Crime

That’s Not How Tasers Work

A man led Citrus county sheriff’s deputies on a high speed chase, dumping bags of fentanyl out the window of the car as he went. He finally wrecked the car in neighboring Marion county when he hit a telephone pole. He bailed out of the vehicle with a slug rifle. Police shot him. Of course a bystander caught the end on video.

The man’s name was Skyler Dan Wentworth, DOB 2/16/1990. His publicly available criminal record goes back to March of 2007, when he was arrested for felony burglary and petit theft (second offense), meaning of course that there are juvenile convictions that we can’t see. That case was dropped when the main witness, the victim, refused to testify.

The decedent’s background

He was arrested for a total of 3 felonies and 2 misdemeanors before his 18th birthday. By the time trial concluded on the felonies, it was 2012. He was sentenced to 2 years in jail on the second of them, 9 months for the third. That’s important because, as a convicted felon, he couldn’t possess a firearm or ammunition.

In all, he has a total of 15 felony cases, involving dozens of criminal violations, and 9 different misdemeanor cases. His driver’s license has been suspended multiple times, but he keeps getting caught driving anyway. By 2018, he had advanced to possession of firearms by a felon, charges related to drug dealing, illegally carrying a concealed weapon, and had been convicted multiple times for fleeing police and getting in accidents that injured innocents who just happened to be in his way. A real pillar of the community.

This choirboy’s mother appeared on TV, demanding to know why police didn’t just “taser” him. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why couldn’t they have Tased him? Why shoot him?” That isn’t how a Taser works, as my readers all know.

I couldn’t find a copy of the raw video, and I hate using media provided video because it is always edited and manipulated to distort what actually happened, but in this case, you can see 43 seconds into the video here that the man is on his knees with both hands on his head before dropping one hand down to what appears to be a rifle clung across his chest.

Looks like a good shoot, but I will post more on this if I find anything.

By Divemedic, ago

Dayton Shooting

Did any of you know that there was a shooting at a WalMart in Dayton on Tuesday evening? No? Yeah, a guy walked into a WalMart with a HiPoint .45ACP carbine and shot four people. He was found 5 minutes later with a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. A bit of press is online about this, but much of it is rather vague.

What makes this story odd, is that there is one witness claiming that he was a long haired, skinny white guy. The cops have released his name, Benjamin Charles Jones. They claim he was from Dayton, moved to Las Vegas, then moved back to Dayton last year. Various reports claim that he is 20, the cops say that he is 25 years old. The local press has his criminal record and his address.

Jones was from the region and had moved back to Dayton recently from Las Vegas, police said. Court records examined by the Dayton Daily News show Jones lived on Buell Lane in Dayton near the Huber Heights border when he was convicted of DUI in August.

This report says that the shooter was arrested and convicted of DUI in Greene county just a couple of months ago, yet there is no record of the arrest or conviction. Odd.

The only other interaction Jones had with law enforcement that the I-Team found came when Fairborn police showed up at an address listed for Jones two different times — in April and May of 2022. In police reports from both instances, officers indicated they responded to deal with a suicidal subject and listed Jones as the subject of the call.

But no picture, no records, no legal description of the guy. I searched for an hour and this is all I could find.

Isn’t that odd? A reported white guy with an “assault weapon” but not a lot of information or photos of the suspect. Why is that?

By Divemedic, ago

Home Intruder

A man creeped in the backyard of a home just after midnight. Then came to the front door, where he was confronted by the homeowner before leaving. Not deterred, he returned to the home and entered through a window. That’s when the homeowner shot his ass.

The original article that led me to find out more caused me to find this one. Not only did his family tell us that he had mental health problems that caused him to hear voices, he was arrested the day before for burglarizing another house.

Too bad that he had mental health issues, but his family and girlfriend should have done more to get him help. Instead, the bailed him out of jail, left him unsupervised, and this resulted in his death.

