Category: Cops

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Cops Stand & Deliver You have to be kidding, right!?!

US air marshals plot ‘mutiny’ against Biden plan to leave flights unprotected By Anna Giaritelli

On-The-Money-NerdWallet-Refreshing-Airline-Amenity

EXCLUSIVE — U.S. air marshals are planning to stage an open rebellion against the Biden administration over a plan that would strip 99% of commercial flights from federal protection as people take to the skies during the busiest time of the year for air travel .

Dozens of federal air marshals have agreed to refuse a Biden administration order that they leave their assignments and go to the southern border , where they will drive, feed, and care for illegal immigrants due to a shortage of Border Patrol agents.

“The rank and file air marshals are going to refuse to deploy and risk termination,” said David Londo, president of the Air Marshal National Council, in a phone call with the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “You’re almost going to have a mutiny of a federal agency, which is unheard of.”

The overseeing agency, the Transportation Security Administration, said in a statement provided after deadline that claims that air marshals are doing menial tasks were “entirely inaccurate and does not reflect the critical and professional law enforcement role these officers perform.”

The administration’s order would leave just 1-in-100 U.S. flights with federal agents on board, one-eighth of its normal coverage.

NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS: BORDER PATROL AGENTS FEAR COLLAPSE OF TITLE 42

It is the first time amid the 20-month-long unresolved border crisis that federal employees have formally turned against President Joe Biden and his Senate-confirmed officials at the Department of Homeland Security . The air marshals are willing to risk everything for how the government is risking national security, Londo explained.

“Morale is so destroyed from this,” said Londo, whose organization serves as an association, not a union. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Air marshals would be risking their jobs as inflation rages and the United States potentially heads into a recession.

The air marshals, who are federal law enforcement agents within the Transportation Security Administration’s Federal Air Marshal Service, have been tasked with menial jobs at the border.

Just this week, air marshals pulled from planes and sent to the border were “heating up sandwiches,” driving immigrants in custody to the hospital and waiting inside for hours on hospital watch, and effectively babysitting adults who are already in confined spaces, Londo said.

“These highly skilled [air marshals] are being made to perform mainly non-law enforcement civilian humanitarian duties,” Londo wrote in the letter obtained first by the Washington Examiner.

In mid-2021, the Federal Air Marshal Service asked for volunteers willing to go to the southern border for 30 days and help process the growing number of illegal immigrants in custody. Earlier this month, the government changed course and announced that the deployments would become mandatory.

The air marshals fought the order but only got the length of the deployment dropped from 30 days to 21 days. DHS ordered a minimum of 150 more air marshals to the border on Dec. 7. At present, dozens plan to refuse and are preparing to be fired for taking the stand.

“Air marshals are deployed two to three nights a week. Now they’re taking them away, and their marriages are already on the rocks,” Londo said.

On Monday, the Federal Air Marshal Service’s Miami Field Office announced the deployments would now last indefinitely. Air marshals have already been sent to El Paso, Laredo, and McAllen, Texas; San Diego; and Tucson and Yuma, Arizona.

The council sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as well as the TSA and Federal Air Marshal Service on Monday, warning them that the order is self-defeating because it makes the skies less safe for people traveling during the busiest time of the year.

“According to the Federal Aviation Administration year to date there have been 2,178 reports of unruly passengers, 767 investigations initiated, and 517 enforcement actions taken. Not to mention the fact there has been two attempted attacks on our homeland since 9-11 during the holiday season,” the letter states. “Your policy has resulted in a complete loss of confidence in Secretary Mayorkas, FAM Director Stevenson, and Administrator Pekoske’s ability to lead DHS/TSA/FAMS.”

Londo pointed in his letter to recent violent passenger attacks midflight that involved weapons smuggled aboard the plane, as well as a cockpit breach on a Southwest Airlines flight last week.

The National Association of Police Organizations issued a statement in support of the air marshals and warned that they were already in a bad place before the deployments became mandatory.

“The Federal Air Marshal Service is understaffed and covering the fewest number of flights since before September 11, 2001,” said NAPO, a coalition of more than 1,000 police departments across the country. “We strongly question the decision by the Department of Homeland Security to divert much-needed aviation security to the southern border especially as we enter the busiest travel season of the year, particularly as a Federal emergency has not been declared at the border.”

Behind the scenes, the council is working with the DHS Office of Inspector General to launch a federal investigation into the Biden administration’s repurposing of air marshals.

Hondo accused TSA Administrator David Pekoske and Federal Air Marshal Service Director Tirrell Stevenson of “fraud, waste, and abuse of authority and violations of federal law” in a letter sent to DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari exclusively obtained by the Washington Examiner.

In the Nov. 18 letter, Hondo called on the inspector general to investigate the legality of the air marshal deployments. He wrote that the only exception to pulling air marshals from their jobs would be in the case of a declared national emergency, which has not been declared. Even if an emergency were declared, air marshals would only be permitted to assist other agencies with transportation-related matters.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The Biden administration has refused to call the record-high number of noncitizens being encountered at the border over the past 20 months a crisis. Border agents have encountered approximately 4 million people attempting to illegally enter the U.S. since Biden took office — more than the Obama administration’s eight years in office.

