Cops

Only Ones

Here are a couple of cops who were arrested for billing a neighborhood for security service they didn’t perform. One of the officers ripped them off for over $15k. I’ve long had a problem with cops working as security.

They wear their department issued uniform, carry a department issued firearm and radio while driving a department issued patrol car. They reimburse the agency they work for for the use of those items, then are free to rent themselves out. Depending on the situation, they are considered to be security guards or police.

If they want to search you but don’t have a warrant or probable cause, they are security guards. If they ask you a question and you lie, they are then cops and you have broken the law. If you resist them in any way, they are cops. They get to have things however it works out best for them. As this great grandmother found out, when Disney security searched her bags as a part of a security check and she was arrested for having CBD oil. The charges were later dropped, but this illustrates the problem I have with cops as security. They can search you, and you have no constitutional protections. But let them find something illegal, and they instantly can use the fruits of what would otherwise be an unconstitutional search and arrest you.

Oh, and should that cop have to use any sort of force, you can bet your ass that they will be fully covered by magic police immunity.

This entire practice is also a clear conflict of interest. There are quite a few Orlando Police who work for Universal Studios. I once watched a famous singer use a shit load of drugs while backstage at a concert at Universal Studios, right in front of uniformed OPD officers working off duty security. Those cops didn’t do shit, because they know that pissing off their employer (the Studios) by arresting performers will ensure that their cushy and lucrative off duty gig will go away. In some cases, they make more working as security than they do as police officers. They aren’t going to let anything like the oath they took to the law and the constitution get in the way of that.

I don’t think the general practice of off duty security should be legal.

By Divemedic, ago

Nope

Several members of Congress have introduced a bill that would allow current and former members of the US military’s special forces to carry concealed weapons nationwide, despite any other laws to the contrary. I’ve seen stories about this bill in a few places over the past few weeks, and I just can’t support it. The idea that we are going to pass a Federal law that grants some sort of “super citizen” status to certain people, who then have rights not available to the rest of us?

No.

I would note that all three of the congressmen who sponsored this bill are former special forces. It’s typical self serving crap that politicians vote to give themselves more rights than the rest of us. The same thing happened with LEOSA. The entire premise behind that travesty of a law was cops might run into some criminal they arrested and need to defend themselves, as if some cop from Bumfukt, Iowa has a higher chance of running into a criminal while spending the day at Disneyland in California than I would is simply ridiculous, and there is no evidence that it actually happens.

The same for special forces soldiers. They don’t need such a permit while carrying out their duties, because they are on duty. For former soldiers, there is no need for them to have more rights than the rest of us. Don’t give me the line that this will be used as a stepping stone for more bills later- as soon as cops got their special LEOSA rights, they promptly turned around and lobbied against our right to carry. I’m not falling for that one again.

If these Republicans want to expand carry rights: do it for everyone, not just yourselves and your friends.

By Divemedic, ago

Karen Fatigue

These were the most chilled out cops ever. I will certainly call out the cops when they are wrong. In this case, they handled this traffic stop in the most professional way.

This entire interaction was due to the US “the customer always gets their way” approach to customer service. These women have learned to just scream for a manager, who will come and kiss their ass, letting them have whatever they are demanding. That doesn’t work on police, and it shouldn’t. If you are on a traffic stop or are getting arrested, the only response people should get when demanding a supervisor is “No”

If you have a problem with your arrest or stop, fix it in court.

By Divemedic, ago

Shooting

A Walmart in Poinciana Florida, an unincorporated community that spans Osceola and Polk County, had been hiring off duty Sheriff’s deputies as security. One of them confronted a group of “teens” who had been shoplifting. That’s when one of the youths decided to pull a gun on the Deputy, thereby changing his crime from misdemeanor larceny into armed robbery, a forcible felony.

The Deputy conducted an impromptu ballistics test of his .45 ACP caliber Glock, which performed as expected. The crowd became a bit irate because the deputy shot a “kid,” so another off duty deputy, along with an off duty firefighter, both of whom happened to be in the store and were armed, assisted the original deputy in securing the crime scene until others could arrive. I can’t post the link to the tweet with the video, because it’s been restricted. Click on the tweet below and take a look.

By Divemedic, ago

Pull Them Out

Yet again, we have a case where the American public is told that cops don’t have to protect you. The school resource officer from the Uvalde school shooting was just found not guilty of all charges for standing outside of the school and hiding while the shooter massacred the students that the cop had a duty to protect.

It turns out, the cops don’t have a duty to do a damned thing except collect a pension. This echoes the case where the coward of Broward, Scot Peterson, was allowed to retire with his pension intact, even though he hid during the Parkland School Massacre and as the School’s Resource Officer, it was his job to protect the school’s students.

If police don’t have a duty to do anything, then why do we even have SROs in school in the first place? In shooting after shooting, we know that the police are cowardly pussies who will take cover while our children are slaughtered. That’s how we know that they aren’t about to go door to door to take shit.

Pull the cops out of the schools and cut police and school budgets by an appropriate amount. School resource officers are a horrendous waste of money.

By Divemedic, ago

FBI Reenters the Caliber Wars

Listen to the below video:

There are 9mm projectiles out there that are doing the same thing the forties are doing, but we can take the full power nines that are still less recoil impulse, high magazine capacity…

I own handguns in all of the major self defense calibers, including a few .40S&W and about three times as many 9 millimeters. I can’t tell you the last time I carried, or even shot, a forty caliber. When the FBI decided to use that caliber, they did so by neutering the 10mm. Why? Because female and limp wristed beta male Federal officers can’t handle the recoil of full power handguns.

I’m just going to say this: The 9mm has been a go to carry piece for me because of capacity and ease of concealment. If I were a Fed and could carry what I wanted without fear of printing or accidentally flashing, I would carry a full sized handgun.

