Police State

Policing For Profit, Episode CXVII

There is an old quote where a bank robber was asked why he robs banks. He replied, “Because that is where the money is.” It seems that the police have decided to take his advice and begin robbing the modern day version of the stagecoach. The Feds are helping them.

Sheriffs in California and Kansas have exploited the fact that marijuana distribution, while legal in those states, is illegal under Federal Law. Because of this fact, they are having deputies conduct traffic stops on the armored cars and confiscating all of the money. In the case of Kansas, no law is being broken in Kansas. The cops are merely stopping the armored cars that are transporting the cash from Missouri pot shops to Colorado banks.

As soon as the money is seized, the cops turn the money over to the Feds, which places it out of the jurisdiction of state judges, who are then unable to intervene. Under Federal forfeiture laws, the local cops get 80% of whatever the Federal government confiscates. Getting $800,000 for a traffic stop is a pretty lucrative business move.

This is purely an attempt to use badges to conduct armed robbery. The cops want people not to oppose them, but that is pretty hard to do when you are acting more like a criminal gang than you are a legitimate law enforcement agency.

By Divemedic, ago

Policing for Profit

After my post from a couple of days ago, it has become apparent that some people think that speed cameras are a good idea, saying that they don’t speed, and are tired of people who do. It’s cute that those people think that speed cameras have anything to do with traffic safety or actual speeding.

In Baltimore, a speed camera issued a speeding ticket to a stationary car. The real story here isn’t that one car was erroneously ticketed. No, the real story is the fact that Baltimore’s 164 cameras have issued $48 million in tickets over the last three years. If the amount of the ticket, $40, is typical, this means that 400,000 tickets a year are issued by those 164 cameras: roughly 2400 tickets for each camera. The officers that review the pictures before a ticket is issued review and issue 1200 tickets per day. On an 8 hour workday, that leaves just 24 seconds for each picture to be reviewed and a citation issued. In other words, this is nothing but a revenue generator with few safeguards or oversight.

Officials in Heath, Ohio installed 2 speed cameras to watch for excessive speed on Route 79, an area that had seen only one crash in the previous two years. Those two cameras alone accounted for 5,000 traffic citations in just 4 weeks.

Since it was such a money maker, ten more cameras were installed to watch intersections in town and look for red light runners. Those ten cameras were responsible for 5,000 more tickets their first month. At those intersections, light runners had been responsible for only 16 traffic accidents over the previous two years.

In all, the traffic tickets will cost the drivers in the area more than $12,000,000 in fines each year, of which the city will keep $10,00,000.

Then there was the Long Island traffic cameras that were responsible for $2.4 million in School Zone speeding tickets during the summer, when there was no school in session.

The big winner here is actually the private company that installs and runs the cameras. They frequently are involved in kickback schemes.

Miami, Washington, DC, and half a dozen other cities have been involved in this fleecing of the public. No oversight, with a private company running the camera while giving some of the take back to the city.

By Divemedic, ago

Isn’t it Still Tyranny?

Let’s say that the cops want to see if you have anything illegal in your house, but don’t have any probable cause with which to get a warrant. So instead, they coerce a local burglar into breaking into your home and reporting on what he sees, so they can use his report to obtain a warrant. Has the government still violated your rights? Many people would say yes.

Now let’s say that the government wants to control what you can say. It would be against the highest law of the land for them to do so. With that being the case, the government instead gets private industry to shut down what you have to say. Has the government still violated your rights? Many people would say yes, although sadly, many would also be OK with that.

So what if the FBI bought spyware that enabled them to break into your phone? Would that be OK? Even if they promised not to actually use it? Just the tip, I swear.

By Divemedic, ago

Still Counting Bullet Holes

Two cars full of NRA members white men gang members unidentified young men engaged in a running gun battle in Winter Haven, Florida. All four people riding in one car, and at least on person in the other car, were hit. The Sheriff’s Department spokesman said that they are still counting casings and bullet holes to try and determine how many shots were fired.

Winter Haven is known as the bailiwick of Sheriff Grady Judd. Some try to make him into some sort of ‘tough guy’ hero cop. While I certainly commend his stance on people who commit violent crimes, he is also the sort of grandstanding cop that I can’t abide.

Don’t forget that Grady Judd is also one of the Sheriffs who has broken Florida law by lobbying state legislators to defeat open carry and defeat Constitutional carry. It is illegal for government officials to lobby the State Legislature for changes to the law, but that doesn’t matter to a police official who supports ‘law and order’ when the law is in opposition to his orders.

