Category: Cops
PITTSBURGH – The parents of a Pennsylvania 13-year-old accused of shooting and killing his 5-year-old brother in November are now facing charges themselves.
Sara Gerwig and Thomas Wolfe are each charged with endangering the welfare of a child following the death of Connor Wolfe in Penn Hills on Nov. 22, according to a criminal complaint the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office provided Tuesday to Fox News Digital.
“What happened in Penn Hills was an intentional act that resulted in the tragic death of a 5-year-old,” the Attorney’s Office said earlier this month. “The 13-year-old was charged as an adult because Pennsylvania law does not permit a charge of criminal homicide to be filed directly in juvenile court.”
The suspect, who is also facing a charge of possession of a firearm by a minor, told investigators he had shot Connor Wolfe after getting angry at his siblings for jumping on a bed inside their home, WTAE reports.
The teen said he went into his father’s bedroom to get his father’s firearm in order to scare his siblings, the station added. But when the 13-year-old pointed the gun at Wolfe and pulled the trigger, he said he believed the safety was on, according to WTAE.
Wolfe was struck in the head and later died at a local hospital.
The criminal complaint obtained by Fox News Digital states that the teenager told investigators that the gun used in the shooting was “left out in the master bedroom” and that “he knew the handgun was there, because Thomas Wolfe always leaves his handgun out.”
“While interviewing Thomas Wolfe and Sara Gerwig separately, Thomas admitted that he left his handgun on top of his gun safe in their 1st floor master bedroom. Thomas stated that the handgun is always loaded, with a live round in the chamber,” the complaint continued. “Thomas uses the handgun as his every day carry gun, when he leaves the house.”
“Sara stated that she saw the handgun sitting on top of the safe since Saturday November 20th, 2021,” days prior to the shooting, the complaint also said.
Read more of this story on FOX News.
U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- Gun turn-in events, labeled with the Orwellian term “buyback” are making a small comeback in the United States. Most of them are occurring in states where private sales are not allowed by law. They are not occurring in states which require the valuable property to be sold for the public’s benefit.
Illinois has a version of the law that requires private sales to go through the state website, identify the purchaser of the firearms with a Firearms Owner Identification (FOID), and be assigned an approval number. This eliminates privacy from private sales. It becomes unworkable for private purchasers to buy guns legally at gun turn-in events.
At the Evanston, Illinois event, 53 guns were turned in on December 4, 2021. From wgntv.com:
EVANSTON, Ill. — Evanston police held a gun buyback event on Saturday, just days after a shooting left four people wounded and one dead.
“It gets the guns off the street. Whether it’s one gun or five, today we had 53. It gets the guns off the street,” interim police chief Aretha Barnes said.
Today, citizens were given $100 for each gun and $25 for ammunition. The gun buyback began nine years ago.
“I’m a lifetime 5th Ward Evanston resident and I was concerned about the gun violence I was experiencing in the neighborhood, so I was planning to do a gun buyback,” organizer Carolyn Murray said.
The best academic study of these events shows they do not reduce homicide, gun crimes, or suicide. There is a small but statistically significant increase in crimes committed with guns in the two months after the event.
These events are propaganda, street theater, virtue signaling; they are symbolic, not pragmatic.
They are meant to send the message: Guns are bad. Turn them into the Police.
Eight of the 53 guns shown as turned in at the Evanston event were BB guns, CO2 guns, or spring-powered air guns. Presumably, the people who turned them in received $100 for each of them.
Private purchasers at gun turn-in events eliminate the propaganda value of these events. They show the opposite message:
Guns are good. We pay cash.
Private purchasers buy guns that are worth more than what the organizers of the event are willing to pay. It is a way for ignorant owners of guns, who want them out of their house, to get a closer approximation of what the gun is worth.
An original military-stocked 1903 Springfield rifle may have been turned in at the event (upper right corner). It could be worth several hundred dollars to a collector. Several other firearms worth hundreds of dollars each were turned in. They include what appear to be Glock handguns, a Remington model 11 shotgun, a pair of antique 7-shot .22 revolvers, a near-new .22 lever action rifle, and others.
If the motive of the organizers were to “get guns off the street”, they would welcome private purchasers. Private purchasers would stretch their money, moving guns from unwanted hands into the hands of responsible owners.
There was no indication of private buyers at the Evanston event. It appears the Illinois law worked to prevent private sales.
Ideally, the organizers of these events would sell the guns they obtain in ordinary commercial channels, then use the money to buy more guns from people who do not want them.
