Gendin's Journal

Sidney Gendin
Browsing Cops

New York’s Finest. F-K You

May7

The “F-k you” in this post stands for “Frisk you.” Hey,what did you expect, you dirty-minded reader?

Neither you nor I nor the person who invented the phrase “New York’s finest” as the appellation for the coppers in New York have a clue as to what it means. On its face, it seems to mean they are New York’s finest citizens but perhaps it means only that they are the best public servants, putting the firefighters to shame. The firefighters wouldn’t like that but that is because they are logic-challenged. If the cops are NY’s finest citizens then they already have the firefighters beat without mentioning them specifically. People don’t like to be mentioned. You can run a commercial that says “Best beer in the world” but don’t you dare run a commercial that says “Our beer is better than Budweiser.” For that you can be sued.

But enough of writing to the essence of things. The point of this post (as with most of posts) is an irrelevant digression.

From Jan. 1 through March 31, officers conducted 99,788 stop and frisks, compared with 203,500 during the same period in 2012, according to New York Police Department data. This is to the chagrin of Mayor Mike Boobyberg, one of the great champions of civil liberties when they are deserved and don’t get in the way. (No 20 ounce cokes anywhere in New York when he is on duty.)

Stop-and-frisk has absorbed criticism because since 2002 when more than 85% of those stopped were either black or Latino, and nearly 90% of those stopped were released without being charged. Hmmm. What does that tell you? Christine Quinn, the heir apparent to Bloomberg Madness promises to keep stop and frisk high in honor of her idol Big Mike Boobyberg. Raymond Kelly, NY’s top cop says blacks are UNDERSTOPPED, considering that violent crimes occur mainly in black neighborhoods. Irish-bred Kelly, passionate lover of all dark-shaded things, wants to protect little old black ladies in white sneakers. This is clever lingo for saying black neighborhoods are where blacks who are taller than 6’2″ and who dress in funny-looking clothes live. Of course, in this case, black people dressed nicely in a suit and tie are also dressed in suspicious-looking clothes.

Public Advocate Bill de Biaso says “We can’t depend on Speaker Quinn to reform stop and frisk if she won’t acknowledge there is a problem.” Come on, Bill, you know Chris knows a dangerous-looking nigger when she sees one.

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P.S. To slaves to stop watches: I’ve got one hour and 59 minutes until I take THE PLUNGE.

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The Boston Monotony

April20

Now, at last, we can go to bed. The Bad Guy is in the custody of even worse guys and we, the public, are delighted. We can call off the media drudges who thrill maniacally to each day’s dull pursuit of a minor criminal. Yes, the media drudges who do their best to promote hysteria.

The nation came close to saying freedom of movement is as nothing compared to the danger of a lunatic on the loose. We were inches away from accepting authoritarian martial law as national policy. Few were the complaints about the Boston lockdown. It was, in the minds of the dullards, worth it. A killer was on the loose. Blah, blah, blah. I was chastened in my home as a ridiculous cynic for my disgust with the media. TV pundits and gurus had confiscated all the major channels for what they thought was best and proper. Too hell with my preference for lamebrain situation comedies. You’ll watch what we tell you to watch and you’ll love it…from the safety of your living room. Don’t you dare go outside! And when those helmeted post-apocalyptic creatures with menacing batons knock on your door demanding to enter without search warrants you will be obedient. Otherwise they will bash your brains out. And don’t expect that to get any TV coverage. You were so glad the forces of law and order were on the job 24 hours per day.

Would it not have been better to try for as much normalcy as possible? Did TV, FBI and local governments have to make hysteria their byword? Well, of course, they did. Ours is a nation of lambs and sheep that needs to be watched over. First madness,then normalcy. Without the first, you can’t appreciate the second.

Gun Control Goes Down To Defeat — Thank Goodness

April18

I speak as the president of the Gendin Idiosyncrasy Club.

I’m glad the Democrats went down to defeat yesterday as they continued their stupid, vicious quest for law and order. I want guns only in the hands of registered hoodlums and Mafia gangsters. I live in dread of gun-packing police who flaunt their weapons openly and I’m not crazy about rifle-bearing “sportsmen.”

Obama and his sycophants present their opponents as either irrational or in the pockets of the moneyed NRA. Bah! Obama himself and his weird followers are in pursuit of ducks, geese and deer…and proud of it. These creatures do not have a forceful lobby. The best that bears can do is to wear those funny placards around their necks that say, SUPPORT THE RIGHT OF BEARS TO BEAR ARMS. That won’t hack it.

I would be glad to give up my 2nd Amendment right to go packing in the dismal hope I will some day bring down some humans who trespass in my garden if those Democratic trespassers would be willing to surrender once and for all their hunting licenses. What’s that saying? Quid pro quo? I love mongrelized Hungarian.