The TSA defended the operation in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner early Wednesday.

“Federal Air Marshals are performing law enforcement support to the mission at the southwest border,” according to a TSA spokesman. “The TSA Federal Air Marshal Service is a highly valued member of the DHS law enforcement team and has an ever-expanding role within DHS, working closely with other U.S. and international law enforcement agencies to safeguard the nation’s transportation systems.”

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Born again Cynic! Cops Darwin would of approved of this!

Sounds to me that like somebody needed killing

Person Of Interest In Custody After 4 Oklahoma Men Who Left Home To ‘Hit A Lick’ Were Found Shot And Dismembered

A person of interest is in custody after four men were found shot and dismembered in an Oklahoma river.

by Martie Bowser

The bodies of four men retrieved from an Oklahoma river have now been identified. According to CNN, Mark Chastain, 32; Billy Chastain, 30; Mike Sparks, 32; and Alex Stevens, 29, were recovered on Oct. 14 from a river in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. Their remains were found shot and dismembered.

According to BuzzFeed News, Okmulgee Police Chief Joe Prentice held a press conference in which he stated that the men were last seen leaving Billy Chastain’s house around 8 p.m. on bicycles “pulling trailers.” The men, whom police described as close friends, might have been up to no good when they went missing on Oct. 9.

Based on a witness’s information provided to the police, the victims planned to commit “some type of criminal act” when they left the house. The witness told investigators that the men were planning to “‘hit a lick’ big enough for all of them,” Prentice said, BuzzFeed News reports.

“That is common terminology for engaging in some type of criminal behavior, but we do not know what they were planning or where they planned to do it,” he said, according to CNN.

Although police were unsure what the men were planning to do, investigators were able to trace their movements to a salvage yard and a local gas station. They traced the men by using data provided by an app on Mark Chastain’s wife’s phone. The men left the station and then visited a second scrapyard located south of Okmulgee, and Chastain’s phone then turned off. Police said they believe a violent event on a nearby property led to the men’s deaths.

The four bodies were found on Oct. 14 after a passerby called the police about seeing something suspicious only partly submerged in the river.

Authorities identified human remains and recovered the men’s bodies. Due to the state of the remains, the bodies were not confirmed to belong to the missing men until Sunday night.

“I’ve worked over 80 murders in my career. I have worked murders involving multiple victims. I have worked dismemberments, but this case involves the highest number of victims, and it’s a very violent event,” Prentice said. “So I can’t say that I’ve never worked anything like it, but it’s right up there at the top.”

Prentice went on to reveal that the cause and manner of death is still pending, however each victim had gunshot wounds and all four bodies were dismembered before being dumped in the river.

“That is what caused difficulty in determining identity, and that’s why it took so long,”  Prentice said, according to BuzzFeed News.

The owner of the two salvage yards, Joe Kennedy, was named a person of interest in the killings, and went missing shortly after his initial interrogation. Investigators spoke with Kennedy on Oct. 14, when the men’s remains were discovered in a nearby river but were not yet positively identified.

Prentice said that Kennedy “appeared to be cooperative” and “was not antagonistic.”

Shortly after the announcement that the bodies had been identified, police located Kennedy’s vehicle but not Kennedy himself. His blue PT Cruiser was found abandoned in Morris, Oklahoma, and police were unsure how it arrived there.

On Oct. 18, Kennedy, 67, was arrested in Florida after driving a vehicle that was reported stolen on Monday. He was booked into Volusia County Branch Jail on charges of grand theft of a motor vehicle, where he is being held without bond. He’s also being held on a warrant from Okmulgee County related to a different shooting in 2012. Kennedy is set to appear before a Volusia County judge on Wednesday.

“The District Attorney and the Sheriff will begin the process of getting Kennedy back to Okmulgee County. … The murder investigation is ongoing and investigators continue to follow leads every day,” police said in a statement, according to CNN.Search underway for four missing men | Okmulgee Times—————————————————————————————-

The local Cops probably have a good clue on who did it. So they either have no proof or they figure that somebody did the world a good days work. Grumpy the Cynical

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All About Guns Cops Darwin would of approved of this!

Fucked around and found out the cost

I just love how compliant a person can become once you grant him his wish of “Shoot me, go ahead.” it’s like a magic bullet.

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Cops

SFPD authorized to kill suspects using robots in draft policy “This is not normal. No legal professional or ordinary resident should carry on as if it is normal.” by WILL JARRETT

A remote-controlled police robot used to disarm bombs. Image from Shutterstock.

A policy proposal heading for Board of Supervisors approval next week would explicitly authorize San Francisco police to kill suspects using robots.

The new policy, which defines how the SFPD is allowed to use its military-style weapons, was put together by the police department. Over the past several weeks, it has been scrutinized by supervisors Aaron Peskin, Rafael Mandelman and Connie Chan, who together comprise the Board of Supervisors Rules Committee.

The draft policy faces criticism from advocates for its language on robot force, as well as for excluding hundreds of assault rifles from its inventory of military-style weapons and for not including personnel costs in the price of its weapons.

