Election season has begun, and that means the riots are starting up again. It’s so predictable, it would be funny, except we are seeing the destruction of our nation in real time.
This week’s riot is brought to you from Philadelphia. Stores were looted after a police involved shooting didn’t result in charges for the cop.
My wife was on the way to work this morning when a pickup travelling at a high rate of speed came up on her from behind. She says that she was going 5 over the speed limit, and he was on her bumper flashing his high beams and honking his horn at her. When he finally passed her, he cut in front of her and then slammed on his brakes in a brake check in an attempt to cause an accident. This is illegal in Florida and is considered to be an act of road rage.
He then took off at a high rate of speed, then did the same thing to one of my wife’s coworkers a mile or so up the road. EDITED TO ADD: I just had lunch with them. The friend said that he was in such a big hurry that he almost ran her off the road when he passed her. She saw him pull into a McDonald’s a mile or so down the road. END EDIT
I have the incident recorded on her dashcam and have both a video of the incident and his plate number. I want to report it, but my wife has pointed out that the cops won’t do anything. After all, she says, I had a guy impersonating a cop that tried to arrest me, causing me to draw on him, and the cops did nothing.
What do my readers think?
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:
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?
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.
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.
A few days ago, I posted a request that my cop readers send submissions as an “equal time” rebuttal of my disdain for modern police. I received exactly one response, that I enclose it below, without editing (other than to cut off the intro with the poster’s real name) there is no twisting of words here. Comments are open, but remember the blog rules on posting. Anyhow- this is his post, so no comments from me, other than to thank him for his submission.
Some of you might know me better from ‘The Bitter Centurion’ blog I formerly ran. I decided to take our generous host, Divemedic, up on his offer to submit a post regarding the good cop/bad cop issue – something I was obligated to do since it was me that prompted him to issue this ‘challenge’ of sorts and open the floor.
For those of you who don’t know or didn’t follow my blog prior, I was a law enforcement officer for just shy of 20 years. I worked with consummate professionals, but worked with some of the worst people I ever met. I helped people who needed it, but sometimes I watched the system fail. I share our host’s utter disdain for corrupt, cowardly, and incompetent law enforcement. In fact, I’d go so far as to assert that my feelings veer more towards sheer hatred for those who dishonour their oaths.
Where I took issue with the host’s stance is his assertion that ‘90% of cops out there are dishonest, corrupt, lazy, and gutless’. That’s a steep number. I’m led to wonder how he came to the conclusion that 90% of police officers fall within that category. Did he don a labcoat, safety goggles, and a clipboard and tabulate these results? Of course not. It’s a number he pulled out of his ass, quite probably because of the volume of mainstream media reports on police misconduct, which when combined with his own sour dealings with law enforcement, tempered his opinion on the matter. But…rather than argue the point, I’ll instead offer some food for thought:
Much of what we DO hear of police misconduct is through the mainstream media. But you’d have to be a moron to not know that the mainstream media is not the bastion of truth they want people to think. We know they’ve been dishonest about the scam-demic/COVID-19 fiasco, the gun violence issue, the conflict in Ukraine, as well as other conflicts abroad. We know that they’ve been dishonest and biased towards race, gender, and sexuality issues, and they’ve been dishonest about Trump, Biden, the Clintons, and a whole mess of other swamp rats. In short, the media exists to mold our opinions and sell us a narrative, not tell us the objective truth.
So, is it any different when it comes to their reporting on law enforcement? Why would anyone, keeping in mind everything else the media has been dishonest about, expect them to be on the level when it comes to reporting on the police? Have you ever stopped to think that all this bad press is being done to deliberately discredit the institution of domestic law enforcement, not much unlike what happened to the US military during Vietnam, for instance, when the left wing media, activists and people like ‘Hanoi’ Jane worked overtime to convince the American public that every troop in a ‘GI lid’ was a rapist and a babykiller and atrocities like ‘My Lai’ and ‘Tiger Force’ were commonplace, even though that wasn’t the case at all?
Just as in Vietnam, where we never heard about the good that soldiers, sailors, and marines were doing over there, we almost never hear or read about police doing good in the communities we live in. But we almost never hear about the lives saved or the people helped. Instead, we’re fed vicious narratives on how career criminals like George Floyd, Michael Brown, or Trayvon Martin were innocent, gentle souls who were mercilessly crushed by the evil, cowardly, racist cops and how the institution is systemically racist and must be stamped out. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we hear this crap from the same Marxist idiots who force feed society bullshit stories like ‘the earth is melting and only communism can save us’, that ‘a woman can have a penis’, and that ‘we must all surrender our guns to the government for our own good’.
So it seems to me, then, that if that’s all we read and our prior dealings with cops are less than pleasant (and dealings with cops are generally not on great circumstances anyway) then it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that ‘90% of all cops are rotten to the core’. I’m not saying there are no rotten cops. Unfortunately, there are. I AM saying that there are more good cops out there than rotten cops, we hate the rotten cops too, and we DO deal with them – a lot more than you might think, even if you don’t get to see us doing it. A compelling argument? You be the judge. But I offer you this to ponder nonetheless.
There is a new variation of an old crime that all of us need to be aware of: Fake traffic stops. It goes like this. A car with blue strobes slips in behind yours and attempts to pull you over.
It isn’t a new crime. Fake cops initiating traffic stops happens all of the time. The police are more afraid of people not respecting their authority than they are protecting the public, so they advise:
However, police officials are asking motorists to pull over for any emergency or law enforcement vehicle that is running its lights and sirens as quickly and as safely as possible and wait for the officer to approach their vehicle and contact them.
If a motorist thinks that the vehicle may not be an official law enforcement or emergency vehicle, the driver should pull over anyway and call … 911. A dispatcher should be able to confirm that the vehicle belongs to a law enforcement officer.
