In yet another example of how the loss of gun rights equals the loss of other rights, read this new Irish bill about to become law:
Police State
Permission Slips
I’m sure that all of you have seen the video of the LA homeowner who was trying to enter his home when armed robbers attempted to force him to allow their entry into his home at gunpoint. The homeowner produced his legally carried CCW and got in a gunfight with them, driving them off and protecting his family.
“I guess they decided to try to come at me and come in the house but I have a five-month-old baby and a wife and a nanny in the house and that wasn’t going to happen,” the man said.
One of the cleanest self defense shootings you will see. The guy was defending his family from would be home invaders that wanted to enter his home where his wife and 5 year old daughter were sleeping.
That can’t be allowed in the fucked up failed state of California. No, the city of Los Angeles has revoked his concealed weapons permit because, according to them, he was rude to the arriving police officers.
What really happened was that he was openly critical of the poor response and sloppy police work of the LAPD on local and national news channels.
During a local news interview, he had blasted the LAPD for ‘sloppy police work’, including their negligence in picking up casings scattered near his home as evidence because they missed a bunch of them and left them behind.
Tyrants can’t stand to be called out and criticized, as we talked about yesterday. I would also point out that this is yet another example of police being worse than useless. They didn’t prevent the crime, they didn’t respond to the crime in time to shalt the crime in progress, and when they DID arrive, they didn’t even do a good job of investigating the crime.
The only thing that they DID do was abuse their power.
I’m on the verge of siding with the “defund the police” crowd.
Police State
Tyrants Don’t Like Criticism
This is what despots do. They arrest people for protesting. This woman honked her horn in criticism of a California politician and got arrested for it. Now it’s going to SCOTUS.
Police State
Public Servants
A big, fat F U to not only the Norwalk police, but to the public works department after they had a man arrested for plowing the driveways of everyone on his block. Apparently some of the snow wound up on the street, which pissed off the public works guy, who called the police.
The cops arrived and arrested the guy.
Public servants, my ass.
Police State
Censorship
Remember that the courts are allowing the government to censor social media. That’s why these pictures:
Are being pulled down and censored by social media just as quickly as they can, IMO. We are living in a dictatorship where the government is using intermediaries to censor the speech of its citizens.
Police State
POP Charges
Edgardo Cancela of Davenport, FL in Polk county was charged with possession of child porn after detectives claimed that they found “files depicting child pornography with pre-pubescent victims” that Facebook claimed had come from an IP address associated with Mrs. Cancela (Edgardo’s wife). The issue here is that the IP address was for a cell phone account that the Cancelas had stopped using when they moved from Puerto Rico to Florida more than a year before.
The cops secured a search warrant for the Cancela’s home, and in May of 2020, they executed that warrant. In the process of searching the home, they used electronic means to scan every electronic device in the home, looking for evidence of child porn. None was found. Also during that search, the couple’s children (ages 10 and 13) were taken by DCF and interviewed. Both children denied ever having been improperly touched or photographed by either parent.
The couple returned home from work while the search was underway, police took them into custody and brought them in for questioning. Even though the cell phones were not named on the search warrant, the police confiscated their cell phones. The cops applied for a second search warrant, covering the cell phones, and the couple was asked to provide passcodes for their cell phones so that cops could see for themselves that they had “nothing to hide.” The couple told them that they wanted to talk to an attorney first.
Despite the fact that the only piece of evidence was the Facebook claim that the wife’s IP address was associated with child porn images, it was the husband who was then arrested and charged with possession of child pornography. The terms of his release were that he was not allowed to see his wife or children and could not even live inside of his own home. The cops then released his name and address to the media, along with information about the alleged crime.
The cops, in filing the child porn charges, made a number of factually incorrect statements. In other words, they lied on the charging affidavit. That’s a felony.
The charges were dropped a year and a half later because police didn’t actually have the evidence that Cancela was the person who possessed or posted the images, despite the charging affidavit claiming that they did. Here is the odd part- all of the video and audio recordings of the search of the home and the interrogation of Mr. Cancela- recordings that show he was being railroaded- are mysteriously missing.