Peskin, chair of the committee, initially attempted to limit the SFPD’s authority over the department’s robots by inserting the sentence, “Robots shall not be used as a Use of Force against any person.”

The following week, the police struck out his suggestion with a thick red line.

It was replaced by language that codifies the department’s authority to use lethal force via robots: “Robots will only be used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers are imminent and outweigh any other force option available to SFPD.”

This could mark a legal crossing of the Rubicon for the city: Robot use-of-force has never before been approved, nor has it ever been prohibited, in San Francisco. A version of this draft policy was unanimously accepted by the rules committee last week and will come before the full board on Nov. 29.

“The original policy they submitted was actually silent on whether robots could deploy lethal force,” said Peskin. He added that he decided to approve the SFPD’s caveated guidelines because the department had made the case that “there could be scenarios where deployment of lethal force was the only option.”

Advocates and lawyers who oppose the militarization of the police are less convinced.

“We are living in a dystopian future, where we debate whether the police may use robots to execute citizens without a trial, jury, or judge,” said Tifanei Moyer, senior staff attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. Moyer leads the organization’s work on police misconduct and militarization.

“This is not normal,” she wrote over email. “No legal professional or ordinary resident should carry on as if it is normal.”

Supervisors Rafael Mandelman, Aaron Peskin, and Connie Chan discuss the new policy. Screenshot via SFGOVTV.

The SFPD has 17 robots in its arsenal, 12 of which it describes as fully functional. According to police spokesperson Officer Robert Rueca, they have never been used to attack anyone. The robots are remote-controlled, and are typically used to investigate and defuse potential bombs or to surveil areas too awkward or dangerous for officers to access.

Uses defined in the new draft policy include “training and simulations, criminal apprehensions, critical incidents, exigent circumstances, executing a warrant or during suspicious device assessments.”

And, in extreme circumstances, they can be used to kill.

How are robots used lethally?

In 2016, the Dallas police force strapped plastic explosives to a robot and used it to blow up a sharpshooter who had killed five officers, in the first U.S. instance of a police robot killing a suspect. One of the SFPD’s robots, the Remotec F5A, is the same model as the one used by Dallas police.

More recently in Oakland, a policy on lethal robots came before the city’s police department’s civilian oversight council. One device they discussed was the PAN disruptor, a device that can be attached to a remote-controlled robot and uses a blank shotgun shell to disable a bomb by blasting it with pressurized water. Oakland police acknowledged that, in emergencies, they could arm it with live rounds. The SFPD also has multiple PAN disruptors that can be attached to robots and fire shotgun shells.

Last month, Oakland police ultimately backed down and removed language that would have allowed them to kill using robots. They said they hope to pursue the option in the future.

Rueca said that the San Francisco Police Department “does not have any sort of specific plan in place” for how lethal force would be applied with robots as “the unusually dangerous or spontaneous operations where SFPD’s need to deliver deadly force via robot would be a rare and exceptional circumstance.”

Why is this happening now?

Cities across California are currently drafting new policies on the use of military weapons by local police forces, thanks to a state law called AB 481, which passed last year. Figuring out the force options of robots is one small part of the law’s remit.

The law mandates that every police force in California must annually report its stock of all military-style weapons, their cost, how they can be used, and how they were deployed in the prior year. The law gives local authorities — in San Francisco’s case, the Board of Supervisors — the ability to annually reject or accept the rules governing how the weapons are used.

The Board will also be required to sign off on any new military-style equipment before purchase, although the police will be able to replace any existing equipment up to a value of $10 million without approval.

An SFPD bomb squad robot was deployed on Valencia Street in 2019. Photo by Abraham Rodriguez.

Most advocates opposed to the militarization of the police hail AB 481 as a step in the right direction for accountability and transparency. But concerns have been raised that some jurisdictions have not gone far enough in limiting how military-style weapons can be used.

Jennifer Tu, a fellow with the American Friends Service Committee, has been tracking how police departments across the state are implementing AB 481.

“My suspicion is that most policies will have left room for robots to use force,” said Tu. She said that it was her understanding that most departments have not mentioned robots at all, which means they are subject only to generic restrictions.

The ACLU has published advice on the use of robots by police, and notes that the limited situational awareness of robots, compared to in-person officers, make it more likely that force is “used inappropriately and/or on the wrong targets.”

“There is a really big difference between hurting someone right in front of you, and hurting someone via a video screen,” said Tu.

What else is in the draft policy?

Tu contended that, on top of the issue of robot force, there are other problems with San Francisco’s draft policy, as it currently stands.

In its initial submission, the SFPD omitted all of its 608 semi-automatic assault rifles, 64 machine guns, and 15 submachine guns from the new use-of-force policy. According to Peskin, these were added in when he pushed back on their omission. But in the department’s latest version, which is set to come before the supervisors next week, 375 of the semi-automatic assault rifles are missing again.

The rationale given for the removal of these assault rifles from the policy: The Chief of Police defines them as “standard-issue service weapons.”

Others disagree with that assessment. “We don’t see regular officers walking around with assault rifles,” said Allyssa Victory, staff attorney with the criminal justice program at the ACLU of Northern California (and recent Oakland mayoral hopeful). “Just writing a policy doesn’t make it so.”

