime is up. By this weekend the city will probably exceed 40 murders for the month of May, its worst 30-day span in 15 years.
"Usually, you can't walk up and down the street drinking or smoking weed," said Donnail "Dreads" Lee to the AP. He lives in the Gilmor Homes, the public housing complex where Freddie Gray was chased down. "Now, people are everywhere smoking weed, and police just ride by, look at you, and keep going. There used to be police on every corner. I don't think they'll be back this summer."
It's a mess, and it won't change soon. And this is in a city that some say never recovered from the 1968 riots that closed many mom-and-pop businesses and sent middle-class residents fleeing to the suburbs.
Let's start by making it clear that nothing excuses police brutality - ever. Officers should use no more force than necessary to make an arrest - and preferably none at all. Police who cross the line should absolutely be held accountable. That's not politics, it's justice.
But the reality is that a lot of police work is inherently violent. It can be so in a small country town, and it can be more so in a gritty urban environment. Cops know this, and so does anyone who did a ride-along or saw a nasty arrest being made. Heck, you can watch TV shows like "Cops" or "Alaskan State Troopers" and see this from the comfort of your living room.
Some people submit calmly to arrest. Good for them - that's the quickest way to get booked in and bonded out.
Other people don't go quietly. They run and resist. They must be chased down, neutralized and handcuffed, sometimes while squirming or resisting vigorously. Some are mentally unbalanced or high on drugs and really can't react in a rational way. Some are dangerous career criminals who can hurt the cop trying to arrest them.
Police may not know which kind of person they're dealing with until the try to put the cuffs on. If they're not firm enough, they could get hurt. If they overreact, they could face charges. It's a tough needle to thread, and they must make split-second decisions that could be criticized later.
So it's no surprise that police in Baltimore are backing off. They feel stuck in a no-win situation, so they stay in their cars more and get out on the streets less. To make things worse, public anger hasn't abated either. Police Commissioner Anthony Batts told the AP, "Our officers tell me that when officers pull up, they have 30 to 50 people surrounding them at any time."
The result is the exact opposite of the proactive police work needed to fight crime effectively. It's been replaced by a reactive approach that often leads to no questioning of suspects, no confrontations and therefore no arrests.
But criminals aren't backing off. They're rushing into the vacuum and will keep pushing forward as long as they can. And they don't play by any rules.
The real losers are, of course, the law-abiding people of Baltimore, the silent majority in any neighborhood, rich or poor. They need cops to be cops again. Let's hope that happens while Baltimore can still be saved.
Beaumont Enterprise
May 31, 2015
If you think that things couldn't get any worse in Baltimore after the riots last month following Freddie Gray's death, guess again. Police have responded to the indictment of six officers in that case and the resultant chaos by pulling back. Arrests are way down, with bookings decreasing by 50 percent. Cops are either angry over the indictments or afraid of making another arrest that could end up on the front page. So consciously or unconsciously, they are standing aside instead of charging in.
Not too coincidentally, crime is up. By this weekend the city will probably exceed 40 murders for the month of May, its worst 30-day span in 15 years.
"Usually, you can't walk up and down the street drinking or smoking weed," said Donnail "Dreads" Lee to the AP. He lives in the Gilmor Homes, the public housing complex where Freddie Gray was chased down. "Now, people are everywhere smoking weed, and police just ride by, look at you, and keep going. There used to be police on every corner. I don't think they'll be back this summer."
It's a mess, and it won't change soon. And this is in a city that some say never recovered from the 1968 riots that closed many mom-and-pop businesses and sent middle-class residents fleeing to the suburbs.
Let's start by making it clear that nothing excuses police brutality - ever. Officers should use no more force than necessary to make an arrest - and preferably none at all. Police who cross the line should absolutely be held accountable. That's not politics, it's justice.
But the reality is that a lot of police work is inherently violent. It can be so in a small country town, and it can be more so in a gritty urban environment. Cops know this, and so does anyone who did a ride-along or saw a nasty arrest being made. Heck, you can watch TV shows like "Cops" or "Alaskan State Troopers" and see this from the comfort of your living room.
Some people submit calmly to arrest. Good for them - that's the quickest way to get booked in and bonded out.
Other people don't go quietly. They run and resist. They must be chased down, neutralized and handcuffed, sometimes while squirming or resisting vigorously. Some are mentally unbalanced or high on drugs and really can't react in a rational way. Some are dangerous career criminals who can hurt the cop trying to arrest them.
Police may not know which kind of person they're dealing with until the try to put the cuffs on. If they're not firm enough, they could get hurt. If they overreact, they could face charges. It's a tough needle to thread, and they must make split-second decisions that could be criticized later.
So it's no surprise that police in Baltimore are backing off. They feel stuck in a no-win situation, so they stay in their cars more and get out on the streets less. To make things worse, public anger hasn't abated either. Police Commissioner Anthony Batts told the AP, "Our officers tell me that when officers pull up, they have 30 to 50 people surrounding them at any time."
The result is the exact opposite of the proactive police work needed to fight crime effectively. It's been replaced by a reactive approach that often leads to no questioning of suspects, no confrontations and therefore no arrests.
But criminals aren't backing off. They're rushing into the vacuum and will keep pushing forward as long as they can. And they don't play by any rules.
The real losers are, of course, the law-abiding people of Baltimore, the silent majority in any neighborhood, rich or poor. They need cops to be cops again. Let's hope that happens while Baltimore can still be saved.
THE NEW NATIONWIDE CRIME WAVE
The consequences of the ‘Ferguson effect’ are already appearing. The main victims of growing violence will be the inner-city poor
By Heather Mac Donald
The Wall Street Journal
May 30, 2015
across America. In Baltimore, the most pressing question every morning is how many people were shot the previous night. Gun violence is up more than 60% compared with this time last year, according to Baltimore police, with 32 shootings over Memorial Day weekend. May has been the most violent month the city has seen in 15 years.
In Milwaukee, homicides were up 180% by May 17 over the same period the previous year. Through April, shootings in St. Louis were up 39%, robberies 43%, and homicides 25%. “Crime is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” said St. Louis Alderman Joe Vacarro at a May 7 City Hall hearing.
Murders in Atlanta were up 32% as of mid-May. Shootings in Chicago had increased 24% and homicides 17%. Shootings and other violent felonies in Los Angeles had spiked by 25%; in New York, murder was up nearly 13%, and gun violence 7%.
Those citywide statistics from law-enforcement officials mask even more startling neighborhood-level increases. Shooting incidents are up 500% in an East Harlem precinct compared with last year; in a South Central Los Angeles police division, shooting victims are up 100%.
By contrast, the first six months of 2014 continued a 20-year pattern of growing public safety. Violent crime in the first half of last year dropped 4.6% nationally and property crime was down 7.5%. Though comparable national figures for the first half of 2015 won’t be available for another year, the January through June 2014 crime decline is unlikely to be repeated.
The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months.
Since last summer, the airwaves have been dominated by suggestions that the police are the biggest threat facing young black males today. A handful of highly publicized deaths of unarmed black men, often following a resisted arrest—including Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., in July 2014, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014 and Freddie Gray in Baltimore last month—have led to riots, violent protests and attacks on the police. Murders of officers jumped 89% in 2014, to 51 from 27.
President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, before he stepped down last month, embraced the conceit that law enforcement in black communities is infected by bias. The news media pump out a seemingly constant stream of stories about alleged police mistreatment of blacks, with the reports often buttressed by cellphone videos that rarely capture the behavior that caused an officer to use force.
Almost any police shooting of a black person, no matter how threatening the behavior that provoked the shooting, now provokes angry protests, like those that followed the death of Vonderrit Myers in St. Louis last October. The 18-year-old Myers, awaiting trial on gun and resisting-arrest charges, had fired three shots at an officer at close range. Arrests in black communities are even more fraught than usual, with hostile, jeering crowds pressing in on officers and spreading lies about the encounter.
Acquittals of police officers for the use of deadly force against black suspects are now automatically presented as a miscarriage of justice. Proposals aimed at producing more cop convictions abound, but New York state seems especially enthusiastic about the idea.
The state’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, wants to create a special state prosecutor dedicated solely to prosecuting cops who use lethal force. New York Gov.Andrew Cuomo would appoint an independent monitor whenever a grand jury fails to indict an officer for homicide and there are “doubts” about the fairness of the proceeding (read: in every instance of a non-indictment); the governor could then turn over the case to a special prosecutor for a second grand jury proceeding.
This incessant drumbeat against the police has resulted in what St. Louis police chiefSam Dotson last November called the “Ferguson effect.” Cops are disengaging from discretionary enforcement activity and the “criminal element is feeling empowered,” Mr. Dotson reported. Arrests in St. Louis city and county by that point had dropped a third since the shooting of Michael Brown in August. Not surprisingly, homicides in the city surged 47% by early November and robberies in the county were up 82%.
Similar “Ferguson effects” are happening across the country as officers scale back on proactive policing under the onslaught of anti-cop rhetoric. Arrests in Baltimore were down 56% in May compared with 2014.
“Any cop who uses his gun now has to worry about being indicted and losing his job and family,” a New York City officer tells me. “Everything has the potential to be recorded. A lot of cops feel that the climate for the next couple of years is going to be nonstop protests.”
Police officers now second-guess themselves about the use of force. “Officers are trying to invent techniques on the spot for taking down resistant suspects that don’t look as bad as the techniques taught in the academy,” says Jim Dudley, who recently retired as deputy police chief in San Francisco. Officers complain that civilians don’t understand how hard it is to control someone resisting arrest.
A New York City cop tells me that he was amazed to hear people scoffing that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who killed Michael Brown, only looked a “little red” after Brown assaulted him and tried to grab his weapon: “Does an officer need to be unconscious before he can use force? If someone is willing to fight you, he’s also willing to take your gun and shoot you. You can’t lose a fight with a guy who has already put his hands on you because if you do, you will likely end up dead.”
Milwaukee Police Chief Edward A. Flynn, discussing hostility toward the police, told me in an interview on Friday: “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m guessing it will take five years to recover.”
Even if officer morale were to miraculously rebound, policies are being put into place that will make it harder to keep crime down in the future. Those initiatives reflect the belief that any criminal-justice action that has a disparate impact on blacks is racially motivated.
In New York, pedestrian stops—when the police question and sometimes frisk individuals engaged in suspicious behavior—have dropped nearly 95% from their 2011 high, thanks to litigation charging that the NYPD’s stop, question and frisk practices were racially biased. A judge agreed, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, upon taking office last year, did too, embracing the resulting judicial monitoring of the police department. It is no surprise that shootings are up in the city.
Politicians and activists in New York and other cities have now taken aim at “broken windows” policing. This police strategy has shown remarkable success over the past two decades by targeting low-level public-order offenses, reducing the air of lawlessness in rough neighborhoods and getting criminals off the streets before they commit bigger crimes. Opponents of broken-windows policing somehow fail to notice that law-abiding residents of poor communities are among the strongest advocates for enforcing laws against public drinking, trespassing, drug sales and drug use, among other public-order laws.
As attorney general, Eric Holder pressed the cause of ending “mass incarceration” on racial grounds; elected officials across the political spectrum have jumped on board. A 2014 California voter initiative has retroactively downgraded a range of property and drug felonies to misdemeanors, including forcible theft of guns, purses and laptops. More than 3,000 felons have already been released from California prisons, according to the Association of Deputy District Attorneys in Los Angeles County. Burglary, larceny and car theft have surged in the county, the association reports.
“There are no real consequences for committing property crimes anymore,” Los Angeles Police Lt. Armando Munoz told Downtown News earlier this month, “and the criminals know this.” The Milwaukee district attorney, John Chisholm, is diverting many property and drug criminals to rehabilitation programs to reduce the number of blacks in Wisconsin prisons; critics see the rise in Milwaukee crime as one result.
If these decriminalization and deincarceration policies backfire, the people most harmed will be their supposed beneficiaries: blacks, since they are disproportionately victimized by crime. The black death-by-homicide rate is six times higher than that of whites and Hispanics combined. The killers of those black homicide victims are overwhelmingly other black civilians, not the police. The police could end all use of lethal force tomorrow and it would have at most a negligible impact on the black death rate. In any case, the strongest predictor of whether a police officer uses force is whether a suspect resists arrest, not the suspect’s race.
Contrary to the claims of the “black lives matter” movement, no government policy in the past quarter century has done more for urban reclamation than proactive policing. Data-driven enforcement, in conjunction with stricter penalties for criminals and “broken windows” policing, has saved thousands of black lives, brought lawful commerce and jobs to once drug-infested neighborhoods and allowed millions to go about their daily lives without fear.
To be sure, police officers need to treat everyone they encounter with courtesy and respect. Any fatal police shooting of an innocent person is a horrifying tragedy that police training must work incessantly to prevent. But unless the demonization of law enforcement ends, the liberating gains in urban safety over the past 20 years will be lost.
By Heather Mac Donald
The Wall Street Journal
May 30, 2015
across America. In Baltimore, the most pressing question every morning is how many people were shot the previous night. Gun violence is up more than 60% compared with this time last year, according to Baltimore police, with 32 shootings over Memorial Day weekend. May has been the most violent month the city has seen in 15 years.
In Milwaukee, homicides were up 180% by May 17 over the same period the previous year. Through April, shootings in St. Louis were up 39%, robberies 43%, and homicides 25%. “Crime is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” said St. Louis Alderman Joe Vacarro at a May 7 City Hall hearing.
Murders in Atlanta were up 32% as of mid-May. Shootings in Chicago had increased 24% and homicides 17%. Shootings and other violent felonies in Los Angeles had spiked by 25%; in New York, murder was up nearly 13%, and gun violence 7%.