By Divemedic, ago

Latest Outrage

The latest thing that has the left up in arms is the video found here. At the five second mark, you see this:

What’s that he is pointing at the cop?

During the struggle, the pedestrian was able to access a taser he had in his possession and used it against the officer. The officer then shot him in self defense.

Don’t point a weapon that looks like a handgun at a cop a person armed with a firearm, and you won’t get shot.

By Divemedic, ago

They Used to Lynch Horse Thieves

Remember when I said when the police can’t or won’t enforce the law, citizens will begin DIY law enforcement? It bears repeating: Police are actually there to protect people who have been accused of crimes and protect those people to ensure that their rights to a fair and impartial trial are protected. Once people feel like there is no justice to be had, they lose respect for the law. Anarchy can be the only result of this.

That happened on Friday afternoon in Birmingham, AL. A man whose car was stolen didn’t feel like the cops were doing enough to find his stolen vehicle. They tracked it down to nearby Birmingham and followed it. When they eventually confronted the thieves, a shootout ensued. Two thieves received life threatening wounds, with two others being hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries. No bystanders were hit. The police can’t have citizens making them look incompetent, so they want to arrest the owner of the vehicle for taking the law into his own hands. The press refers to the thieves as “victims” of a shooting.

The running shootout caused 2 miles of the Interstate to be a crime scene, with shell casings littering the roadway. This happens because the police can’t or won’t enforce the law. In the nine years that I have lived in this house, my vehicles have been the target of attempted burglaries twice: Once resulted in no arrest. The second time, the burglar got probation and his record expunged, even though he broke into four vehicles, stealing one of them. One of the cars broken into was a police cruiser that he stole a fingerprint reader from, another was a truck where he stole a handgun, on top of stealing one of the vehicles.

In the last 23 years, I have had 13 interactions with with the police, and I can’t say that any of those interactions were positive:

  • In 2000, my car was broken into, and my stereo, radar detector, cash, and other items totaling about $600 was stolen from it. The crime scene investigator came out and took fingerprints. They got a hit, gave me the name of the person, and asked me to sign a paper saying that this man did not have permission to be in my vehicle. A month later, I was told that the criminal would not be arrested because the crime was too minor to waste resources on.
  • In 2001, I was pulled over for running a red light. I let the cop know I was carrying, even though Florida law doesn’t require me to. He then threatened to kill me. I don’t inform any more.
  • Same year, I got a traffic ticket for $184, which I paid. Eleven years later, the court sent me a letter saying that they miscalculated the fine for the ticket, and I owe them another $32. I refused to pay it because the statute of limitations had passed and there was nothing that they could do about it.
  • In 2004, a cop told my girlfriend how to use the courts to steal my stuff by claiming that I had committed domestic violence. It took me months to get it straightened out. 
  • I foolishly told the above story to a GF in 2012 and that one copied the scheme. When I beat it in court, she openly told the judge that her new boyfriend was a cop, and he would find a reason to have me arrested. My attorney asked the judge to make sure that statement was entered into and part of the record for the trial.
  • In 2005, I had someone steal a check for over $200 from my mailbox, forge my name and deposit the money into his bank account. The number of the account that the check was deposited into was printed on the back of the check. I went to the station to report the crime. I had a copy of the check. All the cop had to do was go to the bank, get the name of the account owner, and make the arrest. Anyone could have done it, it wasn’t a hard crime to solve. The cops told me that they didn’t have the manpower to solve a crime for such a small amount of money. On the way home from the police station, I passed 6 cops with cars pulled over, writing traffic tickets.
  • As a paramedic in 2010, I ran a call on a report of man who was unconscious and slumped over the wheel at an intersection. When I got there, he was obviously drunk, so I reached in and took the keys out of the ignition and put them on the vehicle’s roof. When the cops got there, they let the man call his girlfriend and let her give him a ride home. They said that they couldn’t prove that he was behind the wheel. I told them I would testify, but then the cop told me that his shift was over soon, and he didn’t want to stay late to do the paperwork. I found out later he was a friend of one of the cops.
  • In 2016, I had to draw a gun on someone who then fled the scene when he claimed to be a cop and tried to “arrest” me but wouldn’t show ID or a badge. I called the cops and the one who showed up didn’t even take a report. Exactly zero effort was made to catch the guy.
  • In 2018, I had a police supervisor tell me that silencers and machine guns were illegal. I offered to bring in NFA items with the proper paperwork, so the cops could be trained to recognize the proper forms and know the law. They refused, and told me “Keep that stuff out of my town or you will be arrested.”
  • Also in 2018, an armed man was burglarizing cars in my neighborhood. He was caught on my security cameras. The cops used my footage to catch the burglar, but he reached a plea deal that included expunging his record. All he got was probation, even though he broke into four vehicles, stealing one of them.
  • In 2022, I was assisting in the treatment of a patient who got violent with me and had to be physically restrained. He was a retired NYPD detective. He swore that I attacked him for no reason and tried to choke him. He called me a “punk ass bitch” and said that he was a retired NYC police officer, and that he would find me on the street and “fucking kill” me. I was interviewed by police detectives, and suspended without pay until I was cleared of criminal wrongdoing.
  • In January of this year, a woman threatened me at work. She threatened to follow me home to see where I lived, then wait until I went to work and murder my family. I formed my employer to call the police, but they did nothing but take a report. That’s fine. At least there is a record if I have to smoke the crazy bitch at the end of my driveway.
  • Then I watched a police officer use his Taser to attack a prisoner while the prisoner was shackled by all four limbs to the hospital bed.