Victory added that shotguns and handguns can be omitted because they are standard issue, according to AB 481, but no such exemption applies to assault rifles.

“The law defines ‘military weapons,’ not the chief of police,” wrote civil rights lawyer Moyer over email. “San Francisco is not the only department to attempt to redefine ‘military weapons’ so as to justify hiding their use, costs, and upkeep from the public.”

“If the law defined military weapons as bubble gum, then the police department would have to disclose their use of bubble gum,” she wrote.

Tu added, “I really think it is confusing to the public if we don’t have those assault weapons reported.” Their omission would mean that in future annual reports, the police would not need to declare how the guns had been used or who had been injured by them.

Another point of contention with advocates is that the SFPD has not included personnel training or maintenance times in their valuation of the cost of their military-style weapons. This appears to be required by AB 481, which states that costs must include “acquisition, personnel, training, transportation, maintenance, storage, upgrade, and other ongoing costs” of the weapons.

But the SFPD rejected a suggestion from the American Friends Service Committee to include personnel costs. The department said that maintenance and training occur during normal work hours, and that their human resources management system cannot track different types of work done by officers, so “there is no compelling reason to track in the suggested manner.”

It remains to be seen if the policy, as it stands, will be approved by the Board of Supervisors, and what limitations will ultimately be placed on the police department’s military-style weapons, including its robots. And, once the rules are settled, the process will begin again with the Sheriff’s Department, which will need to create its own policy to stay in compliance with AB 481.

“The great news about this thing is that it can be evolved,” said Peskin, adding that policy must be scrutinized and approved every year if the SFPD wants to keep using its weapons.

“And I think we are starting off in a good place.”

This policy will be discussed at the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday November 29. The meeting starts at 2 p.m. and the police equipment policy is agenda item 28. More details can be found in the full meeting agenda.

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Cops You have to be kidding, right!?!

Eviction battle leads to SWORD attack, fatal shooting in California By Bob D’Angelo

VALLEJO, Calif. — Two people were arrested on suspicion of murder in the death of a fellow squatter who was shot and killed by a California property owner, authorities said. The property owner was impaled by a sword during the confrontation.

“He came banging on my door with a sword sticking through him,” Patrick McMillan, a tenant who lives in a mobile home on the property, told the Chronicle. McMillan told the newspaper that Lind was his landlord and best friend.

The names of the suspects and the person who died were not released, KTVU reported. The Solano County District Attorney’s Office will determine whether to file formal murder charges, according to the television station.

One of the people shot, a 31-year-old Vallejo resident, died at the scene, according to the Chronicle. The other person, who is 27, was taken to an area hospital, along with Lind. Both were in critical condition, police said.

The confrontation apparently was the result of an eviction battle that had recently intensified, the newspaper reported. For years, Lind had been attempting to evict a group of people whom his family claimed were not paying the rent, KTVU reported. Lind had bought the property, placing 20-foot trailers and shipping containers on the land so he could rent them to people who were unable to afford the cost of housing in Vallejo, McMillan told the Chronicle. Lind also lived on the property.

McMillan told the newspaper that he believed deputies with the Solano County Sheriff’s Office were going to remove several people from the property on Tuesday, and that was what led to the incident.

“A big part of this problem was this moratorium on rent, COVID,” Lind’s son, Carl Lind, told KTVU. “People took advantage of it.”

The group that Curt Lind was attempting to evict lived in a cluster of trailer trucks, McMillan told the Chronicle. Initially, they paid rent but stopped paying during the pandemic.

“He had an agreement that they were going to fix up their vehicles, and then they were going to leave,” Curt Lind’s daughter, Dina Morrill, told the newspaper in a telephone interview on Wednesday.”

“The truth is, they jumped him,” Carl Lind told KTVU.

At some point, McMillan said the property owner opened fire with a gun.

“After they attacked him he got his gun out and shot two of them, killed one of them. The other one had three shots to the chest,” McMillan told the television station.

“(Lind) had a samurai sword stuck to his back with about a foot of it sticking out in front, his face cut up all over,” McMillan told KTVU.

Curt Lind was conscious but still in severe pain, Morrill said Wednesday. He also has a tube in his chest and numerous staples and stitches on his face and back, the Chronicle reported.

She has set up a GoFundMe page to assist with his medical bills.

“My dad always thinks the best of people, and unfortunately some people take advantage of that,” Morrill told the Chronicle. “What he thought was a good idea turned into a nightmare.”

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All About Guns Anti Civil Rights ideas & "Friends" Cops

Travel Update: TSA Guidelines Changed

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All About Guns Anti Civil Rights ideas & "Friends" Born again Cynic! Cops Gun Fearing Wussies

City knew for years about lead concerns at shooting range, but did little to warn workers of danger By Allyson Blair

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Gun owners on Oahu are still without a public range as a probe into possible lead contamination at Koko Head Shooting Complex continues ― and new details emerge about what the city knew.

Two months ago, the range closed abruptly after tests showed nearly everyone who worked there had elevated lead levels. Hawaii News Now has learned it’s not the first time range staff were found to have a concerning amount of lead in their blood, and that the city was informed of the issue.

