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Category: Cops
AP Photo/Damian DovarganesThe lurch to the left continued, however, and now the LA Times has metamorphosed into some hideous amalgam of the Daily Worker, the Advocate, and the bulletin board in some Williams College freshman dorm. Nowhere has the paper’s leftward drift been more evident than in its coverage of crime and law enforcement.
The latest example is a March 7 editorial that lamented the 30th anniversary of California’s “three strikes” law, which mandated lengthy prison sentences for repeat felons. In their lamentation, the editors cite the woeful tale of Jerry Dewayne Williams, who in 1995 received a sentence of 25 years to life for having committed what they would have their readers believe was the mere theft of a slice of pizza.
Though initially charged with robbery, Williams was convicted of the lesser felony of “petty theft with a prior.” Nevertheless, his rap sheet was of sufficient opulence to trigger the three strikes law. In writing about Williams in 2010, by which time he had petitioned for and won his release from prison, the Times called him the “pizza thief,” as though his crime, like Jean Valjean’s in “Les Miserables,” had been motivated by hunger. Though elided completely in the recent editorial — and nearly completely in the 2010 story — the circumstances of the pizza theft were more sinister than the Times would have its readers believe.
Williams and some companions were on the Redondo Beach pier one evening in 1994 when they came across four children, ages 7 to 15, sharing a pizza. Williams walked up and hovered menacingly over the children, picked up a slice of pizza, and began eating it as though daring them to try to stop him. Fearful of being assaulted by Williams and his friends, they did nothing. But they did report the incident to their parents, who called the police, who in turn found Williams nearby and arrested him.
Though the jury deadlocked on the robbery charge, Williams’s conduct clearly met the elements of California Penal Code section 211, which defines robbery as the “felonious taking of personal property in the possession of another, from his person or immediate presence, and against his will, accomplished by means of force or fear.” Williams didn’t take the pizza merely to satisfy a craving; he did it for the thrill he received from intimidating four children. He told police that after taking one bite from the slice he threw the rest in the ocean. Note that in the law cited above, no minimum value of the stolen property is established; it is the conduct that is punished regardless of how trivial the loss. (I once arrested a man and saw him sentenced to prison for robbing one of his neighbors of 75 cents.)
But the minimization of Williams’s misdeed is far from the most glaring defect in the editorial. It notes correctly that by the time California’s three strikes law was passed in 1994, the crime wave that inspired it had already crested, but it goes on to say that crime saw a historic plunge, though without attributing any of that plunge to the law the Times today condemns. “A host of tough-on-crime measures followed from both Republicans and Democrats,” said the editors, “even as crime continued its free fall.”
Thus do the Times editors exhibit their willful blindness to the simple fact that locking up more criminals caused the decline in crime, first by deterring lawbreakers but more importantly by incarcerating them. As Rafael Mangual notes in his book “Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurst Most”, prisons “spare the general public from the crimes those incarcerated would have otherwise committed if they were out on the street.”
But to the editors at the LA Times, crime was in “free fall,” as though affected by nothing other than some mysterious elemental force akin to gravity, a force that causes crime to rise or fall regardless of what methods are employed to combat it.
But again, credit the LA Times for consistency in their error on law enforcement matters. They endorsed George Gascón in his recent primary campaign to remain as Los Angeles County district attorney, and no doubt will do so again as he faces former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman in November’s general election. In their endorsement, the editors wrote that the number of felony cases his office has filed “is on par with that of earlier administrations.” This may be true, as far as it goes, but the number of filings is not the only or most reliable indicator of his office’s commitment to public safety. “The argument that Gascón is lax or lenient on crime,” say the Times editors, “simply does not hold up to the facts.”
Is that so? Then why, we may ask, is it still Gascón’s policy not to seek increased felony sentences under circumstances in which California law explicitly calls for them?
Here are some facts the LA Times editors may have overlooked: In the city of Los Angeles, year to date, homicides are up by 16%, robberies by 14%, and burglaries by 4%. In 77th Street Division, one of the city’s 21 patrol stations, homicides are up by 167% and burglaries are up by 56%.
The question is a simple one: Where would we prefer criminals to live, in our neighborhoods or in prison?
Militarized police? S&W has called their mainstream L.E. service handguns “Military & Police” from 1899 to present.
Misunderstandings, some knowingly fostered by the anti-cop crowd, are rampant among the general public. Here are some truths with which to shoot back.
Generalities
Why not do away with qualified immunity for police? First, it’s not the magic “get out of jail free” card some claim it to be. At the risk of oversimplification, it’s the same Reasonable Person standard the court demands in an armed citizen self-defense case. The triers of the facts must ask themselves, “What would a reasonable, prudent person have done in the same situation, knowing what the defendant knew?”