Those citywide statistics from law-enforcement officials mask even more startling neighborhood-level increases. Shooting incidents are up 500% in an East Harlem precinct compared with last year; in a South Central Los Angeles police division, shooting victims are up 100%.
By contrast, the first six months of 2014 continued a 20-year pattern of growing public safety. Violent crime in the first half of last year dropped 4.6% nationally and property crime was down 7.5%. Though comparable national figures for the first half of 2015 won’t be available for another year, the January through June 2014 crime decline is unlikely to be repeated.
The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months.
Since last summer, the airwaves have been dominated by suggestions that the police are the biggest threat facing young black males today. A handful of highly publicized deaths of unarmed black men, often following a resisted arrest—including Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., in July 2014, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014 and Freddie Gray in Baltimore last month—have led to riots, violent protests and attacks on the police. Murders of officers jumped 89% in 2014, to 51 from 27.
President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, before he stepped down last month, embraced the conceit that law enforcement in black communities is infected by bias. The news media pump out a seemingly constant stream of stories about alleged police mistreatment of blacks, with the reports often buttressed by cellphone videos that rarely capture the behavior that caused an officer to use force.
Almost any police shooting of a black person, no matter how threatening the behavior that provoked the shooting, now provokes angry protests, like those that followed the death of Vonderrit Myers in St. Louis last October. The 18-year-old Myers, awaiting trial on gun and resisting-arrest charges, had fired three shots at an officer at close range. Arrests in black communities are even more fraught than usual, with hostile, jeering crowds pressing in on officers and spreading lies about the encounter.
Acquittals of police officers for the use of deadly force against black suspects are now automatically presented as a miscarriage of justice. Proposals aimed at producing more cop convictions abound, but New York state seems especially enthusiastic about the idea.
The state’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, wants to create a special state prosecutor dedicated solely to prosecuting cops who use lethal force. New York Gov.Andrew Cuomo would appoint an independent monitor whenever a grand jury fails to indict an officer for homicide and there are “doubts” about the fairness of the proceeding (read: in every instance of a non-indictment); the governor could then turn over the case to a special prosecutor for a second grand jury proceeding.
This incessant drumbeat against the police has resulted in what St. Louis police chiefSam Dotson last November called the “Ferguson effect.” Cops are disengaging from discretionary enforcement activity and the “criminal element is feeling empowered,” Mr. Dotson reported. Arrests in St. Louis city and county by that point had dropped a third since the shooting of Michael Brown in August. Not surprisingly, homicides in the city surged 47% by early November and robberies in the county were up 82%.
Similar “Ferguson effects” are happening across the country as officers scale back on proactive policing under the onslaught of anti-cop rhetoric. Arrests in Baltimore were down 56% in May compared with 2014.
“Any cop who uses his gun now has to worry about being indicted and losing his job and family,” a New York City officer tells me. “Everything has the potential to be recorded. A lot of cops feel that the climate for the next couple of years is going to be nonstop protests.”
Police officers now second-guess themselves about the use of force. “Officers are trying to invent techniques on the spot for taking down resistant suspects that don’t look as bad as the techniques taught in the academy,” says Jim Dudley, who recently retired as deputy police chief in San Francisco. Officers complain that civilians don’t understand how hard it is to control someone resisting arrest.
A New York City cop tells me that he was amazed to hear people scoffing that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who killed Michael Brown, only looked a “little red” after Brown assaulted him and tried to grab his weapon: “Does an officer need to be unconscious before he can use force? If someone is willing to fight you, he’s also willing to take your gun and shoot you. You can’t lose a fight with a guy who has already put his hands on you because if you do, you will likely end up dead.”
Milwaukee Police Chief Edward A. Flynn, discussing hostility toward the police, told me in an interview on Friday: “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m guessing it will take five years to recover.”
Even if officer morale were to miraculously rebound, policies are being put into place that will make it harder to keep crime down in the future. Those initiatives reflect the belief that any criminal-justice action that has a disparate impact on blacks is racially motivated.
In New York, pedestrian stops—when the police question and sometimes frisk individuals engaged in suspicious behavior—have dropped nearly 95% from their 2011 high, thanks to litigation charging that the NYPD’s stop, question and frisk practices were racially biased. A judge agreed, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, upon taking office last year, did too, embracing the resulting judicial monitoring of the police department. It is no surprise that shootings are up in the city.
Politicians and activists in New York and other cities have now taken aim at “broken windows” policing. This police strategy has shown remarkable success over the past two decades by targeting low-level public-order offenses, reducing the air of lawlessness in rough neighborhoods and getting criminals off the streets before they commit bigger crimes. Opponents of broken-windows policing somehow fail to notice that law-abiding residents of poor communities are among the strongest advocates for enforcing laws against public drinking, trespassing, drug sales and drug use, among other public-order laws.
As attorney general, Eric Holder pressed the cause of ending “mass incarceration” on racial grounds; elected officials across the political spectrum have jumped on board. A 2014 California voter initiative has retroactively downgraded a range of property and drug felonies to misdemeanors, including forcible theft of guns, purses and laptops. More than 3,000 felons have already been released from California prisons, according to the Association of Deputy District Attorneys in Los Angeles County. Burglary, larceny and car theft have surged in the county, the association reports.
“There are no real consequences for committing property crimes anymore,” Los Angeles Police Lt. Armando Munoz told Downtown News earlier this month, “and the criminals know this.” The Milwaukee district attorney, John Chisholm, is diverting many property and drug criminals to rehabilitation programs to reduce the number of blacks in Wisconsin prisons; critics see the rise in Milwaukee crime as one result.
If these decriminalization and deincarceration policies backfire, the people most harmed will be their supposed beneficiaries: blacks, since they are disproportionately victimized by crime. The black death-by-homicide rate is six times higher than that of whites and Hispanics combined. The killers of those black homicide victims are overwhelmingly other black civilians, not the police. The police could end all use of lethal force tomorrow and it would have at most a negligible impact on the black death rate. In any case, the strongest predictor of whether a police officer uses force is whether a suspect resists arrest, not the suspect’s race.
Contrary to the claims of the “black lives matter” movement, no government policy in the past quarter century has done more for urban reclamation than proactive policing. Data-driven enforcement, in conjunction with stricter penalties for criminals and “broken windows” policing, has saved thousands of black lives, brought lawful commerce and jobs to once drug-infested neighborhoods and allowed millions to go about their daily lives without fear.
To be sure, police officers need to treat everyone they encounter with courtesy and respect. Any fatal police shooting of an innocent person is a horrifying tragedy that police training must work incessantly to prevent. But unless the demonization of law enforcement ends, the liberating gains in urban safety over the past 20 years will be lost.
CALIFORNIA’S PROPOSITION 47 IS INCREASING CRIME
Drug users who used to be incarcerated are now free to commit robberies, burglaries and other crimes
Proposition 47 was approved by Kookfornia voters in November last year. It was designed to reduce the overcrowding in the state’s prisons by reducing some ‘non-violent’ felonies to misdemeanors. Whether it puts a noticeable dent in the prison population remains to be seen, but Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer blames Prop. 47 on a significant increase in crime.
Here is an excerpt from yesterday’s Fresno Bee:
Fresno has seen a nearly 30% increase in robberies this year —380 through Sunday afternoon compared with 293 over the same time last year. Chief Jerry Dyer blamed the surge in robberies in part on a new state law that limits drug arrests.
Dyer said Fresno has seen a nearly 30% increase in robberies this year —380 through Sunday afternoon compared with 293 over the same time last year.
“We’re seeing more and more people out in our community addicted to methamphetamine and fewer consequences, especially since the passage of Proposition 47 (last November), which has made the possession of drugs a misdemeanor,” Dyer said. “A number of these people that are addicted to these drugs are not just committing lower-level offenses like burglary or petty theft, but they’re also involved in armed robberies to support their drug addiction.”
Drug users are now issued citations, Dyer said, rather than being arrested. Arrests, he said, gave police an effective tool to take addicts off the street and give them a chance at treatment. “That’s not happening, which is why we have so many empty treatment beds in Fresno.”
“I believe…the voters in California were misled regarding Prop. 47, the (idea) that these are harmless individuals addicted to drugs. As we know in law enforcement, they are oftentimes very violent, and there have to be consequences for these individuals prior to them going out and committing armed robberies,” Dyer said.
As for Prop. 47, the path to hell is paved with the stones of good intentions.
Proposition 47 was approved by Kookfornia voters in November last year. It was designed to reduce the overcrowding in the state’s prisons by reducing some ‘non-violent’ felonies to misdemeanors. Whether it puts a noticeable dent in the prison population remains to be seen, but Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer blames Prop. 47 on a significant increase in crime.
Here is an excerpt from yesterday’s Fresno Bee:
Fresno has seen a nearly 30% increase in robberies this year —380 through Sunday afternoon compared with 293 over the same time last year. Chief Jerry Dyer blamed the surge in robberies in part on a new state law that limits drug arrests.
Dyer said Fresno has seen a nearly 30% increase in robberies this year —380 through Sunday afternoon compared with 293 over the same time last year.
“We’re seeing more and more people out in our community addicted to methamphetamine and fewer consequences, especially since the passage of Proposition 47 (last November), which has made the possession of drugs a misdemeanor,” Dyer said. “A number of these people that are addicted to these drugs are not just committing lower-level offenses like burglary or petty theft, but they’re also involved in armed robberies to support their drug addiction.”
Drug users are now issued citations, Dyer said, rather than being arrested. Arrests, he said, gave police an effective tool to take addicts off the street and give them a chance at treatment. “That’s not happening, which is why we have so many empty treatment beds in Fresno.”
“I believe…the voters in California were misled regarding Prop. 47, the (idea) that these are harmless individuals addicted to drugs. As we know in law enforcement, they are oftentimes very violent, and there have to be consequences for these individuals prior to them going out and committing armed robberies,” Dyer said.
As for Prop. 47, the path to hell is paved with the stones of good intentions.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
GOVERNMENT PAID $20.2 MILLION IN SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS TO MORE THAN 130 EX-NAZIS WHO WENT ON TO LIVE COMFORTABLY IN THE U.S.
The payments were made over the course of 50 years with some being made as recently as this year to former guards at Nazi labor camps where millions died
Associated Press
May 31, 2015
Nazi war criminals, SS guards, and others who may have participated in the Third Reich's atrocities during World War II collected $20.2 million in retirement benefits, according to the Social Security Administration's inspector general.
In a report scheduled for public release next week and obtained by The Associated Press, the inspector general said nearly a quarter of the total, $5.7 million, went to individuals who were found to have played a role in the Nazi persecution and had been deported.
More than $14 million was paid to people who weren't deported but were alleged or found to have assisted the Nazis during a period in which millions of Jews perished in the Holocaust.
The IG's report comes seven months after an AP investigation revealed benefits were paid to former Nazis after they were forced out of the United States. AP found that the Justice Department used a legal loophole to persuade Nazi suspects to leave the U.S. in exchange for Social Security benefits. If they agreed to go voluntarily, or simply fled the country before being deported, they could keep their benefits.
Former guards at Nazi labor camps, where millions died, are among those who received payments from the U.S. government, some as recently as this year.
Congress reacted swiftly by passing legislation to close the loophole and bar Nazi suspects from receiving benefits. President Barack Obama signed the measure into law late last year.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, requested the inspector general look into the scope of the payments following AP's investigation.
'This report is another reminder that we must never forget the atrocities committed by the Nazis,' Maloney said Saturday in an emailed statement.
'According to this report, 133 alleged and confirmed Nazis actively worked to conceal their true identities from our government and received millions of dollars in Social Security payments.'
The report doesn't include the names of the former Nazis and is narrowly focused on how many Nazi suspects received benefits.
It criticizes the Social Security Administration for improperly paying four beneficiaries $15,658 because it did not suspend the benefits in time.
The report includes a detailed breakdown of how the payments were distributed.
The Social Security Administration last year refused the AP's request that it provide the total number of Nazi suspects who received benefits and the dollar amounts.
Associated Press
May 31, 2015
Nazi war criminals, SS guards, and others who may have participated in the Third Reich's atrocities during World War II collected $20.2 million in retirement benefits, according to the Social Security Administration's inspector general.
In a report scheduled for public release next week and obtained by The Associated Press, the inspector general said nearly a quarter of the total, $5.7 million, went to individuals who were found to have played a role in the Nazi persecution and had been deported.
More than $14 million was paid to people who weren't deported but were alleged or found to have assisted the Nazis during a period in which millions of Jews perished in the Holocaust.
The IG's report comes seven months after an AP investigation revealed benefits were paid to former Nazis after they were forced out of the United States. AP found that the Justice Department used a legal loophole to persuade Nazi suspects to leave the U.S. in exchange for Social Security benefits. If they agreed to go voluntarily, or simply fled the country before being deported, they could keep their benefits.
Former guards at Nazi labor camps, where millions died, are among those who received payments from the U.S. government, some as recently as this year.
Congress reacted swiftly by passing legislation to close the loophole and bar Nazi suspects from receiving benefits. President Barack Obama signed the measure into law late last year.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, requested the inspector general look into the scope of the payments following AP's investigation.
'This report is another reminder that we must never forget the atrocities committed by the Nazis,' Maloney said Saturday in an emailed statement.
'According to this report, 133 alleged and confirmed Nazis actively worked to conceal their true identities from our government and received millions of dollars in Social Security payments.'
The report doesn't include the names of the former Nazis and is narrowly focused on how many Nazi suspects received benefits.
It criticizes the Social Security Administration for improperly paying four beneficiaries $15,658 because it did not suspend the benefits in time.
The report includes a detailed breakdown of how the payments were distributed.
The Social Security Administration last year refused the AP's request that it provide the total number of Nazi suspects who received benefits and the dollar amounts.