His opinion on guns seems to change, depending on who is listening:

By Divemedic, ago

Third World Policing

Wirecutter over at Knukledraggin my Life Away points out a story of a tiny Alabama town that has discovered that it can use cops as a money making machine and has become the worst speed trap in the entire nation. The town has less than 1300 residents, but has at least sixteen full time cops and a number of part time cops. (The police chief, claiming “security” won’t tell how many cops he has) Those cops make over 1,000 arrests, write over 3,000 traffic citations, and have their own SWAT team, complete with an armored vehicle that they call a “riot control vehicle.” (How big of a riot can that small of a town have?)

Read the article that the post is based on, and think about this quote:

Chief Jones testified under oath that just one of the 10 Brookside vehicles is painted with police striping, but nine others bear no emblems, and seven are tinted all the way around, making it impossible to see inside. Jones testified his officers wear gray uniforms with no Brookside insignias.

These dumbasses think that they are badasses because they carry the authority of a badge that they don’t even wear. Thinking that they are some kid of secret agents, they act more like a street gang that is shaking down the citizens for protection money. They refer to themselves as “agents” and do not provide their identification, even on arrest affidavits:

The names of the officers were not listed on the tickets in secretive Brookside. Instead, the arresting officer was listed as “Agent JS,” while the assisting officer was “Agent AR.”

Arrests in Alabama come from all sorts of things that you wouldn’t think are a crime. For example: It is considered road rage in Alabama to drive in the left lane for more than a mile and a half. One of my favorite legal Youtube channels is Lehto’s Law. Take a look:

The entire thing is a scam. The traffic court judge is a local lawyer who was hired as the municipal traffic court judge to hold court one day a month. When audited, the town had no written budget. Wanna take odds on some skimming off the top by the police chief, Mayor, and judge?

These idiots are so predictable, it begs for an ambush. The kinder version would have a person with hidden cameras break a traffic law in full view of Roscoe Coaltrain, and when he pulls you over it seems like it would be easy to get some civil rights violations on film. Then they can be taken down by some good attorneys.

The more aggressive ambush would be to goad them into a traffic stop, coming to a halt in a kill zone, then having an ambush team light up one of these would be secret agents. Since they are in unmarked vehicles and wearing clothes with no insignia, one could argue that they look more like a criminal gang conducting an ambush than they do a legitimate police force.

By Divemedic, ago

Kill Switch

Former Vice President Joe Biden signed the infrastructure bill into law. Buried in that law is a provision that requires all new cars, trucks, and SUVs to have a “kill switch” installed by 2026. The system must connect to the vehicle’s operational controls, so as to disable the vehicle either before driving or during, when impairment is detected.

Marketed to Congress as a benign tool to help prevent drunk driving, this measure is disturbingly short on details. The switch will passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired. The term “impaired driving” isn’t defined by the legislation, so it would be open to interpretation by regulators such as the Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The worst part of the legislation is the open nature of the system which will feature at least one backdoor for third-party access to the system’s data at any time.

Who has access to the data collected by the kill switch system? Will the police be given access to the data without a warrant? What about insurance companies, will they be granted access to the data in order to better understand what kind of driver is being insured, or worse, will they know with what frequency your driving habits “change” which could then be interpreted as impairment?

What if a driver is not drunk, but sleepy, and the car forces itself to the side of the road before the driver can find a safe place to pull over and rest? Considering that there are no realistic mechanisms to immediately challenge or stop the car from being disabled, drivers will be forced into dangerous situations without their consent or control. Imagine your car stopping in the middle of a bad neighborhood.

This law is a disaster in the making. They just can’t resist bossing people around. Tyrants, the whole lot of them.

By Divemedic, ago

Secret Police

Marsalee (Marsy) Ann Nicholas was stalked and killed by her ex-boyfriend in 1983. Only one week after her murder and on the way home from the funeral service, Marsy’s family was confronted by her daughter’s murderer. Having received no notification from the judicial system, the family had no idea he had been released on bail mere days after Marsy’s murder. Marsy’s family was not informed because the courts and law enforcement had no obligation to keep them informed.

As a result, voters in seventeen states have passed Marsy’s law, with Florida voters passing its version of the law in 2018. The law was sold as a victims’ rights bill, but it wasn’t long before the law of unintended consequences showed itself.