Moving guns from unwanted hands into responsible hands is not the intent. Destruction of the valuable property appears to meet an emotional need. Organizers want to shift responsibility for bad events from people to inanimate objects.
When faced with the option of selling the guns or not having a turn-in “buyback” event, organizers choose not to have the event.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
I had coffee recently with a friend of mine, a retired FBI agent. We were talking about the mess the FBI has become. He’s even more disturbed about the politicization of the bureau than I am. During our talk he said something very interesting: “Current agents are just keeping their heads down and following orders.” A simple statement with profound implications.
Jobs in law enforcement are fundamentally different than other jobs. That difference is the oath that all law enforcement officers swear. The FBI oath states:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
All federal, state, and local law enforcement officials swear something similar.
Certainly, following lawful orders is important, but notice that there is nothing mentioned about obedience to leadership. That’s because following orders is between the officers and their leaders. Upholding their oath is between them and us, the American people. We expect them to make judgements about right and wrong, and the oath is their assurance that they will do so conscientiously.
Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/12/does_a_law_enforcement_oath_mean_anything_anymore.html#ixzz7G2VS6tPw
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All law enforcement officers, including FBI agents, who are “just following orders” are missing the point of their oath. They may be bound by agency rules to follow orders, but they are bound by sacred honor to remain faithful to the American people.
There’s a reason why people in law enforcement are required to place their honor on the line for the citizens they serve. No other occupation is allowed to detain, sometimes with restraints, another person solely based on their word that it’s justified. A cop can pull over a car, administer a sobriety test, handcuff the driver, and arrest him if he’s found to be impaired. No citizen who has not sworn the oath can do such a thing.
We grant the police the awesome powers of the state. In exchange, they promise to not abuse those powers. They promise to serve the public, as prescribed in the Constitution. That promise takes precedence over orders. So long as their leadership directs their activities consistent with the Constitution, there’s no problem. But when leadership directs them to do something counter to the Constitution — like ordering them to violate someone’s civil liberties — such orders are unlawful. An officer’s oath, whether he be a police officer or an FBI agent, is a promise to assess the constitutionality of all orders before blindly obeying them.
And yet we’ve seen widespread infractions of that promise across the range of law enforcement. Churchgoers have been cited or even arrested for failing to comply with closure orders. Worship is a basic human right guaranteed by the 1st Amendment. There is no pandemic exception in the Constitution. Federal and local officials have no authority to order such closures. Orders for police to enforce the closures were unlawful. Yet, far too many cops simply followed their orders.
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” has been affirmed by the courts to include property rights. No government official can take or lower the value of your property without due process and appropriate compensation. Yet some businesses have been ordered closed, rendering them worthless. Police have been charged with enforcing the closures, and they’ve done it. An untold number of American citizens have lost their businesses and even their life savings, simply because the police “followed orders.”
Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/12/does_a_law_enforcement_oath_mean_anything_anymore.html#ixzz7G2VFhyeL
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The FBI has dispatched agents to identify and question anyone in attendance at the January 6 protest — ostensibly to identify the person who placed bombs outside the DNC and RNC headquarter buildings. However, there are no reports that everyone in the surrounding neighborhoods have been questioned. Why are peaceful protesters presumed to have seen something just because they were in the same city on the same day? Have members of Congress been questioned? They were in the city too. Are the agents really investigating? Or are they just letting the protesters know: We know you were there. To have agents show up at one’s door has the effect of chilling freedom of assembly and political expression — a 1st Amendment violation. We don’t know how many agents have refused to comply, but we know that a great many have not refused.
Project Veritas has been in the news lately because the FBI raided the homes of its leader, James O’Keefe, and a number his reporters. The FBI even seized working documents, and is alleged to have leaked them to other news agencies. That is also a 1st Amendment violation. The courts have interceded to constrain the FBI, but it should have been stopped by the agents before it even happened.
Parents have been arrested for protesting at school-board meetings. The arresting officers weren’t even responding to the orders of their superiors. They were complying with a request from the school board itself. So now a private citizen can demand that another private citizen be arrested for saying something they don’t like, and the police comply without even questioning it? As disturbing as that is, it gets even worse. The FBI has created “tags” in its tracking database to track this constitutional behavior as possible instances of domestic terrorism. That is a violation of citizens’ rights to free speech, assembly, and due process — the 1st and 4th Amendments.