Saturday, May 30, 2015
COLORADO TEACHER AIDE’S FUTURE RATHER DIM
First grade girls at Denver’s Ford Elementary School found Cassandra Rein passed out in a school restroom with a syringe stuck in her arm
Many teacher aides aspire to become certified teachers. That may have been what Cassandra Rein, 27, had in mind. But something happened Thursday at Denver’s Ford Elementary School that makes her future as a teacher, or anything else for that matter, rather dim.
Four first grade girls found Cassandra passed out in a school restroom. Now that could happen to anybody. But Cassandra’s passing out was somewhat unique. When the little girls found her, there was a syringe stuck in her arm and a baggie containing white powder by her side.
One of the girls told her teacher that Cassandra was sleeping on the bathroom floor. Paramedics and the cops were called. Cassandra was taken to a hospital and then arrested for possession of a controlled substance. A search of her bag turned up several bottles of different pills, more syringes, and several metal caps containing the residue of burnt powder.
Cassandra is probably looking at some jail time and can kiss her aspirations of becoming a teacher adios. Eureka, not so fast! If I were her lawyer, I would argue that Cassandra was actually giving a drug education presentation to show her elementary school students what can happen to them if they use drugs. Brilliant, isn’t it?
Many teacher aides aspire to become certified teachers. That may have been what Cassandra Rein, 27, had in mind. But something happened Thursday at Denver’s Ford Elementary School that makes her future as a teacher, or anything else for that matter, rather dim.
Four first grade girls found Cassandra passed out in a school restroom. Now that could happen to anybody. But Cassandra’s passing out was somewhat unique. When the little girls found her, there was a syringe stuck in her arm and a baggie containing white powder by her side.
One of the girls told her teacher that Cassandra was sleeping on the bathroom floor. Paramedics and the cops were called. Cassandra was taken to a hospital and then arrested for possession of a controlled substance. A search of her bag turned up several bottles of different pills, more syringes, and several metal caps containing the residue of burnt powder.
Cassandra is probably looking at some jail time and can kiss her aspirations of becoming a teacher adios. Eureka, not so fast! If I were her lawyer, I would argue that Cassandra was actually giving a drug education presentation to show her elementary school students what can happen to them if they use drugs. Brilliant, isn’t it?
Friday, May 29, 2015
GUN OWNERS BEWARE!
The Firearm Risk Protection Act, a bill introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, would require all gun owners to have liability insurance
Today, Democratic Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York introduced The Firearm Risk Protection Act, a bill that would require all gun buyers to have liability insurance before they can purchase a gun and it would impose a $10,000 fine on any gun owner that did not have the insurance. The bill exempts law enforcement officers and members of the military.
Maloney says that since automobile owners are required to have insurance, so should gun owners.
While mandatory auto insurance is designed to compensate the victim of a car crash where the other driver is at fault, Maloney’s bill is really not meant to compensate a gunshot victim. Make no mistake about it, the purpose of Maloney’s bill is to make it harder for citizens to acquire guns. It’s just one more form of gun control, nothing more or less!
I doubt this bill will survive in a Republican dominated congress, but just to be on the safe side, all gun owners should contact their congressional representative and express their opposition to Maloney’s gun control bill.
Maloney is an ardent anti-gunner. A few weeks ago she also introduced The Gun Show Loophole Closing Act, a bill that requires anyone selling or transferring a gun at a gun show to run a background check on the recipient with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System and requires that transfers be reported to the attorney general.
Doesn’t Maloney rhyme with baloney?
Today, Democratic Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York introduced The Firearm Risk Protection Act, a bill that would require all gun buyers to have liability insurance before they can purchase a gun and it would impose a $10,000 fine on any gun owner that did not have the insurance. The bill exempts law enforcement officers and members of the military.
Maloney says that since automobile owners are required to have insurance, so should gun owners.
While mandatory auto insurance is designed to compensate the victim of a car crash where the other driver is at fault, Maloney’s bill is really not meant to compensate a gunshot victim. Make no mistake about it, the purpose of Maloney’s bill is to make it harder for citizens to acquire guns. It’s just one more form of gun control, nothing more or less!
I doubt this bill will survive in a Republican dominated congress, but just to be on the safe side, all gun owners should contact their congressional representative and express their opposition to Maloney’s gun control bill.
Maloney is an ardent anti-gunner. A few weeks ago she also introduced The Gun Show Loophole Closing Act, a bill that requires anyone selling or transferring a gun at a gun show to run a background check on the recipient with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System and requires that transfers be reported to the attorney general.
Doesn’t Maloney rhyme with baloney?
EXECUTIONERS WANTED, NO EXPPERIENCE NEEDED
Saudi Arabia advertises for eight new executioners to carry out public beheadings
Justice in Saudi Arabia is harsh under Wahhabism, the Islamic sect of the Saudi rulers, which calls for the execution of murderers, apostates, homosexuals, adulterers, fortune tellers (for performing magic), etc. Executions, except for adulterers who are stoned to death, are by beheading and carried out in public, as are amputations and floggings.
The Daily Mail reports that so far this year, the Saudi kingdom has carried out 89 public executions. To keep up with the rash of beheadings, the Saudis have advertised for eight new executioners, no experience needed. The beginners hired will be given a traditional sword and will train by beheading live sheep. The advertisement promises successful applicants an attractive benefits package including a housing allowance and six months’ sick leave on full pay.
Here is the Daily Mail’s description of the typical Saudi execution:
The condemned, wearing white robes, is driven to a public square in a police van. He is dragged from it by eight officers. The executioner is waiting. He is carrying a four-foot curved silver sword.
He is forced to kneel facing Mecca, and the executioner tests his blade by running it lightly across the prisoner’s exposed neck, making him flinch. There is a drain in the ground to collect the blood.
The executioner raises his sword, then powers it down on to the kneeling man’s neck, slicing through skin, muscle and bone. The head rolls away; the body topples to the ground.
The man’s head is put in a bag and attached to his body with rope. Then the corpse, head dangling, is hoisted on a crane and left to fester in the square for up to three days.
These are equal opportunity beheadings in that the executions of women in Saudi Arabia are carried out in the same way as those of men. That should make the feminists happy.
The new executioners will also carry out amputations on thieves, stoning adulterers to death and surgically paralyzing offenders under the strict eye-for-an-eye Sharia law.
Stoning victims are typically buried up to their waist or neck, unable to avoid the stones hurled at their head by a crowd of bystanders until they slowly die.
The public is encouraged to bring their children to watch beheadings, amputations, stonings and floggings so that they will see the consequences of breaking Wahhabi laws.
I have a very strong suspicion that, even though the crime rate in Saudi Arabia has risen sharply, it is still very low.
Justice in Saudi Arabia is harsh under Wahhabism, the Islamic sect of the Saudi rulers, which calls for the execution of murderers, apostates, homosexuals, adulterers, fortune tellers (for performing magic), etc. Executions, except for adulterers who are stoned to death, are by beheading and carried out in public, as are amputations and floggings.
The Daily Mail reports that so far this year, the Saudi kingdom has carried out 89 public executions. To keep up with the rash of beheadings, the Saudis have advertised for eight new executioners, no experience needed. The beginners hired will be given a traditional sword and will train by beheading live sheep. The advertisement promises successful applicants an attractive benefits package including a housing allowance and six months’ sick leave on full pay.
Here is the Daily Mail’s description of the typical Saudi execution:
The condemned, wearing white robes, is driven to a public square in a police van. He is dragged from it by eight officers. The executioner is waiting. He is carrying a four-foot curved silver sword.
He is forced to kneel facing Mecca, and the executioner tests his blade by running it lightly across the prisoner’s exposed neck, making him flinch. There is a drain in the ground to collect the blood.
The executioner raises his sword, then powers it down on to the kneeling man’s neck, slicing through skin, muscle and bone. The head rolls away; the body topples to the ground.
The man’s head is put in a bag and attached to his body with rope. Then the corpse, head dangling, is hoisted on a crane and left to fester in the square for up to three days.
These are equal opportunity beheadings in that the executions of women in Saudi Arabia are carried out in the same way as those of men. That should make the feminists happy.
The new executioners will also carry out amputations on thieves, stoning adulterers to death and surgically paralyzing offenders under the strict eye-for-an-eye Sharia law.
Stoning victims are typically buried up to their waist or neck, unable to avoid the stones hurled at their head by a crowd of bystanders until they slowly die.
The public is encouraged to bring their children to watch beheadings, amputations, stonings and floggings so that they will see the consequences of breaking Wahhabi laws.
I have a very strong suspicion that, even though the crime rate in Saudi Arabia has risen sharply, it is still very low.
STREET JUSTICE IS NO JUSTUCE
Why is it wise to support your local law enforcement (even if you have issues)?
By Greg ‘Gadfly’ Doyle
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
May 29, 2015
The backlash against the Baltimore, Maryland police department in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death while in police custody has had a chilling effect on police response within the community. Prior to the riots and indictments handed down against six police officers, Baltimore PD conducted proactive policing on the mean streets of that city.
Now policing in Baltimore has been reduced to strictly handling calls for service. And the citizens of Baltimore are suffering as a result.
Proactive policing means the police actively engage criminals in their own neighborhoods to disrupt and suppress their illegal enterprises. By doing so, criminals are generally forced to operate under cover of darkness and take greater efforts to avoid detection.
Reactive policing generally happens in more rural areas where their are fewer law enforcement personnel to cover vast areas of land in sparsely populated areas.
One of the first signs that the shift in policing strategy has changed in Baltimore is the rapid spike in violent crime. Police are armed, trained, and equipped to apprehend violent offenders. In high crime areas, proactive policing has proven to reduce violent crimes.
So what is happening in Baltimore since the riots subsided and the have police backed down due to public vilification?
Here are some of the news headlines:
Violence Spikes in Baltimore; 29 Shot, 9 Dead Just Over the Weekend Holiday (for story read http://tinyurl.com/pxywp29.)
Baltimore’s deadliest month: Can the community still find peace? (for story read http://tinyurl.com/ncslqrl.)
Deadly month sees 35 killings in Baltimore (for story read http://tinyurl.com/paa6dzc.)
Woman, boy most recent homicides in Baltimore as city sees deadliest month in years (for story read http://tinyurl.com/o6u9wcd.)
The point of this article is not about the merits of Freddie Gray ‘s death in police custody. After all the smoke has cleared and the dust has settled, someone will determine in a court of law if anything criminal occurred causing Mr. Gray’s death, or if negligence was the main culprit. In order to attain any measure of justice, we must trust our justice system.
The alternative, of course, is community instability and utter anarchy as witnessed in the Ferguson, Missouri riots and the recent Baltimore conflagration.
As I have expressed previously in my 2010 article called Mob Rule,
“Once a crowd becomes a mob, the rule of law is suspended until authority can dispel and disperse the malcontents, and this usually by force, to establish and maintain order. Rioting, looting, violence, and vandalism are the forefathers of mob rule and anarchy.”
In both the Ferguson and Baltimore cases, mob rule resulted in major destruction of property, multiple injuries, and some fatalities. Were the police responsible for the riots?
No. Angry mobs were the culprits. Militant, unthinking mobs demanded justice in the streets without waiting for an official outcome in the courts. As unruly mobs almost always do, they took the law into their own hands and destroyed everything within arms reach, including their own communities.
Street justice is no justice.
Who was charged with quelling the riots? The very police that the mobs were angry at. How would you like to be a Ferguson or Baltimore police officer under those conditions?
As much as the media would like us to all believe that the police were responsible for the devastation based upon a history of systemic racism (triggered by two incidents), I would suggest that this assertion is specious.
I would assert that hatred of the law (by specific segments of our society)—that which defines acceptable and unacceptable behavior—is at the root of the problem; not racism.
As a retired police sergeant, I can attest to the fact that I have encountered many individuals (of all colors, shapes, and sizes) who hated the police because those persons have no respect for the law, little concern for following rules, or any desire to have their illegal activities interrupted.
Since when is it acceptable in ANY community, within any ethnicity, among any cultural group to address an injustice by assaulting the police, rioting in the streets, burning City and private property, and looting local businesses?
Nothing can justify such a response to an injustice. Civilized people do not undo civilization by becoming uncivilized in order to address an injustice. And that is just what the mobs in Ferguson and Baltimore did—unraveled and burned whole communities—without effectively addressing their perceived injustices.
And what will those who riot, burn, and pillage in the same instances get for all their efforts? Nothing.
They will never be satisfied with any legal outcome, because they have no understanding of, or respect for, the law in the first place.
Mob rule flies in the face of logic, reason, and civility.
Why is it wise to support your local law enforcement (even if you have issues)? Because the police are the second line of defense for the citizenry (the first is being constitutionally armed to protect yourself.) Without the police, you go it alone. And if your State or community restricts your right to keep and bear firearms, you are doubly screwed.
Take a real hard look at the numbers in Baltimore and tell me the police were not doing a better job against the criminal element than an unarmed citizenry.
Whose side are you on: the law-abiders or law-breakers?
Let the courts decide, not the angry mob, decide the outcome and abide by it. That is the rule of law.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Like it or not, mob rule works. Just look at the rushed indictments of the six cops handed down in Baltimore. And the driver of the paddy wagon containing Freddie Gray is charged with murder. Without the burning and looting that would not have happened.
By the way, I have looked carefully and closely at the pictures of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ demonstrations from the East Coast to the West. In all of those demonstrations there were a lot of whites participating. Most of those whites, both men and women, appeared to be in their early to mid 20s. This leads me to suspect they were college students or recent (unemployed) graduates influenced (if not indoctrinated) by the Marxist and other far-left professors that have infested our colleges and universities.