Since police who use force against someone are only doing so because they claim themselves to be victims of a crime, they can refuse to allow their names to be released. A cop can claim that someone threatened them, use force against that person, and then demand that their names be withheld because they are a victim.

That is exactly what happened here when a police officer shot and killed a man on the campus of a Melbourne college. The odd part here is that the same law doesn’t appear to apply when a private citizen does the exact same thing.

When the voters of this state voted on the amendment, it was intended to give victims of crimes a bit of privacy. It wasn’t intended to give police a means of becoming secret death squads with no public accountability.

By Divemedic, ago

Water Gun= Deadly Weapon

A water gun is a deadly weapon, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Department, who arrested a 14 year old boy for shooting a 12 year old girl with one. He is facing a felony charge of “shooting a weapon/missile in a public or private building that could cause death or great bodily harm.”

So now the boy’s family will have legal bills in the $100,000 range, or they will be forced to take a plea deal. This is ridiculous.

By Divemedic, ago

Air Security Failure

A man flew from Barbados to Miami International with a loaded .32 revolver in his carry on. They claim that he was arrested after TSA agents found a handgun in his belongings.

I don’t buy it. Since when does the TSA screen people who are getting off of a plane? One of two things happened here: Either he brought it to their attention himself, or he was caught because he had to exit and reenter security for some reason.

The article reads like the TSA is so much better at security than other agencies. This summer, it was announced that TSA agents missed 95% of weapons that were placed in luggage by inspectors. In 17 out of 18 tries by the undercover federal agents saw explosive materials, fake weapons, or drugs pass through TSA screening undetected.

The problem that I have here, all incompetence aside, is that TSA is wasting time and effort looking for drugs. Their main and only purpose is supposed to be safety. in fact, the only reason that SCOTUS even allowed this violation of the Fourth Amendment was that the TSA was for safety and not law enforcement purposes, but that is not the point of this post.

The 2021 failure rate is not anything new. In 2017, they missed 70% of weapons. In 2015, they failed 95% of the time. Congress has been briefed that the TSA is a colossal waste of money.

I can believe it. I have had two incidents where I accidentally flew with weapons.

  • I once flew from Fairbanks to Los Angeles with a large container of bear mace in my carry on bag.
  • I once flew from Orlando to Nashville, including a layover in Atlanta, with a Glock 9mm in my carry on. I had simply forgotten that it was in my bag. I went to the airport, passed through security, and boarded the plane. When I put my bag in the overhead compartment, I heard a loud thump. I wondered what I had in there that was so heavy, and it dawned on me in an instant. I flew the entire way to Atlanta in a cold sweat. I was worried that I would have to pass through security again to change gates at my layover. It turns out that I didn’t. Once I was on the second flight, I realized that most security is theater. The TSA is staffed with a bunch of minimum wage high school dropouts. The only reason that 911 hasn’t happened again is that no one has tried.

The TSA catches 4,500 or so firearms at checkpoints per year. Assuming that they catch as many as 30% of them, as they did in the best year they ever had, this means that 15,000 or more firearms per year wind up on America’s aircraft. If they only catch 5%, as they did in the most recent test, as many as 90,000 firearms per year wind up flying the friendly skies.

The TSA costs us taxpayers $8.24 billion per year. That is over $1.8 million for each detected firearm, while they miss 95% of the firearms in passenger luggage. Who knows how much extra the TSA agents steal on top of that? The TSA has fired nearly 400 employees for stealing from travelers’ luggage.

The Miami Airport is #1 in TSA agent thefts, which ranks twelfth in passengers, with 29 employees terminated for theft from 2002 through December 2011.

This is one of the marks of third world shithole countries: the police are often on the take. If they are willing to steal, how willing are they to take bribes? Officers in Palm Beach, New Haven, Newark, and Westchester have all been caught accepting bribes from people for circumventing security. In fact, 20,000 of the TSA’s 55,000 agents have had complaints of misconduct against them, but 95% of the time, no discipline is administered.

The TSA, like most of the government, is a jobs program that is nothing more than a waste of taxpayer money that doesn’t accomplish the mission that it has been assigned.

Disclaimer: The stories above are for illustrative and artistic purposes only. They may or may not have happened. The posts on this site should not be construed as a confession or admission of guilt. So if any Federal, State, or Local law enforcement are reading this page, you should keep in mind that I probably never did any of the things I claim to have done. So there.

By Divemedic, ago