Crime

Why is the Answer Always College?

The latest trend in the press thinking that they are experts in all things, is the claim that US police training needs to be more like police training in Europe. They claim that police in other countries receive more training than the 6 months that is typical in the US.

police recruits in Japan get between 15 and 21 months of training. Police in Germany get 2.5 years of training. And in Finland, police education takes three years to complete.

So they want to make police training a 4 year degree? What will that cost? I do agree with them that police training is too much like military boot camp. If you train your police like soldiers, you can expect that your police will act like soldiers. I don’t think that the problem is in how long the training is, I think the problem is in the institutional mindset- “War on crime,” the “War on drugs,” that sort of thing. When you think of criminal justice as warfare, you get police who act as if they are on a battlefield.

That’s where my agreement with them ends. The next claim simply tells me that they have never dealt with someone who needs to be taken somewhere, but isn’t going to go. You are assuming that the people who police contact are rational.

As a street medic, and even in the ED, we encounter people who can’t be reasoned with, yet still need to go somewhere or do something. Whether it’s due to mental illness or simply because they are assholes, some people just need to be forced into compliance. Talking only works on people who are rational.

Imagine negotiating with a spree shooter. Someone who believes in what they are doing so strongly that they are willing to gun down a dozen or more people isn’t going to be negotiated out of their act.

You can tell that some people have juts never had to deal with those kinds of people.

By Divemedic, ago

Quality Teachers

The video below is an example of what is teaching your kids. I spent 7 years as a teacher, and I can tell you that there are some really good teachers in your schools. There are also some real pieces of shit. The Wisconsin woman in this video is the latter: you can see for yourself what she dresses like to go to work and the mouth she has as she is driving over 100 miles per hour in a 30 mph zone, passing people on the shoulder, and admits to having both mental health and drug problems. A real pillar of the community.

35 year old Amanda McKaig’s arrest is also reported in this news story.

By Divemedic, ago

‘Teens’

An old man was being beaten on a New York subway car by a group of ‘teens.’ A local TV weather man, who was also on the train, told them to stop. The weatherman became the target of their beating instead. Since the arrested ‘teens’ were all juveniles, they were released without charges. Look at the man’s injuries:

Two black eyes, swollen face. A beating that causes injuries like this are frequently debilitating or even fatal. How can any society look at this as being some kind of lark or harmless crime? My wife keeps asking me why I won’t go to places like New York City or why most of the people I know view NYC as a cesspool. This is why. She counters with “stuff like this is rare. You just have to be careful about where you go.”

There is no way to know how rare this is, because there are no charges filed. Since there are no charges filed, crimes like this are likely not tracked. Misdemeanors and all. Just harmless fun committed by a bunch of ‘teens’ who weren’t doin nuthin.

By Divemedic, ago

Peaceful Protests in Atlanta

More peaceful protesting in Atlanta this weekend.

According to Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum, people protesting a new police training ground gathered around 5 p.m. and marched peacefully until, once downtown, several of the protestors “started committing illegal acts, which included the breaking of windows and also attacking police cruisers that were in the area.” Police suppressed the violence quickly and no law enforcement officers or citizens were injured

So it was peaceful, except for the vandalism, looting, and attacking police officers. But wait a tick, which version of the article is accurate? Reuters had something else to say.

Marchers had gathered to protest the killing of an activist by law enforcement on Wednesday during a raid to clear the construction site of a public safety training facility that activists have derided with the nickname “Cop City”.

The demonstration started peacefully, then abruptly escalated with some protesters throwing fireworks and rocks and smashing buildings’ windows with hammers

By Divemedic, ago

California Tracking

It turns out that the new electronic license plates being issued in Michigan, California, and at least one other state have GPS trackers in them, which allow anyone to track the location of the car that they are attached to. The government having the ability to track everyone all of the time disturbs me enough, but complicating this is the fact that securing them from outside parties tracking them is something that apparently didn’t occur to the company that makes them.

White hats were able to hack into the plates, giving them the ability to see the GPS location, name, address, and other information about the registered owner. In addition, they were able to alter the plates to make them appear to be dealer tags.

This is a bonanza for criminals. A robber sees someone buy something that they want in a store, so they track you through your tag so that you can be robbed in a remote location. Cut someone off in traffic? It would be easy for them to find out where you live. Is your wife pretty? Maybe they can track her home for some easy raping.

This is a major security fail. Remember, just because you don’t do business on the cloud, you are still vulnerable to cyber crime. I am not sure how I would defend against this, but the time to figure that out is BEFORE these plates become mandatory where YOU live.

By Divemedic, ago

Criminal Operation Zone

A family at the Orlando airport discovered that gun free zones are simply areas where criminals can operate in a safe environment. The patriarch dropped his wife and kids off curbside, but was immediately car jacked at gunpoint, and his car stolen. The car was later recovered about 20 miles away from the airport.