Reports and interviews revealed the Honolulu Department of Parks and Recreation did little to protect its workers or educate them about potential hazards at the shooting range.

‘It wasn’t anything serious’

Former range employee Chris Wong said the concerns about lead at the range date back years.

Wong has been shooting for more than three decades, including competitively.

“I have a love for the sport. I believe it’s a right for everyone to be able to have their firearm,” he said. “And I wanted to be involved in the safety aspect of it.”

It’s what inspired the former Kalihi Valley Neighborhood Board chairman to become a firearms instructor. And in 2013, he started working part-time as a range officer at the Koko Head Shooting Complex.

Two years later, Wong says his boss told him he might want to see a doctor.

“I was notified by a co-worker ― my supervisor at the time ― that his lead levels were elevated. So he suggested I go get checked. And when I checked they were elevated,” Wong said.

RELATED: Oahu’s only public shooting range closed indefinitely as probe into possible lead contamination begins

He says he was kind of shocked “because I do take precautions.”

Although Wong says he never experienced symptoms, it took one year for his lead levels to get back to normal. Not long after getting those initial test results, Wong got another job with the city.

But before he left, Wong said, “I did notify verbally some of the people in Parks and Recs.”

When asked how the Department of Parks and Recreation responded, “It was almost like, ‘Well, good thing you’re transferring.’ That’s it. It wasn’t anything serious.”

It’s unclear what if anything was done with the information about Wong’s health.

When Hawaii News Now asked the city how many former Koko Head Shooting Complex employees had elevated lead level, a spokesperson responded via email “to the best of our knowledge” there was only “one” prior to 2022.

City waited weeks to confirm lead concerns

It’s an issue the Department of Parks and Recreation wasn’t initially forthcoming about.

In mid-September, officials abruptly closed the complex two weeks ahead of a planned berm renovation project.

A city news release cited a staffing shortage but failed to mention the closure was due to the majority its employees having elevated levels of lead in their blood.

After a month and a half of questioning, parks officials finally admitted nine out of 10 staff who were tested had lead levels above the normal range.

HNN has since learned the city has been aware of lead contamination at the range for at least 20 years.

A 2001 report showed extreme levels of lead pollution at the rifle, pistol, silhouette, trap skeet and SWAT ranges. Of the 20 soil samples taken, 15 tested above state regulatory guidelines.

[Read the 2001 report on lead levels at the shooting range by clicking here.]

To give you an idea how toxic it was, the report showed four of those samples contained about 100 times more lead than what the state considers safe for a residential area.

Eight years later, in a separate memo, the state Department of Health outlined seven recommendations the city could implement to reduce potential lead exposures.

Those measures included posting signs, advising everyone at the facility to wash their hands frequently, and to avoid eating and drinking while at the range.

But of the seven recommendations the state Health Department made, the city Parks Department only fully followed through with two of them. Those include posting warning signs to alert nearby hikers of the active range and providing dust protection to workers tasked with disturbing potentially contaminated soil during clean-ups.

Health officials also advised the city to keep its berms “well-maintained” to reduce the creation of fine lead particles.

Over the past two decades, the city says it’s encapsulated the backstop just once ― back in 2014.

The same year the Parks Department confirms a former range worker was diagnosed with elevated lead levels.

In 2020, the City also conducted a cleanup of the range firing line, utilizing a consultant expert in the field of environmental hazard construction remediation.

Range closed indefinitely

Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi told Hawaii News Now there’s no timeline for reopening the range.

“We’re not going to let people back there unless it’s safe,” he said.

He added:

“I don’t know when it’s going to reopen to be honest with you. There’s a lot that has to go into that because that had been going on for a long time with respect to use of the range and what was compiled there and what has to be cleaned up.”

Wong, the former range officer, said he has no interest in suing the city but chose to speak out because he wants to see the lead issue abated and the public park reopened as soon as possible.

He said it’s not right to permanently close Oahu’s only public range for reasons that could have been prevented.

“To have the range shut down, it’s an infringement of rights,” Wong said.

The city did confirm it has hired necessary the environmental consultants.

“We are awaiting the recommendations from the above-mentioned consultant before proceeding with the berm renovation project,” the city said, in a statement.

“We understand the environmental concerns of the neighboring community, and also recognize the shooting complex’s importance to the local firearms community, as this location is the only public shooting range on Oahu. We appreciate their patience while we work with these advisors to make necessary improvements to ensure the shooting complex can once again operate safely upon its reopening.”

Meanwhile, city officials say all Koko Head Shooting Complex workers have been reassigned to work at other parks.

Health officials say casual range users shouldn’t worry too much about lead exposure if they follow safety guidelines.

Those include:

  • Washing your hands and face with soap and water after shooting.
  • Changing clothes before you leave the range.
  • And washing those items separately from everything else.

It’s also advised not to eat, drink or smoke while shooting.

IN FULL:
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All About Guns Anti Civil Rights ideas & "Friends" Cops

How to Transport NFA Items Across State Lines

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All About Guns Cops

The Professional Assassination of Marielle Franco: Truly Bad Cops by WILL DABBS

Juarez, Mexico, is just across the border from El Paso, Texas. However, Juarez is as different from El Paso as Des Moines is from the moon.