For qualified immunity, that becomes “What would a reasonable, prudent, trained and experienced police officer have done in the same situation, knowing what the accused knew at the time?” In either case, the standard of judgment is called objective reasonableness. This was defined by SCOTUS more than 30 years ago in the landmark case of Graham v. Connor, which has been the guiding light of police use of force training ever since. If this standard was taken away from police, you could expect something similar to follow for armed citizens, which would greatly compromise the right of self-defense.
Why can’t we have peace officers instead of law enforcement officers, guardians instead of warriors? Because you can’t have one without the other. The officer keeps the peace by enforcing the law upon those who shatter the peace and endanger the peaceful.
What does a guardian do? Guard against danger, which requires the tools necessary to overcome that danger. To fight fire with fire, you must first have … fire.
One must become a warrior to guard against life-threatening violence. The police are, literally, society’s designated gunfighters. Police trainer and writer Ed Sanow wasn’t being hyperbolic when he spoke of patrol officers as “America’s road warriors.”
Why can’t we de-militarize the police? For one thing, police work has always been paramilitary in organization. Look at the rank structure. Ask yourself why in most jurisdictions state police are called “troopers.” Compare the Class A uniform of the idealized Peace Officer in the famous Norman Rockwell painting to the dress uniform of an Army officer of the same period. Why do SWAT teams have military surplus armored vehicles or similar commercial Bearcats? To stop criminal bullets, not to project force. You don’t see Bearcats equipped with cannons.
Why can’t we send psychologists to domestic violence calls instead of police? Why can’t cops learn to de-escalate? Because the wife-beaters and child-beaters will beat the hell out of the unarmed psychologist, too.
The cops are ahead of the self-styled reformers on this: Many departments have experimented with CIT, Crisis Intervention Teams, and many of the rank and file have been trained in verbal crisis intervention such as George Thompson’s Verbal Judo since the 1980s.
Unfortunately, the escalating suspect gets a vote too, and many don’t respond to calm words or reason. There’s also the matter of cost. The average cop earns about $52K a year and the average psychologist almost $78K. One of each in every patrol car is more than most budgets can bear, especially since there are fewer calls for the doc to handle than the cop.
From the old Bucheimer palm sap to the “police flashlight” and beyond, less-lethal
police tools have long created controversy.
Specifics
How can police justify shooting a man pointing a stolen TASER at them? For the same reason they’ve always been allowed to shoot the guy who snatched and wielded their baton, and later their Mace and pepper spray. State attorneys general have long since ruled each of these is a less lethal weapon when used as trained. The suspect who violently wields one is not trained to avoid vital zones with what is now “a deadly weapon, to wit a bludgeon.”
If he incapacitates the officer, he can take his service pistol, murder him, and then murder whoever else he chooses, particularly since he can take the keys to the patrol car, use its communications to evade capture, and pull over the unsuspecting victim of his choice. Thus, less lethal in the cop’s hands, but highly lethal and a danger to society in a criminal’s hands.
Why do police need AR15s? Remember, American police were using autoloading rifles long before the American military. If your son or daughter had to respond to multiple violent criminals alone, would you want your kid to have an AR15 or a six-shot revolver designed in 1899?
And it’s time to answer a question with a question: Why do elected officials and the media do nothing to educate the public in the realities of police use of force?
Today’s heartwarming story of Democrats getting what they voted for takes us to Austin, Texas, where a police staffing crisis exploded the murder rate, and according to a report there were no cops at all in a section of the city on one Saturday in February.
“Austin, Texas residents are expressing outrage over police staffing shortages and longer 911-call response times in the aftermath of the city council’s vote to defund the department in 2020,” the New York Post reported.
It gets better…
“In February, a section of the city was notably left without a single police officer for a few hours on a Saturday due to the ongoing shortages,” the Post noted.
“Each year since 2017, we’ve lost more officers than we’ve hired,” Austin Police Association President Michael Bullock warned. “We had to gut our specialized units and force detectives to work backfill on patrol just to try and respond to 911 calls.”
Bullock added, “Our staffing has been set back at least 15 years, and at the same time, we’ve dealt with a population growth of over 250,000 new residents.”
Here’s the rub:
In 2020 following the Black Lives Matter riots, Austin’s city council voted unanimously to cut up to $150 million from its police department budget — about 34% of its current total — and reinvest the funds in other services. The following year, the Texas Legislature passed a law essentially forcing Austin to restore the funding, but the officer shortage persists.
…
“What the Austin city council did was horrific to the community,” [Fraternal Order of Police Vice President Joe Gamaldi] told Fox News Digital.” There is no one left to fill these shortages because the city council treats officers like scum. Now, responses are over 10 minutes for emergency calls. Some districts are left without staff. City council should learn their lesson over violent crime. 2021 was the highest ever for recorded murders and, since then, the murder rate continues to stay close to that high and looks like 2024 will not be any better. People are dying over bad decisions.”
