Crime

Defense

Many people don’t understand the ins and outs of self defense. My wife, who has attended classes in self defense and actually has a CWP even has problems with the concept.

A couple in Sanford were checking out at WaWa when they noticed that a bottle of wine had been added to their order. They told the clerk that it wasn’t theirs, and the clerk took it off the bill. The woman behind them in line told the couple that it was her wine, then demanded that they pay for it. When they refused, she began beating them with the bottle, and knocked the male unconscious. The woman with the wine bottle was subsequently arrested for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

I was reading that story to my wife, and I made the comment that, should someone do something like that to me, her ass would be shot long before she was able to hit me with the bottle and knock me out. My wife’s reply was, “I don’t think a jury would agree that shooting an unarmed woman is self defense.”

I pointed out to her that the wine bottle was definitely a weapon, and not only was there a risk of serious bodily injury, the man actually DID suffer serious bodily injury, as any blow to the head that results in unconsciousness is at least a concussion, and has a fair chance of resulting in death.

My wife is from New York State. The attitude that is fostered there when it comes to guns in pretty well known to those of us in the gun community. When we were first dating, she questioned why I felt the need to carry a gun and said that she had never needed one. She was open to listening, so I took her to the range. She eventually took some classes and got her CWP.

Still, she is a pacifist at heart. When we were first dating, we were at a baseball game (the Rays v the Yankees- she is a Yankees fan) and a fight broke out in the crowd. One of the trouble makers was being escorted out by a cop, and he decided to punch the cop in the face. The cop took the guy down hard with a leg sweep. The assailant landed on his face hard enough that I heard his face hit the concrete from 30 feet away. After it was over, she was visibly shaken, and told me that she doesn’t like violence, and it makes her sick to her stomach.

The terrorist attacks in Paris were a turning point. We were on vacation in France when the attacks took place. When we saw the news of the shooting, she turned to me and said, “When we get home, I want to take the concealed weapons safety course, so I can apply for a concealed weapons permit.”

Still, even though she has the CWP, she isn’t thrilled about using force.

I get it- she is a girl, and I am not married to the Sara Conner from Terminator 2. The reason I relate this story is that you will be tried by a jury of soccer moms who are likely less gun friendly than my wife is. Remember that when you are in a situation that may require you to use force. You also need to have a lawyer who is good enough to explain your shooting in a way that will get the jury to understand why you felt the need to use force.

By Divemedic, ago

Not Murder in my Book

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.

By Divemedic, ago

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