The far-left professors constantly criticize our criminal justice system as being racist, our police officers for being brutal and racist, our government for favoring the rich over the poor (blacks), etc. They encourage their students to participate in the demonstrations and often give extra credit to those that do.
I believe that were it not for those far-left professors, there would be few whites participating in the ‘Black Lives Matter’ demonstrations.
By the way, when you look at the few demonstrations in support of the police, you see mostly the middle-aged and seniors participating. No college students there!
By Greg ‘Gadfly’ Doyle
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
May 29, 2015
The backlash against the Baltimore, Maryland police department in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death while in police custody has had a chilling effect on police response within the community. Prior to the riots and indictments handed down against six police officers, Baltimore PD conducted proactive policing on the mean streets of that city.
Now policing in Baltimore has been reduced to strictly handling calls for service. And the citizens of Baltimore are suffering as a result.
Proactive policing means the police actively engage criminals in their own neighborhoods to disrupt and suppress their illegal enterprises. By doing so, criminals are generally forced to operate under cover of darkness and take greater efforts to avoid detection.
Reactive policing generally happens in more rural areas where their are fewer law enforcement personnel to cover vast areas of land in sparsely populated areas.
One of the first signs that the shift in policing strategy has changed in Baltimore is the rapid spike in violent crime. Police are armed, trained, and equipped to apprehend violent offenders. In high crime areas, proactive policing has proven to reduce violent crimes.
So what is happening in Baltimore since the riots subsided and the have police backed down due to public vilification?
Here are some of the news headlines:
Violence Spikes in Baltimore; 29 Shot, 9 Dead Just Over the Weekend Holiday (for story read http://tinyurl.com/pxywp29.)
Baltimore’s deadliest month: Can the community still find peace? (for story read http://tinyurl.com/ncslqrl.)
Deadly month sees 35 killings in Baltimore (for story read http://tinyurl.com/paa6dzc.)
Woman, boy most recent homicides in Baltimore as city sees deadliest month in years (for story read http://tinyurl.com/o6u9wcd.)
The point of this article is not about the merits of Freddie Gray ‘s death in police custody. After all the smoke has cleared and the dust has settled, someone will determine in a court of law if anything criminal occurred causing Mr. Gray’s death, or if negligence was the main culprit. In order to attain any measure of justice, we must trust our justice system.
The alternative, of course, is community instability and utter anarchy as witnessed in the Ferguson, Missouri riots and the recent Baltimore conflagration.
As I have expressed previously in my 2010 article called Mob Rule,
“Once a crowd becomes a mob, the rule of law is suspended until authority can dispel and disperse the malcontents, and this usually by force, to establish and maintain order. Rioting, looting, violence, and vandalism are the forefathers of mob rule and anarchy.”
In both the Ferguson and Baltimore cases, mob rule resulted in major destruction of property, multiple injuries, and some fatalities. Were the police responsible for the riots?
No. Angry mobs were the culprits. Militant, unthinking mobs demanded justice in the streets without waiting for an official outcome in the courts. As unruly mobs almost always do, they took the law into their own hands and destroyed everything within arms reach, including their own communities.
Street justice is no justice.
Who was charged with quelling the riots? The very police that the mobs were angry at. How would you like to be a Ferguson or Baltimore police officer under those conditions?
As much as the media would like us to all believe that the police were responsible for the devastation based upon a history of systemic racism (triggered by two incidents), I would suggest that this assertion is specious.
I would assert that hatred of the law (by specific segments of our society)—that which defines acceptable and unacceptable behavior—is at the root of the problem; not racism.
As a retired police sergeant, I can attest to the fact that I have encountered many individuals (of all colors, shapes, and sizes) who hated the police because those persons have no respect for the law, little concern for following rules, or any desire to have their illegal activities interrupted.
Since when is it acceptable in ANY community, within any ethnicity, among any cultural group to address an injustice by assaulting the police, rioting in the streets, burning City and private property, and looting local businesses?
Nothing can justify such a response to an injustice. Civilized people do not undo civilization by becoming uncivilized in order to address an injustice. And that is just what the mobs in Ferguson and Baltimore did—unraveled and burned whole communities—without effectively addressing their perceived injustices.
And what will those who riot, burn, and pillage in the same instances get for all their efforts? Nothing.
They will never be satisfied with any legal outcome, because they have no understanding of, or respect for, the law in the first place.
Mob rule flies in the face of logic, reason, and civility.
Why is it wise to support your local law enforcement (even if you have issues)? Because the police are the second line of defense for the citizenry (the first is being constitutionally armed to protect yourself.) Without the police, you go it alone. And if your State or community restricts your right to keep and bear firearms, you are doubly screwed.
Take a real hard look at the numbers in Baltimore and tell me the police were not doing a better job against the criminal element than an unarmed citizenry.
Whose side are you on: the law-abiders or law-breakers?
Let the courts decide, not the angry mob, decide the outcome and abide by it. That is the rule of law.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Like it or not, mob rule works. Just look at the rushed indictments of the six cops handed down in Baltimore. And the driver of the paddy wagon containing Freddie Gray is charged with murder. Without the burning and looting that would not have happened.
By the way, I have looked carefully and closely at the pictures of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ demonstrations from the East Coast to the West. In all of those demonstrations there were a lot of whites participating. Most of those whites, both men and women, appeared to be in their early to mid 20s. This leads me to suspect they were college students or recent (unemployed) graduates influenced (if not indoctrinated) by the Marxist and other far-left professors that have infested our colleges and universities.
The far-left professors constantly criticize our criminal justice system as being racist, our police officers for being brutal and racist, our government for favoring the rich over the poor (blacks), etc. They encourage their students to participate in the demonstrations and often give extra credit to those that do.
I believe that were it not for those far-left professors, there would be few whites participating in the ‘Black Lives Matter’ demonstrations.
By the way, when you look at the few demonstrations in support of the police, you see mostly the middle-aged and seniors participating. No college students there!
Thursday, May 28, 2015
FOUR LEGGED PARTNER SAVES LIFE OF MISSISSIPPI COP
Hancock County K-9 officer Lucas sprang to the aid of his partner, Sheriff’s Deputy Todd Frazier, who had been ambushed by three men that were about to slit his throat
On Monday night, Hancock County Sheriff’s Deputy Todd Frazier and his K-9 partner Lucas were patrolling om Highway 90 near Pearlington, Mississippi, close to the Louisiana state line. Frazier spotted a Lincoln Town Car parked in a deserted rest stop. He saw that the driver was not moving.
Frasier got out of his car to check on the driver. Suddenly two men emerged from the woods to ambush the deputy. The driver joined in to pummel Frazier. One of the men cut Frazier’s forehead with a box cutter. They began to drag Frazier to the woods, telling him they were going to slit his throat.
At that point Frazier managed to get a hand free and press a remote control which opened the patrol car doors. That’s when K-9 officer Lucas, a black Belgian Malinois, sprang into action. Lucas attacked the three men, biting the shit out of them. The three assholes fled to the Lincoln and drove off with Lucas still hanging onto the leg of one of the car’s occupants.
Frazier, a three-year veteran, was hospitalized with non- life-threatening injuries that included a gash on his forehead and bruises. Lucas chipped a few teeth and bruised his shoulder. Frazier and Lucas have not returned to work yet.
The three men who attacked Frazier are believed to have fled into Louisiana.
There is no doubt that Lucas saved the life of Todd Frazier. What a great four legged partner!
On Monday night, Hancock County Sheriff’s Deputy Todd Frazier and his K-9 partner Lucas were patrolling om Highway 90 near Pearlington, Mississippi, close to the Louisiana state line. Frazier spotted a Lincoln Town Car parked in a deserted rest stop. He saw that the driver was not moving.
Frasier got out of his car to check on the driver. Suddenly two men emerged from the woods to ambush the deputy. The driver joined in to pummel Frazier. One of the men cut Frazier’s forehead with a box cutter. They began to drag Frazier to the woods, telling him they were going to slit his throat.
At that point Frazier managed to get a hand free and press a remote control which opened the patrol car doors. That’s when K-9 officer Lucas, a black Belgian Malinois, sprang into action. Lucas attacked the three men, biting the shit out of them. The three assholes fled to the Lincoln and drove off with Lucas still hanging onto the leg of one of the car’s occupants.
Frazier, a three-year veteran, was hospitalized with non- life-threatening injuries that included a gash on his forehead and bruises. Lucas chipped a few teeth and bruised his shoulder. Frazier and Lucas have not returned to work yet.
The three men who attacked Frazier are believed to have fled into Louisiana.
There is no doubt that Lucas saved the life of Todd Frazier. What a great four legged partner!
BARACK OBAMA: AMERICA’S FIRST JEWISH PRESIDENT?
By Zev Chafets
Fox News
May 27, 2015
In March, 2013, President Barack Obama paid a state visit to Israel. At the airport he introduced Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to his staff. One was Benjamin Rhodes, his deputy national security advisor and speechwriter.
“If I say anything offensive, it’s because of him,” Obama told Netanyahu in a jocular tone, according to various news reports. Bibi smiled thinly. He and Obama had a habit of offending one another and there was reason to suppose it would be different this time.
Obama told Bibi that not only was Ben Rhodes a VIP, but his brother David was the head of CBS News. “Talk about having a proud Jewish mother!”
Netanyahu refrained from commenting on Mrs. Rhodes’ good fortune or Obama’s ploy transparent ploy: If Ben Rhodes (and his proud Jewish mother!) think my policies are kosher, who are you to say otherwise?
Since that visit, relations between the two leaders have grown steadily worse. This presents a problem for Obama, who rightly thinks that Bibi is encouraging Congress to block the nuclear deal with Iran, and rousing American public opinion against the president’s goal of establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with eastern Jerusalem as its capital.
Last Friday, to celebrate Jewish Heritage Month, Obama took his resentment against Netanyahu and disappointment with Israel to the Jewish public. His venue was Washington’s historic Adas Israel Synagogue. Wearing a gold colored bar mitzvah-boy skullcap, he stood on the pulpit and proudly reminded the audience that journalist Jeffrey Goldberg—a member of that very congregation--had once dubbed him, “America’s first Jewish President.”
When the applause and laughter subsided, Obama admitted that it was not literally true, but he was flattered by the conceit and would be speaking as an “honorary member of the tribe.”
Obama’s speech focused on Jewish values. He began by praising American Jewry’s role in supporting the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. He lamented the recent rise of international anti-Semitism and pledged to fight it (although he refrained from actually naming the perpetrators).
When he came to the subject of Israel, he grew nostalgic. As a young man, he told the audience, he had been inspired by the justice of Israel’s creation, its pioneering spirit and its wonderful values. He especially admired former Golda Meir and General Moshe Dayan—both dead for decades (and both of whom would have been horrified by Obama’s vision of a Palestinian state or his nuclear diplomacy). If there are living Israelis Obama approves of (other than Jeff Goldberg, who is a dual citizen), he didn’t mention them.
The president called the American-Israeli relationship “unbreakable.” And he denounced those who say that he is not a friend and supporter of the Jewish State. In fact, he loves the place. “[And] it is precisely because I care so deeply about the state of Israel -- it’s precisely because, yes, I have high expectations for Israel the same way I have high expectations for the United States of America -- that I feel a responsibility to speak out honestly about what I think will lead to long-term security and to the preservation of a true democracy in the Jewish homeland.”
A Palestinian State is, in Obama’s view, not merely good policy but a moral imperative. “The rights of the Jewish people [to have a state] then compel me to think about a Palestinian child in Ramallah that [sic] feels trapped without opportunity. That’s what Jewish values teach me.”
There are some Jews who agree. But they constitute a small minority in Israel. Most Israelis do not see creating a PLO-Hamas regime within a few miles of Tel Aviv as a Jewish value—certainly not one that trumps national security and common sense.
That was the unmistakable meaning of the recent Israeli election and, indeed, of every Israeli election in the past twenty years. It will likely remain the prevailing sentiment as long Hamas and the Palestinian grassroots regard the Jewish state as illegitimate, and the international jihad sees Israel as a strategic target.
Obama is clearly vexed by the failure of Israelis to live up to his high expectations of them or to appreciate the deep love that his incessant criticism expresses. If only they could be more like Benjamin Rhodes or David Axelrod or that nice rabbi at the synagogue who let him hold the Torah. Instead, he gets stuck with Bibi Netanyahu. And what does he know about Jewish values?
EDITOR’S NOTE: Obama, America’s first Jewish president? No way Jose! Let’s not forget that for many years Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a rabid anti-Semite, was Obama’s mentor.
As for Israel, with friends like Obama, the Jewish state does not need any enemies. The only reason Obama supports Israel is because it has the overwhelming support of Congress.
Fox News
May 27, 2015
In March, 2013, President Barack Obama paid a state visit to Israel. At the airport he introduced Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to his staff. One was Benjamin Rhodes, his deputy national security advisor and speechwriter.
“If I say anything offensive, it’s because of him,” Obama told Netanyahu in a jocular tone, according to various news reports. Bibi smiled thinly. He and Obama had a habit of offending one another and there was reason to suppose it would be different this time.
Obama told Bibi that not only was Ben Rhodes a VIP, but his brother David was the head of CBS News. “Talk about having a proud Jewish mother!”
Netanyahu refrained from commenting on Mrs. Rhodes’ good fortune or Obama’s ploy transparent ploy: If Ben Rhodes (and his proud Jewish mother!) think my policies are kosher, who are you to say otherwise?
Since that visit, relations between the two leaders have grown steadily worse. This presents a problem for Obama, who rightly thinks that Bibi is encouraging Congress to block the nuclear deal with Iran, and rousing American public opinion against the president’s goal of establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with eastern Jerusalem as its capital.
