Archive for the 'Law Enforcement' Category

Last year, I read about an incident in a water park in the United Kingdom.

A father took his kids to the park so they could frolic in the cool and refreshing waves. When the children said they wanted to hurl themselves down the water slide, the proud father decided that this would be a perfect opportunity for some action photos of the apples of his eye.

He positioned himself at the end of the slide, camera at the ready, only to face a muttering and hostile crowd that apparently wanted to lynch him then and there!

The justification for the violence was that he must be a pedophile. After all, what other reason would a grown man have of snapping shots of young children in swimwear? The explanation that he was only photographing his own progeny were rejected out of hand. What else would child molesters say to escape just punishment when the righteous crowd gets their blood up?

Lucky for all concerned, the police were notified by someone in the mob. A police officer arriving at the scene averted any ugly actions.

Unfortunately, I cannot now find the online article to prove to my readers in the United States that such a ridiculous incident actually occurred. It seems unbelievable, that such a climate of suspicion and paranoia can actually exist in Old Blighty. I wouldn’t blame you one bit if you thought that I was simply writing as fact a bad comedy I once viewed on cable TV, or some uncomfortable dream I once had where everyone around me turned into bizarre and violent zombies.

But such an environment of hatred and prejudice is all too prevalent in Great Britain, and simply scanning the online news article from that country proves it to be so with appalling regularity.
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Why do these murdering nut jobs so often target the IRS?[h/t Instapundit]

At first, one might presume they do so out of ideological resentment, but as I noted in my previous post, these nuts tend to pick and choose from various ideologies depending on what is best for them at the moment. If so, why do so many of them perform their final detonation at the IRS?

I think it is because the IRS is the one institution that no one can ever escape.

You can’t escape death and taxes, and the IRS is always the latter and sometimes the former.

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More revelations concerning the university professor who allegedly slaughtered some of her colleagues. (Hat tip to Ace.)

Seems she killed her brother with a shotgun 24 years ago, fled the scene of the crime after the death, and tried to carjack a passing motorist. It is tough to say if this is a true account, since police reports of the incident have been missing since 1988.

I worked for some years as a fingerprint technician for the local police force. Standard procedure was to keep all arrest records on hand until the person taken into custody died, and the death was verified via fingerprints taken from the corpse. Some of the cards were from before the First World War, and were the very first set of prints taken by the police.

Of course, I live in Columbus, Ohio. I have no idea what guidelines the cops in Alabama use. Something tells me that it is not all that different, though.

I found the following passage from the news article I linked to above to be interesting…

“After she left the room, the police said, she dumped the gun — for which she did not have a permit — in a second-floor bathroom.”

I’ve seen that mentioned in several news stories now. She did not have a permit! (”No permit! No permit!“) It seems the reporters writing these articles want to make sure that their readers know this.

In Alabama you don’t need a permit to purchase a firearm, only to carry a concealed handgun.

One of two things are happening here.

It could be that the journalists working on this story want to include the fact that the crime was premeditated, as the suspect cannot claim that she just forgot to leave her gun in the car when she came onto the university campus that morning. Not only is it illegal for someone in Alabama to carry a firearm on to school grounds, CCW permit or not, but it was illegal for the suspect to even carry a concealed handgun at all. This strongly indicates that she was planning this attack in advance.

The second possibility is that the reporters writing these news items hail from places with such draconian gun laws, that they simply cannot conceive of anywhere you can purchase and own a firearm without government permission. The fact that the suspect owned a gun at all when she didn’t have a license is a crime in their eyes.

Considering how much anti-gun bias I’ve encountered in the news over the past two decades, I’d have to say that the latter explanation is more credible than the former.

But, whatever their motivations, it turns out that they are actually doing a favor for those who advocate armed self defense. The suspect wasn’t one of us!

(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)

Via Glenn we find out that the TSA is using legal muscle to go after a couple of bloggers.

It seems that new security procedures were rushed into place right after the Panty Bomber incident, but the Feds say that the directive wasn’t supposed to be revealed to the public. They want to know who leaked the info.

The fact that bloggers are in the litigation cross hairs will be of primary interest to other people who write online. But I want to know how the TSA thinks it can keep out terrorists who are aching to blow up commercial airliners if they can’t keep their internal, secret security directives from being emailed to those who are supposed to be kept in the dark. Since they allowed some known al Qaeda stooge without a passport or luggage who was carrying a syringe full of acid just waltz on a flight to Detroit, I suppose that is a silly question.

