Crime

My brother is undergoing chemo treatment for cancer and is unable to tolerate a physical altercation because the chemo has weakened him enough that he would not survive a violent encounter. He is also a business owner, and even does business with the city and the police department. The cops in the smallish town know him for the most part, as he has been doing business there for about 30 years.

For 25 of those years, he has owned a distribution center that is contained in a large building. The main warehouse and his offices take up most of the building. He leases out several smaller spaces that are contained in the building and uses one of the spaces as a gym that is available for his own and his employees’ use. He also has a parking lot in front of the building, and there is a fenced in area where his delivery vehicles are parked at night. There are a pile of security cameras covering every square foot of the place.

The nature of his business is that he frequently has large amounts of cash on the property, sometimes as much as $25,000. His delivery drivers have been robbed a few times, twice at gunpoint. There is an armored car that comes by to pick up the cash on a regular basis, but because of the large amounts of cash, my brother is armed while at work, and he allows his office staff to carry firearms if they have a CCW. My mother used to be his manager, and she carried a gun at work. Yes, we really are a gun owning family. My sister is the only one of us that doesn’t routinely carry a gun.

(On a side note, he once had to make a large deposit, and I helped him out by riding literal shotgun in the back of the van that was carrying the cash. I was armed with a 12ga and a 9mm handgun. We weren’t robbed.)

One of his employees was working late. A pair of vagrants (1 male, 1 female) approached the employee while he was inside of the fenced area and asked for a handout. The employee refused, and the male vagrant responded by saying, “You are lucky that I asked. I usually just take what I want.” The employee called my brother and told him about it, and my brother called the police. When the police arrived, my brother gave the police a copy of security camera video. The police told him that they didn’t know who the pair were, but stated that they would investigate. It turns out that they were lying on both counts.

A week later, my brother was inside the onsite gym and heard a noise outside. He grabbed his Sig 365 and went to investigate. He found the pair outside of the building, but inside of the fenced in part of the property. When they were told to leave, the male of the pair immediately put his hands into a backpack that was at his feet. My brother, who was on the phone with 911, immediately drew his weapon and screamed at him, “Let me see your hands or I will shoot you.” The pair ran off.

When the cops arrived, they made contact with the pair of vagrants just a block away. They told the police that they were in fear for their lives, and that my brother threatened to kill them. One of the cops even admitted to my son that, if the officer had been faced with the same events, the vagrant would have gotten shot. The police began questioning my brother. A friend of his from the police department called him and warned him that the cops were going to try and flip it on him to make him look like the bad guy. It turns out that there was much more to the story. More on that at the end of this post.

When the detective arrived, he read my brother his rights, and that was when my brother told them he didn’t want to answer any questions without an attorney present. It was at that point that the detective told him to put his hands behind his back and arrested him for aggravated battery and intent to cause serious bodily harm. In the arrest report, the detective used my brother’s earlier statements from before his rights were read to him and also the fact that he refused to answer questions without an attorney once he was Mirandized as the reasons for probable cause to make the arrest. That is a blatant violation of my brother’s Constitutional Rights. You have a right to both remain silent, and to have an attorney present while being questioned, and exercising those rights can’t be used against you.

There is, as I said earlier, more to the story. The pair of vagrants were well known to the local cops. They are both known drug users. Even though my brother was not aware of it, they both have multiple felony convictions for burglary, possession of burglary tools, and drug possession (meth), as well as many more arrests that didn’t result in convictions. However, the cops certainly knew them and were lying about not being able to identify them, because the pair of them is being used by the police as confidential informants. This is a case of the police were trying to shield their informants for the attempted robbery from the week before. That is also important.

Pointing a firearm at someone is, under Florida law, NOT lethal force. Especially when they are on your property and in the process of committing a felony, and you (the property owner) have reason to believe that they are willing to commit violence AND are making furtive movements as if to retrieve a weapon.

My brother hired a good attorney, and they didn’t have a single hearing, with the exception of his arraignment. The attorney made her discovery request and demanded all information in the possession of the police, even a copy of the records of the vagant/informants. The police refused. Taking all of the facts into account, the state attorney decided to enter a notice of nolle prosequi.

This cost my brother three months of worry AND about $3,000 in legal fees. He also lost his concealed weapons permit, which was automatically revoked when he was arrested. His insurance company cancelled his company’s insurance policy because he was facing felony charges, and now he has a criminal record, which will cost him more money in the form of increased insurance fees for the foreseeable future.

The lawyer told him that she can get the arrest expunged from his record, but it will cost him another 5 large, and will take about a year. Meanwhile, the druggie douchebags have been arrested two more times since that night.

Tell me again that our legal system isn’t broken and the cops are mostly good guys. As a side note, my sister and I have had T-shirts made with my brother’s mugshot on them. We are going to be wearing them at Christmas dinner.

Back in September, I reported that US thieves are beginning to use cell phone jammers. Well, it’s apparently becoming more common.

Worried that bad guys might have cell jammers when they burglarize you? Use a radio to call the police. After my smart remarks, I'll give you a tip past the break.

First, be poor. Poor people usually aren't targeted by sophisticated burglars. Second, look poor if you aren't.

If… pic.twitter.com/2UskDUKVmo

— Don Shift (buy my books) (@DonShift3) December 7, 2023

A couple of thoughts.