We have even observed the FBI interfering in the peaceful transition of power following an election. Crossfire Hurricane was the FBI’s “insurance policy” against a Trump presidency. That’s not my terminology. “Insurance policy” is the term Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok used to describe his plan to use the power of the FBI to prevent Trump from being elected, and to interfere with his administration if he was elected anyway. That plot was confirmed by FBI lawyer Lisa Page in sworn congressional testimony. It was a blatant attempt by our “public servants” to prevent an electoral outcome they found undesirable — and reverse the election if it didn’t go the way they wanted it to.
Compliance with an officer’s oath can involve personal risk. To refuse an order from one’s superior carries the risk of seriously damaging — or even ending — an officer’s career. But the thing is, they’ve already promised us that they would make that sacrifice on our behalf. That’s the deal they strike with the public to be in law enforcement.
If their oath no longer binds them, how does that change our relationship with law enforcement? If their sworn word no longer means what it says, how can we believe them the next time they swear to tell the “truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” in court? When an officer assures us that they made an arrest for sound reasons, are they standing for justice, or using their authority for personal or political gain? If their oath is meaningless, they become no more credible than the person they’ve placed under arrest.
Far too many law-enforcement officers, FBI agents included, have demonstrated that they are no longer agents of the Constitution. At best, they’re just employees doing as told. Their oath has become an irrelevant formality. Given that, why should we continue to vest them with the authority of the state? For one reason, and one reason only, it’s a dangerous world. We need police organizations to maintain order. But we need them to be better than they have been, so that order does not become tyranny.
John Green is a political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He currently writes at the American Free News Network (afnn.us). He can be followed on Facebook or reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
Image: US Marshals Office of Public Affairs
Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/12/does_a_law_enforcement_oath_mean_anything_anymore.html#ixzz7G2V1OGyZ
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We routinely hear American anti-gun cities and states blame neighboring states for their own gun issues. Chicago, in particular, is notorious for trying to blame Indiana for their violence without ever explaining how Indiana isn’t a lot more violent.
Yet when you look at somewhere like the United Kingdom, you have to wonder where those guns are coming from. After all, they’re an island. Further, all the nations that have easy access to them also have very strict gun control laws in place. It’s not like Scotland is a gun rights paradise and criminals are just driving south with a trunkload (or should I say “bootload”?) of guns.
No, they get them some other way.
The sentencing of a UK man who was involved in smuggling guns and drugs provides some indication of just how British bad guys get their guns.
A man who fled the UK after drugs and guns were found at his house has been jailed for 14 years.
Police searched the house of Marius Supelis after a van had been stopped at the French border with guns and ammunition hidden inside, along with a TV and music speaker.
The van driver had told border officials that the items were due to be delivered to the home of Supelis who lived in Ollard Avenue in Wisbech.
When UK border force stopped the van and x-rayed its contents, they found a laundry bag with guns stashed inside.
Three handguns were also found on a makeshift shelf in the top of a boom box music speaker, held in place by three screws.
…
The guns had been adapted to fire live ammunition and the bullets found in his bedroom were identical to those seized from the delivery van.
See, this is something I’ve seen before.
Apparently, one common tactic of British criminals is to adapt non-functional replicas of firearms into fully-functional weapons. I don’t know just how common it is, but I’ve run across several different mentions of this being used to arm British criminals.
Now, let’s take a step back for a moment and look at this.
These people are surrounded by nations that have very strict gun laws, laws meant to disarm people like them and they know it. So what do they do? Anything they can to arm themselves. If they’re not using backyard-built firearms, they’re adapting lawful and inoperable guns into working models instead.
Let this stand as a reminder, folks. Criminals will get guns no matter what laws you put in place. The only thing gun laws do is inhibit the law-abiding citizen who has done nothing wrong, nothing to warrant being disarmed. The UK flipped out after a mass shooting and issued wholesale gun confiscation. So what did criminals do? What they always do. They ignored all the laws and continue to get guns regardless.
Meanwhile, the average British person is powerless to respond to the threats that present themselves. They’re not even allowed to carry pocket knives anymore, for crying out loud. What are they going to do against a bad guy who has a gun?
And this should illustrate that such a thing is a very real possibility.
Would-be thieves find out too late they’ve broken into wrong house.
‘It kind of goes back to your rights. I have the right to carry, and I have the right to protect myself, and I have the right to protect my property.’
Would-be thieves find out too late they’ve broken into wrong house.
‘It kind of goes back to your rights. I have the right to carry, and I have the right to protect myself, and I have the right to protect my property.’
A fast-acting Washington resident and his family are alive after he thwarted a burglary at his residence by shooting one would-be thief dead.