On a side note, fellow gunblogger Breda has the final word on the failures of TSA security…

“…tell me again why I have to bear the humiliation of being groped and swabbed every time I fly? Someone please explain it to me because, clearly, I don’t understand. Can’t they just put me on a terrorist watchlist so that TSA will leave me alone?”

“In the wake of the latest failed terrorist incident, the TSA announced a new round of security procedures designed to greatly inconvenience millions of air passengers without doing anything to increase their security…”

Here’s an idea. Let’s start using basic counterintelligence principles to screen prospective travelers to the United States and bar those young, unmarried, Muslim men having affiliations with radical mosques, madrassas, imams, extremist Islamist political groups or a history of mental illness and erratic behavior from receiving visas to enter the United States. This clown should never have been able to get a visa. His own father, a senior government official of a foreign nation, was trying to red-flag him as a potential al Qaida terrorist for us(!).

Would such a policy catch every prospective terrorist? No. Nothing will.

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I hail from Columbus, Ohio. It is more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from the US-Mexico border.

Things are pretty hairy down ol’ Mexico way. The government declared war on the drug cartels three years ago. So far there isn’t much progress, even though any gains by law enforcement usually sets off a turf war between the gangs as they try to seize lucrative smuggling routes from suddenly weakened rivals. If the big boys ever get organized instead of simply looking to grab what they can, then I really don’t think the Mexican government has a prayer of winning. Or even surviving.

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Way back in May of 2008 I linked a very interesting video that was done by an attorney, at this post. Unfortunately the link is now dead.

In essence, the attorney was pleading with people to protect their fifth amendment rights by NOT speaking with the police after an incident unless you have your attorney present, ever. In the video there was a police officer who also said that you should never speak with the cops without an attorney present even if you are IN THE RIGHT.

The attorney said that even if you are in the right, things you tell the police can get twisted and turned around (intentionally, or not), and could incriminate you.

I was thinking of this as the Tiger Woods situation unfolded. I will never know what really happened outside of Mr. Woods’s house in those early morning hours last week. But as I was reading coverage on it I kept seeing that the police kept wanting to come to his house to ask him questions and they were denied. Florida law only states that in this type of investigation that Woods give his license, registration and proof in insurance and apparently that is all that he gave. Finally, Mr. Woods hired an attorney.

It is possible that Mr. Woods hired an attorney right after the incident and got good advice not to speak to the cops, but this episode is a great example of someone who clearly knew his rights and decided to exercise them. Any interview with the police would have hurt Mr. Woods, even though he might have done nothing wrong and just merely had an accident.

Update: Commenter Andrew has a link to the video here.

In my previous post, I listed some (but far from all) of the practical problems presented by trying in a civil criminal court an individual (1) who was captured overseas, (2) had evidence against him collected using covert means, with (3) no chain of evidence or custody, and (4) was harshly and physically interrogated with (5) all witnesses and methods being secret.

The greatest danger posed in the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) isn’t that he will go free. The greatest danger is that he will be convicted and that during his appeals the courts will ratify all of the extraordinary measures used to capture and convict him. The great danger is that the courts will ratify the rough, inaccurate and ambiguous norms of martial law as applying to all civil criminal trials.

After a couple of decades of these court decisions reverberating throughout the legal system, we could end up living under de facto martial law.

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“Men, we’ve got to give this man a fair trial before we hang him.” — attributed to Judge Roy Bean.

Finding an impartial jury for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) is the least of our worries in President Obama’s decision to try him in a civil court. Our greatest concern is that it will be a shambles of a show trail that ignores all established legal precedent. The ramifications of that could be worse than terrorism itself.

What Obama the law professor fails to grasp is that none of the prerequisites exist for a fair civil trial in the case of terrorist captured overseas by intelligence agents.

For example, just for starters, what objective proof do we have that the individual who will show up in the courtroom is actually the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who planned 9/11? What do we do if he simply asserts he is not the person the government claims he is?

