Police State

What Are They Good For?

The police didn’t save lives in Uvalde, because that isn’t their job. For those of us who are part of the Second Amendment family, that comes as no surprise. Ever since the riots of 2020, the rest of the US has been learning to face that reality.

The “thin blue line” does not, as cops would have you believe, separate society from violent chaos. The US Supreme Court has made it clear that law enforcement agencies are not required to provide protection to the citizens who are forced to pay the police for their “services.”

Still, we are told there is a “social contract” between the government on one hand, and tax paying citizens on the other. By the very nature of being a contract, we are led to believe that this is a two-way street. The taxpayers are required to submit to a virtual government monopoly on force and pay taxes.

In return, we are told, government agents will provide services. In the case of police agencies, these services are summed up by the phrase “to protect and serve,” a motto that is printed on the sides of police vehicles.

But what happens when those police agencies don’t protect and serve? That is, what happens when one party in this alleged social contract doesn’t keep up its end of the bargain? The Supreme court says, “not a damned thing.”

In the cases DeShaney vs. Winnebago and Town of Castle Rock vs. Gonzales, the supreme court ruled that police agencies are not obligated to provide protection to citizens. In other words, police are well within their rights to pick and choose when to intervene to protect the lives and property of others, even when a threat is apparent. This reality does belie the often-made claim, however, that police agencies deserve the tax money and obedience of local citizens because the agencies “keep us safe.”

As the public is discovering, we are our own protection. In school shooting after school shooting, it has been illustrated that the police are not going to do shit when someone is slaughtering children. That isn’t why the police are there.

Police spend most of their time on activities on non-criminal in nature. During each police shift, police officers spend their time thusly:

  • 27 percent on random patrol
  • 20 percent on non-criminal calls for service
  • 13 percent on administrative tasks
  • 11 percent on traffic enforcement
  • 9 percent on breaks and other personal time
  • 7 percent on property crimes
  • 6 percent on miscellaneous crime
  • 4 percent on violent crime
  • 3 percent dealing with the public, providing assistance or information, and attending community meetings.

The police rarely solve crimes. Only 11% of crimes in the US result in an arrest, and only 1 in 4 arrests result in prosecution and conviction. It’s called clearance rate, and shows that most crimes go unpunished. (pdf alert)

As you can see, police do a good job solving murders, which results in an 81% arrest rate. They do a horrible job with all other crime.

They don’t prevent crime. They don’t solve many crimes. They don’t protect you when you are a victim. This is why I won’t give up my guns. Ever.

By Divemedic, ago

National Licensing

Democrats are proposing a license issued by the DOJ in order to purchase, possess, or obtain a firearm. In order to get this license, you would need to be at least 21 years old, pass a written and practical exam, be fingerprinted, and prove your identity.

Can you imagine of Republicans initiated a similar plan for voting registration, obtaining an abortion, or receiving welfare?

Not only is this unconstitutional, but I will not obey. This merely lets the feds know where all of the firearms are for when the confiscations begin. Nope. Not now, not ever.

By Divemedic, ago

The Only Winning Move

The left is using the shooting in New York and is going to come at us with every gun control move that they have. There is nothing that they love as much as pools of blood that they can joyously dance in while they call for more control that everyone knows will not work.

  • You could counter their arguments by pointing out that the US, despite having more guns in private hands than the rest of the world combined, still has fewer homicides than half of the nations in the world.
  • You could argue that, even in nations where guns are banned, suicide rates are much higher than the US. The US has a combined suicide/homicide rate of 16.6 per 100,000 while South Korea, where firearms are virtually illegal, has a rate of 29.8. Canada, where there is severe gun control and handguns are virtually illegal: 18.3 per 100,000.
  • You could argue that the US counts all deaths where one person kills another as homicides, while some countries like Australia only counts a death as a homicide if someone is arrested and charged for the killing. Unsolved murders don’t count. Murders where the killer is already dead don’t count. This skews the statistics.
  • You could also argue that population density has a larger correlation to homicide and suicide rates than does gun ownership.

At one point or another, we have all made each of these arguments in gun control debates. They are based upon logic and facts, and backed with scores of studies and mountains of statistical evidence.

And they are always ignored.