Last Friday, to celebrate Jewish Heritage Month, Obama took his resentment against Netanyahu and disappointment with Israel to the Jewish public. His venue was Washington’s historic Adas Israel Synagogue. Wearing a gold colored bar mitzvah-boy skullcap, he stood on the pulpit and proudly reminded the audience that journalist Jeffrey Goldberg—a member of that very congregation--had once dubbed him, “America’s first Jewish President.”
When the applause and laughter subsided, Obama admitted that it was not literally true, but he was flattered by the conceit and would be speaking as an “honorary member of the tribe.”
Obama’s speech focused on Jewish values. He began by praising American Jewry’s role in supporting the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. He lamented the recent rise of international anti-Semitism and pledged to fight it (although he refrained from actually naming the perpetrators).
When he came to the subject of Israel, he grew nostalgic. As a young man, he told the audience, he had been inspired by the justice of Israel’s creation, its pioneering spirit and its wonderful values. He especially admired former Golda Meir and General Moshe Dayan—both dead for decades (and both of whom would have been horrified by Obama’s vision of a Palestinian state or his nuclear diplomacy). If there are living Israelis Obama approves of (other than Jeff Goldberg, who is a dual citizen), he didn’t mention them.
The president called the American-Israeli relationship “unbreakable.” And he denounced those who say that he is not a friend and supporter of the Jewish State. In fact, he loves the place. “[And] it is precisely because I care so deeply about the state of Israel -- it’s precisely because, yes, I have high expectations for Israel the same way I have high expectations for the United States of America -- that I feel a responsibility to speak out honestly about what I think will lead to long-term security and to the preservation of a true democracy in the Jewish homeland.”
A Palestinian State is, in Obama’s view, not merely good policy but a moral imperative. “The rights of the Jewish people [to have a state] then compel me to think about a Palestinian child in Ramallah that [sic] feels trapped without opportunity. That’s what Jewish values teach me.”
There are some Jews who agree. But they constitute a small minority in Israel. Most Israelis do not see creating a PLO-Hamas regime within a few miles of Tel Aviv as a Jewish value—certainly not one that trumps national security and common sense.
That was the unmistakable meaning of the recent Israeli election and, indeed, of every Israeli election in the past twenty years. It will likely remain the prevailing sentiment as long Hamas and the Palestinian grassroots regard the Jewish state as illegitimate, and the international jihad sees Israel as a strategic target.
Obama is clearly vexed by the failure of Israelis to live up to his high expectations of them or to appreciate the deep love that his incessant criticism expresses. If only they could be more like Benjamin Rhodes or David Axelrod or that nice rabbi at the synagogue who let him hold the Torah. Instead, he gets stuck with Bibi Netanyahu. And what does he know about Jewish values?
EDITOR’S NOTE: Obama, America’s first Jewish president? No way Jose! Let’s not forget that for many years Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a rabid anti-Semite, was Obama’s mentor.
As for Israel, with friends like Obama, the Jewish state does not need any enemies. The only reason Obama supports Israel is because it has the overwhelming support of Congress.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
FIFA BOSSES BUSTED FOR TAKING OVER $150 MILLION IN BRIBES
Bribes involved awarding the World Cup matches to South Africa in 2010, to Russia in 2018 and to Qatar in 2022
Do you like soccer? Millions of people all over the world love it passionately. It is called football everywhere but in our country. It is not uncommon for riots to break out in the spectator stands during matches between teams from England and France and teams from Brazil and Argentina. Many football fans have been injured and some have been killed during the riots.
FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) is the equivalent of the NFL in that it is the governing body of international football leagues. Running FIFA is a big business. It is also a corrupt business. Seven FIFA executives were busted in Switzerland today, accused of taking more than $150 million in bribes during the past 24 years.
The arrests came as the result of separate but parallel investigations by the FBI and Swiss authorities. The seven FIFA execs were busted while living it up at Zurich’s swank five-star hotel Baur au Lac. Those arrested were:
Jeffrey Webb, 50, FIFA vice president.
Eugenio Figueredio, 83, former president of the South American football federation.
Costas Takkas, 58, former general secretary of the Cayman Islands Football Association and current advisor to Jeffrey Webb.
Jose Maria Marin, 83, vice president of the Brazil Football Federation and member of the FIFA organizing committee for the Olympic football tournaments.
Julio Rocha, 64, FIFA development officer in charge of helping member associations identify and implement future projects within their respective regions.
Eduardo Li, 56, FIFA executive committee member-elect and current CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) executive committee member.
Rafael Esquivel, 69, South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) executive committee member.
Also charged in the U.S. indictment but not yet arrested is Jack Warner, 72, former FIFA vice president and Niccolas Leoz, 86, former president of CONMEBOL.
Bribes involved awarding the World Cup matches to South Africa in 2010, to Russia in 2018 and to Qatar in 2022. And, according to Mail Online, the FBI has charged 14 defendants - nine FIFA officials and five corporate executives - with racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies in connection with bribes 'totaling more than $150m' linked to commercial deals dating back to the 1990s for football tournaments in the United States and Latin America.
The FBI was able to develop its investigation with the help of New York resident Chuck Blazer who in 2013 secretly pled guilty to a total of 10 counts, including wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering, income tax and banking offenses. Blazer, 70, former FIFA executive committee member, cooperated with the FBI by wearing a wire to meetings with FIFA officials.
How about that all you soccer moms? Your kids are enrolled in a sport run by big-time crooks.
Do you like soccer? Millions of people all over the world love it passionately. It is called football everywhere but in our country. It is not uncommon for riots to break out in the spectator stands during matches between teams from England and France and teams from Brazil and Argentina. Many football fans have been injured and some have been killed during the riots.
FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) is the equivalent of the NFL in that it is the governing body of international football leagues. Running FIFA is a big business. It is also a corrupt business. Seven FIFA executives were busted in Switzerland today, accused of taking more than $150 million in bribes during the past 24 years.
The arrests came as the result of separate but parallel investigations by the FBI and Swiss authorities. The seven FIFA execs were busted while living it up at Zurich’s swank five-star hotel Baur au Lac. Those arrested were:
Jeffrey Webb, 50, FIFA vice president.
Eugenio Figueredio, 83, former president of the South American football federation.
Costas Takkas, 58, former general secretary of the Cayman Islands Football Association and current advisor to Jeffrey Webb.
Jose Maria Marin, 83, vice president of the Brazil Football Federation and member of the FIFA organizing committee for the Olympic football tournaments.
Julio Rocha, 64, FIFA development officer in charge of helping member associations identify and implement future projects within their respective regions.
Eduardo Li, 56, FIFA executive committee member-elect and current CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) executive committee member.
Rafael Esquivel, 69, South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) executive committee member.
Also charged in the U.S. indictment but not yet arrested is Jack Warner, 72, former FIFA vice president and Niccolas Leoz, 86, former president of CONMEBOL.
Bribes involved awarding the World Cup matches to South Africa in 2010, to Russia in 2018 and to Qatar in 2022. And, according to Mail Online, the FBI has charged 14 defendants - nine FIFA officials and five corporate executives - with racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies in connection with bribes 'totaling more than $150m' linked to commercial deals dating back to the 1990s for football tournaments in the United States and Latin America.
The FBI was able to develop its investigation with the help of New York resident Chuck Blazer who in 2013 secretly pled guilty to a total of 10 counts, including wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering, income tax and banking offenses. Blazer, 70, former FIFA executive committee member, cooperated with the FBI by wearing a wire to meetings with FIFA officials.
How about that all you soccer moms? Your kids are enrolled in a sport run by big-time crooks.
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
NO SHOOTOUT AT THE TWIN PEAKS CORRAL
I'm still recovering from some serious April 15th neck surgery. I spent part of Memorial Day at Twin Peaks. No, not the one in Waco, but the one in Webster. There was no shootout at the Twin Peaks corral. It was nice and peaceful, and I was enjoying some beers, a Philly cheese steak sandwich, and of course the view.
As you can see from the pictures, I wasn’t feeling any pain. I don’t know if it was the beer or the boobs, but I felt good. Now that I’m back home, damn it, I’ve got that awful pain in the neck again.
As you can see from the pictures, I wasn’t feeling any pain. I don’t know if it was the beer or the boobs, but I felt good. Now that I’m back home, damn it, I’ve got that awful pain in the neck again.
MEMORIAL DAY POLICE CHASE ENDS AT BARBEQUE GRILL
Half-hour chase of burglar by LAPD ends at Chanel Washington’s family barbeque
When South Los Angeles homeowners returned to their house around 3 p.m. on Memorial Day they noticed signs that they had been burglarized. When LAPD officers responded to their call they observed a man in the alley behind the home. The suspect jumped into a red Honda and took off with the cops in pursuit.
The chase started at Hoover and 58th streets and ended in the driveway of a duplex on 87th Place a half hour later. During the chase, according to CBS Los Angeles, the suspect circled surrounding neighborhoods, driving erratically, jumping the sidewalk and sideswiping parked cars.
The Chanel Washington family had been enjoying a family barbeque on their front lawn when they noticed the suspect turning into their driveway with the police in pursuit. They did not stay to see what was going on. Instead they fled indoors and locked the doors.
The Honda came to a stop only a few feet from Chanel’s grill. The suspect emerged from the car with his hands up and was taken into custody.
When South Los Angeles homeowners returned to their house around 3 p.m. on Memorial Day they noticed signs that they had been burglarized. When LAPD officers responded to their call they observed a man in the alley behind the home. The suspect jumped into a red Honda and took off with the cops in pursuit.
The chase started at Hoover and 58th streets and ended in the driveway of a duplex on 87th Place a half hour later. During the chase, according to CBS Los Angeles, the suspect circled surrounding neighborhoods, driving erratically, jumping the sidewalk and sideswiping parked cars.
The Chanel Washington family had been enjoying a family barbeque on their front lawn when they noticed the suspect turning into their driveway with the police in pursuit. They did not stay to see what was going on. Instead they fled indoors and locked the doors.
The Honda came to a stop only a few feet from Chanel’s grill. The suspect emerged from the car with his hands up and was taken into custody.
Monday, May 25, 2015
MEXICO OFFICIALS STAND BY ACCOUNT OF DEADLY RANCH SHOOTOUT
By E. Eduardo Castillo
Associated Press
May 25, 2015
MORELIA, Mexico -- Mexican officials stood by their account Monday of a shootout that killed 42 suspected criminals and one federal police officer last week, dismissing questions raised about the lopsided death toll.
"There was not one single execution, I can say that categorically," Enrique Galindo, head of Mexico's federal police, told local media.
The 42 men died Friday during a three-hour gun battle on a ranch in Michoacan state. Officials say the fight began when police officers came under fire while responding to a report of armed men taking over the Rancho del Sol, in Ecuandureo, a township near the border with Jalisco state.
It was the deadliest such confrontation in recent memory and followed two deadly clashes in the area controlled by the powerful Jalisco New Generation cartel: The gang is blamed for an ambush that killed 15 state police officers in April and for a May 1 attack in which a rocket launcher shot down an army helicopter, killing eight soldiers.
Families of some of the men killed on Friday told The Associated Press that after viewing the remains of their loved ones, they doubted the official account. Relatives gathered at a local morgue said one body was missing an eye and had facial bruising, another had its teeth knocked inward. Another had a gunshot in the top of the head.
Galindo said a helicopter gunship had participated in the shootout and that its role had been decisive. "If the helicopter had not arrived, the death toll might have been different."
National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said at a news conference later Monday that the helicopter had been hit three times by bullets from an AR-15 assault rifle.
Authorities detained three people and confiscated 38 semi-automatic weapons, two smaller arms, a grenade launcher and a .50-caliber rifle. They had initially said they seized 40 weapons.
Speaking to the television network Televisa earlier Monday, Rubido said tests on the bodies of the victims showed they had been shot "from a considerable distance ... dozens of meters (yards)," ruling out anybody having been finished off at close range.
An official from Michoacan state, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press, said all the dead were men and most died from gunfire.
Rubido said the three men arrested were "the only three who when told to surrender, did so. The others refused and continued shooting."
But the lopsided death toll, and photographs from the scene in which bodies appeared to have been moved, raised questions about the official version.
Family members who arrived at the morgue in the state capital, Morelia, to retrieve the bodies spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals, but some were willing to provide the names of their dead relatives. Many were from Ocotlan in Jalisco state and said that a group of at least 25 men from the town had gone to the ranch after being offered work.
Juan Enrique Romero Caudillo, 34, was one of those men. Family members said he sold scrap metal to make a living.
"He said he had been offered maintenance work at the ranch," said a relative, adding that Romero didn't belong to a gang.
After seeing his corpse, the relative said Romero had been shot in the head from above and there was bruising on his face. On the death certificate, the cause of death was listed as "destruction of the brain mass due to penetration by a projectile from a firearm." It did not say if the gunshot was from close range or far away.
Romero's relative said he believed what happened on the ranch "was a massacre" not a shootout with criminal gunmen.
Relatives of Mario Alberto Valencia Vazquez, 22, said he worked in a furniture business but had been offered employment on the ranch.
One relative said Valencia's teeth had been knocked inward as if "he had been struck by something" and his body showed signs of having received blows. Another woman said her husband's face had been destroyed and was missing an eye.
Photographs from the site showed the bodies of men, some without shirts or barefoot, strewn over the ranch. Some appeared to lie with semi-automatic rifles in a field with farm equipment and others on a blood-stained patio strewn with clothes, mattresses and sleeping bags. Video of the battle obtained by The Associated Press showed federal police officers coming under fire.
Rubido dismissed photos circulating online, saying some were not from Friday's events and others were captured at different points in time.