As the wheels come off, you will see more and more of this. People WILL lose faith in our legal system. Things WILL get much worse.

By Divemedic, ago

Winners Get to Punish Losers

Scotty claims that I am outdated in my opinions on the so-called “rules” of warfare. This is what he claims are the “rules” of war. Let’s take a look at what they really are.

  • The Hague Convention(s). There were two- held in 1899 and 1907. The one in 1899 concentrated on the outlawing of poisons in warfare, the killing of enemy combatants who have surrendered, looting of a town or place, and the attack or bombardment of undefended towns or habitations. Inhabitants of occupied territories may not be forced into military service against their own country and collective punishment is forbidden. I would point out that every signatory of the treaties arising out of this convention has violated them whenever it suited them.
  • The second Hague convention in 1907 was a set of rules for naval warfare and was passed to help Britain (then the largest and most powerful Navy) to retain its supremacy at sea. It didn’t work.
  • The Geneva Convention(s). The Geneva Conventions concern only protected non-combatants in war and how they can’t be imprisoned. I will let the prisoners in Gitmo explain that one to you.
  • The 1925 Geneva Protocol. It bans the use of chemical and biological weapons in war. That one has been violated numerous times, and the US had a sizeable poison gas stockpile until July of this year, with plans of using them against the Soviets in a European land war. The only reason they weren’t used is that the anticipated war never happened.
  • United Nations Charter. This is an international debating society that is largely funded by the US. It spends most of its time slamming the US, while it’s ‘peacekeepers’ spend their time raping the civilian populations in the areas they are nominally observing.
  • Nuremberg Trials and Nuremberg Principles. This was nothing more than an ex post facto declaration that permitted the winners of WW2 to punish the losers. This has been done after every war, ever. (See the southern ‘reconstruction’ after the Civil war, the salting of the farmland of Carthage by Rome, etc.)
  • 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. More ex post facto punishment of the losers of WW2 by the winners.
  • 1974 United Nations Declaration on the Protection of Women and Children in Emergency and Armed Conflict. Declaration on the Protection of Women and Children in Emergency and Armed Conflict. The UN themselves violates this on a regular basis.
  • 1977 United Nations Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques. This one bans the use of weather modification during wartime to protect the environment. This treaty is followed simply because the technology doesn’t exist to break it.
  • 1977 Geneva Protocols. This one is there to protect the wounded, the sick, the shipwrecked, prisoners of war and civilians who find themselves in enemy hands. One of the things it does is ban the arming of medical personnel marked with either the Red Cross or the Red Crescent.
  • 1980 United Nations Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects (CCW). This one bans the use of land mines, booby traps, incendiary devices, blinding laser weapons and demands the clearance of explosive remnants of war. Many countries, the US included, has used each and every one of these in conflicts around the globe. The US is currently suppling many of these weapons to Ukraine for use against Russia. The US didn’t clean up shit in Afghanistan. I would also point out that the US has always used what they euphemistically call the “mechanical ambush”- for example a tripwire set to detonate a claymore mine that is aimed down a trail. Just read many of the field manuals published by the US Army as an example.
  • 1997 Ottawa Treaty. This one prohibits the use of landmines. Need I point out how many nations and conflicts are still using them today?