So he is suing. The problem here is that police can’t be held personally liable for their conduct. It’s the taxpayers of Florida that will pay for this. It’s time to end immunity for cops. Let’s force them to get malpractice insurance.
Police State
Police State
Big Brother is watching you as more police departments install license plate readers to track everyone’s movements.
Guns
LAPD Only Ones
LAPD has sent out a memo notifying officers that they can no longer carry any handgun magazines with a capacity of more than 18 rounds, on or off duty.
It seems to be an oddly specific number, until you remember that the LAPD has been armed with the FN 509 MRD-LE for over a year and a half now, a pistol which is being sold by FN for LEO use only. The FN 509 is considered by California to be safe for cops to own by the state, but not for the subjects that they rule over. The FN 509 can accept FN’s 24 round magazines, which is where I think that this memo came from.
The handgun is being restricted by FN to Law Enforcement only, but the only differences that I can see with this handgun and the FN 509 MRD are that the LE version has a flat trigger face, the LE handgun ships with 17 round magazines, while the “normal” version’s magazine capacity is only 15 rounds, 10 in CA.
I also want to note that LAPD uses the Speer G2 ammo as their duty ammo. I have blogged on that ammo before, it’s quality stuff. (They used to use Winchester SXT)
Cops
Reasonable Suspicion
This post is about a video of a police interaction in Virginia, which is included below. Let me say that the cops really need to stop being total dumbasses, because I really don’t want this blog to become an anti-cop blog. It just seems like they can’t help themselves. They are just hiring tyrannical dumbasses to be cops.
Here is the basis of the video that follows:
Police received at least one call complaining about shots fired in a rural area. The vehicle involved was reported to be a red pickup truck.
A deputy sees a vehicle matching that description and initiates a traffic stop. By the deputy’s own admission, he is not aware if the shots were fired in the vicinity of houses or a road, meaning that he has no idea whether or not a crime has been committed. In other words, there is no reasonable suspicion to believe that the driver of the red truck has committed a crime, because you can’t even point to a crime that you would suspect him of, thus making the traffic stop illegal. Note that Virginia law is plain on this:
Any law enforcement officer may detain any person whom the officer encounters under circumstances creating a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime, and require the person to identify himself. Any person so detained shall identify himself by giving his full legal name, but may not be compelled to answer any other inquiry of any law enforcement officer.
Here is what happened next:
Note that the deputy claims “You can’t shoot within so many feet of a home,” but by his own admission, he has no idea how far away any homes are from the location where the shooting was talking place.
I believe the cop is wrong about what the law says. For starters, the law in Virginia says that you can’t discharge a firearm on public land, AT a building, across or from a road, from a vehicle, or in a reckless manner. None of which has been alleged here. Watch this second, longer video of the traffic stop, and the second cop says that merely operating a vehicle on the roadways of Virginia constitutes reasonable suspicion to initiate a traffic stop and demand to see the ID of the driver.
He says that “Evidence of a crime isn’t reasonable suspicion. You need to get a better lawyer.” The cop is clearly wrong. The law says:
A police officer may have reasonable suspicion that a crime is being committed if based on all of the facts and circumstances of the situation, a reasonable police officer would have the same suspicion.
The cop is not being reasonable, which is the standard here. He can’t even articulate which law, if any, he believes is being broken. How can a police officer believe that this man is committing a crime, when he can’t even point to a crime that he reasonably believes is being committed? The statement that merely driving down the road constitutes reasonable suspicion is extremely incorrect.
He says that I don’t have to point to a crime to initiate a traffic stop. This fucking dumbass of a cop then proves beyond a doubt that he doesn’t know what he is talking about when he admits that this isn’t a Terry stop. A Terry stop gets its name from the Supreme Court case, Terry v. Ohio. In a Terry stop, if a police officer has a reasonable suspicion that an individual is armed, engaged, or about to be engaged, in criminal conduct, the officer may briefly stop and detain an individual for a pat-down search of outer clothing. Since, under this cop’s own admission, this isn’t a Terry stop, then he has no reasonable suspicion that a crime is being committed.