…
Last year, the department was on the verge of a staffing collapse after 40 officers filed retirement papers following a 9-2 city council vote to scrap a four-year contract that the city had previously agreed to in principle and instead pursue a one-year contract that the police union’s board had rejected.
You see, these Austin idiots have cornered themselves. They can either 1) allow their city to implode or 2) admit they were wrong. The problem for Austin is that leftists never admit they are wrong. In their twisted minds, they are not wrong. Rising crime is the goal. Violence is the goal. Urban blight is the goal. Chronic homelessness, poverty, and drug abuse are the goals. It’s all laid out right here.
The dummy voters are in a similar spot. They hate us MAGAtards and would rather see their city go full shithole before handing us a “toldjaso.”
Pride is such an awful and insidious thing. The inability to admit you are wrong is a devastating handicap. But that’s what the voters will have to do: admit they were wrong and that we MAGAtards are right about supporting your police force and locking up violent criminals and three-time losers.
While I wish no physical harm on anyone, watching the smug and prideful lose their city brings me nothing but joy. It’s no different than watching CNNLOL implode, or the Disney Grooming Syndicate lose billions. These voters, politicians, media outlets, and entertainment conglomerates are only victims of one thing: laughably stupid choices based on deranged and fascist thinking.
These people are so smug and self-involved that they honestly believe their Greatness can alter human nature: criminals will see the light, news consumers will enjoy being lied to, and parents will subject their small children to gay sex, transvestites, and other queering and grooming propaganda.
Burn, baby, burn.
Categories
7 Most Traced Guns Used In Crimes
Police report that a suspect made off with a 16-figure haul after burglarizing a Pennsylvania residence earlier this month.
Investigators say that the Bedford home was broken into on February 6 by “an unknown individual” who made off with several pieces of jewelry, silver dollars worth $20, and 2,000,000,000,000,000 in currency.
Zimbabwean currency.
According to a police report, “twenty Zimbabwe 100 trillion dollar bills” were swiped by the burglar.
For some reason, the report values the stolen currency as worth $1 million U.S.. However, the Zimbabwe bills–issued during a period of hyperinflation–are essentially worthless as currency. Instead, they are sold as a numismatic oddity for around $10 apiece.
The burglar also escaped with $30 in loose change.
Postal police going unused as mail thefts increase
FOX 26 Reporter Abigail Dye explains why a resource that could help curb mail theft isn’t being used.
HOUSTON – Postal Police Officers, or PPO’s, exist. PPO’s have been employed by the United States Postal Service and overseen by the United States Postal Inspection Service for decades.
According to the National President Postal Police Officers Association, Frank Albergo, they patrolled streets for 50 years protecting mail and mail carriers.
“People are not going to rob a letter carrier knowing that postal police officers are on patrol,” he said.
But in 2020, a USPS memorandum changed their jurisdiction, making it so PPO’s are only allowed to man postal buildings – no longer able to patrol.
“There are postal police officers in Houston, and they’re not being utilized to stop mail theft. This isn’t hard to figure out. You have postal police officers that specialize in mail theft prevention and protection of mail carriers and the postal service refuses to use them,” said Albergo.
USPIS has acknowledged an intense rise in mail carrier robberies in the latest annual report of their Fiscal Year (FY) 2022.
They say those robberies target mail carriers to get access to their “arrow keys” that open numerous mail boxes.
According to those reports, from 2019 to FY 2022, robberies more than quadrupled from 94 to 423. While the arrest rate concerning those robberies plummeted from 70% to 23%. Arrests rates for all crime dropped from 98% in FY 2019 to 78% in FY 2022.
“It’s been an absolute disaster. Mail is being stolen day after day, letter carriers are being robbed, identities stolen, bank accounts drained, something has to be done,” said Albergo.
We reached out to USPIS asking for an interview to better understand the circumstances around PPO jurisdiction.
They declined to interview and responded with an email that can be read in its entirety below.
In the email they say, “Given the lack of statutory authority for PPO law enforcement activity off postal premises, curtailing such use of PPOs was necessary to protect individual PPOs and the Postal Service more broadly from legal liability. In 2020, a federal court confirmed, in response to the PPOs’ contrary assertions, that the Postal Service’s determination of PPOs’ jurisdiction constituted a reasonable interpretation of the law.”
They also explain how the inspection service is structured, saying, “From a more practical perspective, we also question the effectiveness or appropriateness of expanding the role of PPOs beyond the protection of real property, given the structure of the Inspection Service.”
Going on to say, “The U.S. Postal Inspection Service takes seriously its role to safeguard America and will continue to aggressively pursue perpetrators that use the U.S. Mail system to further their illegal activity.”
There are currently two bills in Congress that would restore the jurisdiction of PPO’s. House Bill 3005 and Senate Bill 3356.