The debate recalled a June 30 case in Tlatlaya, a rural community in Mexico state in which the army initially said 22 suspected criminals were killed in a confrontation and only one soldier had been wounded. An investigation by The Associated Press revealed that several of the suspects were executed after surrendering. Seven soldiers have been charged with wrongdoing.
"This is in no way anything like what happened in Tlatlaya," Galindo said. Officials say overwhelming power and training — police used four armored cars and the helicopter in the shootout — as well as the suspects' lack of preparation spelled the difference.
And Galindo noted that not all of the suspects at the ranch were killed. Three surrendered and were taken into custody, and a significant number escaped.
"We calculate there could have been between 60 and 70 people, because some fled," Galindo said.
Rubido said the cartel gunmen invaded the ranch last Monday, but the ranch owner, who lives in Guadalajara, did not report the takeover to authorities until Thursday. The gunmen were seeking a safe place to escape the government's pressure in Jalisco, Rubido said.
A convoy of 42 federal police were headed to the ranch to investigate when fired upon Friday morning, Rubido said. About 60 additional personnel joined them after 1 ½ hours of the battle.
EDITOR’S NOTE: 42 suspects and only one cop killed? That does not pass the smell test! Sure seems like a mass execution to me. Probably in retaliation for the ambush that killed 15 state police officers in April and for a May 1 attack in which a rocket launcher shot down an army helicopter, killing eight soldiers.
Associated Press
May 25, 2015
MORELIA, Mexico -- Mexican officials stood by their account Monday of a shootout that killed 42 suspected criminals and one federal police officer last week, dismissing questions raised about the lopsided death toll.
"There was not one single execution, I can say that categorically," Enrique Galindo, head of Mexico's federal police, told local media.
The 42 men died Friday during a three-hour gun battle on a ranch in Michoacan state. Officials say the fight began when police officers came under fire while responding to a report of armed men taking over the Rancho del Sol, in Ecuandureo, a township near the border with Jalisco state.
It was the deadliest such confrontation in recent memory and followed two deadly clashes in the area controlled by the powerful Jalisco New Generation cartel: The gang is blamed for an ambush that killed 15 state police officers in April and for a May 1 attack in which a rocket launcher shot down an army helicopter, killing eight soldiers.
Families of some of the men killed on Friday told The Associated Press that after viewing the remains of their loved ones, they doubted the official account. Relatives gathered at a local morgue said one body was missing an eye and had facial bruising, another had its teeth knocked inward. Another had a gunshot in the top of the head.
Galindo said a helicopter gunship had participated in the shootout and that its role had been decisive. "If the helicopter had not arrived, the death toll might have been different."
National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said at a news conference later Monday that the helicopter had been hit three times by bullets from an AR-15 assault rifle.
Authorities detained three people and confiscated 38 semi-automatic weapons, two smaller arms, a grenade launcher and a .50-caliber rifle. They had initially said they seized 40 weapons.
Speaking to the television network Televisa earlier Monday, Rubido said tests on the bodies of the victims showed they had been shot "from a considerable distance ... dozens of meters (yards)," ruling out anybody having been finished off at close range.
An official from Michoacan state, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press, said all the dead were men and most died from gunfire.
Rubido said the three men arrested were "the only three who when told to surrender, did so. The others refused and continued shooting."
But the lopsided death toll, and photographs from the scene in which bodies appeared to have been moved, raised questions about the official version.
Family members who arrived at the morgue in the state capital, Morelia, to retrieve the bodies spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals, but some were willing to provide the names of their dead relatives. Many were from Ocotlan in Jalisco state and said that a group of at least 25 men from the town had gone to the ranch after being offered work.
Juan Enrique Romero Caudillo, 34, was one of those men. Family members said he sold scrap metal to make a living.
"He said he had been offered maintenance work at the ranch," said a relative, adding that Romero didn't belong to a gang.
After seeing his corpse, the relative said Romero had been shot in the head from above and there was bruising on his face. On the death certificate, the cause of death was listed as "destruction of the brain mass due to penetration by a projectile from a firearm." It did not say if the gunshot was from close range or far away.
Romero's relative said he believed what happened on the ranch "was a massacre" not a shootout with criminal gunmen.
Relatives of Mario Alberto Valencia Vazquez, 22, said he worked in a furniture business but had been offered employment on the ranch.
One relative said Valencia's teeth had been knocked inward as if "he had been struck by something" and his body showed signs of having received blows. Another woman said her husband's face had been destroyed and was missing an eye.
Photographs from the site showed the bodies of men, some without shirts or barefoot, strewn over the ranch. Some appeared to lie with semi-automatic rifles in a field with farm equipment and others on a blood-stained patio strewn with clothes, mattresses and sleeping bags. Video of the battle obtained by The Associated Press showed federal police officers coming under fire.
Rubido dismissed photos circulating online, saying some were not from Friday's events and others were captured at different points in time.
The debate recalled a June 30 case in Tlatlaya, a rural community in Mexico state in which the army initially said 22 suspected criminals were killed in a confrontation and only one soldier had been wounded. An investigation by The Associated Press revealed that several of the suspects were executed after surrendering. Seven soldiers have been charged with wrongdoing.
"This is in no way anything like what happened in Tlatlaya," Galindo said. Officials say overwhelming power and training — police used four armored cars and the helicopter in the shootout — as well as the suspects' lack of preparation spelled the difference.
And Galindo noted that not all of the suspects at the ranch were killed. Three surrendered and were taken into custody, and a significant number escaped.
"We calculate there could have been between 60 and 70 people, because some fled," Galindo said.
Rubido said the cartel gunmen invaded the ranch last Monday, but the ranch owner, who lives in Guadalajara, did not report the takeover to authorities until Thursday. The gunmen were seeking a safe place to escape the government's pressure in Jalisco, Rubido said.
A convoy of 42 federal police were headed to the ranch to investigate when fired upon Friday morning, Rubido said. About 60 additional personnel joined them after 1 ½ hours of the battle.
EDITOR’S NOTE: 42 suspects and only one cop killed? That does not pass the smell test! Sure seems like a mass execution to me. Probably in retaliation for the ambush that killed 15 state police officers in April and for a May 1 attack in which a rocket launcher shot down an army helicopter, killing eight soldiers.
Sunday, May 24, 2015
PROFESSOR DAVID KIRK’S ‘AMAZING’ DISCOVERY
The Oxford University sociology professor discovered that dispersing parolees away from crime-infested neighborhoods reduces the parole recidivism rate
David Kirk, a sociology professor at Britain’s prestigious Oxford University, apparently had a lot of money and time to prove what he most certainly had to have already known - that parolees who are released to crime-infested neighborhoods have a high recidivism rate, but if they are dispersed to crime-free neighborhoods, the recidivism rate is substantially reduced.
Kirk’s study on the consequences of concentrating former prisoners in the same neighborhoods as other parolees has just been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Here are some excerpts from his study:
The results of my analyses suggest the greater the concentration of ex-prisoners in a neighborhood, the greater the rate of subsequent recidivism. I find that concentrating former prisoners in the same neighborhoods leads to significantly higher recidivism rates than if ex-prisoners were more dispersed across neighborhoods.
The results presented in this study suggest that although parole and public housing policies and practices were designed, in principle, to enhance public safety, they may in fact be undermining it.
The extreme concentration of criminals in geographic space likely produces a contagion effect that not only leads to elevated rates of recidivism among existing criminals but also pulls the previously noncriminal toward deviance.
“Put simply, the alarming rates of recidivism in the United States are partly a consequence of the fact that many individuals being released from prison ultimately reside in the same neighborhoods as other former felons,” says Kirk in summing up his findings.
Wow, double wow, this is really amazing! Who would have ever thought that releasing parolees to the same crime-infested neighborhood results in a high rate of parolee recidivism. Seriously though, here we have another example of how those in academia set out to prove what they most certainly already know.
I don’t know how much time and money Kirk spent on his study, and how many assistants he used to conduct it, but all he had to do was to ask any parole officer and he would have instantly reached the same findings.
Kirk provides us with evidence that professors in academia do not live in the real world. Yes, it would be nice if we could spread all parolees around relatively crime-free America’s middle and upper-class neighborhoods. How about Malibu, the ritzy Dallas suburb of Plano, New York’s upper west side, the Hamptons and other trendy communities? Sorry Prof. Kirk, but it ain’t ever gonna happen. The residents of those communities will not stand for any parolees residing there other than their own family members.
I am sure that Kirk and his assistants have never been involved in counseling prison inmates or in conducting pre-release investigations. Had they been, they would have learned that every counselor and parole officer tries to place each parolee in the best available free world setting.
Here is a dose of reality. Most families of prison inmates live in lower-class neighborhoods, many of which are crime-infested. Other than a halfway house, the only residence usually available to a parolee is with family members. And even if you placed him in a sanitary crime-free environment among complete strangers, he would very likely drift back to his old neighborhood to be in familiar places with old friends, many of them also on parole or engaged in unlawful activities.
Prof. Kirk, I suggest you take a lengthy sabbatical from Oxford to spend time in the real world where you do not have to waste time and money on studies to prove what you already know.
David Kirk, a sociology professor at Britain’s prestigious Oxford University, apparently had a lot of money and time to prove what he most certainly had to have already known - that parolees who are released to crime-infested neighborhoods have a high recidivism rate, but if they are dispersed to crime-free neighborhoods, the recidivism rate is substantially reduced.
Kirk’s study on the consequences of concentrating former prisoners in the same neighborhoods as other parolees has just been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Here are some excerpts from his study:
The results of my analyses suggest the greater the concentration of ex-prisoners in a neighborhood, the greater the rate of subsequent recidivism. I find that concentrating former prisoners in the same neighborhoods leads to significantly higher recidivism rates than if ex-prisoners were more dispersed across neighborhoods.
The results presented in this study suggest that although parole and public housing policies and practices were designed, in principle, to enhance public safety, they may in fact be undermining it.
The extreme concentration of criminals in geographic space likely produces a contagion effect that not only leads to elevated rates of recidivism among existing criminals but also pulls the previously noncriminal toward deviance.
“Put simply, the alarming rates of recidivism in the United States are partly a consequence of the fact that many individuals being released from prison ultimately reside in the same neighborhoods as other former felons,” says Kirk in summing up his findings.
Wow, double wow, this is really amazing! Who would have ever thought that releasing parolees to the same crime-infested neighborhood results in a high rate of parolee recidivism. Seriously though, here we have another example of how those in academia set out to prove what they most certainly already know.
I don’t know how much time and money Kirk spent on his study, and how many assistants he used to conduct it, but all he had to do was to ask any parole officer and he would have instantly reached the same findings.
Kirk provides us with evidence that professors in academia do not live in the real world. Yes, it would be nice if we could spread all parolees around relatively crime-free America’s middle and upper-class neighborhoods. How about Malibu, the ritzy Dallas suburb of Plano, New York’s upper west side, the Hamptons and other trendy communities? Sorry Prof. Kirk, but it ain’t ever gonna happen. The residents of those communities will not stand for any parolees residing there other than their own family members.
I am sure that Kirk and his assistants have never been involved in counseling prison inmates or in conducting pre-release investigations. Had they been, they would have learned that every counselor and parole officer tries to place each parolee in the best available free world setting.
Here is a dose of reality. Most families of prison inmates live in lower-class neighborhoods, many of which are crime-infested. Other than a halfway house, the only residence usually available to a parolee is with family members. And even if you placed him in a sanitary crime-free environment among complete strangers, he would very likely drift back to his old neighborhood to be in familiar places with old friends, many of them also on parole or engaged in unlawful activities.
Prof. Kirk, I suggest you take a lengthy sabbatical from Oxford to spend time in the real world where you do not have to waste time and money on studies to prove what you already know.
Friday, May 22, 2015
OOPS, THAT DIDN’T WORK OUT TOO WELL !!
L.A. SWAT officer violated policy in use of Taser, police panel says
By Richard Winton and Kate Mather
Los Angeles Times
May 21, 2015
A Los Angeles police SWAT officer violated department policies last year when he used a Taser on a mentally ill homeless man standing on a downtown rooftop who then fell to his death, the LAPD's civilian overseers recently concluded.
The Police Commission voted 3 to 1 in support of Chief Charlie Beck's conclusion that a veteran officer's tactics "substantially and unjustifiably deviated" from his training, according to records obtained by The Times.
The officer said he had fired the electric stun gun to prevent Carlos Ocana from climbing a ladder back up a rooftop billboard. And, he told department investigators, he thought the man would fall in a way that would not hurt him. Instead, the 56-year-old fell to his death.
Another officer on the roof grabbed Ocana's leg, but couldn't keep hold, records show. Ocana fell more than 15 feet and landed in a parking lot below, just missing one of two air cushions that firefighters had deployed, the report states. He was pronounced dead at a hospital.
In his report to the commission, Beck said the officer, as a SWAT member, had the tactical expertise, extensive training and other skills to "ensure the highest degree of operational effectiveness."
"I have high expectations for SWAT. They meet or exceed them almost every time," Beck told The Times. "This was a rare exception."
Sources familiar with the matter said Beck's findings were harsher than those of the commission's inspector general, Alex Bustamante, who did not find fault in the officer's overall tactics and use of the Taser.
The names of the officers involved in the incident were redacted from the report provided to The Times. But multiple sources identified the officer who shot the Taser as Stephen Scallon.
Scallon, who has spent most of his 26 years in the LAPD with the elite Metropolitan Division, received the agency's highest honor, the Medal of Valor, and was recognized at the White House for his role in a deadly 2008 shootout in Winnetka that left one officer dead and another seriously wounded. Scallon helped pull the wounded officer, who was shot in the face, from the house as other officers exchanged gunfire with the suspect.
Scallon could not be reached for comment Thursday.