Spanaway resident Jerahme Smith, who’s lived with his wife and children at his leased home for three years, grabbed his firearm after he heard someone kick down his door Thursday around 4:20 a.m.
“The homeowner told police he shot at the suspects as they kicked in his back door,” according to Fox 13. “The intruders then ran into the front yard where deputies later found one of the suspects dead. The other suspect ran off.”
Speaking to reporters, Smith said he took a few moments to assess the situation and calm his nerves before he “took action,” resulting in a 24-year-old suspected thief being shot dead during the attempted break-in.
“When everything first started, the first thing I had to do was take a few breaths and calm myself down because I knew it could have gone one of two ways.”
“I didn’t know who they were, I didn’t know what they had, but the first thing I did–and it’s the honest to God truth–is I took a few breaths to myself. That way I knew I was calm enough to make a proper judgment decision,” Smith told Fox 13.
Relieved he survived the home invasion, Smith asserted his right to defend his family and his property, saying, “It kind of goes back to your rights. I have the right to carry and I have the right to protect myself and I have the right to protect my property.”
Smith acknowledged it’s unfortunate the incident led to a loss of life, but said choosing between his life or the thief’s was an easy decision.
“We practice, but you never want to put it into action because it’s still a human life,” he said. “But my life is more important to me than theirs is, and me going home to my family and kids is more important than theirs is. I don’t know what they wanted out of this house. I don’t know what they were doing, but I don’t care.”
“Protect yourself. That doesn’t mean go looking for it, that means just be ready,” he added.
Discussing the robbery attempt with King 5 News, Smith insisted he wouldn’t re-locate his family, and encouraged other Americans to stand their ground if faced with similar circumstances.
“He says that he won’t be scared away by this one situation and he hopes that it becomes known that this is how Americans should act and that they should protect themselves,” reported King 5‘s Lionel Donovan.
The Daily Mail reports police took about 10 minutes to arrive at Smith’s home, located roughly 45 miles south of Seattle.
One neighbor told Fox 13 there’s been an uptick in crime in the neighborhood in recent weeks.
Police say the second robbery suspect is still at large and that the incident is still being assessed by Pierce County sheriff’s department investigators.
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A fast-acting Washington resident and his family are alive after he thwarted a burglary at his residence by shooting one would-be thief dead.
Spanaway resident Jerahme Smith, who’s lived with his wife and children at his leased home for three years, grabbed his firearm after he heard someone kick down his door Thursday around 4:20 a.m.
“The homeowner told police he shot at the suspects as they kicked in his back door,” according to Fox 13. “The intruders then ran into the front yard where deputies later found one of the suspects dead. The other suspect ran off.”
Speaking to reporters, Smith said he took a few moments to assess the situation and calm his nerves before he “took action,” resulting in a 24-year-old suspected thief being shot dead during the attempted break-in.
“When everything first started, the first thing I had to do was take a few breaths and calm myself down because I knew it could have gone one of two ways.”
“I didn’t know who they were, I didn’t know what they had, but the first thing I did–and it’s the honest to God truth–is I took a few breaths to myself. That way I knew I was calm enough to make a proper judgment decision,” Smith told Fox 13.
Relieved he survived the home invasion, Smith asserted his right to defend his family and his property, saying, “It kind of goes back to your rights. I have the right to carry and I have the right to protect myself and I have the right to protect my property.”
Smith acknowledged it’s unfortunate the incident led to a loss of life, but said choosing between his life or the thief’s was an easy decision.
“We practice, but you never want to put it into action because it’s still a human life,” he said. “But my life is more important to me than theirs is, and me going home to my family and kids is more important than theirs is. I don’t know what they wanted out of this house. I don’t know what they were doing, but I don’t care.”
“Protect yourself. That doesn’t mean go looking for it, that means just be ready,” he added.
Discussing the robbery attempt with King 5 News, Smith insisted he wouldn’t re-locate his family, and encouraged other Americans to stand their ground if faced with similar circumstances.
“He says that he won’t be scared away by this one situation and he hopes that it becomes known that this is how Americans should act and that they should protect themselves,” reported King 5‘s Lionel Donovan.
The Daily Mail reports police took about 10 minutes to arrive at Smith’s home, located roughly 45 miles south of Seattle.
One neighbor told Fox 13 there’s been an uptick in crime in the neighborhood in recent weeks.
Police say the second robbery suspect is still at large and that the incident is still being assessed by Pierce County sheriff’s department investigators.
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