Criminals know that everyone entering and leaving the airport are disarmed. This creates a safe working environment for them to carry out their violent, armed crimes.

By Divemedic, ago

Eat Your Gun

The Uvalde Police Chief was interviewed the day after the school shooting. During that interview, he admitted that – well, you can read it for yourself:

When I opened the [school] door, I saw the smoke,” he recalled, saying “shots started firing” again as he and a colleague started nearing the classroom where Ramos was holed up with kids and teachers. “Obviously, I backed off and started taking cover,” the lead officer said, which CNN noted was in clear defiance of training that insists officers risk their own lives to “neutralize” active shooters.

“I know there’s probably victims in there and with the shots I heard, I know there’s probably somebody who’s going to be deceased,” he acknowledged of the room he backed away from.

But he felt the “priority” was the “preservation of life” of those not under the “immediate threat.”

“Once I realized that was going on, my first thought is that we need to vacate” the rest of the school, he said, telling arriving officers that “we’re taking [other] kids out first.”

You know what else would have saved the lives of those who weren’t under imminent threat? Enter the room and shoot the murdering bastard in the fucking face!

If he had any scruples at all, he would eat the barrel of his service pistol. Then again, if he had any scruples at all, this would never have happened.

Sorry, but cops are seldom heroes and when push comes to shove, they back out and hope someone else will take care of it. Parkland, Uvalde, and others have proven this to be the case.

By Divemedic, ago

Why Do We Tolerate This?

Frederick Douglass once said: “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” This is a universal truth. We get as much tyranny as we are willing to endure without taking action. That’s what caused me to write the post about workplace violence from today.

It’s also caused me to write my opinion on the Taqueria shooting in this post. We all know the story. A man is sitting in a restaurant enjoying dinner when an armed robber comes in. The armed robber takes everyone’s money, and our hero pulls his weapon and smokes his ass. Now the law is talking about prosecuting the hero.

There has been a lot of debate as to whether or not the man should have taken as many shots as he did. I will grant you that the law says shooting someone who is down and out of the fight is illegal. That’s where I have a problem. See, the dirtbag who was killed had already murdered one person while committing a similar robbery in 2015. He shot and killed a man and saw his charges pled down to aggravated robbery, for which he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He served only about a third of that reduced sentence. For killing someone, he served about 5 years in prison. Keep in mind that there are people who committed the crime of trespassing in the US Capitol during the J6 protests that are still in prison awaiting trial two years later.

We as a people should decide that we have had enough. The law is not there to protect law abiding people from criminals. There are many more law abiding citizens than there are criminals. No, police are there to protect accused criminals so that they are ensured of getting a fair trial.

That system is broken. Now the criminals are getting more lenient punishment than are the law abiding.

I will never get put on a jury because I am a gun owning, employed white male. However, if I ever was, no one who takes out the trash like this would EVER be found guilty. I wouldn’t care if he had tied his hands behind his back and put a bullet behind his ear. As far as I am concerned, that would have been a public service.

Perhaps his lawyer can make the case that the critter, having been shot 8 times was already dead, and therefore his client’s only violation of the law was abuse of a corpse, then plea it down to something else like vandalism.

By Divemedic, ago

Work

I worked yesterday. The theme of the day was insane people with mental problems and intoxicant day.

One woman came in with a complaint of constipation. She said that her anal sphincter was too tight, and wanted us to loosen it for her. I told the charge nurse that we should send her to the local bar with a couple of coupons for free drinks, and I am sure one of the patrons of the bar would help her out. The charge nurse actually snorted.

Then I was given a Baker Act. She was being Baker acted for the third time for threatening to kill herself. This time, threatened to get a gun and come back to kill us all after she was discharged. Then she told me that she would look for me when she got out, so she could “fuck me up.” She also said that she would follow me home one night so she could kill my family. I had to get a female staff member to escort the patient to the bathroom. Once they were in there, the patient attacked the female. After that, I couldn’t get a single female to take over my patient. They were all afraid of either being attacked and injured, or being attacked and getting suspended. Since I already was suspended recently, I insisted that my manager call the local cops and filed a police report. My amanger wasn’t happy about that, but I don’t care. I am not going to put up with crazy bitches threatening me. The cops wouldn’t arrest her, but at least it creates a record in the event that I see her near my house. Other than taking reports, cops are largely useless. I don’t know if the threats and her appearing in my neighborhood would be reasonable fear or not, but it can’t hurt. I am pretty sure that, should I see her in my neighborhood, I will call the cops and probably hold her at gunpoint.

Name another job that requires its employees to be physically attacked and put up with threats of being murdered.

Speaking of that, one of my former druggie dirtbag patients decided to perform a home invasion, and got ventilated by the homeowner. He is now fully rehabilitated. I love happy endings.

Then I had to spend the day in recertification classes, doing my recertifications in Basic Life Support, Advanced Life Support, and Pediatric Life Support.

By Divemedic, ago