Much as I love my little 6-shot 38 caliber revolver, it ain’t much compared to those heavy rifles you can buy at Cabella’s Store For Killing. I can make the sacrifice if the Cabella gang can do likewise.

Meanwhile, Kenya man, quit your bellyaching.

posted under Animals, Cops, Death, law | Comments Off

Gotcha, Mr. Bad Guy

April8

Early in the morning of March 29, before dawn, FBI agents wearing bullet proof vests raided the home of Michael Steinberg, a multi-millionaire, and carted him off to wherever dangerous inside traders are taken. Mr. Steinberg will be charged with an assortment of crimes but in exchange for his cooperation in nailing an even richer Jew, Steven A. Cohen, a very, very multi-billionaire, Mike will get a sweet plea bargain. The FBI tipped off reporters of what they were about to do, and a nice crowd of reporters and photographers were on hand for the arrest.

I have no problem with putting Mike behind bars but you need to understand what happened. In the first place, Mike was going nowhere. The FBI could have arrived at 7.30 A.M. without armor, knocked politely on the door, announced who they were and taken the archfiend away without handcuffs. Fans of law and order see nothing wrong with the way it was done because they don’t know why this drama was unnecessary. Catch bad guys. That’s what the public likes, and that excuses every imaginable injustice. The ONLY reason for the actual scenario was that the FBI wanted to display its power in all its awful arrogance. The FBI knew perfectly well that Mike was not an escape threat nor likely to pull out a gun and attack one of the agents. It enjoyed its power and needed to call the press to show it off in all its ugliness. The public wont demonstrate at Mike’s jail.

The FBI has already corralled other Cohen collaborators who have received plea bargain offers. Cohen won’t get one because it is with him that the buck stops. Eric Holder, the SCUMBAG Attorney General won’t intervene because he has proved himself over and over to be a piece of garbage who, for all we know, experiences a thrill of excitement with each arrest.

What can be done? Do what you always do: count the number of bad guys who go down for the count and tell yourself, “Wow, how awful it would be if they were all on the loose.” GET your kicks observing the FBI in peace and war.

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We know Rossini’s William Tell Overture Finale via The Lone Ranger. Likewise we know Prokofiev’s, Love for Three Oranges Suite via the old radio show that competed for audience share with The Lone Ranger, THE FBI IN PEACE AND WAR. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0AkO2OTfjA

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Our Finest

March16

I can no longer remember a time when New York City’s police force was not informally referred to by NY politicians as “OUR FINEST.” Understandably, they never told us Finest What. Surely, they could not have meant NY’s finest citizens, thereby putting down the firefighters, emergency ambulance squads, and the people themselves. In truth, they had nothing in mind. It was a slogan that the public willingly accepted – a deep insult that New Yorkers had been battered into accepting uncomplainingly and unthinkingly.

If we must have a catchphrase for NY’s cops, it ought to be this: OUR WORST. I have argued for years that police everywhere are, institutionally, a disaster. Now and then we are glad for their interventions but on the whole they do more harm than good and, it may even be maintained, that they exist for the purpose of making ordinary people miserable. Outlandish as that sounds, there is some evidence for it.

We all know the horror stories concerning police brutality but few of us know how systemic it is and most of us would be reluctant to do away with police altogether because we have no grasp of what alternatives there can be. Philosopher Robert Nozick, arguing on the basis of libertarian principles, once upon a time, proposed neighborhood security teams in lieu of government-sponsored police. On its face, this proposal seems to leave lot to be desired but, while Nozick himself never elaborated, there are ways to make it practical. That is not my concern in this essay. I want to document our decline into a police state, a frightful state that foolish champions of police fail to fully appreciate. I am not going to explore the depth of police corruption nor even the extent of police brutality. These matters have been investigated hundreds of times, and more fully than I can hope to emulate. Reports have been issued dozens of times and to some extent they do good. The most famous is the Knapp Commission Report on Corruption. For starters, but by no means finishers, take a look at the laconic article about the Knapp Commission in Wikipedia.

Far less publicized than corruption and overt instances of brutality, is the militarization of police forces everywhere. This has been an insidious encroachment into our lives for decades beginning in the 1960s when Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates first conceived the idea of the SWAT team in response to the Watts riots and a few mass shooting incidents for which he thought the police were unprepared.

Gates’ idea quickly grew popular in law enforcement circles, particularly in cities worried about rioting and domestic terrorism. From Gates’ lone team in LA, the number of SWAT teams in the U.S. grew to 500 by 1975. By 1982, nearly 60 percent of American cities with 50,000 or more people had a SWAT team. By 1995, nearly 90 percent of cities with 50,000 or more people had a SWAT team. According to Peter Kraska, a criminologist at Eastern Kentucky University, the total number of SWAT raids in America jumped from just a few hundred per year in the 1970s, to a few thousand by the early 1980s, to around 50,000 by the mid-2000s.

