Crime

Use of Force

I just had the oddest experience that I have ever had in Las Vegas. It ended in a use of force incident.

My wife and I were playing Craps at Harrah’s this morning. My wife was standing to my left. We were at the end of the table and a woman walked up to the table on my right and tried to buy in with $25 cash and a slot machine ticket worth $77. The dealer told the woman that tickets were not accepted at the tables, and directed her to the cashier’s cage that was 20 feet away. The woman left the $25 in chips on the table and headed that way.

She returned 10 minutes later, and I pointed out to her that the chips she had left behind were still there. She said “I don’t care about that, it’s chump change,” then put the chips on the field. I was the shooter and rolled a 6. Her money was taken by the dealer. She asked the dealer to place another bet, the dealer asked for money, the woman again tried to use the slot machine ticket. My wife helpfully told her that she needed to use cash. She left. After she was gone, I made a joke: “That’s what happens when you legalize pot.” The entire table laughed, dealers included.

She came back a third time, about 15 minutes later. She stood so close to me that our shoulders were touching, despite the fact that no one else was at our end of the table. I slid my chips to my left, away from her and closer to my wife. It made me nervous. The woman said, pointing to my wife,”She isn’t helping me. I should just punch her.” I told the woman that this would be a bad idea and that she needed to leave. I asked the dealer to call security. I couldn’t leave, because I had about $200 in play. The woman left, and the dealer said, “She is someone else’s problem now.”

You guessed it- she was back 5 minutes later. The stupid ass tried using the slot ticket again. She said, “I don’t have any circle things (meaning chips?) to play with, so I will just take some of his.” She then reached in and grabbed a handful of my chips with her right hand.

I grabbed the offending hand HARD and twisted towards me as I stepped to my right, into her, planting my foot behind her. At the same time, I lifted her arm and pushed. Off balance, she started to fall and I was just starting to finish the move when my wife yelled “stop.” I eased up and let the woman keep her feet. Security was there pretty quickly. They removed her from the property. As they were doing so, she insisted that security get a supervisor and “fully document” the incident. She will be lucky if they don’t have her arrested.

My wife later said she was worried that I would be the one who got in trouble. She also said that she wasn’t sure that I needed to use force. I explained that the woman had already verbally signaled her willingness to get violent and was in the act of committing robbery. What I did was a clear case of the lawful use of force in self defense.

First time I have ever had to use force in my wife’s presence.

By Divemedic, ago

No one available

Years ago, I used to live in an apartment. I came home one night to see that my neighbor’s apartment appeared to have been broken into while he was out of town. The front door had been kicked in. I called 911. The operator told me that it was a busy night, a burglary of an unoccupied dwelling was low priority, and it would therefore be an hour or so before police would arrive.

I told them that I understood, described what I was wearing, told the operator that I would be clearing the apartment of any criminals with my firearm, and asked her to relay that to responding officers, so that I wouldn’t be shot.

Less than five minutes later, 6 officers arrived, lights and sirens on. I got the standard lecture about taking the law into my own hands. I told them that SOMEONE has to stop criminals, and since they were busy writing reports of crimes that were over, the people themselves would stop crime.

They were not amused.

It looks like the citizens of Asheville, NC will be having to do the same for themselves. Here are ten crimes that the Asheville police will stop responding to:

  • Theft under $1,000 where there is no suspect information (this does not include stolen vehicles or guns)
  • Theft from a vehicle where there is no suspect information
  • Minimal damage and/or graffiti to property where there is no suspect information
  • Non-life-threatening harassing phone calls (does not include incidents that are related to domestic violence and/or stalking)
  • Fraud, scams, or identity theft
  • Simple assaults that are reported after they have occurred
  • Reports that do not require immediate police actions and/or enforcement (information only reports)
  • Funeral escorts
  • Lost/found property
  • Trespassing where the property owner does not want to press charges
  • In addition, noise complaints made during normal business hours and after-hours may have a significant delay in response…
By Divemedic, ago

McAfee

I bought a new laptop last year. It came with McAfee antivirus. Because I was working from home, I got an email virus from a work email. I don’t think I was the target, I think the hackers were trying to target my school district. The payload was the ech0raix malware. McAfee never detected the virus, and didn’t do a thing to clean the computer.

I lost everything. All of my data. The weakness of the virus is that it saves an encrypted version of all of your files using a randomly generated key. No one with the possible exception of the NSA can decrypt it. Then it deletes the original. That was the weakness that my IT friend was able to exploit. We got the files back, but filenames and metadata was lost. So now I have a couple of hundred thousand files without names. The only way to find out what a file is, is to open it and then rename the file. I gave up on that about 11 months ago. Tedious.

Why do I mention this now?

Because McAffee is telling me that my year subscription is up, and is asking me to renew. They have a money back guarantee that, if you get a virus and they cannot retrieve your data, they will refund you the purchase price of their software.

