Category: Stand & Deliver
The Wooden hand of Captain Jean Danjou the most sacred icon of the FFL.
The Battle of Camarón, (30 April 1863). Was a defensive action fought with suicidal courage during France’s ill-fated intervention in Mexico. The Battle of Camarón founded the legend of the French Foreign Legion.
A suspected catalytic converter thief was stabbed to death in a driveway early Friday morning in Los Angeles County, California, CBS News reported.
Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies responded to a house in South El Monte on the 1100 block of Thienes Avenue at 2:37 a.m. and found a man dead at the scene, sheriff’s Lieutenant Michael Gomez said.
“Deputies made contact with the resident of the house, who said he had been sleeping when he heard people outside tampering with his car. He went outside to investigate, where he was confronted by three to four people. An altercation ensued and one man was fatally stabbed,” according to the report.
Investigators said two or three other suspects fled the scene and were last seen driving eastbound on Thienes Avenue. Gomez said tools left at the scene indicate the suspects were attempting to steal catalytic converters.
The deceased suspect, between 35 and 45 years old, was found lying partially underneath a car in the driveway. The weapon used is believed to be a kitchen knife, according to investigators.
Investigators detained and interviewed the resident. Two other people were allegedly inside the house at the time of the incident, officials said.
————————————————————————————— Two things about this comes to my feeble mind. In that Richard Ramirez the serial killer was caught messing with somebodies car. (Don’t ever mess with a car in LA as you WILL inherit the wind of some serious violence)
The other thing is that if the Cops won’t or cannot do their job. Then the neighborhood even here in wimpy LA will!
Along with his motley band of buddies, Phoenix Jones roamed Seattle in pursuit of evildoers. Wikipedia/Torrin Maynard.
Superhero movies are some of the most profitable in Hollywood. Here’s the gist of pretty much all of them: Some buff guy is burdened by pervasive crime and the inability of the cops to control it. Determined to clean up the streets, the guy dons a garish costume and visits vigilante justice upon evil-doers. The cops resent this as extrajudicial and dangerous. A frustrated populace is grateful. Fold in a tortured love interest and some sad back story. Repeat as necessary for as long as the sequels, prequels, and sub-character spinoffs will keep dragging folks into theaters.
It really has become a bit of trope. Perhaps Hollywood screenwriters have lost the ability to create original content. No real person in the real world would voluntarily risk his life to fight crime as a masked vigilante. And then there was Phoenix Jones…
Phoenix Jones was a real superhero. By contrast,
I’m just some geeky guy who likes wearing a Superman costume
underneath his surgical scrubs at work.
Origin Story
Phoenix Jones was born Benjamin John Francis Fodor in 1988. Raised an orphan in Texas until he was adopted by a Seattle couple at age 9, Fodor’s past had just the right amount of pathos for a proper superhero origin story. A criminal once broke the windows out of his car in full view of bystanders, yet no one intervened. His son later fell on the broken glass and injured himself. The thief left a ski mask at the scene.
Fodor subsequently saw a friend assaulted outside a bar. When nobody moved to help, he donned the criminal’s abandoned ski mask, notified 911, and “made a commotion” until police arrived. He later said, “And I thought, why didn’t someone help him? There were seventy people outside that bar and no one did anything.” That experience lit a fire.
Ben Fodor went home and did a little Googling. In short order, he had his own custom-made supersuit consisting of a Dragon Skin armored vest, multi-aspect stab plating and a cowl. Fodor claimed the purpose of the suit was to ensure that responding police officers did not mistake him for a criminal. He added pepper spray, a first-aid kit, a stun batona nd a net gun. Thusly equipped, Fodor went to work cleaning up Seattle as superhero Phoenix Jones.
Ben Fodor earned some notoriety as an MMA fighter. Wikipedia/Kelly Bailey.
Occupational Hazards
During the course of his three years of superhero service, Jones was both shot and stabbed. In each case his supersuit prevented serious injury. Once, while attempting to break up a fight, two belligerent men attacked him and broke his nose.