Police no longer reserve SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics for events that present an immediate threat to the public. They now use them mostly as an investigative tool in drug cases, creating violent confrontations with people suspected of nonviolent, consensual crimes. In 1988, Congress created the Byrne grant program, which gives money to local police departments and prosecutors for a number of different criminal justice purposes. A large portion of Byrne grant money over the years has been earmarked for anti-drug policing. Competition among police agencies for the pool of cash has made anti-drug policing a high priority. And once there was federal cash available for drug busts, drug raids became more common. Politicians love the Byrne grant program. Congressmen get to put out press releases announcing the new half-million dollar grant they’ve just secured for the hometown police department. Everyone gets to look tough on crime. The old lady on the street is thrilled because, through it all, “the nice officer on the beat” stops to help her cross the busy intersection. (Three miles away, her son is being harassed by a cop wearing dark glasses. Her son’s crime? Dirty license plate and being disrespectful.)

Roving bands of drug cops are often entirely funded with asset forfeiture, and usually don’t report to any single police agency. Lack of real accountability has produced catastrophic results, like the mass drug raid debacles in Tulia and Hearne, Texas, in the late 1990s. In Hearne, for example, police raids were nothing else than a crackdown on black Americans because black Americans were black Americans. It remains one of the great scandals of criminal “justice” in America. Dozens of African Americans were rounded up in para-military drug sweeps and dozens of others were harassed and injured as “collateral, unintended damage.” The ACLU got nowhere in seeking a court order to prevent the Task Force and local law enforcement from conducting drug “sweeps” targeting African-American residents in Hearne and the unlawful arrest, detention, and prosecution of residents based solely on their race.

During the Clinton years, Congress passed what’s now known as the “1033 Program,” which formalized and streamlined the Reagan administration’s directive to the Pentagon to share surplus military gear with domestic police agencies. Since then, millions of pieces of military equipment designed for use on a battlefield have been transferred to local SWAT teams — machine guns, tanks, armored personnel carriers, helicopters, bayonets, and weapons that shoot .50-caliber ammunition. Clinton also created the “Troops to Cops” program, which offered grants to police departments who hired soldiers returning from battle, contributing even further to the militarization of the police force.

The ACLU is, for now, not trying to do more than gather information about the extent of militarization but its efforts are being blocked. In 2009, Maryland passed a SWAT transparency law. It requires every police agency in the state with a SWAT team to provide data twice per year on the number of times the SWAT team is deployed, the reason for the deployment, whether any shots were fired, and whether the raid resulted in criminal charges. The effort to get the law passed was led by Cheye Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Md., who was the victim of a highly publicized mistaken raid on his home in which a Prince George’s County SWAT team shot and killed his two black Labradors. The bill puts no restrictions on SWAT teams or how they’re used. Its only purpose is transparency. Still, it was vigorously opposed by every police agency in the state. The National Sheriffs Association and the National Association of Chiefs of Police do not respond to requests for data. Why should they? As Stalin asked about the Pope, “How many divisions does he command?” That question may also be put to the ACLU.

The great champion of civil rights, Barack Obama, has expanded the Byrne and Community-Oriented Policing Services program (COPS) by giving them $1.55 billion, a 250 percent increase over its 2008 budget under Bush. (For that much money, Obama can inveigle me into wearing a good pair of storm trooper boots, good for kicking doors down.)

ACLU spokesperson Kara Dansky, senior counsel at the ACLU’s Center for Justice, is only seeking information. Once it gets the information, Dansky said the organization will analyze the figures and recommend policies to minimize the effects of police militarization on civil liberties. “We’re also concerned that these tactics are disproportionately used against poor people, and in communities of color,” Dansky said. “SWAT is really only part of it. The effects of militarization also happen beyond and outside of just an increase in SWAT deployments.”

“I wish the ACLU success,” abused mayor Cheye Calvo said. “And I suspect that once they force the police agencies to cooperate, they’ll find that this problem is even more dramatic and pronounced than most people know. But then the question is, now what? Even if you can show that people are being victimized and terrorized by these tactics — and to no good end — if no one cares, then what does it matter?”

Yes, now what? So far as I am concerned, the first step to end police viciousness does not lie with the ACLU but with the public’s quitting the nonsense of thinking the police are our friends. And if nobody cares, as Calvo suspects, what does it all matter? We get the treatment we deserve and beg for.

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A solid lead for this article was provided by Dr. Ted Drange.

American Corruption

February16

The majority of Americans believe that however awful federal agencies may be, we must not exaggerate. While corruption may be widespread, it must surely be true that, on the whole, government agencies like the CIA, FBI, DEA, CBF, and ATF do more good than harm. This we may take as an article of faith because these agencies were created for the explicit purpose of doing good. That being the case, it would be incredible for each of them to fail, and fail alarmingly.