So instead, the cops go to the man’s property and arrest the father on a trumped up charge to teach the property owner (the son in the red pickup) a lesson. The cops went to the man’s property and arrested the man’s father because, in the cop’s own words, “He ain’t gonna curse me out.” This is a clear violation of the First Amendment rights of the father.
NOTE: A look at Sussex county court records shows that the father, Robert Steven Huffman, has been charged with a violation of 18.2-416, abusive language to another, a 3rd degree misdemeanor. His next hearing is December 18.
The Supreme Court of Virginia has limited the sweep of § 18.2-416 to abusive language that has “a direct tendency to cause acts of violence by the person to whom, individually, [the language is] addressed.” Mercer v. Winston, 214 Va. 281, 199 S.E.2d 724, 726
So is the police officer alleging that the man saying “Leave, get the hell off of my property” is language that would tend to cause him to commit acts of violence? No, this officer is a tyrannical asshole.
Again, remember that no crime has been alleged to cause the police to even be on the property in the first place. It isn’t a crime to shoot guns on private property. The cop keeps saying “We have complaints in the area of shots fired, and this is an open investigation,” but as we have pointed out already, there is no investigation, because there has been no crime alleged. In my opinion, the cops made the arrest to lure the property owner (the son in the red pickup) to an ambush.
The man in the pickup arrives on his property, and the cop arrests him because he won’t provide ID to prove that he is the owner of the property. Refer back to the law, above. The man doesn’t have to show that he owns his own land, which would mean that he has to prove his innocence. That’s not how this works.
This is a bad cop. The second cop who stood there and told him to “just comply” is also a bad cop. Why? Because he saw this illegal behavior and did nothing. He is also a dumbass that doesn’t understand the laws that he is supposed to be enforcing.
I hope they get a good lawyer, and I hope that they sue the Sheriff’s department of Sussex County. I also would like to reiterate that qualified immunity needs to go away. In the meantime:
Cops
Misusing Involuntary Commitment
Every state has a law allowing individuals to be involuntarily committed in the event that they are in such a mental state that they are an imminent danger to themselves or others. In Florida, it’s called a Baker Act, and it allows a doctor or law enforcement officer to hold a person for up to 72 hours for the purposes of medical and psychological evaluation, if that professional reasonably believes that they are a threat to themselves or others.
My last day at work, I placed a woman under a Baker Act after she told me that she had ingested several handfuls of pills in an attempt to commit suicide. If you do this, your documentation had better be able to stand up in court. Because if you misuse this power, you will and should get your ass sued. It’s one of the reasons why I carry a million dollars worth of malpractice insurance, and why that policy includes coverage of my legal bills.
But what happens if you are a cop with qualified immunity? What if you decide to misuse this power by lying in order to place an ex-girlfriend on an involuntary hold, then use force to enforce it? That’s exactly what Pennsylvania State Trooper Ronald Davis did. One of her friends got it all on video:
If I *did* intervene, would I go to jail? Would other cops automatically take this cop’s side, and either arrest or ventilate me? I think we know the answer to both of those questions. If you are a cop and are reading this- This is what you should be asking yourself:
This cop is obviously a bad cop. Would I arrest someone for intervening in this situation? What if that person was holding the cop at gunpoint? Would I shoot them for pointing a gun at a cop? Even if it was being done to stop the officer’s felonious battery of an innocent woman? If so, can you still call yourself a good cop?
Something needs to be done. For starters, I think that qualified immunity should be eliminated. Let cops get personally sued into oblivion for stuff like this. They can go out and get malpractice insurance, just like medical professionals do.
Second, I think that cops should have *every* use of force judged by a panel of at least 7 people, and that panel should consist of: A judge, two current or retired police officers, and 4 citizens who are not convicted felons. That panel would have the power to fine police officers or refer them to the Grand Jury and suspend their LEO certification pending completion of the Grand Jury’s deliberations. The judge is there to advise the others on the meaning of the law, and only gets a vote in the event of a tie.
What other things might work?