City officials, predictably, had little use for Phoenix Jones’ vigilante justice. Seattle city attorney Peter Holmes publicly described Jones as a “deeply misguided individual.” In October 2011, Jones was arrested for using pepper spray to break up a fight. When he arrived in court he wore a civilian shirt over his supersuit. After the hearing he said, “I will continue to patrol with my team … In addition to being Phoenix Jones, I am also Ben Fodor, father and brother. I am just like everybody else. The only difference is that I try to stop crime in my neighborhood and everywhere else. I think I have to look toward the future and see what I can do to help the city.”
Alas, nobody’s perfect in the real world, not even superheroes. In 2020, Ben Fodor was arrested for selling ecstasy to an undercover police officer. At the time of his arrest, he was also in possession of a significant amount of cocaine. Despite his obvious warts, I still think the guy is cool. Lots of people talk about being a superhero, Phoenix Jones actually did something about it.
A Nevada woman took away a carjacker’s gun in Las Vegas, tried to flee, then ended up shooting the carjacker dead when he tackled her from behind, according to police.
FOX News reports that the incident occurred November 19, 2022, but a police report was just released, providing details.
FOX 5 notes that the woman and a friend pulled up outside a residence where a party was scheduled to occur. The woman and her friend were early, so they sat in the car to wait for the party to start.
While they waited, two men with guns allegedly approached their vehicle, and one of the men grabbed her shirt and pulled her out of the car.
The man then got into her car and put his gun down in his lap. The woman grabbed the gun and took off running.
The police report indicates the suspect chased the woman and tackled her, at which point she shot the suspect in the head, fatally wounding him.
The second carjacking suspect allegedly opened fire on the woman, so she fled into a nearby backyard and hid.
The second carjacking suspect, Jaylin Morrison, was arrested on December 2, 2022.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range
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Future president Theodore Roosevelt returned to the city of his birth in 1895 to take on a task that might have intimidated other people, the reform of the notoriously corrupt police department.
His appointment was front-page news and he obviously saw the job as chance to clean up New York City while reviving his own political career, which had stalled.
His appointment was front-page news and he obviously saw the job as chance to clean up New York City while reviving his own political career, which had stalled.
As the president of the police commission, Roosevelt, true to form, vigorously threw himself into the task. His trademark zeal, when applied to the complexities of urban politics, tended to generate a cascade of problems.
Roosevelt’s time at the top of the New York Police Department brought him into conflict with powerful factions, and he did not always emerge triumphant. In one notable example, his widely publicized crusade to close saloons on Sunday, the only day when many workingmen could socialize in them, provoked a lively public backlash.
When he left the police job, after only two years, the department had been changed for the better. But Roosevelt’s time as New York City’s top cop had been raucous, and the clashes he found himself in had nearly brought his political career to an end.
Roosevelt’s Patrician Background
Theodore Roosevelt was born into a wealthy New York City family on October 27, 1858. A sickly child who overcame illness through physical exertion, he went on to Harvard and entered New York politics by winning a seat in the state assembly at the age of 23.
In 1886 he lost an election for mayor of New York City. He then stayed out of government for three years until he was appointed by President Benjamin Harrison to the United States Civil Service Commission. For six years Roosevelt served in Washington, D.C., overseeing the reform of the nation’s civil service, which had been tainted by decades of adherence to the spoils system.
Roosevelt was respected for his work reforming the federal civil service, but he wished to return to New York City and something more challenging. A new reform mayor of the city, William L. Strong, offered him the job of sanitation commissioner in early 1895. Roosevelt turned it down, thinking the job of literally cleaning up the city was beneath his dignity.
A few months later, after a series of public hearings exposed widespread graft in the New York Police Department, the mayor came to Roosevelt with a far more attractive offer: a post on the board of police commissioners. Enthused by the chance to bring much-needed reforms to his hometown, and in a very public post, Roosevelt took the job.