I have done a poor job over the many years I have been interested in corruption to persuade people how naive they are. First, it is unlikely that any of these agencies were created with noble intent. I admit that proving this is a bigger job than I have heart to take on. However, it is not a great task to argue that, as they are constituted, these agencies exist for ignoble purposes. Dozens of books and hundreds of articles are out there for perusal by those of you who have the strength (and indignation) to find out for yourselves.

One small but well documented and highly readable essay that should prove very disheartening to you (if you believe America is the greatest country on Earth) is Michael Levine’s account of his life as an officer for decades in the DEA, directly and closely involved in many of the biggest drug busts in history. The amazingly depressing story of the DEA is American corruption writ small and it would be a blunder to suppose that it is only an exception to the largely good work other agencies do.

Please read http://www.expertwitnessradio.org/site/mainstream-media-the-drug-war-shills/

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A Few Bits And Pieces

December30

1. More than 450 teachers and other school employees applied for 24 spots in a free Ohio firearms training program.
The Columbus Dispatch reported, via Free Republic. More than 450 teachers and other school employees from around Ohio have applied for 24 spots in a free firearms-training program being offered by the Buckeye Firearms Association.

“We’re pleasantly surprised, but it’s not shocking,” Ken Hanson, legal chairman for the association, said today of the response since the group began taking applications on its website 10 days ago. “The demand has been there for quite some time.”

The issue of arming school employees to protect students has been “on the radar” of school boards in Ohio for several years, he said, but the organization decided to launch its training program after the Dec. 14 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults.

“That was the breaking point,” he said. “We decided it’s time to quit talking about it and move forward.”

2. The Dow Jones industrial average hurtled downward 1.2% today losing 158 points to finish below the 13,000 threshold, at 12,938.
The Dow dropped nearly 70 points in the last half hour during Barack Obama’s fiscal speech.

3. President Barack Obama issued an executive order to end the pay freeze on federal employees, in effect giving some federal workers a raise. One federal worker now to receive a pay increase is Vice President Joe Biden. According to disclosure forms, Biden made $225,521 last year. After the pay increase, he’ll make $231,900 per year.

Members of Congress, from the House and Senate, also will receive a little bump, as their annual salary will go from $174,000 to 174,900. Leadership in Congress, including the speaker of the House, will likewise get an increase. Meanwhile… For the rest of America, median household income has dropped $4,520, or about one month’s average wages, since President Obama took office.

4. American Heart Association on the job: The American Heart Association offers these guidelines for exercise:

Exercise only if your doctor says it’s safe.
Begin each workout with a gentle warm-up and end with a cool-down.
Monitor the intensity of your activity, making sure it’s within the recommended range.
Monitor your heart rate and blood pressure.
Be aware of warning signs that you’re pushing yourself too hard, including chest pain, lightheadedness or feeling out of breath.

5. President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed off on a controversial bill that bans U.S. citizens from adopting Russian orphans.
The U.S. State Department said later in the day that it “deeply regretted” the measure.

Effective from Jan. 1, the ban is part of Russia’s lightning response to the Magnitsky Act that President Barack Obama signed earlier this month. The U.S. legislation seeks to punish Russian officials suspected of committing human rights violations.

6. Murders in New York have dropped to their lowest level in over 40 years, city officials announced on Friday, even as overall crimes increased slightly because of a rise in thefts — a phenomenon based solely on robberies of iPhones and other Apple devices.

There were 414 recorded homicides so far in 2012, compared with 515 for the same period in 2011, city officials said. That is a striking decline from murder totals in the low-2,000s that were common in the early 1990s, and is also below the record low: 471, set in 2009. [In an extraordinarily stupid proclamation, Mayor Bloomberg said, “The essence of civilization is that you can walk down the street without having to look over your shoulder.”]

Mr. Bloomberg acclaimed the accomplishment during a graduation ceremony for more than 1,000 new police officers at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. He attributed the low murder rate to the department’s controversial practice of “stop, question and frisk,” in which people are stopped on the street and questioned by officers, and aggressive hot-spot policing, in which officers are deployed to areas with crime spikes. Shootings are also down for the year so far. The number of murders is the lowest since 1963, when improvements in the recording of data were made. Killings have dropped to such a low level that more New Yorkers now commit suicide than are the victims of homicides. About 475 New Yorkers kill themselves each year, according to the city’s health department.

Mr. Bloomberg praised Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, saying the 19 percent drop in homicides compared with 2011 was achieved despite a shrinking police force and an increasing population. Mr. Kelly said he believed that relatively new policing strategies, including adding more police officers dedicated to curbing domestic violence, and monitoring social media to thwart gang-related murders, were working. “We’re preventing crimes before someone is killed and before someone else has to go to prison,” the commissioner said.

Of the 414 murders, 14 deaths from previous years were counted as homicides for the first time… Of the 400 murders in 2012, 223 were .gunshot victims, 84 victims were stabbed to death, 43 died of blunt trauma and 11 died of asphyxiation.