Being a gambler, I can tell you that this is a sucker’s bet. The overwhelming majority of their users won’t get a virus, thus making you the loser of the bet and McAfee the winner. Those who DO get the virus must send the computer in to be ‘cleaned’ and data recovered, if possible. Those who can’t be cleaned, McAfee ‘loses’ the bet, and you ‘win’ your money back- a push.

This virus software is not very good, and their “guarantee” is a sucker’s bet- a gimmick designed to take your money.

By Divemedic, ago

Child, felon, killer

News in the Orlando area about two kids, ages 14 and 12, who committed a burglary, stole some guns, then engaged in a shootout with responding police. The two kids ran away from a local foster home, the Florida United Methodist Children’s Home. The home has a history of trouble, with the police responding there as many as 200 times a year. In March, one of the foster kids residing there beat and murdered one of the home’s security guards.

The pair used a shovel, a crowbar and large rocks to break windows to break into the home, where they then used baseball bats to destroy furniture, toilets and a tub. They soon located the homeowner’s guns — an AK-47, a pump shotgun, and a handgun, along with 200 rounds of ammunition.

The older one, a girl, was recorded saying, “I’m gonna roll this down like GTA.” They fired on police for over 90 minutes while police tried to negotiate. Police finally returned fire, striking the girl in the chest. Video of parts of the shootout can be found here as well as here.

The 14 year old girl has been arrested for stealing puppies in 2018 and for setting several fires when she was at another facility in Flagler County. The 12 year old boy has been in foster care since 2016 and just a month ago threatened “to kill a student and spread his guts all over the bleachers” while at school.

Both of them now face felony charges of attempted first-degree murder of law enforcement officers and armed burglary. Sheriff Mike Chitwood has this to say about the juvenile justice system:

“The brainiacs in Tallahassee, they want to do this restorative justice stuff. They need to take a deep look and say, ‘Something’s not right here,’ because where the rubber meets the road, these kids are killers. They’re capable of killing. This juvenile citation (expletive) that you hear from these faith groups, they need to worry about what’s going on in the pulpit in their church, not worried about what’s going on on the (expletive) streets when you have 14-year-olds and 12-year-olds arming themselves,” Chitwood said.

I have layers of security. Cameras. Alarm system. Gun safe. All of it is designed to prevent amateur attempts and slow down more professional attempts. Please secure your weapons in a safe. Even a cheap gun safe would have prevented the teens from accessing the weapons, and one can be had for less than $150. If long guns won’t fit in a small safe, remove the bolts from the long guns and lock THEM in the safe.

By Divemedic, ago

Inside a liberal’s head: thoughts on the cops

Thanks to Big Country, I saw a story that came out yesterday about the Seattle Police Department no longer performing traffic stops. I met my wife after work last night- we went to the house of one of her friends. Another of her liberal teacher friends who was there was talking about this story with me. He is all in favor of it. I shot several holes in his argument.

His claim was that there is no reason for police to do a traffic stop when they can simply take down your tag number and mail a ticket to your house. Traffic stops, he says, are an escalation and almost ensures that the subjects of these stops will be nervous or scared, thus also ensuring that there will be some kind of violence that will end with the police shooting people.

I replied, “So you don’t think the cops should ever stop anyone?” He replied no, and I told him that as a paramedic who has responded to perhaps 25,000 car accidents in his career and seen hundreds of fatalities as a result, that I disagree. People would soon drive even worse than they already do. He replied that people mainly have any good driving habits because they are afraid of getting a ticket, so mailing out those tickets would have the same effect.

This was where I laughed and said, “I will just remove the license plate from my car and never get another ticket in my life. After all, if there are no traffic stops, without a tag, you have no idea where to send the ticket.”

His reply was that, of course police would stop you for no tags. I said, “Oh, so SOME traffic stops are ok?” He says yes, in cases where there are no tags, or for safety reasons. So now I move on to- what about suspected DUI? Yes. What about someone speeding? Yes, but only if someone is 25 mph or more over the speed limit. What would prevent the police from simply lowering speed limits by 25 mph? What about the kid who gets hit by a car going 44 mph in a school zone?

So then he moved the goalposts. He said that his problem was that the police use traffic stops to profile people. His daughter (white, liberal, purple hair and many piercings) lives in a ghetto, all black neighborhood and drives a red, lowrider Honda with dark tinted windows. She “gets pulled over all of the time” they question her and then “let her go because she is white.”

I said, “But profiling works.” He replied: “What?”

“Look, you are a cop. You are trying to prevent crime, or at least catch a criminal. It’s kind of your job. Which scenario will likely accomplish that- Stopping a 60 year old man driving a Lexus in a neighborhood of half million dollar homes, or a red Honda with dark tinted windows and a coffee can muffler being driven by a couple of white kids in an all black neighborhood that is notorious for drug sales and random drive by shootings?”