I have a friend with more testosterone than sense. He and a college buddy found themselves on the Mexican border during Spring Break several years ago with some spending money and a little time. They were young, bulletproof, and immortal, so they figured they’d wander over and spend the day exploring Juarez on foot.

Once you get off the beaten path places like Juarez can become legitimately unsettling.

These two pale gringos were having a simply grand time taking in the sights. However, in short order, they got lost. These were the days before ubiquitous GPS-equipped cell phones, so they really were on their own. Soon they found themselves in a bad neighborhood with the locals looking at them all hungry-like.

This Mexican cop is on duty during the Dia de las Muertos or Day of the Dead celebration. Maybe our cops should try something similar the next time they have to face off against Antifa here in the US. That guy is just unsettling.

Just when things seemed bleakest these two stupid American college kids happened upon a pair of uniformed Mexican police officers and innocently attempted to ask directions. In response, the two Mexican cops drew their weapons and robbed the young men of all their accumulated possessions.

In some parts of the world, human life is incredibly cheap. In 2010 Juarez, Mexico, saw more than 3,600 murders. This unfortunate slob was one of them.

You didn’t need a passport to travel to Mexico back then, so they did eventually get back over the border. However, they lost their wallets, watches, and everything else of value they had on their persons. This was their rude introduction to the realities of police corruption in a Third-World country.

Relativity

It’s woke to hate the cops these days. However, like most artificially put-upon Americans, we really have no clue how bad it is in the rest of the world.

It is in vogue to denigrate and even assault the police in America these days. Quite a few politicians have built successful careers around the practice. However, we have no idea what truly bad police really look like. In America, if you get in trouble with precious few exceptions you can call 911 and some selfless guardian with a gun will show up to help you out. The rare exceptions get all the press, but when the zombies start staggering up the cul-de-sac even the most ardent police-bashing anarchist will eventually pick up the phone.

The favelas of Rio de Janeiro are hellholes of drugs and violence.

Today’s sordid episode gives us a glimpse into the dark realities of life in the favelas, the sprawling lawless slums of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In these strange spaces, drug cartel foot soldiers openly packing automatic weapons patrol the streets around police stations. The militarized police force conducts massive armed operations, but shadow organizations of current and former cops engage in extra-judicial killings at the behest of powerful figures both inside and outside of government. It is suspected that this corruption infects the Brazilian government at all levels.

The Target

This is Marielle Franco. There is likely not a single ideological position upon which she and I might completely agree. However, this lady laid it on the line for what she believed.

Marielle Franco was born in the summer of 1979 in Mare, a slum area in Northern Rio de Janeiro. She began working to help support her family at age eleven. She had a daughter at age 19 and raised the child as a single mother. Franco was openly bisexual and lived with her partner Monica Benicio from 2017 until her death.

Once Marielle Franco started speaking out about police corruption she put a target on her back.

Franco held a Master’s degree in public administration and was an avowed socialist. Her resume included qualifications as a sociologist, feminist, and human rights activist. In 2016 she won a seat on the Rio de Janeiro city council. She used her political pulpit to speak out vociferously against police corruption. This made her some very dangerous enemies.

The Setting

These Brazilian thugs are about typical of the species.

Crime in urbanized Brazil is so extensive as to be difficult for the civilized mind to comprehend. Many to most of the refugees flowing toward our southern border are fleeing such sordid stuff as this. In the face of well-funded and ruthless gangs driven by drugs, murder, and rampant unfettered lawlessness, many police organizations exceed their official mandate. It’s like a bad movie.

Lots of folks die at the hands of the cops in Rio’s favelas. In their defense, their typical beat looks more like Mogadishu than Mayberry. This dude in the yellow shirt doesn’t seem unduly inconvenienced.

Even if they originally meant well, absolute power corrupts absolutely. In the favelas of Rio, that means shadowy milicias comprised of trained law enforcement officers who undertake extrajudicial killings without due process. While many times this means dead bad guys, it also results in substantial collateral damage as well. In darker spaces, it also means that political activists are targeted for termination based upon their cultural and social influence.

The Hit

Franco’s frustrated pronouncement on social media turned out to be darkly prescient.

On March 13, 2018, Marielle Franco posted this to Twitter, “Another homicide of a young man that could be credited to the police. Matheus Melo was leaving church when he was killed. How many others will have to die for this war to end?”

The shooters in the Marielle Franco hit chose a nondescript Chevy Cobalt sedan like this one for the operation.

The following day Franco and her driver Anderson Pedro Gomes were returning home from a round table discussion titled, “Young Black Women Moving (Power) Structures.” This event promoted the empowerment of black women in impoverished Brazil. Ms. Franco’s press officer was also in the back seat. From out of the traffic a Chevy Cobalt pulled stealthily up alongside.

The HK MP5 submachine gun is a formidable close-range weapon.