Of course, if it isn’t a cop, it’s now too late to get help. The cops will arrive just in time to take a report and perhaps photograph your corpse.
It looks fishy, so you decide to do what police advise: You try to call 911 and verify that the cop is a real one. Your cell phone has no signal. Oddly enough, your GPS mapping systems aren’t working either.
It turns out that the “cop” is a bad guy, this is an ambush, and your communications aren’t working because they are being jammed by a device just like this one.
Sure, jammers are illegal, but since when do criminals care about the law? So now what? If you refuse to pull over, you are in deep trouble if it IS a real cop.
Hollywood movies and television often portray burglaries as meticulously planned and skillfully executed events like Oceans 11. In reality, these crimes are rarely carefully orchestrated. The vast majority of burglaries are random, opportunistic acts. Until lately, that is. Electronic devices are becoming cheaper and easier to obtain.
There are all sorts of signal jammers, jamming WiFi, Cell phones, and other frequencies. Thieves are using them to jam security cameras and burglar alarms as well.
Keep a sharp eye out.
A customer with a receipt showing that they paid for their food through an online app is asked to leave without the merchandise that they paid for. The customer says that all they want is either their food or a refund. The manager refuses and tells the customer to leave the store. He refuses, and the woman calls the cops. She also gets angry and slaps the phone that is being used to film the encounter out of the customer’s hand.
Even though she asked the customer to leave, he is still entitled to either a refund or the merchandise he paid for. To have a manager then call the cops and slap the phone out of his hand turns this from a civil matter into strong armed robbery. It doesn’t surprise me to see the demographics involved.
A side note, Popeye’s has really good chicken, though.
Francis Porretto over there at Liberty’s Torch (I read them every day, don’t you?) asks a great question about the security of checks versus the security of credit cards. Since I do stories on information security, I thought it would make a good topic for a post here. Let me start by saying that I ran this by my wife, who actually teaches banking and finance, which was the topic of her Masters degree. She’s way smarter than I am on this topic. Here is our take:
Those numbers that are on the bottom of your check are the routing and account numbers that tell the check processing companies (called the automated clearing house, or ACH) where to go in order to get paid. When a scammer has your bank account and routing numbers, they could set up bill payments for services you’re not using or transfer money out of your bank account. Getting those numbers is easy, because they are printed right there on your check, and most companies store that information on their computers, you know- the same computers that keep having data breaches. Scammers can create fake checks using your numbers and then use those fake checks to pay for purchases — or simply cash them. Know, too, that with technology scammers could digitally scan the check (called a “demand draft”) and deposit the amount into their bank account. Many banks now allow you to deposit a picture of a check. How and why does this happen?
It used to be that physical, paper checks had to be exchanged in order for banks to get paid. Shipping paper checks all over the country was costing them quite a bit of money, so they lobbied the government for a solution. Enter the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (Check 21 Act), which became effective on October 28, 2004. The Check 21 Act authorizes a new negotiable instrument called a “substitute check,” which is a reproduction of an original check, is the legal equivalent of an original check. In other words, all someone must do is have those numbers on the bottom of your check, and they now have access to your money. There is no way to password protect your account from this sort of scam, because Check 21 doesn’t mandate that the banks secure you from this sort of scam. Some banks will for PR reasons, but they mostly do not. It’s expensive to monitor fraud, and there is no real financial incentive for banks to do so with this sort of scam.
So a thief gets ahold of your checking and routing numbers, what next? The only defense is closing your bank account and getting another one. That’s a inconvenience, for sure. The bank may or may not be able to reverse the fraudulent transactions, but don’t count on it. Check 21 doesn’t say that they have to. While it doesn’t happen often, when scammers get those numbers, you frequently lose everything, and there is nothing that the bank can do. One charity I found fell victim to this and lost over $10,000.
Credit cards have a bit more legal protection. The law here is called the Fair Credit Billing Act, which requires creditors to give consumers 60 days to challenge certain disputed charges over $50 such as wrong amounts, inaccurate statements, undelivered or unacceptable goods, and transactions by unauthorized users. Also, the Act limits liability of consumers for transactions by unauthorized users to $50. Since this law forces banks to absorb losses for fraudulent charges over $50, banks have a financial incentive to monitor for fraud, and they do. In fact, if you report fraud, most banks don’t even worry about the $50.
Note that this law only applies to credit cards, not debit cards. Debit cards are treated the same as checks from the perspective of the law. I don’t EVER use my debit cards to pay for anything. I use them at bank owned ATMs only, and I keep my debit cards locked in the safe most of the time.
I myself have had my credit card numbers compromised on a few occasions. The last time was over two years ago, when someone was using my Barclay’s card to make unauthorized charges. The bank was telling me that the charges were legit because IMO, they didn’t want to eat the cost. The $845 that was stolen from me wasn’t worth the cost to hire a lawyer, but luckily the bank finally saw it my way and reversed the charges. I no longer use that card because Barclays was too difficult to deal with in the matter. I shouldn’t have to fight that hard to get a bank to follow the law.
Still, it was easier to switch credit cards than it would be to get a new checking account.
All forms of payment are vulnerable to electronic fraud, even though it’s relatively rare. You have more legal protections, and banks have a more robust fraud detection plan, when you use credit cards than when you use checks. Whenever possible, use credit cards to do business online. In fact, I have a couple of cashback cards that give me great benefits. One that I have gives me 5% cashback on all Amazon purchases, and another gives me 2% cashback on all purchases. I pay for everything with them, and pay them off at the end of each month. Stay disciplined and don’t spend more in a month than you can pay, and it’s a great way to give yourself a 2% raise and keep your money secure.