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It is pretty well established that Maj. Hasan, the person captured while engaging in a murderous shooting spree at Ft. Hood, was well known to coworkers and the FBI as a potential terrorist. He was trying to contact al-Qaeda and members of other terrorist groups, but nothing was done about this. It would be accurate to say that a fair amount of pressure is going to come to bear on the authorities for their inaction.

Federal prosecutors moved to close down four mosques and a Fifth Avenue skyscraper that is allegedly a front for Iranian organizations that funnel funds to terrorist groups. Big money is involved, and there should be headlines for weeks.

When it comes to operations of this scale, it obviously takes a great deal of time to investigate and collect enough evidence to prosecute. It isn’t like some cop on the beat who stumbles across a jimmied lock and catches a thief red-handed. But I do wonder if things weren’t speeded up a bit in order to provide some good press for the Feds in the midst of their performance with Maj. Hasan.

Citizens of Japan, with very few exceptions, are barred from even touching a single round of ammunition. Defy the law and they could end up in jail for five years.

Convicted felons in the United States, or people who received a Dishonorable Discharge from the armed forces, are pretty much operating under the same restrictions. This section of Federal law has been the subject of much debate amongst those interested in armed self defense. I’ve decided to post about it because John of The Zeray Gazette fame is asking his readers if they agree with the practice.

Just keep in mind that this is my opinion only, and I am certainly not a lawyer or government official by any stretch of the imagination. I’m sure that there will be plenty of stuff in the rambling post below to piss just about everyone off. But this is how see it.

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Glenn brings us this sordid tale. Two men were recently arrested for plotting to perform terrorist attacks in Denmark.

It seems that they are still upset about that whole Muhammad cartoon flap that happened way back in 2005. Makes sense, as Muslim terrorists have a very long memory. They still cite the Crusades as a major reason for hating the West. If something done and gone for close to ten centuries still motivates them to attack people who had nothing whatsoever to do with those long ago events, then I suppose it seems logical that half a decade will seem like a mere tick of the clock. Maybe there will still be terrorists who have a yen to blow up cartoonists in the year 2300 CE or so, simply because of what those long dead scribblers dashed off in the opening years of the 21st Century.

But that is merely tangential to what I really want to discuss.

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I listen to Bloomberg radio on XM most days when I am riding to work. They give a quick snapshot of the major markets and typically have interesting discussions that are not the usual shouting matches that you will find on the major networks.

Today in their news segment they reported some news that I had hoped I would see one day. I let out a cheer – what a great way to start out my week.

I understand that this will be a long fight, but at least it is a start.

From the AP:

Experts say that anarchists successfully deployed a tactic in Pittsburgh that they have often used at other protests, leading a large group of people toward police, then slipping out of the crowd to commit mayhem elsewhere.

Nice.

[Note: This post is a little dated. The events described have been assigned their place in the leftist narrative and swept under the rug. However, I did promise commenter Tdaxp a detailed explanation of why I thought his view of the Gates affair was dead wrong and this post covers that ground. In any case, the event serves as a powerful example of the hold that predefined narratives have over the minds of leftists.]

The incident between Officer James Crowley and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. demonstrates just what a powerful grip fictional narratives have on the minds of leftists. All the leftists in the country, from the President on down, fervently believe that Crowley acted out of racial animosity but they can’t explain what action of Crowley’s indicates his racial animosity. Instead, they must rely on a narrative shared by the subculture to convince each other that Crowley must be wrong.

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I worked my way through college as a security guard for a company that specialized in security for the campus area of a major flagship university. The area was simply stuffed with the children of the wealthy and connected, most of whom belonged to sororities and fraternities. Most of the security and police work revolved around controlling the excesses of the frats. I got to see how the police had to deal with people quick to claim immunity because of their membership or parentage. I saw how irritated the police got every time they had to talk to one of those little snots.

So, when I read the police report on the Gates incident I understood immediately that Gates’s mistake wasn’t  “being a black man in America,” it was this:

I then overheard Gates asking the person on the other end of his telephone call to “get the chief” and “what’s the chief’s name?” … Gates then turned to me and told me that I had no idea who I was “messing” with and I had not heard the last of it.

I can only imagine how many hundreds of times the Cambridge police have heard some arrogant little snot of a Harvard frat boy utter variants on that same claim to privilege. The Cambridge police also well know that frats only claim privilege when they know they’re in the wrong and they need to weasel out the consequences. When Gates played the privilege card like a frat snot, Officer Crowley immediately suspected that Gates was up to something and was trying to intimidate the officer into backing off and not investigating further.