The incident involving Ocana unfolded the night of May 24, when officers from the LAPD's Central Division responded to a radio call of a homeless man on the roof of the Four Corners Market on San Pedro Street, along downtown's skid row. The officers tried to talk to Ocana, but he ignored them, the report said. Ocana then climbed from the roof to the top of a billboard using a ladder.
Ocana straddled the top of the billboard and began to rock it back and forth. Officers at the scene said he appeared to be under the influence of narcotics or mentally ill, the report said.
Firefighters placed two air cushions, one on the rooftop of a building next to the market and another in the market's parking lot.
When the Central officers were unable to get Ocana down, officials requested SWAT come to the scene.
Believing Ocana posed a threat to himself while atop the billboard, SWAT supervisors devised a plan to prevent Ocana from climbing back up the billboard should he come down to the rooftop. By then, officers said, they had learned Ocana had a history of fighting with police.
Officers planned to grab the suspect but were prepared to use "less-lethal" force, such as a Taser, the chief said in his report.
About 11:30 p.m., an officer placed a cigarette at the bottom of the billboard's ladder and backed away, hoping to lure Ocana down. Ocana hesitantly climbed down to the rooftop and grabbed the cigarette, according to the report.
Another officer then took out a lighter, hoping to coax Ocana further away from the edge of the roof. But the man dug into his shorts pocket and pulled out one of his own. As Ocana smoked the cigarette, Scallon unholstered his Taser and hid it behind his leg, police records state.
Suddenly, Ocana turned and grabbed onto the ladder leading up the billboard. Scallon fired the Taser, causing Ocana to fall.
Coroner's officials determined that he died of blunt force head trauma, with "massive skull fractures," and deemed the death accidental. They also found cocaine in his system.
Although Beck ordered two lieutenants and a sergeant to undergo more training after the incident, the chief primarily faulted Scallon for how he used the Taser. The chief said Scallon deviated from the tactical plan by using the Taser before officers had the chance to grab Ocana and did not provide adequate warning that he was going to deploy the device.
Scallon told investigators that he thought there was only a "small window of opportunity" to use the Taser and take Ocana into custody. He said he thought Ocana would fall onto the roof, the chief's report states.
The Taser was used despite the LAPD's warning to officers against generally using the device against someone who is "in danger of falling which would likely result in death or serious bodily injury," according to the report.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Scallon, a 26-year LAPD veteran, “received the agency's highest honor, the Medal of Valor, and was recognized at the White House for his role in a deadly 2008 shootout in Winnetka that left one officer dead and another seriously wounded. Scallon helped pull the wounded officer, who was shot in the face, from the house as other officers exchanged gunfire with the suspect.”
What’s Chief Beck going to recommend? Does he want to fire this highly decorated veteran officer? Suspend him without pay for 30 days?
Although the use of the taser resulted in a tragic death, I do not believe Scallon meant to harm Ocana. I believe that a reprimand is the most punishment that is called for in this case.
By Richard Winton and Kate Mather
Los Angeles Times
May 21, 2015
A Los Angeles police SWAT officer violated department policies last year when he used a Taser on a mentally ill homeless man standing on a downtown rooftop who then fell to his death, the LAPD's civilian overseers recently concluded.
The Police Commission voted 3 to 1 in support of Chief Charlie Beck's conclusion that a veteran officer's tactics "substantially and unjustifiably deviated" from his training, according to records obtained by The Times.
The officer said he had fired the electric stun gun to prevent Carlos Ocana from climbing a ladder back up a rooftop billboard. And, he told department investigators, he thought the man would fall in a way that would not hurt him. Instead, the 56-year-old fell to his death.
Another officer on the roof grabbed Ocana's leg, but couldn't keep hold, records show. Ocana fell more than 15 feet and landed in a parking lot below, just missing one of two air cushions that firefighters had deployed, the report states. He was pronounced dead at a hospital.
In his report to the commission, Beck said the officer, as a SWAT member, had the tactical expertise, extensive training and other skills to "ensure the highest degree of operational effectiveness."
"I have high expectations for SWAT. They meet or exceed them almost every time," Beck told The Times. "This was a rare exception."
Sources familiar with the matter said Beck's findings were harsher than those of the commission's inspector general, Alex Bustamante, who did not find fault in the officer's overall tactics and use of the Taser.
The names of the officers involved in the incident were redacted from the report provided to The Times. But multiple sources identified the officer who shot the Taser as Stephen Scallon.
Scallon, who has spent most of his 26 years in the LAPD with the elite Metropolitan Division, received the agency's highest honor, the Medal of Valor, and was recognized at the White House for his role in a deadly 2008 shootout in Winnetka that left one officer dead and another seriously wounded. Scallon helped pull the wounded officer, who was shot in the face, from the house as other officers exchanged gunfire with the suspect.
Scallon could not be reached for comment Thursday.
The incident involving Ocana unfolded the night of May 24, when officers from the LAPD's Central Division responded to a radio call of a homeless man on the roof of the Four Corners Market on San Pedro Street, along downtown's skid row. The officers tried to talk to Ocana, but he ignored them, the report said. Ocana then climbed from the roof to the top of a billboard using a ladder.
Ocana straddled the top of the billboard and began to rock it back and forth. Officers at the scene said he appeared to be under the influence of narcotics or mentally ill, the report said.
Firefighters placed two air cushions, one on the rooftop of a building next to the market and another in the market's parking lot.
When the Central officers were unable to get Ocana down, officials requested SWAT come to the scene.
Believing Ocana posed a threat to himself while atop the billboard, SWAT supervisors devised a plan to prevent Ocana from climbing back up the billboard should he come down to the rooftop. By then, officers said, they had learned Ocana had a history of fighting with police.
Officers planned to grab the suspect but were prepared to use "less-lethal" force, such as a Taser, the chief said in his report.
About 11:30 p.m., an officer placed a cigarette at the bottom of the billboard's ladder and backed away, hoping to lure Ocana down. Ocana hesitantly climbed down to the rooftop and grabbed the cigarette, according to the report.
Another officer then took out a lighter, hoping to coax Ocana further away from the edge of the roof. But the man dug into his shorts pocket and pulled out one of his own. As Ocana smoked the cigarette, Scallon unholstered his Taser and hid it behind his leg, police records state.
Suddenly, Ocana turned and grabbed onto the ladder leading up the billboard. Scallon fired the Taser, causing Ocana to fall.
Coroner's officials determined that he died of blunt force head trauma, with "massive skull fractures," and deemed the death accidental. They also found cocaine in his system.
Although Beck ordered two lieutenants and a sergeant to undergo more training after the incident, the chief primarily faulted Scallon for how he used the Taser. The chief said Scallon deviated from the tactical plan by using the Taser before officers had the chance to grab Ocana and did not provide adequate warning that he was going to deploy the device.
Scallon told investigators that he thought there was only a "small window of opportunity" to use the Taser and take Ocana into custody. He said he thought Ocana would fall onto the roof, the chief's report states.
The Taser was used despite the LAPD's warning to officers against generally using the device against someone who is "in danger of falling which would likely result in death or serious bodily injury," according to the report.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Scallon, a 26-year LAPD veteran, “received the agency's highest honor, the Medal of Valor, and was recognized at the White House for his role in a deadly 2008 shootout in Winnetka that left one officer dead and another seriously wounded. Scallon helped pull the wounded officer, who was shot in the face, from the house as other officers exchanged gunfire with the suspect.”
What’s Chief Beck going to recommend? Does he want to fire this highly decorated veteran officer? Suspend him without pay for 30 days?
Although the use of the taser resulted in a tragic death, I do not believe Scallon meant to harm Ocana. I believe that a reprimand is the most punishment that is called for in this case.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
HISTORY: JAPANESE SURRENDER CEREMONY ON USS MISSOURI
This is an outstanding film of the ceremony on the deck of the U.S. battleship Missouri where the Japanese surrendered to McArthur in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. It is believed to have rarely been seen since 1945. General McArthur's voice is a rarity in these old film clips. This is a 'must see' film for the WWII history buff or anyone else interested in history.
Turn up the volume on your speakers!
Turn up the volume on your speakers!
A NET ASSESSMENT OF THE WORLD
By George Friedman
Stratfor Global Intelligence
May 19, 2015
A pretentious title requires a modest beginning. The world has increasingly destabilized and it is necessary to try to state, as clearly as possible, what has happened and why. This is not because the world is uniquely disorderly; it is that disorder takes a different form each time, though it is always complex.
To put it simply, a vast swath of the Eurasian landmass (understood to be Europe and Asia together) is in political, military and economic disarray. Europe and China are struggling with the consequences of the 2008 crisis, which left not only economic but institutional challenges. Russia is undergoing a geopolitical crisis in Ukraine and an economic problem at home. The Arab world, from the Levant to Iran, from the Turkish border through the Arabian Peninsula, is embroiled in politically destabilizing warfare. The Western Hemisphere is relatively stable, as is the Asian Archipelago. But Eurasia is destabilizing in multiple dimensions.
We can do an infinite regression to try to understand the cause, but let's begin with the last systemic shift the world experienced: the end of the Cold War.
The Repercussions of the Soviet Collapse
The Cold War was a frozen conflict in one sense: The Soviet Union was contained in a line running from the North Cape of Norway to Pakistan. There was some movement, but relatively little. When the Soviet Union fell, two important things happened. First, a massive devolution occurred, freeing some formally independent states from domination by the Soviets and creating independent states within the former Soviet Union. As a result, a potentially unstable belt emerged between the Baltic and Black seas.
Meanwhile, along the southwestern border of the former Soviet Union, the demarcation line of the Cold War that generally cut through the Islamic world disappeared. Countries that were locked into place by the Cold War suddenly were able to move, and internal forces were set into motion that would, in due course, challenge the nation-states created after World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire that had been frozen by the Cold War.
Two emblematic events immediately occurred. In 1990, even before the collapse of the Soviet Union was complete, Iraq invaded Kuwait and seemed to threaten Saudi Arabia. This followed an extended war with Iran from which Iraq emerged in a more favorable position than Tehran, and Baghdad seemed to be claiming Kuwait as its prize. The United States mobilized not only its Cold War coalition, but also states from the former Soviet bloc and the Arab world, to reverse this. The unintended consequence was to focus at least some Sunnis both on the possibilities created by the end of the Cold War and on the American role as regional hegemon, which in turn led to 9/11 and is still being played out now, both to the south and north of the old Cold War dividing line.
The second event was the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian war that left about 100,000 people dead. It was a war of old grudges and new fears. It seemed to represent a unique situation that was not applicable to the rest of the region, but it in fact defined the new world system in two ways. First, Yugoslavia was the southern extension of the borderland between the Soviet Union and Western Europe. What happened in Yugoslavia raised questions that most people ignored, about what the long-term reality in this borderland would be. Second, among other things, the war centered on an east-west schism between Christians and Muslims, and the worst of the bloodletting occurred in this context. The United States and NATO interceded in Kosovo against Serbia despite Russian protests, and Moscow was ultimately sidelined from the peacekeeping mission that defused the war. The explosion in the Balkans foreshadowed much of what was to come later.
While Russia weakened and declined, the two ends of Eurasia flourished. The decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany ushered in a period of significant prosperity that had two results. The European Union, created through the Maastricht Treaty the same year the Soviet Union disintegrated, expanded its influence eastward into the former Soviet sphere and southward, incorporating disparate states whose differences were hidden by the prosperous period. And China, after the end of the Japanese economic miracle, became the global low-wage, high-growth country, powered by the appetite for its exports in prosperous Europe and North America.
The forces at work in Eurasia were hidden. The fragility of peripheral nations in Europe relative to German economic power was not fully visible. The cyclical nature of China's growth, similar in many ways to the dynamics of Japan in the previous generation, was also invisible. The consequences of the end of the Cold War Islamic world, the forces that were unleashed beneath the surface and the fragility of the states that were containing them were hidden beneath the illusion of American power after the victory in Kuwait. Only in Russia was weakness visible, and one of two erroneous conclusions was reached: Either Russia was permanently impotent, or its misery would cause it to evolve into a liberal democracy. All seemed right with Eurasia.
Signs of Destabilization
The first indication of trouble was, of course, 9/11. It was the American attack that was critical. Drawing on the recollection of Desert Storm, it was assumed that American power could reshape the Islamic world at will. All power has limits, but the limits of American power were not visible until later in the 2000s. At that point two other events intervened. The first was the re-emergence of Russia as at least a regional power when it invaded Georgia in 2008. The other was, of course, the financial crisis. Both combined to define the current situation.
The financial crisis transformed Chinese behavior. Although China was already reaching the end of its economic cycle, the decline in appetites for Chinese exports changed the dynamic of China's economy. Not only did the decline suppress growth, but Beijing's attempts to shift growth to domestic consumption created inflation that made its exports even less competitive. The result was a political crisis as the Chinese government became increasingly concerned about instability and therefore increasingly oppressive in an attempt to control the situation.
At the other end of Eurasia, the differences between the interests of Germany — Europe's major exporter — and those of Southern Europe's developing economies exposed the underlying contradiction in the European Union. Germany had to export. The weaker countries had to develop their economies. The two collided first in the sovereign debt crisis, and again in the austerity policies imposed on Southern Europe and the resulting economic crisis. As a result, Europe became increasingly fragmented.
In a reversal of roles, Russia took advantage of the fragmentation of Europe, using its status as a natural gas supplier to shape Europe's policies toward Russia. Russia was no longer the cripple of Europe but a significant regional power, influencing events not only on the Continent but also in the Middle East.
