Police State

Professional Negligence

Imagine that a man’s truck with half a dozen guns inside of it is stolen. The man uses the “Find My Phone” app to locate his phone, which is presumably still in the stolen truck. The app tells him that his phone is somewhere within a 4 block radius of a location, so he drove around the area in a rented car and somehow came to the conclusion that his phone, and presumably his stolen guns and truck, were located in a woman’s garage.

The cop assigned to the case somehow bought into this hunch, secured a warrant, and performed a SWAT raid of the house. The resident of the house, a 77 year old woman, opened her door to an armed and armored SWAT team who handcuffed her and placed her in the back of a patrol car, leaving her in there for hours without food, water, or her medication. The search, which lasted for several hours, didn’t turn up a truck, a cell phone, or any guns. In fact, there was no evidence of any criminal activity found there at all. The entire incident happened in Denver.

The woman has filed a lawsuit against the police (pdf alert), as she rightly should have. A search warrant is only supposed to be issued on “probable cause” that evidence of a crime is located on the property to be searched. The circle drawn by “find my phone” is an approximate location based upon the cell tower that the phone is connected to. In this case, the circle was four blocks wide and covered six different properties. That isn’t an indication that HER house was the one where the phone was. It isn’t even an indication that the phone is located within that circle.

The lawsuit alleges that the detective failed to disclose his inexperience using the “Find My” app, failed to explain how the ‘Find My’ app works, identify what technology it uses to produce its results, or establish that the app was working correctly. Going only on a screenshot from the “Find My” app that pointed to Johnson’s home, the search warrant was approved.

The police damaged the woman’s home by breaking her garage door and climbing atop her new dining room chairs to break holes into her ceiling, they also damaged irreplaceable collectables in the home. The detective then told the elderly woman on the day of the raid that the Denver police would pay nothing to cover any of these damages.

People need to have a belief that the police are not just another criminal street gang. The more I interact with and see how police work, the more I come to believe that we would be better without them. I have only called them a few times, and each time they did nothing more than write a report. It was a waste of time.

I have said before: the police need to clean up their ranks. I don’t think you can, because I believe that the bad cops far outnumber the good ones. The police have become just another group of criminals who prey on the people in this nation who actually produce wealth. They are a street gang with badges and qualified immunity.

By Divemedic, ago

Don’t Answer Questions

This encounter is why you don’t answer a cop’s questions. Hand over the license and registration, and then respond with “I am not trying to be disrespectful, but I don’t wish to answer any questions at this time,” and then shut up. If you get officer road rage, it likely won’t help, but at least you have a stronger case later.

By Divemedic, ago

Another Boiling of the Blood

A guy wearing a motorcycle helmet in a WalMart is approached from behind by the manager and told to take off the helmet or leave. Since he was listening to music on earbuds, the man never heard the manger. The manager calls the cops.

Now the encounter could have gone two ways:

  1. They ask for his ID, see his receipt, see that he paid for his items, and heard both sides of the story. He didn’t have an attitude, even. So seeing all of this, chalk it up to misunderstanding, ask the manager if he wants the man to receive a trespass warning, if yes, do issue it and tell the man he is no longer welcome in the store. Everyone leaves, encounter deescalated.
  2. No, instead we get officer badass. By 7:45 into this video, he tells the motorcycle rider “You seem like an argumentative person. You need to take your hand, go like this, and pull your head out of your ass. Don’t mess with me, I am not the guy you want to mess with. You hear me??”

My answer at that point would be, “I know about the First Amendment. Spare me your roid rage bullshit. Go fuck yourself, and I am not saying another fucking thing until you get me a fucking lawyer, douchebag.” Then I would go to jail and be the state’s next winner of the “sue the cops” lottery.

Instead, he followed the cop’s instruction to stop talking, and they arrested him for not talking.

The manager lied. The cops violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights, and possibly others. I would be a money making individual. As he will hopefully be. He wound up suing them for malicious prosecution, illegal search, and illegal arrest. Mr. Pfaendler offered to settle with the city and department for $250,000 but the offer was rejected. The case, Pfaendler v. Sahuarita, Town of (4:20-cv-00188-JCH) has been running through the courts for more than two and a half years.