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Via Instapundit comes a story of a hate crime against a black family in Austin, Tx:

The brick, thrown through a 4-year-old boy’s bedroom window, read “Keep Westside White. Keep Westside Strong.”
 
The homeowner, Barbara Frische, who is black, said she has lived in the home for 10 years.
 
“It’s the first time anything like this has ever happened to me,” she said.
 
Police have not classified this incident as a hate crime, said Austin Police Sgt. Richard Stresing, because hate crimes target an individual specifically because of an identifying characteristic, like race. Police say the incident has been classified as criminal mischief and deadly conduct.

Honestly, every time I think we’ve made progress in Texas on race relations, something like this comes along to prove me wrong. How can the police not see this as a hate crime? You have a message advocating racial segregation tossed through the window of a black family who had the temerity to move into a historically all-white area of the city.

This is why African Americans have such a hard time believing that hate-crime laws will be fairly enforced and aren’t just some kind of legal fiction intended to single them out for punishment and to stigmatize them as a group. This is especially true when you consider that many people in the law and academia hold to the belief that racism and therefore hate crimes are attributes solely of African American culture. When you have such an intellectual framework, how can African Americans trust that hate-crime laws will be enforced fairly?

Clearly, America still has a lot of work to do.

[Update: It's pointed out to me that I may have made a typo or two when I copied the quote from the original article. I'll fix it later but in the meantime make sure to read the original before commenting.]

How soon until the news media starts investigating, harassing and ridiculing Police Sergeant James Crowley, and his wife and family?

Obama’s media allies defend him by trying to impose personal misery, and if possible, professional destruction, on anyone who crosses him.

Obama chose to get involved in this, so it is about him now.

Sgt. Crowley and his family are next.

Watch.

UPDATE: While some of the facts are not yet in — statements from other witnesses for example, which I have not seen, though they may be on the Net somewhere — it appears for now that the police officer was doing his job and that Prof. Gates was out of line to the point that he was within the scope of the Massachusetts disorderly conduct statute. I base this on the police report, in large part, as well as the known facts, i.e. that there was a report of an attempted break-in, that there had been break-ins in the neighborhood, that Gates was locked out and trying to get into his own house, that the police arrived to investigate, and (some speculation) that Gates was probably in a foul mood, sensitive to real or imaginary racial slights, and failed to exercise self-control. Do cops lie on police reports? Yes, some do, from time to time. Do cops act abusively, or condescendingly or blusteringly? Of course, we have all seen this from time to time. Do we have any basis to say this officer did anything wrong or inappropriate? Only if you accept what Gates says and discount the police report to zero. I am inclined to see the conflicting stories as at best a wash, with Gates’ story making less sense overall. Were there witnesses to this episode? Yes, apparently there were. Can they confirm or rebut what was in the police report versus what Gates says happened? Maybe. Will this investigation continue? Apparently not formally. Will the news media keep it alive as a controversy? Likely. Will we get more clarity, or only heat and not light? Too soon to say. I am open to contrary facts, but I am not seeing them yet. So far, I see no basis to assume that Sgt. Crowley was (1) racist, (2) stupid, or (3) abusing his authority.

My point is that since Obama inserted himself into this, I predict his allies will rally to him and use all available means to smear and intimidate and harass someone who has found himself adverse to Obama.

UPDATE II: Mr. Gates lives in a city with a black mayor, a state with a black governor and a country with a black President.

Strategypage reports that someone was caught trying to sell nuclear material….

“Ukrainian police arrested three men trying to sell eight pounds of plutonium, for $10 million. It turned out that they did not have plutonium, but the less radioactive (and not suitable for nuclear weapons) Americium (which could be used for a dirty bomb). The three arrested (a politician and two businessmen from Western Ukraine) had obtained the radioactive material (which was originally produced inside Russia) from someone outside Ukraine.”

Seems this happens on a fairly regular basis.

The essay goes on to discuss how much nuclear material is floating around out there. It is unlikely that terrorists could cobble together a nuclear bomb, but a dirty bomb is certainly something within their capabilities.

Just thought I’d brighten up your Monday.

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