It was at this point that Russia encountered the United States. The United States has an elective relationship with the rest of the world. Except when a regional hegemon is trying to dominate Europe, the United States limits its global exposure. It exports relatively little, and almost half of what it does export goes to Canada and Mexico. But as Russia became more assertive, and particularly as it tried to recoup its losses after the fall of the Ukrainian government and the ensuing installation of a pro-Western government, the United States began to increase its focus on Ukraine and the borderlands between Europe and Russia.
At the same time that Washington felt it had to respond to Russia, the United States sought to minimize its exposure in the Middle East. Recognizing the limits of its power, the United States came to see the four indigenous powers in the region — Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel — as bearing the primary responsibility for regional stability and as counterbalances to each other's power.
The Current State of Play
This brings us to the contemporary world. There is general economic malaise around the globe. That malaise has forced China to control social forces by repression. It has created an existential crisis in Europe that goes far beyond Greece but is being acted out in a Greek-German relationship. The Russians have reached for regional power but have fallen short, for the moment. The nation-states of the Middle East are fraying, and the four major powers are maneuvering in various ways to contain the situation.
The United States remains the world's leading power, but at the same time, the institutions that it used during the Cold War have become ineffective. Even though NATO is increasing deployments and training in Eastern Europe, it is a military alliance that lacks a substantial military. The International Monetary Fund has become, in many cases, the problem and not the solution to economic difficulties. The United States has avoided entanglement in the economic problems in Europe and China and has limited its exposure in the Middle East. Yet it is becoming more directly involved with Russia, with its primordial fear of a European hegemon aroused, however far-fetched the prospect.
After every systemic war, there is an illusion that the victorious coalition will continue to be cohesive and govern as effectively as it fought. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna sought to meld the alliance against France into an entity that could manage the peace. After World War I, the Allies (absent the United States) created the League of Nations. After World War II, it was the United Nations. After the Cold War ended, it was assumed that the United Nations, NATO, IMF, World Bank and other multinational institutions could manage the global system. In each case, the victorious powers sought to use wartime alliance structures to manage the post-war world. In each case, they failed, because the thing that bound them together — the enemy — no longer existed. Therefore, the institutions became powerless and the illusion of unity dissolved.
This is what has happened here. The collapse of the Soviet Union put into motion processes that the Cold War institutions could not manage. The net assessment, therefore, is that the Cold War delayed the emergence of realities that were buried under its weight, and the prosperity of the 1990s hid the limits of Eurasia as a whole. What we are seeing now are fundamental re-emerging realities that were already there. Europe is a highly fragmented collection of nation-states. China contains its centrifugal forces through a powerful and repressive government in Beijing. Russia is neither an equal of the United States nor a helpless cripple to be ignored or tutored. And the map of the Middle East, created by the Ottomans and the Europeans, has hidden underlying forces that are rearing their heads.
The United States is, by far, the world's most powerful nation. That does not mean that the United States can — or has an interest to — solve the problems of the world, contain the forces that are at work or stand in front of those forces and compel them to stop. Even the toughest guy in the bar can't take on the entire bar and win.
Stratfor Global Intelligence
May 19, 2015
A pretentious title requires a modest beginning. The world has increasingly destabilized and it is necessary to try to state, as clearly as possible, what has happened and why. This is not because the world is uniquely disorderly; it is that disorder takes a different form each time, though it is always complex.
To put it simply, a vast swath of the Eurasian landmass (understood to be Europe and Asia together) is in political, military and economic disarray. Europe and China are struggling with the consequences of the 2008 crisis, which left not only economic but institutional challenges. Russia is undergoing a geopolitical crisis in Ukraine and an economic problem at home. The Arab world, from the Levant to Iran, from the Turkish border through the Arabian Peninsula, is embroiled in politically destabilizing warfare. The Western Hemisphere is relatively stable, as is the Asian Archipelago. But Eurasia is destabilizing in multiple dimensions.
We can do an infinite regression to try to understand the cause, but let's begin with the last systemic shift the world experienced: the end of the Cold War.
The Repercussions of the Soviet Collapse
The Cold War was a frozen conflict in one sense: The Soviet Union was contained in a line running from the North Cape of Norway to Pakistan. There was some movement, but relatively little. When the Soviet Union fell, two important things happened. First, a massive devolution occurred, freeing some formally independent states from domination by the Soviets and creating independent states within the former Soviet Union. As a result, a potentially unstable belt emerged between the Baltic and Black seas.
Meanwhile, along the southwestern border of the former Soviet Union, the demarcation line of the Cold War that generally cut through the Islamic world disappeared. Countries that were locked into place by the Cold War suddenly were able to move, and internal forces were set into motion that would, in due course, challenge the nation-states created after World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire that had been frozen by the Cold War.
Two emblematic events immediately occurred. In 1990, even before the collapse of the Soviet Union was complete, Iraq invaded Kuwait and seemed to threaten Saudi Arabia. This followed an extended war with Iran from which Iraq emerged in a more favorable position than Tehran, and Baghdad seemed to be claiming Kuwait as its prize. The United States mobilized not only its Cold War coalition, but also states from the former Soviet bloc and the Arab world, to reverse this. The unintended consequence was to focus at least some Sunnis both on the possibilities created by the end of the Cold War and on the American role as regional hegemon, which in turn led to 9/11 and is still being played out now, both to the south and north of the old Cold War dividing line.
The second event was the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian war that left about 100,000 people dead. It was a war of old grudges and new fears. It seemed to represent a unique situation that was not applicable to the rest of the region, but it in fact defined the new world system in two ways. First, Yugoslavia was the southern extension of the borderland between the Soviet Union and Western Europe. What happened in Yugoslavia raised questions that most people ignored, about what the long-term reality in this borderland would be. Second, among other things, the war centered on an east-west schism between Christians and Muslims, and the worst of the bloodletting occurred in this context. The United States and NATO interceded in Kosovo against Serbia despite Russian protests, and Moscow was ultimately sidelined from the peacekeeping mission that defused the war. The explosion in the Balkans foreshadowed much of what was to come later.
While Russia weakened and declined, the two ends of Eurasia flourished. The decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany ushered in a period of significant prosperity that had two results. The European Union, created through the Maastricht Treaty the same year the Soviet Union disintegrated, expanded its influence eastward into the former Soviet sphere and southward, incorporating disparate states whose differences were hidden by the prosperous period. And China, after the end of the Japanese economic miracle, became the global low-wage, high-growth country, powered by the appetite for its exports in prosperous Europe and North America.
The forces at work in Eurasia were hidden. The fragility of peripheral nations in Europe relative to German economic power was not fully visible. The cyclical nature of China's growth, similar in many ways to the dynamics of Japan in the previous generation, was also invisible. The consequences of the end of the Cold War Islamic world, the forces that were unleashed beneath the surface and the fragility of the states that were containing them were hidden beneath the illusion of American power after the victory in Kuwait. Only in Russia was weakness visible, and one of two erroneous conclusions was reached: Either Russia was permanently impotent, or its misery would cause it to evolve into a liberal democracy. All seemed right with Eurasia.
Signs of Destabilization
The first indication of trouble was, of course, 9/11. It was the American attack that was critical. Drawing on the recollection of Desert Storm, it was assumed that American power could reshape the Islamic world at will. All power has limits, but the limits of American power were not visible until later in the 2000s. At that point two other events intervened. The first was the re-emergence of Russia as at least a regional power when it invaded Georgia in 2008. The other was, of course, the financial crisis. Both combined to define the current situation.
The financial crisis transformed Chinese behavior. Although China was already reaching the end of its economic cycle, the decline in appetites for Chinese exports changed the dynamic of China's economy. Not only did the decline suppress growth, but Beijing's attempts to shift growth to domestic consumption created inflation that made its exports even less competitive. The result was a political crisis as the Chinese government became increasingly concerned about instability and therefore increasingly oppressive in an attempt to control the situation.
At the other end of Eurasia, the differences between the interests of Germany — Europe's major exporter — and those of Southern Europe's developing economies exposed the underlying contradiction in the European Union. Germany had to export. The weaker countries had to develop their economies. The two collided first in the sovereign debt crisis, and again in the austerity policies imposed on Southern Europe and the resulting economic crisis. As a result, Europe became increasingly fragmented.
In a reversal of roles, Russia took advantage of the fragmentation of Europe, using its status as a natural gas supplier to shape Europe's policies toward Russia. Russia was no longer the cripple of Europe but a significant regional power, influencing events not only on the Continent but also in the Middle East.
It was at this point that Russia encountered the United States. The United States has an elective relationship with the rest of the world. Except when a regional hegemon is trying to dominate Europe, the United States limits its global exposure. It exports relatively little, and almost half of what it does export goes to Canada and Mexico. But as Russia became more assertive, and particularly as it tried to recoup its losses after the fall of the Ukrainian government and the ensuing installation of a pro-Western government, the United States began to increase its focus on Ukraine and the borderlands between Europe and Russia.
At the same time that Washington felt it had to respond to Russia, the United States sought to minimize its exposure in the Middle East. Recognizing the limits of its power, the United States came to see the four indigenous powers in the region — Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel — as bearing the primary responsibility for regional stability and as counterbalances to each other's power.
The Current State of Play
This brings us to the contemporary world. There is general economic malaise around the globe. That malaise has forced China to control social forces by repression. It has created an existential crisis in Europe that goes far beyond Greece but is being acted out in a Greek-German relationship. The Russians have reached for regional power but have fallen short, for the moment. The nation-states of the Middle East are fraying, and the four major powers are maneuvering in various ways to contain the situation.
The United States remains the world's leading power, but at the same time, the institutions that it used during the Cold War have become ineffective. Even though NATO is increasing deployments and training in Eastern Europe, it is a military alliance that lacks a substantial military. The International Monetary Fund has become, in many cases, the problem and not the solution to economic difficulties. The United States has avoided entanglement in the economic problems in Europe and China and has limited its exposure in the Middle East. Yet it is becoming more directly involved with Russia, with its primordial fear of a European hegemon aroused, however far-fetched the prospect.
After every systemic war, there is an illusion that the victorious coalition will continue to be cohesive and govern as effectively as it fought. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna sought to meld the alliance against France into an entity that could manage the peace. After World War I, the Allies (absent the United States) created the League of Nations. After World War II, it was the United Nations. After the Cold War ended, it was assumed that the United Nations, NATO, IMF, World Bank and other multinational institutions could manage the global system. In each case, the victorious powers sought to use wartime alliance structures to manage the post-war world. In each case, they failed, because the thing that bound them together — the enemy — no longer existed. Therefore, the institutions became powerless and the illusion of unity dissolved.
This is what has happened here. The collapse of the Soviet Union put into motion processes that the Cold War institutions could not manage. The net assessment, therefore, is that the Cold War delayed the emergence of realities that were buried under its weight, and the prosperity of the 1990s hid the limits of Eurasia as a whole. What we are seeing now are fundamental re-emerging realities that were already there. Europe is a highly fragmented collection of nation-states. China contains its centrifugal forces through a powerful and repressive government in Beijing. Russia is neither an equal of the United States nor a helpless cripple to be ignored or tutored. And the map of the Middle East, created by the Ottomans and the Europeans, has hidden underlying forces that are rearing their heads.
The United States is, by far, the world's most powerful nation. That does not mean that the United States can — or has an interest to — solve the problems of the world, contain the forces that are at work or stand in front of those forces and compel them to stop. Even the toughest guy in the bar can't take on the entire bar and win.
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
POLICE NEED MORE AND BETTER TRAINING
The Unconventional Gazette
May 19, 2015
Now let’s see if we can get this right. There's no guidance or discipline in the home.
The family situation is so unstable that Tyrone Washington has never seen his father and doesn’t know who or where he is.
Tyrone gets dumped into the education system where he is socially promoted because the school district will not suspend or expel undisciplined black whelps.
Tyrone's major formative influences are 'gangsta' rap videos and a corresponding peer group of gangsta wannabes.
At age 18, Tyrone is turned loose on society carrying a bad attitude, a broken compass and no respect for authority.
Tyrone gets himself in big trouble with the law because he is illiterate, unskilled, unemployable and his only source of income other than Government assistance is from stealing, burgling, robbing, carjacking and selling dope.
Tyrone points a pistol at the cops and gets shot. ‘Witnesses’ claim Tyrone was unarmed and that the cops shot him for no reason. Massive “No Justice, No Peace” demonstrations follow. Rioting, looting and burning occurs.
Then, according to academia's social scientists, Justice Department officials and civil rights leaders, the solution for situations like those of Tyrone is for the police to get more and better training in compassion, sensitivity and understanding of the urban black culture.
Pardon me for asking, but can you possibly buy this bullshit solution?
May 19, 2015
Now let’s see if we can get this right. There's no guidance or discipline in the home.
The family situation is so unstable that Tyrone Washington has never seen his father and doesn’t know who or where he is.
Tyrone gets dumped into the education system where he is socially promoted because the school district will not suspend or expel undisciplined black whelps.
Tyrone's major formative influences are 'gangsta' rap videos and a corresponding peer group of gangsta wannabes.
At age 18, Tyrone is turned loose on society carrying a bad attitude, a broken compass and no respect for authority.
Tyrone gets himself in big trouble with the law because he is illiterate, unskilled, unemployable and his only source of income other than Government assistance is from stealing, burgling, robbing, carjacking and selling dope.
Tyrone points a pistol at the cops and gets shot. ‘Witnesses’ claim Tyrone was unarmed and that the cops shot him for no reason. Massive “No Justice, No Peace” demonstrations follow. Rioting, looting and burning occurs.
Then, according to academia's social scientists, Justice Department officials and civil rights leaders, the solution for situations like those of Tyrone is for the police to get more and better training in compassion, sensitivity and understanding of the urban black culture.
Pardon me for asking, but can you possibly buy this bullshit solution?
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