The majority of the 400 homicides occurred on a Saturday, followed by early Sunday morning. Most occurred at 2 a.m. People were more likely to be killed outside than in. Nearly 70 percent of the victims had prior criminal arrests, the police said. Domestic-related homicides dropped to 68, from 94 in 2011. In Chicago, killings are on the rise.

7. Goodbye Mr. Tom Regan. This announcement must be intended to re-confirm Mr. Regan’s view that friendship with me is a serious mistake. He broke with me in 2009 because of a similar announcement and my defense of Bolt’s selection over Michael Phelps.

Triple Olympic champion Usain Bolt, the 2012 World Athlete of the Year, has been named the best athlete of 2012 by the International Sports Press Association (AIPS). In a poll of 450 sports journalists from 100 countries, Bolt was the overwhelming winner, amassing more than a third of all votes to beat US swimmer Michael Phelps and tennis star Novak Djokovic.

posted under Cops, Crime, Death, Economics, Family, MEDICINE, Money, Sports | Comments Off

When Will We Ever Learn? Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

December28

The slaughter of young children is nothing anybody can make a joke about. But the solutions to the violence are hilariously off the mark.
The professional Liberals at MSNBC, Current, and the NY Times don’t want civilians to be armed. Instead they want two things, one of which is fine with me – get rid of assault weapons (that will reduce violence by at least 4%) and the second – allow the police to do their job of protecting us. We don’t need to review the statistics concerning the first suggestion because I have gone over that often enough.

I have also written about the second of these “solutions.” I have pointed out that the courts have ruled it is not a legal obligation of the police to protect us. Look it up; don’t make me repeat it. But summarily, it is this: the job of the police is twofold: (a) by their presence to deter and (b) to catch the bad guys after the fact. They are not in the business of coming to the rescue. Deterrence via presence can be provided by any group trained for that purpose – the private protection organizations as advocated by Robert Nozick. We have statistical evidence that people who own guns only for the sake of protection and who hate hunting are less likely, as a group, than unarmed civilians to commit violence – sorry to shock you but that is how it is. We have statistical evidence that people who protect themselves are safer than people who don’t protect themselves.

But forget all that. Where have you been since about 1877, the year of the mass murder by police of railroad strikers? For the last 135 years, police have killed more people per year than any criminal gang. Have you ever been to the movies? Do you really think that all that police violence, brutality and corruption is fiction, bordering on fantasy? It is NOT. Let me bore you with facts and figures.

1. The good news is that the worst of police brutality occurs in other countries. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet until you get to South Africa. I will confine myself to the sordid story of the USA. I will further confine it to events since 1960 and not trace the true and total history. Much of the violence is not by police but military people but if you think that matters, you are entitled to your qualms.
2. 4 May 1970: The Kent State shootings — also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre — occurred at Kent State University in the U.S. city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.
3. Forty-three people killed by police in 1967 in Detroit in a single episode that caused damage to the city that lasted for years.
4. Denver, Colorado. 2011. Three police killed an unarmed man. Such incidents are actually commonplace.
5. Rodney King. 6. Literally (I use the word “literally” in the unconventional sense nowadays to mean literally) thousands of beatings each year by police, mostly visited upon black people. Quadriplegics and paraplegics are frequently victimized. Read the newspapers.
7. For the most recent year, 2012, police committed 531 unjustifiable homicides. Compare that to the Connecticut massacre.
8. The Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department, informally known as the Christopher Commission, was formed in April 1991, in the wake of the Rodney King beating, by then-mayor of Los Angeles Tom Bradley. It was chaired by attorney Warren Christopher (who later became U.S. Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton). “The commission was created to conduct ‘a full and fair examination of the structure and operation of the LAPD, including its recruitment and training practices, internal disciplinary system, and citizen complaint system.” However, with the election of Richard Riordan, these reforms were put on hold. The Commission report says that the failure to control police who persistently ignore written guidelines is “the heart of the problem.” Go back and review the Knapp Commission findings, too.
9. Frank Serpico earmarked for assassination because he was an honest cop. You all know the story. All of it true.
10. The Christopher Commission found that only 2% of 2152 “excessive force” complaints (1986-1990) were thoroughly investigated. The Commission report says, “Ugly incidents will not diminish until ranking officers know they will be held responsible for what happens in their sector, whether or not they personally participate.” This is NEVER, NEVER going to happen.
11. I grew up in the officially worst section of America – Brownsville – and witnessed more unprovoked attacks on decent people than you can imagine. I have seen almost as many Gays bashed by homophobes and cops as my son, Stephen, witnessed. Read STREET JUSTICE by Marilynn S. Johnson and permit yourself to be sickened. Give up listening to news on the vile propaganda outlet of thinly disguised capitalism that is promoted by MSNBC. The TV “journalists” [sic] are a bunch of unknowing, unrealizing sycophants of the cops, politicians and corporate structure even though they think they are our defenders. The attacks on Wayne LaPierre and the rest of his horde at the NRA are stupid well beyond your understanding. Every dope from the black guy in the White House down to the merely moronic people in Congress who proudly declare themselves not opposed to the good old American sport of hunting ought to be shot. DEAD. Hunting violence begets human violence. Read your Mahatma Gandhi, for Pete’s sake. If you want to put the wisdom of Obama against the wisdom of Gandhi, then you are a certifiable lunatic. I will take no place in line behind people who hate guns. I hate them more than you do. I hate starters’ pistols at track meets, target guns in your back yard, paint guns you allow your children to play with. They all play a part in making this a mad world. You play your part, too, if you refuse to see things for what they are.