The left bases its arguments on emotion and catchphrases. The don’t care about science, don’t care about evidence, unless it is convenient to do so in support of their position. All other facts are ignored. Arguing something like this is a waste of time. I know, because I have wasted my time like this for decades.

As they say in War Games, the only winning move is not to play. So don’t.

I will not turn in my guns. Just in case you feel that confiscating them is the answer and you send the cops over to take them, there are two outcomes of that plan.

  1. You will lose a lot of cops. Eventually, the cops will stop taking the chance.
  2. You won’t get anywhere near all of the guns

So my answer to gun laws is this: No.

Your move.

By Divemedic, ago

Poor Tactics

A SWAT team driving around in an unmarked van was taking random potshots at people on the street with rubber bullets.

Someone fires a shot or two in return, then immediately surrenders when he sees that they are cops. The cops swarm him.

It turns out that the group of people that the cops were shooting at were the business owner and some employees who were protecting the business from looters.

For over an hour, those cops had been driving around, randomly shooting at pedestrians they saw on the street. In the officer’s bodycam footage, officers armed with less-lethal launchers can be seen crowded in an unmarked, white cargo van. The van was equipped with police lights but the officers didn’t use them. As cops can be heard explaining, the van was the lead vehicle in a caravan of other, marked cars, and the cops wanted to use that stealth to their advantage. At one point an officer in the van asks for the trailing patrol cars to stay far behind “so we can… utilize 40s.”

Advance to 41 seconds. The man had already surrendered when the cops came up and began kicking, punching him, and slamming his head into the pavement. They fractured his eye socket. The officer doing the beating, Officer Stetson, wrote in his report that he struck Stallings to gain control of him, even though he was flat on the ground and not moving, and claimed Stallings wasn’t complying. The video shows that to be a lie.

The man, Jaleel Stallings, was charged with eight felonies, including attempted second degree murder of a LEO and first degree assault. Despite the large amounts of mitigating video evidence in the case, the charging attorney still wanted to throw the book at him, asking him to plead guilty to counts carrying 13 years in prison. Instead, he demanded a jury trial and was acquitted of all charges by the jury. He used self defense as his defense, and it worked.

His lawyer has since released the video showing that the cops went hunting that night. They even planned it out, and all of it was caught on their bodycams.

Discussing it while driving around, one supervisor said, “We’re going hunting. Fuck these people.”

During their “patrol” their bodycams even revealed them slashing people’s tires:

One of the officers admitted in court during the trial: “We went out that evening and concealed our presence so people wouldn’t flee and we’d be able to get close enough to shoot them… and we were actually having fun shooting them”

This behavior is indefensible. The cops here were just plain wrong, and were worse than the rioters that were burning the city.

I count no fewer than ten cops in a relatively small box. They are either engaged in beating up and cuffing the one suspect, or milling around while not really paying attention to their surroundings.

These are the actions of people who don’t really think that there is a threat.

Now imagine that the people they are abusing are mad enough to fight back. Imagine that the people who are fighting back have some military experience.

For those of you familiar with ambushes: What could a four man fire support element do if they were in an overwatch position 100 yards or so away and this was a planned ambush? How hard would it be to lure police into a kill box and then overwhelm them with large amounts of fire before disengaging and disappearing before the cops could organize an effective counter?

The police need to be very careful to stop treating the citizens they are sworn to protect as if they were the enemy, because the citizens might just eventually begin acting like it.

By Divemedic, ago

Cop Cars Have the Best Drugs

A sheriff’s office volunteer was caught selling drugs from his marked patrol vehicle.

This isn’t anything new. When I was in high school some 40 years ago, there was an Orange county deputy who used to sit in his patrol car on International Drive just south of Sand Lake Road, right there where it became a dirt road. He used to sell drugs out of his patrol car. Everyone knew he had good stuff, because it had been tested by the police drug lab.

By Divemedic, ago

TSA Agent Lies About Robbery

A TSA agent made a habit out of being late for work. To excuse her latest tardiness, 34 year old Taleta Collier concocted an elaborate story about a man with a knife who tried to rob her. Collier told her supervisor she was visiting her parents’ home when a man armed with a knife attempted to burglarize their vehicle. She said she drew her agency-issued weapon and aimed it at the suspect, causing him to flee.