The passenger in the Cobalt then produced an HK MP5 submachine gun and fired a total of nine rounds in controlled bursts. Four bullets hit Franco—three in the head and one in the neck. She died on the scene. Her driver was struck by three rounds and was also killed. Her press secretary was injured but survived.

Details

Movies tell us that the world is covered with a thin patina of deadly trained assassins ready to gank anybody on the planet for a buck. Reality is not quite like that. Mind that trigger finger, stud.

Movies would have us believe that highly-trained hitmen accepting contracts from anonymous clients online have raised assassination for money to an art form. Reality is typically far removed from this stylized image. In many places, criminals will kill in exchange for drugs or even the right to pilfer the pockets of the deceased. In the case of Marielle Franco, however, this job truly was professionally executed.

This is the location of the Marielle Franco hit. The shooter team in this case was efficient, professional, and slick.

The kill zone was a city street amply covered with surveillance cameras. However, somebody with the skill and access to do so had deactivated the cameras covering the area at the precise moment of the hit. The cartridge cases recovered at the scene were traced to a shipment sent to Brasilia’s federal police force in 2006. Police officials initially alleged that the shipment had been stolen from a local post office though they later retracted this claim.

Roller-locked HK firearms sport fluted chambers that leave these distinctive ridges along the sides of spent cases.

The HK MP5 submachine gun incorporates a fluted chamber to smooth extraction and enhance reliability. As a result, fired cases from an MP5, or any roller-locked HK firearms for that matter, demonstrate distinctive longitudinal lines. No other military weapon in common use marks its empties in this manner. This identified the murder gun as a fairly rarefied piece of iron.

The Weapon

The German MG34 belt-fed light machine-gun was likely the most revolutionary military small arm of its day.

The HK MP5 traces its roots all the way back to the Second World War and the German MG42 belt-fed machinegun. The previous MG34 had revolutionized Infantry combat. For the first time maneuver elements were afforded truly man-portable, rifle-caliber, belt-fed firepower mobile enough to keep pace during an Infantry assault. However, the MG34 was meticulously machined with tight tolerances. This made the gun heavy, expensive, and finicky.

The wartime German MG42 inspired generations of follow-on weapons.

The MG42, by contrast, was formed predominantly out of stamped steel pressings that could be churned out cheaply by semi-skilled workers. The beating heart of the MG42 was its roller-locked, delayed-blowback action. This system utilized a pair of roller bearings that cammed into recesses milled into the breech face. The end result was cheap, rugged, and reliable.

The StG 44 rifle issued at the end of World War 2 changed the way the world made weapons.
The StG 45 was still in the developmental stage when the war ended.

In the closing days of WW2, the Germans adapted this system to drive a prototype assault rifle. The StG 45 was an evolutionary development of the StG 44 and used the roller-locked system to fire the 7.92x33mm Kurz intermediate cartridge. Allied forces overran the arms factories where these guns were being developed, but the design was subsequently taken to Spain.

The Spanish CETME shown here evolved into the familiar HK G3 battle rifle.

This effort resulted in the Spanish CETME rifle that eventually morphed into the German HK G3. This same action was rechambered for the 5.56mm, the 7.62x39mm, and, in 1964, the 9mm pistol cartridge. This pistol caliber SMG was originally designated the HK54. It eventually became known as the MP5.

This British cop is shown on a security detail in London. Pistol-caliber submachine guns are common police weapons in Europe.

The MP5 was first issued to German border police in 1966. It has since been produced under license around the world in more than 100 different variations and remains in series production today. Though its 800 rpm rate of fire is a bit spunky for my tastes, the MP5 remains one of the smoothest submachineguns ever produced. The takedown of the Iranian embassy in London on May 5, 1980, by the British SAS wielding HK MP5 SMGs on international television, sold untold thousands of the guns to military and LE users around the globe.

The Aftermath

Some of these rogue Brazilian cops are flat-out terrifying.

Brazilian police investigated Ronald Paulo Alves Pereira and Adriano Magalhães da Nóbrega in connection with the killings. Both men had been honored by Jair Bolsonaro, the current President of Brazil, for their police service in the early 2000s. Nóbrega purportedly headed one of these extrajudicial paramilitary groups active in Brazil called “The Crime Bureau.” He was shot to death after supposedly firing upon police who came to arrest him in northeastern Bahia state. Whatever secrets he held went with him to the grave.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (center) turned out to have a tenuous connection to the Marielle Franco hit team.

Brazilian police also arrested Ronnie Lessa and Elcio Vieira de Queiroz roughly a year after the shooting. Lessa was purportedly the triggerman, while de Queiroz was alleged to have driven the Cobalt. Both men were former members of the military police. One was also a previous neighbor of current Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in a gated luxury apartment complex in Rio. Both Lessa and de Queiroz denied involvement.

Some in Brazilian Law Enforcement are known to play both sides of the fence.

I read quite a lot about this sordid situation pulling this article together and still don’t even begin to understand it. Allegations of corruption run all the way up to the Presidency. Various players served together in either the military or elite Law Enforcement units and seem connected in ways that are impossible to untangle. However, the take-home point is that today’s American institutional Law Enforcement challenges pale in the face of true corruption.