• I have a HAM radio. It can reach help in various frequencies in the 70cm, 1.25 meter, 2 meter, 6 meter, and 10 meter bands. I can also use CB (11 meter), GMRS, and others. Besides, those portable jammers only put out 20 watts or less, for the most part. I am pushing out far more than that. There is no way that any man portable jammer can hit every frequency that I can possibly select from. I can still call for help.
• With that being said, I have body armor, weapons, night vision, and enough ammo to make this into one hell of a firefight. I am not foolish enough to think that my home can’t be overrun, but it will be expensive, and the thieves can’t want what’s in my house badly enough to take serious casualties. The thieves might get me and my stuff, but there will be fewer of them at the end than there were at the beginning. You think that jammer means that I can’t call for help? Neither can you.
• Look for the guy with the backpack that has all of the antennas poking out, shooting him and his backpack first will fix the comms problem pretty quickly.

I wasn’t going to post for awhile, but morons sucked me in. Found on X (Formerly Twitter):

Stay safe out there folks. This is a PSA. Last night I called a Lyft ride. It was a long ride, but I talked to the driver before hand, and recommended the proper route. I live in downtown Cincinnati. Immediately, he drives into KY. My destination was in Ohio.

After 10 minutes of KY driving, assuming the best of intentions, I expressed that he was going the wrong way, and that the other way was quicker. He laughed at me.

I felt my heart sink.

At this moment, I confirmed that my location was shared with my people. I shared the ride too.

I contacted 911 through ADT in the Lyft app, & called 911 myself. I pretended like I was confirming plans for a party, & gave the dispatcher the info I could.

“Ma’am, this is 911, did you mean to call 911?” Yes sir. I did. I don’t know where I am going. At this moment I noticed that my driver had two GPS’s. One to my destination, and one mapped to somewhere 7 hours away.

In the app my arrival time was rapidly increasing. Hours being added to the time. I have never been so scared. Finally – a police officer pulled him over for speeding. They got him out of the car, and spoke to me. They let me charge my phone in one of the cruisers while they tried to figure out what had happened.

By the time he got pulled over – after I lost cell service several times – I was over 65 miles from home. Further from my destination than when I started. There were weapons in the car. I could see them.

This could’ve been so much worse. Had I not trusted my gut, had I thought I was overreacting, this could have been horrific. I’m so grateful I had the tools to do something. Who knows what could’ve happened if I didn’t.

An officer drove me to a nearby field, and we waiting for the Lyft driver to leave the county. I then waited for a friend, alone, for an hour at a local gas station. During the ordeal I was texting my partner – he said “I have never known you to be this scared.” Because I’m never this scared. But god, was I terrified.

So there were a bunch of posts telling her to file charges. My answer was simple: For what crime? Everyone, and I mean HUNDREDS of responses slammed me, calling me stupid, claiming that this was abduction or kidnapping. As evidence:

• He didn’t go the right way. I explained that this isn’t a crime in itself. It’s a civil matter. An airplane that is supposed to fly to NY but diverts to NJ didn’t kidnap you.
• There were weapons. So? In OH and KY, it isn’t illegal to have a weapon in your vehicle.
• They crossed state lines. That isn’t a crime, either.
• Then it was “Explain why he had 2 GPS’s and why he laughed at her.”
• They also said he was speeding, as if that is grounds for a kidnapping charge.

I explained that they were incorrect, that there was no evidence of either crime. Abduction is defined in OH as:

By force or threat, remove another from the place where the other person is found

Since she willingly got into the car, and at no time in the story did she ask to be let out of the car, it wasn’t by force. He didn’t threaten her, so this wasn’t legally an abduction. One person said, deception is enough for kidnapping, but A required element of Kidnapping requires a demand for ransom, sexual performance, or furthering a felony. There was no evidence of that, either.

That’s when the discussion degenerated, and I bowed out. I was called a pedophile, a predator, and a dick sucker. I was accused of being the driver in the story. Then they all screamed that I was stupid and said that if the guy can’t explain away what happened, that’s evidence of a crime.

I admitted that what happened was suspicious, but there isn’t enough here for charges. They guy doesn’t have to prove that he didn’t commit a crime, the cops have to prove that he did. The fact that a ride share didn’t take you where you wanted to go is not a crime.

There are holes in her story anyway. How did the GPS show that she was “hours” away from her destination without her driving into KY for hours, and it only took her friends an hour to come get her from the gas station in KY? Had they arrested this guy, a first year law student could beat the charges. This story is exactly why your mom told you not to get into strangers’ cars.

Jesus, people can be ignorant. They should use their heads for something other than a buttplug.

Nothing like a good internet argument to make you forget your troubles for a bit.

SHOOTOUT—in 2021, Noah Jones called the Memphis police and reported that a juvenile carjacked his black Camaro at gunpoint.

Three hours later, Noah Jones (and three of his cousins) caught up to the 15 year old carjacker at a Valero gas station and ambushed him.

The 15 year old… pic.twitter.com/Lj4DZRzkS3

— Amiri King (@AmiriKing) December 2, 2023

So someone steals your car at gunpoint. You report it to the cops, who take a report and otherwise do nothing.

You and your friends then find your car. You attempt to retrieve it, but knowing that the thieves are armed, you make sure that you are, too. The thieves then produce weapons in furtherance of their crime. You shoot them in self defense.

The cops THEN decide to do something and arrest you for murder because you did the job that they are being paid to do, but don’t.

Now you are in court, and I somehow have made it on to the jury. I will vote not guilty, and if it were in my power, I would vote to have the government take the cost of your defense out of the pension fund of the local cops.

An inmate stabbed Derek Chauvin 22 times in the law library of a Federal Prison on Black Friday.

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.

School bus drivers don't deserve this… pic.twitter.com/VEfpieuJBu

— non aesthetic things (@PicturesFoIder) November 23, 2023

That driver and his White Privilege…