It isn’t every day that a Federal law enforcement officer has to draw their weapon in the line of duty, so her supervisor requested the Polk Sheriff case number, and the TSA agent provided one. She even texted her supervisor a screenshot of a document that appeared to be a police report.  It was soon discovered that the report number was fake, and now the loser is facing criminal charges.

The TSA has been a disaster from the start. All this agency is, is a jobs program for morons who would otherwise be collecting welfare. I can’t believe that we give idiots like this a badge, a gun, and real authority.

The list goes on and on.

By Divemedic, ago

The FBI lies?

It’s looking more and more like the FBI staged the entire pipe bomb incident last January 6. Read this from American Greatness for more details. The summary?

So, either the Secret Service missed the device in clear view outside the DNC headquarters that day before the arrival of Kamala Harris or there never was an explosive at either location and the FBI is not telling the truth. Again.

I know where I am going to put my money.

By Divemedic, ago

Important SCOTUS case

A restaurant owner filed a complaint about a Federal cop with that cop’s supervisor. The cop responded by getting other Federal agencies (including the IRS) to place the owner under a microscope. The restaurant owner sued, and now that case is headed to SCOTUS.

If SCOTUS holds that this cop is immune from lawsuits, even while he is willingly and knowingly violating someone’s Constitutional rights, expect police behavior to get worse. We all know that SCOTUS is likely to support the cop’s behavior.

It’s almost like we live in a police state where the only way you can get justice is to mete it out yourself.

By Divemedic, ago

Police Dogs

JKB over at GunfreeZone and Wirecutter over at Knuckledraggin My Life Away each posted an article about a woman who had her scalp removed by a police K9. Now I don’t feel sorry for that particular woman, but the comments over at Wirecutter’s took a turn into whether or not police should be using dogs for law enforcement. I found the topic to be interesting enough for its own post.

On Using Dogs as Weapons

Dogs are unreliable as weapons. They frequently bite those that they shouldn’t, and refuse to stop biting when commanded to stop. As a medic, I had two memorable wrong bites. One was a female police officer that was bitten high up on her thigh when a police K9 bit her during a foot pursuit, instead of biting the suspect that she was chasing.

The second was a guy who was fleeing a traffic stop. When his vehicle got stuck in traffic, he fled on foot. The pursuing officer released the K9, and it caught up to him a quarter of a mile later. During the several minutes that it took for the handler to arrive, the dog removed the suspect’s right but cheek. Was that a proportional use of force?

Constitutional Rights

A dog can’t read the Constitution. It can’t understand the finer legal issues involved in the use of force or probable cause. All the dog knows is that if it pleases its handler, it gets a reward. It doesn’t know that if it removes a suspect’s butt cheek for nothing more than running from a cop, that this level of force is legally lethal force. The dog’s cop handler would know that, but he is sometimes blocks away. If a cop isn’t authorized to shoot someone, why should they be permitted to sic a body deforming fur missile on them?

Dogs Want Treats

Dogs are very good at reading people. They know that if they give their handler what he wants, they get a reward. If the cop wants the dog to alert on a car, the dog will alert on a car. There was one study that actually supported that, but once the study was published, cops have refused to participate in any more studies unless those studies are being performed by pro-policing organizations.

Cops don’t even keep records of how often dogs alert to drugs and then no drugs are found. The police say:

“There’s been cars that my dog’s hit on… and just because there wasn’t a product in it, doesn’t mean the dog can’t smell it,” says Gunnar Fulmer, a K9 officer with the Walla Walla Police Department. “[The drug odor] gets permeated in clothing, it gets permeated in the headliners in cars.”

The problem here is obvious- even giving the dog the benefit of the doubt, probable cause means that the search is being done because drugs are probably there. What the cop in the above quote is saying is that by alerting, the dog is indicating that drugs may have been there at some time in the past. The dog indicates the odor of drugs, but not the presence of drugs. That isn’t the same thing and shouldn’t be enough to trigger a warrantless search of someone’s property.

So in short, I think that dogs should not be used to attack people or manufacture probable cause. I would be OK with them being used in bomb or cadaver detection (as long as they don’t trigger warrantless probable cause searches of people’s property) and in tracking people, rescue work, and searching for missing people or bodies. K9’s have been misused and abusing people’s rights for too long.

By Divemedic, ago