The simple fact is this: Countries set these rules to attempt to prevent their enemies from using effective weapons, but continue to violate these “laws” whenever it suits them. Don’t begin to tell me that the US cares one whit about civilian casualties. Just ask the residents of Dresden, Nagasaki, or Hiroshima about that. Even the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts saw more than half a million civilian deaths, and the US has never held anyone accountable for that.

But post Nuremberg, post Yugoslavian civil wars, post Serbo-Coatian Civil war, and Kosovo war the international community has laid teeth to the idea that if you violate the rules of war, the laws of war, you will not get away with it. We are still having discussions about 90-100 year old men maybe having been concentration camp guards or complicit actors to genocide.

That’s complete bullshit. By “international community” you mean that the US and their allies are using those deaths as an excuse to push their agenda on the rest of the world, while turning a blind eye to its own and China’s abuses. (See the Uyghur massacre)

Are there rules of war? I dunno ask those Abu-Ghraib guards who went to prison

Those guys went to prison while even worse abuses were happening in US “extraordinary rendition” policies around the world. Those guys went to jail for embarrassing their chain of command more than for what they actually did.

I would take on the rest of his comment, but it wandered off topic into the reasons why we need to support the Ukraine conflict, nuke Russia, and other neocon warhawk talking points before supporting the Israelis wiping out the residents of Gaza, which of course violates most of the “laws” he pointed out in the beginning, which supports my point-

The point to me saying that there are no laws of warfare other than to win is this- the only people who have ever been punished for violating “the rules of war” are the people who lose the war, because winning the war is the ONLY thing that matters. To the winners go the spoils, might makes right, etc. After the war is over, the winners get to punish the losers by using the “international laws” as a pretext for show trials that are designed to humiliate the losers of the conflict.

By Divemedic, ago

What If Police Can’t or Won’t?

The purpose of the police is not supposed to be enforcing the law. The people themselves are pretty good, some would say too good, at protecting themselves and stopping crime, if left to their own devices. In fact, they are so good at stopping crime, that many people have been accused of crimes and punished, only for it to later be proven that the person punished wasn’t the culprit.

No, police are actually there to protect people who have been accused of crimes and protect those people to ensure that their rights to a fair and impartial trial are protected.

A convicted pedophile has set up camp directly next to a children’s school. He has signs out, offering free drugs. The police say that their hands are tied, and either can’t or won’t do anything about it. What happens when the police can’t or won’t do anything to protect children? Sooner or later, someone is going to take care of it themselves. It may be a parent of a molested child, or even a molested child or someone who feels like they themselves are a victim. At that point, the cops will fall all over themselves to find the culprit.

On the other hand, you see police and the legal system setting their sights on people who haven’t committed a crime. They are being used as political tools to destroy the opponents of those who would seek power.

This is a deadly combination. Once people feel like there is no justice to be had, they lose respect for the law. Anarchy can be the only result of this.

By Divemedic, ago