Misusing Involuntary Commitment

Every state has a law allowing individuals to be involuntarily committed in the event that they are in such a mental state that they are an imminent danger to themselves or others. In Florida, it’s called a Baker Act, and it allows a doctor or law enforcement officer to hold a person for up to 72 hours for the purposes of medical and psychological evaluation, if that professional reasonably believes that they are a threat to themselves or others.

My last day at work, I placed a woman under a Baker Act after she told me that she had ingested several handfuls of pills in an attempt to commit suicide. If you do this, your documentation had better be able to stand up in court. Because if you misuse this power, you will and should get your ass sued. It’s one of the reasons why I carry a million dollars worth of malpractice insurance, and why that policy includes coverage of my legal bills.

But what happens if you are a cop with qualified immunity? What if you decide to misuse this power by lying in order to place an ex-girlfriend on an involuntary hold, then use force to enforce it? That’s exactly what Pennsylvania State Trooper Ronald Davis did. One of her friends got it all on video:

As I was watching this, I was thinking to myself, “What if this was my sister, or a close friend? Would I stand by and allow this, while just filming? Or would I use force to protect her from this felony domestic battery?”
If I *did* intervene, would I go to jail? Would other cops automatically take this cop’s side, and either arrest or ventilate me? I think we know the answer to both of those questions. If you are a cop and are reading this- This is what you should be asking yourself:

This cop is obviously a bad cop. Would I arrest someone for intervening in this situation? What if that person was holding the cop at gunpoint? Would I shoot them for pointing a gun at a cop? Even if it was being done to stop the officer’s felonious battery of an innocent woman? If so, can you still call yourself a good cop?

Something needs to be done. For starters, I think that qualified immunity should be eliminated. Let cops get personally sued into oblivion for stuff like this. They can go out and get malpractice insurance, just like medical professionals do.

Second, I think that cops should have *every* use of force judged by a panel of at least 7 people, and that panel should consist of: A judge, two current or retired police officers, and 4 citizens who are not convicted felons. That panel would have the power to fine police officers or refer them to the Grand Jury and suspend their LEO certification pending completion of the Grand Jury’s deliberations. The judge is there to advise the others on the meaning of the law, and only gets a vote in the event of a tie.

What other things might work?

Douche

It turns out that country star Zach Bryan is an entitled douche. He gets arrested, and threatens the cop by saying he is a star, knows the Sheriff, then threatens to call the mayor and governor.

We get it- you’re rich and famous. That doesn’t make you better than the rest of us. Douche.

Not Hate

There are those who say that I “hate cops” because I disagree with their actions when they screw up. Well, here is a time when I think that the police were completely justified in their use of force:

I don’t care that she is a girl. I don’t care that she is, at 16 years of age, still legally a child. She entered into a fight with a police officer and attacked him in an attempt to disarm him and acquire possession of his weapon. The police must presume that, should she gain control of this weapon, it will be used against them.

For that reason, the officer was entirely within the bounds of being reasonable when he threw her to the ground. This is a clear case of self defense.

Blogs I Still Miss

Saysuncle used to be a daily read for me. He began blogging shortly after he got married in 2002. He was a prolific poster, often posting a dozen or more times a day. Sadly, his wife passed away in March of 2020. The frequency of his blogging fell off shortly after, and he eventually stopped posting. A year after his wife died, his house burned to the ground and was a total loss. That’s a tough run of bad times, there. I hope things have improved for him.

Tam over at Books, Bikes, and Boomsticks was also a daily read. Then she went and got herself a job as a professional writer, and her blog quality fell sharply. AFAIK, she still posts, but I stopped reading her stuff a couple of years ago. I do miss her snark.

There are many others: The Ambulance Driver, Munchkin Wrangler, and a few others. I just can’t think of them all at this point.

This blog is now 16 years old, and I began blogging because of them. I walk in the footsteps of giants.

Second Place, Again

Gaige Grosskreutz was one of the three men justifiably shot by Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha in 2020 was struck down in the middle of the street in a hit and run. The driver has been arrested, and it turns out that he wasn’t targeting Grosskreutz. The hit and run was due to the fact that the driver had a suspended license.

Second Place in the quick draw competition.

Second Place in the Frogger Live Action competition.

He is a violent convicted felon who admitted lying during the Rittenhouse trial, and who has now moaned about ‘right wing media’ outlets who exposed his planned subterfuge. 

Server Upgrade

I just upgraded the server here. Things should be a bit faster. In total, we are seeing about 14,000 visitors a day. This blog alone is getting about 6,000 of those. The extra traffic was causing a bit of a slowdown, so we did a few upgrades. More memory, a different set of IP’s, and a larger CPU. If you people keep wanting to share my server, I will just expand again.

Keep helping us preserve the First Amendment.