To his credit, he admitted that the Honda is most likely. Then I said, “Could it be that they let your daughter go because they could see that she wasn’t breaking the law, and not merely because she was white? Is it possible that they let black people go without a ticket as well?”

Then I had to let it go, because my wife was giving me “the look” for grilling her coworkers.

The fact is this: Florida did a study of traffic stops. They found out that blacks are not stopped in numbers that are out of proportion to the population of the areas where the stop is made. That is, in areas where all of the residents are black, police stop- mostly black people. Not because they are black, but because that is who is driving in that area.

By Divemedic, ago

Facts matter

We see how a large group of feral blacks conspired to illegally enter an occupied building of a school, where they entered a classroom and attacked a 14 year old girl, causing her injury before attempting to flee the scene.

I can’t tell you NC law, but in Florida:

  • Entering a school without permission and with the intent to commit a felony offense is burglary: a felony in the first degree, punishable with life in prison.
  • Trespassing on school property is a First degree misdemeanor.
  • Attacking a person with the intent to commit a felony is aggravated battery, a felony of the second degree.
  • The victim is a child, so the adults are guilty of aggravated child abuse, a first degree felony.
  • The fact that they planned and conspired to all of the above is another first degree felony.

If black lives really matter, the BLM group will support hefty sentences for this, but you know that they won’t.

By Divemedic, ago

The Big Guy

Remember when the left said that Trump was Putin’s stooge? Remember when Biden cancelled the Keystone pipeline in order to save the environment? Do you also recall how Hunter Biden was on the board of a Ukranian energy company, even though he has no experience with oil, doesn’t even speak the language, and is completely unqualified for the job?

So explain to me how it is that Biden waives sanctions so that a Russian oil company owned by Vladimir Putin can build a pipeline. Was this because Trump was a Russian stooge, or was it to save the environment, or perhaps it was because ten percent goes to the big guy?

By Divemedic, ago

Dealership car thieves

One of the Youtube shows that I enjoy watching is Lehto’s Law, a show where a Michigan lawyer answers legal questions from his subscribers. A video from last week referred back to a situation from years ago where a dealer was running a financing scam. It is apparently a widespread practice.

Looking back on it, the story is a familiar one. I myself have had a dealer call me the next day to tell me that they couldn’t reach a deal and wanted me to either return the car or bring in more cash. This video is worth a few minutes of your time.

Many businesses are shady, taking actions that they KNOW they are not legally permitted to take. They also know that few customers will call them on it, and even fewer will sue. For that reason, breaking the law becomes quite lucrative. Don’t be a sucker. Know your rights, fight for them.

By Divemedic, ago

More knees needed

A man in Ocala Florida was attacked on May 2 by three feral critters who used a baseball bat and a shovel to beat him during a robbery. The man had multiple skull injuries and fractured vertebrae as a result of the beating, and had to be placed in a medically induced coma when he was taken to the hospital due to his injuries.

The three critters were 32-year-old Darrielle Murphy, 33-year-old Keshana Oliver, and 19-year-old Jakecio Pollard. Pollard is in custody and considering that he is only 19, is already off to a great start on his career at being a lifelong violent criminal. He was arrested for petit theft, but they dropped the charges, they also convicted him of drug possession and giving a false name to a LEO, crimes which sent him to jail for 16 days. At the time of the robbery, he was awaiting trial for a jail escape.

Murphy and Oliver are still at large. They are pictured here:

Keshana Oliver has felony convictions going back to 2007. Those include burglary, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, battery, tampering with witness, tampering with evidence, affray (fighting/rioting in jail), threatening a public official, grand theft, assault during a burglary, attacking a LEO, three different cases of driving while license suspended, providing false identification, and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. For his crimes, he has been sent to prison 4 times, having served a total of 18 months in jail.

In the case of Darielle Murphy (street name “Bumbo”), the earliest crime that wasn’t a traffic offense that I could find was for “trespassing on school property after warning” in 2007 when he was 18 years old, but the arrest affidavit was sealed. Included in the paperwork for this crime was “violation of probation” which means that there were earlier convictions, but they were likely while he was a juvenile and records were sealed. Anyway, his visible convictions going back to 2009. They include charges for domestic battery (at least three convictions), tampering with evidence, escape, grand theft (at least three convictions), drug possession, battery, witness tampering, at least three convictions for petit theft, motor vehicle theft, theft of a firearm, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, armed burglary, and multiple convictions for resisting arrest with violence. He also had charges dropped on “lewd and lascivious battery on a child 12-16” there as well. For his crimes, this guy has been in prison 15 times for a total 4 years and 7 months in custody.

Murphy and Oliver are career violent criminals, with Pollard following in their footsteps. They have each committed numerous violent felonies, and it is only a matter of time before they murder someone. The short bit of time they have served seems like a slap on the wrist for the long list of crimes that they have committed.

There are far more blacks like them than there are successful black professionals.

By Divemedic, ago