12. COPS ARE THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.

Their main purpose in life is to make us unhappy [when they are not drunk and beating up their own spouses.] There is not one iota of exaggeration in anything I write. I am interested only in unvarnished truth.
13. There are partial solutions for the sick violence in America but it cannot be halted altogether without moving to an Orwellian world. Don’t dream. Act. I can tell you what to do if you are really interested. I doubt you are. Better to eat a ham on Thanksgiving. Better to complain in a high-minded, self-righteous way against murderous Jews in Israel. Better to tell me my posts are facetious. I am the most serious man who ever lived. Do you want to get started? Send me a private message and learn GOODNESS. As Frank Szymanski, the great Notre Dame footballer of the 1940s, said “Coach, I could have said I am not the greatest player who ever lived but I was under oath.” ME, TOO, FRANK.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y2SIIeqy34

Bang Bang

December22

I promised myself not to participate in the poorly named “gun debate.” However, I cant help adding a few words.

There is a conscious conspiracy of lowgrade propaganda against John R. Lott and Wayne LaPierre, the two chief exponents of the value of fire arms. TV broadcasters gather round a table to excoriate both of them as liars, stupid, bent-on-evil, money grubbers and they have a few bad things to say about this redoubtable duo, too. LaPierre’s proposals are said to go against everything America believes, and ignorant, non-empirically inclined pundits succeed only in proving their own incompetence.

Lapierre and Lott believe guns should be in the hands of as many competent weapons carriers as possible. They would flood the schools with private armies of defenders. They have little faith in the police to protect us. They blame crime mainly on a culture of violence taught to our children via video games and TV shows that ought to be locked out by responsible parents. Some of their claims go unaddressed and some are laughed at as not worthy of being addressed.

Statistics do not interest the critics. Heart-breaking stories of children being slaughtered is what matters to them. They locate the problem for the madness at the gun shows and the easy access with which bad guys and the mentally defective can obtain guns without going through security checks. “Assault weapon” is on all their lips. Who needs them, etc.? Respectable deer hunters get by very well without them, ad nauseum.

All our efforts to battle violence are misdirected. The random acts of crazy people have been with us forever and they are only the tip of the iceberg. They fascinate because they fascinate. Violent criminals, members of drug gangs, the mafia and even casual street robberies are not enabled by access to military-style automatic weapons (whose firing power is no more rapid or powerful that the standard guns of gangsters). The facts are these: Fewer than 8% of all violent crime is committed by the weapons that the Liberals are screaming to have banned. Moreover, they account for under 1% of all the murders. Winning friends and influencing people is the sole strategy of the professional Liberal. And with evidence to the contrary staring him in the face, he thinks that we should entrust our safety and security to police – a subculture of villains that out performs in horror any of our gangs and who have no legal obligation to come to our rescue. They have a dual purpose: (a) to deter, by means of their presence; (b) to capture, after the fact. The history of plant Earth proves they are not very good at either.

The theory of the Liberals is that if you give private citizens access to guns ONLY after all the usual safeguards are in place, mental health checkups, crime records, a ban on gun shows, training with weapons, and all the rest, crime will drop dramatically due to one thing and one thing only:sane citizenry. Better yet, the Liberal thinks, keep guns in the hands of the police. People with guns occasionally get angry. So we need to end that. Of course, this happens but cannot this “shrewd observation” be tempered with a bit of research? Research shows that people who own guns for self-protection are less likely to acts of violence than other citizens. Research indicates indicates that criminals who invade homes they discover to be protected by the inhabitants are much less likely to follow through. Prison inmates, by a wide margin,say they are far more frightened by private citizens with guns than they are by police. This shouldn’t be replied with, “I don’t believe it.” Search the data. Much more crime is deterred by ordinary armed citizens than by the combined police forces throughout America.

But the children! They take a gun from the unsealed lock box of Daddy and blow bullets in the faces of 10-month old sisters and brothers. This has got to stop! And a very good idea that is, indeed, but it won’t be stopped by the preposterous call on all of us to surrender our guns. Criminals would only be too delighted for the rest of us to go unarmed, praying for delivery from police. Take a look at the Federal Register to learn how few tragedies are caused by the blunder of allowing young children access to guns.