The Corruption of the New York Police
A crusade to clean up New York City, led by a reform-minded minister, Rev. Charles Parkhurst, had prompted the state legislature to create a commission to investigate corruption. Chaired by state senator Clarence Lexow, what became known as the Lexow Commission held public hearings which exposed the startling depth of police corruption.
In weeks of testimony, saloon owners and prostitutes detailed a system of payoffs to police officials. And it became apparent that the thousands of saloons in the city functioned as political clubs which perpetuated the corruption.
Mayor Strong’s solution was to replace the four-member board that oversaw the police. And by putting an energetic reformer like Roosevelt on the board as its president, there was cause for optimism.
Roosevelt took the oath of office on the morning of May 6,1895, at City Hall. The New York Times lauded Roosevelt the next morning, but expressed skepticism about the other three men named to the police board. They must have been named for “political considerations,” said an editorial. Problems were obvious at the outset of Roosevelt’s term at the top of the police department.
Roosevelt Made His Presence Known
In early June 1895 Roosevelt and a friend, the crusading newspaper reporter Jacob Riis, ventured out into the streets of New York late one night, just after midnight. For hours they wandered through the darkened Manhattan streets, observing the police, at least when and where they could actually find them.
The New York Times carried a story on June 8, 1895 with the headline, “Police Caught Napping.” The report referred to “President Roosevelt,” as he was president of the police board, and detailed how he had found policemen asleep on their posts or socializing in public when they should have been patrolling alone.
Several officers were ordered to report to police headquarters the day after Roosevelt’s late night tour. They received a strong personal reprimand from Roosevelt himself. The newspaper account noted: “The action of Mr. Roosevelt, when it became known, made a sensation throughout the department and as a consequence, more faithful patrol duty may be performed by the force for some time to come.”
Roosevelt also came into conflict with Thomas Byrnes, a legendary detective who had come to epitomize the New York Police Department. Byrnes had amassed a suspiciously large fortune, with the apparent help of Wall Street characters such as Jay Gould, but had managed to keep his job. Roosevelt forced Byrnes to resign, though no public reason for the ouster of Byrnes was ever disclosed.
Political Problems
Though Roosevelt was at heart a politician, he soon found himself in a political bind of his own making. He was determined to shut down saloons, which generally operated on Sundays in defiance of a local law.
The problem was that many New Yorkers worked a six-day week, and Sunday was the only day when they could gather in saloons and socialize. To the community of German immigrants, in particular, the Sunday saloon gatherings were considered an important facet of life. The saloons were not merely social, but often served as political clubs, frequented by an actively engaged citizenry.
Roosevelt’s crusade to shutter saloons on Sundays brought him into heated conflict with large segments of the population. He was denounced and viewed as being out of touch with the common people. The Germans in particular rallied against him, and Roosevelt’s campaign against saloons cost his Republican Party in the city-wide elections held in the fall of 1895.
The next summer, New York City was hit by a heat wave, and Roosevelt gained back some public support by his smart action in dealing with the crisis. He had made an effort to familiarize himself with slum neighborhoods, and he saw that the police distributed ice to people who desperately needed it.
By the end of 1896 Roosevelt was thoroughly tired of his police job. Republican William McKinley had won the election that fall, and Roosevelt began concentrating on finding a post within the new Republican administration. He was eventually appointed assistant secretary of the Navy, and left New York to return to Washington.
Impact of Roosevelt on New York’s Police
Theodore Roosevelt spent less than two years with the New York Police Department, and his tenure was marked with nearly constant controversy. While the job burnished his credentials as a reformer, most of what he tried to accomplish ended in frustration. The campaign against corruption proved essentially hopeless. New York City remained much the same after he left.
However, in later years Roosevelt’s time at police headquarters on Mulberry Street in lower Manhattan took on a legendary status. He would be remembered as a police commissioner who cleaned up New York, even though his accomplishments on the job didn’t live up to the legend.