Cops like this are douchebags. When they are harassing compliant, law abiding citizens, firing beanbag rounds in random drive by shootings, tossing flashbangs into baby cribs, or using armored vehicles to clear people out of a bar during COVID, they are total bad asses. When it comes time to stop a mass shooter from killing a bunch of third graders, they stand around outside, texting people on cell phones that are emblazoned with Punisher logos, or take cover behind cars filled with children and soccer moms.

I swear that cops like this make all of you look bad. Either you cops need to clean up your ranks, or if there are so many of these meatheads that you can’t accomplish that, then walk away. I also don’t think that a WalMart in Arizona can trespass you from WalMarts in Maine. He may be mistaken there, but I would have to check.

By Divemedic, ago

Clean Up Your Ranks

In the last 22 years, I have had 9 interactions with with the police:

  • 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 this story to a GF in 2012 and that one copied the scheme)
  • 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. 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.

I am giving the good cops some advice: clean up your ranks. I don’t think you can, because I believe that the bad cops far outnumber the good ones. The police have become just another group of criminals who prey on the people in this nation who actually produce wealth. They are a street gang with badges and qualified immunity.

By Divemedic, ago

This is Why People Hate Cops

A deputy in Columbia County, FL stops a blind man for having a folding cane in his back pocket, claiming that she thought it was a firearm. EDITED TO ADD: It’s obvious that the deputy didn’t REALLY believe that the folded walking stick in his back pocket was a firearm, judging by her demeanor when he reached back and pulled it from his pocket. She invented the firearm story because she wanted an excuse to stop and harass him. I believe that she stopped him because she had already decided to harass him and find a reason to arrest him. END EDIT

It is quickly established that her reasonable, articulable suspicion was incorrect. At this point, her legal justification for the stop is over. There is no RAS that a crime was being committed, therefore there is no reason to detain this man. Instead, she then demands that he produce identification and he refuses because he apparently understands the law better than this cop and her sergeant.

After they run his ID, the female deputy asks “Was that so hard?” The man replies, “It’s gonna be. I want your names and badge numbers,” to which the sergeant replies, “You know what, put him in jail for resisting.”

Resisting what? There was no legal reason to put him in handcuffs or demand his ID.

This is the kind of shit that makes me dislike police. The deputies know the charges will be dropped but are using the process to punish people because they know that they will inconvenience you, costing you legal fees, and retaliate by putting you into the system. We should change the law to establish citizen review committees that review police actions and give these committees the power to strip individual officers of their qualified immunity so that they can be personally held accountable when deliberately using the law as a weapon to satisfy personal vendettas.

This kind of stuff makes my blood boil.

By Divemedic, ago

Gov’t Tracking Your Stuff

Last month, the FMCSA released a new proposed regulation for public comment. The proposal is for a electronic ID system that would place a transponder in every interstate commercial motor vehicle that would transmit a unique electronic ID number. This number would allow police to remotely track every single commercial vehicle and its contents. The government claims that there are no “credible” privacy concerns for carriers and drivers.

The proposed regulation takes effect in early December.

By Divemedic, ago

Concentration Camps

It has long been said that wealthy, elitist Democrats don’t care about illegal immigration because they don’t have illegal immigrants in their neighborhoods. Ron Desantis has proven that old saying to be correct by shipping some illegals to Martha’s Vineyard.

FDR put inconvenient non-whites into military guarded camps. Now the left has found another group of non-white people to put into camps. Less than 36 hours after arriving in Martha’s Vineyard, which declared itself to be a sanctuary location, the immigrants that arrived there were shipped off to a concentration camp to be guarded by 125 National Guard troops activated for that express purpose.

It isn’t that liberals don’t understand hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance, as Miguel argues. They fully understand it. The leftists have simply decided that they don’t have to follow the rules that they have set for others.

In the meantime, everyone on the left who supports this needs to be called a racist who supports putting Hispanics into concentration camps.

By Divemedic, ago