LaPierre is right – we need to stop crime at the ground floor. Teaching teenagers not to use guns is like teaching them not to experiment with marijuana. Not introducing toy bazookas into their repertory of things to play with would go much farther as a technique for gun control. As long as we keep victimizing ourselves with preposterous worries of a nation going berserk with its weapons, as a nation whose children will be lucky to reach 8-years of age, as long we refuse to do the research and merely spend our time attacking LaPierre and others of his ilk, we are going to be in for tragedies for a long, long time. As long as we are resolved to suppose that the deaths of 20 children deserves daily sobbing, shrieking and hair-pulling whereas the negligent, preventable deaths of 100,000 people in hospitals each year is just one of those things to shrug off with, “Well don’t blame me, Dear. You just put up the kettle and we’ll have a nice cup of hot teas,” this country is going to hell in a hand basket.

posted under Cops, Crime, Death, Education, Health, Journalism, MEDICINE | Comments Off

COGITO. HOW ABOUT YOU?

December18

1. September 06, 2012 9:05 am.

A woman who was groped by an off-duty DPS officer at a Flagstaff bar last summer says that comments to her by the judge during Wednesday’s sen… After being convicted by a jury earlier this summer of sexual abuse for groping a woman in a bar, ex-DPS Officer Robb Gary Evans walked out of a Coconino County Superior Courtroom on Wednesday morning having been sentenced to two years of probation.

Evans received credit for the four days of jail time he served in Coconino County jail. Prosecutors contended that he drank eight beers and then drove himself to the Green Room, where he flashed his badge in an attempt to get into a concert for free. While inside, he walked up behind the victim, who was a friend of a friend, put his hand up her skirt and then ran his fingers across her genitals.

When bouncers threw him out, Evans told them he was a cop and they would be arrested. The 43-year-old former Arizona Department of Public Safety officer was facing between six months and 2 1/2 years in prison, but the crime was eligible for probation. He will not be required to register as a sex offender, according to the sentence. The judge said she considered the defendant’s lack of a criminal record and strong community support in her sentencing. She also advised the victim to be more vigilant.

2. Ozark Police Chief Jim Noggle says one of his officers used a Taser on a 10-year-old girl who was combative when the officer tried to get the girl into a patrol car to be taken to a youth shelter. Noggle said Tuesday that officer Dustin Bradshaw went to the girl’s home after her mother called police woman called police. According to a report filed by Bradshaw on Thursday, the officer found the girl on the floor of the house screaming and crying. She refused to follow her mother’s instructions and the mother told Bradshaw to use his Taser.

Bradshaw carried the girl to the living room and told her she was going to jail, according to the report. The girl was violently kicking, the report said, and struck Bradshaw in the groin with her legs and feet. The report said Bradshaw administered a “very, very brief” stun with the Taser, put the girl in handcuffs and carried her to his patrol car. She was taken to the Western Arkansas Youth Shelter in Cecil.

3. NOBLE, Okla. — A police officer shooting at a snake apparently killed a 5-year-old boy who was fishing at a nearby pond, officials said.

Austin Haley was fishing with his grandfather, Jack Tracy, when Tracy said he heard a shot and saw something hit the water just a few feet in front of the boat dock where he was standing. Moments later, a second shot hit Austin in the head.

A Noble police officer who had responded to a report of a snake in a tree apparently fired the deadly shot while trying to kill the snake on Friday, City Manager Bob Wade said.

“I was told that they tried several ways to get the snake down, but it was still hissing at them and firmly lodged,” Wade said. “What I was told is that the owner of the home either suggested or agreed that they should go ahead and shoot the snake, and then everything happened from there.”

“Then two officers came out of the brush over there,” he told The Oklahoman. “They didn’t tell us they were the ones who had been shooting or that they had shot him. They didn’t admit a doggone thing.” The boy was pronounced dead at an Oklahoma City hospital, about 25 miles north of Noble. Wade refused to identify the officer but said the person had been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.

4. Connecticut State Police announced Monday they will be holding all crimes scenes connected to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting for the foreseeable future, while they investigate the horrific mass murder. Connecticut State Police spokesman Lt.J.Paul Vance told reporters at a midmorning news briefing it could take months for investigators to complete their examination of the crime scene at the school. [You, the reader, take this delay in your stride. “Oh, well, if they think they need it, then then then they need it.”