He says it, but in a roundabout way:

I asked the guy at Hornady, why are we seeing huge gains in 9mm performance, but not in the other calibers? His answer was “you allowed us to increase velocity.”

This is a fundamentally misleading statement. The 10mm had plenty of velocity, but you forced the industry to slow it down and called it a .40. That’s why the “S&W” at the end is said to stand for “slow and weak.” The heart of the issue is at 12:45 (paraphrased just a bit):

10mm was fine for some agents, but you can’t hand that to a “Fleet” of 13,000 agents. The 180 grain bullet generates too much recoil, so let’s slow it down. Well, if you slow it down, you might as well go to a 40.

The other issue was the handgun chosen for the 10mm: The model 1076. He says half of the guns bought had to go back to the Performance center to be reworked because the gun didn’t function correctly. That’s a firearm, not a caliber problem. Still, recoil was and remains an issue.

All handguns are tradeoffs. Still, let’s be honest here- the FBI went back to the 9mm because women and soyboys are recoil sensitive, and the 1076 was just a crappy gun.

By Divemedic, ago

Assist

As a paramedic, I have opened dozens of cars for medical emergencies, pets, or even children locked in cars. A person who is in a car and isn’t responding is a medical emergency until proven otherwise. Our policy was to try and wake the person while knocking on the window. If no response, the person was showing signs of distress, or it was a child, we would then gain entry to the vehicle. If the temperature outside was less than 80 degrees Fahrenheit, we would take the time to open in without damaging the vehicle, if possible. We had tools for that, but they take a bit of time. If the temperature was more than 80 degrees, our policy was to immediately gain access using the fastest possible means.

The people commenting on this post have a problem with what the cops did. I don’t.

By Divemedic, ago

Weed, Guns, and Prostitutes

In a move that signals just how much of a fascist tyrant he is, Trump signed an executive order reclassifying marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III on Thursday. Schedule III drugs are things like Ketamine, Testosterone, and Codeine. That sets in motion a number of things that are important. The most obvious of these is that users of medical marijuana are no longer unlawful users of the drug, which also means that those with a medical marijuana card are no longer prohibited from buying a firearm, and can now legally put no on a 4473. It also means that BATFEIEIO will have to revise and rewrite their form 4473 questions.

Republicans are incensed because police unions have long opposed such a move, as busting people for weed is a huge source of police employment and a great way to conduct warrantless searches: “I smelled weed.” As evidence to support their ire, Republicans made the following points:

  • Reclassifying marijuana as a Schedule III drug will send the wrong message to America’s children, enable drug cartels, and make our roads more dangerous
  • According to a recently published fifteen-year review of medical research, marijuana has no real medical value, and 30% of medical marijuana users have an addiction to the drug
  • Under Schedule III, pilots, truck drivers, and other safety-sensitive professions will not be tested for marijuana.
  • Marijuana is already imperiling safety: over 40% of fatal car crashes today involve THC. Rescheduling will exponentially worsen this crisis

First, let me say that I am one of the only people that I know that has never even tried the stuff. I have no interest in it, and I just never felt the need to try it. My only oppositions to marijuana are practical ones.

  1. I hate the smell when it is smoked. It reeks. I don’t care if they legalize it, as long as I don’t have to smell it. Make it an edible, or make patches. Do that, and I won’t care.
  2. Pass limits beyond which someone is considered impaired, and come up with a test that can reliably determine if someone is beyond that limit. I don’t want someone flying my plane or surgeons operating on people while they are impaired.

Now that that is out of the way, let’s address the Republican claims:

America’s children aren’t sitting there saying “Oooh, Trump said doctors can now prescribe weed. I think I will go out and smoke it now.” Ridiculous. Anyone who wants weed gets it now. I know that it’s anecdotal, but I would say that half of the people under the age of 30 who come to the ED test positive for marijuana, and probably 1 in 5 who are over 30 do as well. The patients I don’t test smell like weed a good bit of the time, too. Your policies aren’t doing shit to prevent people from using.

Half of the states (almost- it’s 24 now) have already legalized marijuana in some form or another. The Federal government is just catching up with what the states are doing, and what the citizens obviously want.

Marijuana DOES have medical uses. The fact that studies are showing that it doesn’t is a reflection of science being for sale. The government pays someone to conduct a study on marijuana to prove it has no legitimate use, and what do you know, the preexisting opinion of the study’s sponsor is confirmed. Far too much of what we call “science” is actually paid propaganda. Most “scientists” are actually whores who sell the weight of their credentials to the highest bidder.

Truck drivers, pilots, and the like can still be tested for weed as a Schedule III drug. They are tested for intoxication on things like alcohol (no scheduled at all), Schedule IV drugs like Xanax, Ativan, and Valium, as well as other Schedule III drugs like Ketamine and Codeine. This is just a stupid and downright untruthful argument that I classify as fear mongering, no different than “every traffic accident will result in a gunfight.”

In my several decades as a paramedic, I can say that nearly every traffic accident occurring after midnight involves an alcohol impaired driver, and we aren’t making alcohol illegal. If fatal accidents involve a driver with marijuana in their system 40% of the time, I ask how many people have marijuana in their systems. Correlation doesn’t imply causation. I could easily say that 60% of people who die in a traffic crash eat sandwiches, but that doesn’t make sandwiches the cause of traffic deaths. Keep in mind that current testing for marijuana doesn’t test for intoxication, it tests for presence. Because they are fat soluble, the metabolites of marijuana stay in your system for up to 90 days. That doesn’t mean that you were intoxicated at the time you were tested, which is my second point, above.

Overall, I think this issue is a loser for Republicans, and I support the action Trump took here. I just wish I didn’t have to smell that stuff everywhere I go.

By Divemedic, ago