This rather intense Brazilian cop packs a dead goat head as part of his web gear. Wow.
Categories
All About Guns Cops

Commentary: Faulty FBI Data Obscures Successful Defensive Gun Use

by John R. Lott Jr.

 

With crime such an important issue, Americans depend on the FBI for accurate data. The crime data for 2021 is a mess, with almost 40% of law enforcement agencies around the country not submitting any data to the FBI. In California, 93% didn’t report crime data. In New York, 87% didn’t. Cities are embarrassed by the soaring crime rates, and even when they have collected the data they aren’t transmitting those numbers to the FBI.

But many more data errors are the direct responsibility of the FBI. Up until January of last year, I worked in the U.S. Department of Justice as the senior advisor for research and statistics, and part of my job was to evaluate the FBI’s active shooting reports. I found that they were missing lots of cases and had misidentified others. Unfortunately, the FBI was unwilling to fix any of these errors. Since leaving that job, I have found many more missed cases, updating the list this month.

Nor was that the first time I pointed out such errors to the FBI, and I published a list of them in a criminology publication in 2015.

These news reports relied on a series of FBI reports on active shootings put together by researchers at Texas State University.

The FBI reports that armed citizens stopped only 11 of the 252 active shooter incidents that it identified for the period 2014-2021. The FBI defines active shooter incidents as those in which an individual actively kills or attempts to kill people in a populated, public area. But it does not include shootings that are deemed related to other criminal activity, such as robbery or fighting over drug turf. Active shootings may involve just one shot being fired at just one target, even if the target isn’t hit.

To compile its list, the FBI hired academics at the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University. Police departments don’t collect data, so the researchers had to find news stories about these incidents.

My organization, the Crime Prevention Research Center, also undertook a search for news stories. The CPRC discovered a total of 360 active shooter incidents from 2014 to 2021, and it found that an armed citizen stopped 124 of these. I also found that the FBI had misidentified five cases, usually because the person who stopped the attack was incorrectly identified as a security guard. We found these cases on a tiny budget of just a few thousand dollars. Though we found that armed citizens had stopped 11 times more cases than the FBI reports, I make no claim that we have identified all of them. It is quite possible that the news media itself never covers many such incidents.

But no one needs to take my word for it that the FBI missed many cases. All of the news stories that my team collected are listed on the CPRC website.

While the FBI claims that just 4.4% of active shootings were stopped by law-abiding citizens carrying guns, the percentage that I found was 34%. I am more confident that we have identified a higher percentage of recent cases, and the percentage in 2021 was even higher – 49%.

The FBI doesn’t differentiate between law-abiding citizens stopping attacks where guns are banned and where they are allowed, but you can’t really expect law-abiding citizens to stop attacks where it is illegal to carry guns. In places where law-abiding citizens are allowed to carry firearms, the percentage of active shootings stopped is above 50% for the whole period. And, again, we are more confident that we have more of the cases in recent years. The figure hits 58% in 2021.

In order to follow the FBI’s definition, I also had to exclude 24 cases because a law-abiding person with a gun stopped the attacker before he was able to get off a shot.

But there is a more basic problem in the reliance on news coverage to determine whether an active shooting was stopped by an armed civilian. The news media has a clear bias to cover cases where bad things happen over cases where bad things are prevented. The old adage is: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Killings are usually more newsworthy than woundings, and woundings more notable than confrontations defused simply by someone brandishing a gun.

As an example, I examined news stories of defensive gun use data from Jan. 1 to Aug. 10 of this year, and found 774 defensive gun uses, fully 85% involving people shot: 43% resulting in death and 42% in wounding. Less than 4% of cases involved no shots fired. But survey data indicate that in 95% of cases when people use guns defensively, they merely show the gun to make the criminal back off. Such defensive gun uses rarely make the news.

The problem is that the FBI numbers are used by academics who do research and by the media. To see how the FBI reports alter news coverage, see the July 17 Greenwood Mall shooting near Indianapolis, where a young man, Elisjsha Dicken, used his legally carried gun to stop what clearly would have been a horrible mass public shooting. The news coverage immediately relied on the FBI and Texas State University reports to tell people Dicken’s heroism was very unusual.

“Making Dicken’s heroism perhaps even more remarkable is the fact cases of an armed bystander attacking an active shooter are rare,” CNN noted two days after the attack. “The Greenwood incident is unique, however, because it became one of the rare instances of an armed civilian successfully intervening to end a mass shooting,” claimed the Washington Post the day after the attack. But what is really rare is the news coverage of these attacks. Few know that there were at least six other similar likely mass public shootings that armed civilians stopped in the first nine months of this year.

It is hard to ignore how all of this feeds into the gun control debate. Nor can one forget about the charges of political bias leveled by whistleblowers in the FBI.

The FBI is systematically missing defensive gun uses. And it has failed to fix these errors, even when I have pointed them out. Considering how often the media cites the FBI as an authoritative source, this institution needs to do better.

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John R. Lott Jr. is a contributor to RealClearInvestigations, focusing on voting and gun rights. His articles have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, USA Today, and Chicago Tribune. Lott is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice.
Photo “FBI Building” by Ken Lund. CC BY-SA 2.0.