5.Fredricktown MO police captain pleads guilty to sexual exploitation and sodomy of child……Fond du Lac WI cop throws cuffed mentally challenged man into table, cutting his head open……Vian OK asst police chief caught for public intoxication, beating girlfriend, threatening to shoot bouncers……….Monroe County NY sheriff’s captain indicted on three rape charges……….Philadelphia PA cop pleads guilty to forcing female prisoner into sex acts in jail cell……….Pawtucket RI cop caught masturbating and exposing himself to motorists/urinating……….Abbeville LA police officer sued for tasering elderly man who called police to report DV incident………Mentor OH cop caught headbutting & beating little league coach at game………..Seattle WA undercover police officer on leave for kicking 17 yr-old on video……………YOU MAY NOT REMEMBER A POST IN WHICH I POINTED OUT THE HIGHEST COURT HAS RULED POLICE HAVE NO LEGAL DUTY TO RESCUE THOSE IN DISTRESS. What , then, is there job? (a) Catch bad guys after the fact; (b) be a deterrent presence.
Read on.
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6. Don B. Kates, Jr., eminent civil rights lawyer and criminologist, states:

Even if all 500,000 American police officers were assigned to patrol, they could not protect 240 million citizens from upwards of 10 million criminals who enjoy the luxury of deciding when and where to strike. But we have nothing like 500,000 patrol officers; to determine how many police are actually available for any one shift, we must divide the 500,000 by four (three shifts per day, plus officers who have days off, are on sick leave, etc.). The resulting number must be cut in half to account for officers assigned to investigations, juvenile, records, laboratory, traffic, etc., rather than patrol. It is, therefore, a fact of law and of practical necessity that individuals are responsible for their own personal safety, and that of their loved ones. Police protection must be recognized for what it is: only an auxiliary general deterrent.

7. Some of you may remember a little incident at Kent State in the late 1960s. Oh, the joy that only clubs and water hoses can provide. Each year, police crime approximates civilian crime. The trouble is that police crime is largely unreported or when it come to the surface, it is hushed up. Remember the Knapp Commission (as you do the Alamo)) You don’t? That is precisely the problem.

8. These are only a small handful of crimes committed daily by police. In any case, cops cannot shoot the side of a barrel unless they are aiming elsewhere. Gary Kleck has gathered data that middle aged women who take courses in gun use are far better shots than the average cop. Who needs these goons? Assault and battery of police wives far exceeds the rate among the next worse criminal element in society (whoever that may be). Who needs these guys? Cops routinely steal the drug paraphernalia that they confiscate from the so-called “bad guys.”

9. Every police officer who patrols observes at least one other police officer commit a felony in the course of a day’s work. Not reporting that, – as he most CERTAINLY won’t – is the crime of misprision. It is never proscecuted. Who needs a million goons fiercely walking through the streets, wielding guns, who are immune prosecution?

10. Adam Winkler, law professor at UCLA, author of The Battle over the Right To Bear Arms in America, has shown via hard statistics, that persons who possess legal gun permits commit crimes at a rate lower than the general population.

11. The number of permits to carry concealed weapons – 8 million – is at an all-time high but the number of homicides is the lowest it has been in 40 years.

12. Arrested burglars routinely report , and by a very high margin, that they fear to enter homes they suspect are guarded by legal gun owners far more than they fear the police. In keeping with this, Gary Kleck has has estimated that between 800,000 and 1.2 million would be thieves and robbers are deterred by a citizen’s waving a gun at them. In contrast, the number of people who are victimized because they don’t seem to be a threat to the bad guys is much lower. Deterrence wins. Who needs cops? Trayvon Martin didn’t need any. Rodney King didn’t need them. Neither did the thousands brutalized over the last 100 years by southern gangsters with guns strapped to their hips. How many other cases of cop brutality do you know? If a cop wounds a black kid for “I thought he was reaching for a gun,” who is going to jail? How much more of this are we supposed to bear up with? Plenty now that Obama has joined the blood-hunt and announced we can’t take this any longer? We aleady know he made a campaign point of his assassination of bin Laden. Can you doubt that if a gun battle breaks out between a “lay criminal,” i.e. a non-cop and 50 cops who send 500 bullets into the air, finally killing the “lay criminal,” Obama will heap praise on them? Then he will go off to a rally, defending the rights of hunters to suck blood from deer and squirrels. Who needs cops? Who needs Obama?

13. You, Unfortunate Reader, are addicted to THE FALLACY OF THE DRAMATIC INSTANCE. Few crimes are committed either by “lay criminals” or by professional criminals, i.e. cops by means of assault weapons. Grieve, if you must and as you should, for the kids of Connecticut BUT GET YOUR BRAIN IN GEAR.

For the precious few of you who have not been completely brainwashed by anti-gun propaganda and who yet may have a trace of brain left in your head, I recommend Don Kates’s article The Value of Civilian Arms Possession As Deterrent To Crime Or Defense Against Crime. It is long and you already know it is wrong. Lucky for you. http://www.lawandliberty.org/kates_de.htm

Do not send a five-line comment saying you don’t agree. However, serious analysis is always welcome. And I sure don’t want to hear about your 6-year old cousin who blew his brains out when his dumb father did not know how to keep his rifle safe.

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