Due process

The Atlanta police officer (Rolfe) involved in the shooting there was fired without being investigated or suspended pending investigation.

One of my college degrees was in Public Safety Administration. To get this degree, I had to take classes on Administrative Law. One of the topics covered was employment law. Under the Constitution of the United States, the government cannot take any of a person’s property without first allowing due process. There is a Supreme Court case that specifically addresses this situation. We were forced to write a research paper on the case. I am still in a recovery mode from our ransomware attack, so I cannot retrieve the file. The gist of it goes like this:

An employee of the government still has constitutional rights. If your employer (the government) wishes to deprive you of your employment, due process is required. This means that before the employee can be suspended without pay or terminated, there must be an investigation, and the employee is entitled to a hearing in front of the administrative authority (or his appointed representative) where that employee can bring representation, call witnesses, etc..

While the investigation is taking place and before the hearing, many employers do not want the disgraced employee out there in the public, so the employee is usually either assigned some sort of desk duty, or is suspended with pay, pending the outcome of the investigation and hearing.

That did not happen in this case. At the very least, Officer Rolfe has grounds for suing the department for damages, and perhaps will be given his job back, with back pay.

COVID update

Here is the latest data for new COVID infections and deaths from the last 30 days.

Note that as the number of infections is rising, the number of deaths is falling. Of course, that isn’t the case. The reason for the negative correlation is garbage data. That is, in the beginning, we were only testing people who were deathly ill, then it was only people who were symptomatic, and now we have moved on to testing people who are asymptomatic.

All this chart proves is that the people with less severe symptoms, and those without symptoms are more likely to survive.

The press is making a big deal out of the fact that the NUMBER of confirmed infections is climbing while ignoring the fact that the CFR is falling.

It appears that we were all (including medical personnel) bamboozled into thinking this illness was more serious than it was. I will admit it. I was fooled. My apologies to anyone that I wronged in my ignorance.

Chaz leaders arming the occupiers

This video shows how the leaders of CHAZ CHOP whatever are arming the occupiers of that area with various weapons. The people receiving them are obviously unfamiliar with firearms. I doubt that they can accurately put lead on target. Your preparations should be accelerated. Open warfare may begin at any time, with little to no warning.

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In the background of the video, I saw at least three spots with good elevation and about a 250 yard straight shot down the street. I am willing to bet that none of the people in this video could reliably get return fire on target from 200 yards.

More preparing

So far this month, I have added an ACOG for 5.56mm, 250 rounds of 9mm, 100 rounds of .357 magnum, 250 rounds of .380ACP, and 2,000 rounds of 5.56 ammo to the stockpile.

If time is short I will be glad I did it. If it isn’t, I will have some extra range ammo, if there is such a thing.

Back home

We left Houston and arrived home last night. There were some here who asked what I brought, so here it is:

One level 3A ballistic vest, and one level 4 vest
Active hearing protection (two sets)
Night vision goggles
2 Gas masks
Various holsters (OWB, IWB, Fanny pack)

Weapons:
Pepper Spray
M&P9C with three 18 round magazines loaded with 9mm 115gr +P.
M&P380 with three 8 round magazines loaded with 90gr Gold Dot HP
Skorpion EVO with three 32 round and one 20 round magazines with 9mm 135gr +P
AR-15 with four 30 round magazines loaded with Lake City 62gr Green tip, and one 30 round magazine loaded with 50gr Jacketed Hollowpoints.

Credit cards, $1,000 in cash
Cell phone
Portable HAM radio in 2m band, programmed for Houston area repeaters
First aid kit

My first aid kit is made using this kit as a base. Then I added:
2 Hyfin chest seals
1 Quik Clot Kit
2 CATs
1 Israeli battle dressing
A couple of single dose packs of Benadryl (Benadryl is useful for all sorts of stuff)

and all of it (except the CATs) fits into the pouch that the kit came in, and is attached to my body armor with MOLLE. There are all sorts of people that will tell you to carry IV equipment, BVMs, and all of that, but frankly, you don’t need that stuff. There are plenty of studies that bear that out.

Try to control bleeding for 30 seconds. If you can’t, but a TQ on it. Seal chest wounds with Hyfin. Insert a nasal cannula. That’s it. You don’t need to carry the entire hospital with you.

EDITED: In all, 68 pounds of gear. That wasn’t counting clothes, food, etc. My brother thought I was nuts. I don’t care. I was not going to travel 1100 miles from home during civil unrest while defenseless.

Open letter to the police

The police have no one to blame but themselves for the situation that they find themselves in right now. For years, instead of calling out the bad cops in their midst, they actively shielded and protected them. This created a real PR problem for the cops.

I generally support the police, but there are times when that support gets tested. I have had a few interactions with police officers in my life, not counting ones directly related to my job as a paramedic. I am a law abiding citizen, and the majority of those interactions were not positive ones.

  • In 2005, I had someone steal a check for over $200 from my mailbox, forge my name and deposit that check into his bank account. The number of the account that the check was deposited in to was printed on the back of the check, right below my forged signature, and right above the signature of the account holder. 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, I passed 6 cops with cars pulled over, writing traffic tickets. So much for lack of manpower.
  • In 2001, I was pulled over for running a red light. When I informed the cop I was carrying, he threatened to kill me.
  • In 2000, my car was broken into: my stereo, radar detector, cash, and other items totaling about $600 were stolen. 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.
  • I once had a police supervisor tell me that silencers and machine guns were illegal. I offered to bring in NFA items and the proper paperwork, so the cops could be trained to recognize and know the law. They refused.

At the same time, we hear of cops having traffic citation quotas that they need to meet in order to get raises. Cops are the collections department of a $10 billion industry whose job it is to extort money from the public.

We hear of cops getting out of DUI arrests, even while driving department issued vehicles.

We hear of retired cops getting in arguments with people for using cell phones in a movie theater, killing the other person, and getting away with the murder.

On duty cops murdering handcuffed prisoners by putting a gun to their head and pulling the trigger and getting away with it.

There are the bad cops who are caught on video threatening to plant evidence on,  kill people, or simply like to harass people.

Gaming the constitution and using DUI checkpoints as an excuse to springboard into other searches.

The public watched as cops took cover behind housewives and their children during a shootout just six months ago. When called out on this, the reply is: “You’re demanding perfection in an imperfect world. Where should the cops have stood in that situation, right out in the open where they would have been shot? You’re confusing prudent behavior with suicide.” Then they demand that we call them “heroes.”

The cops have lied, planted evidence, killed people’s dogs, police snipers have sniped people’s wives and taunted them about it, shot victims who were seeking help, framed people, shot innocents, and have been caught framing and arresting black people, drop grenades into baby cribs and happily say that they would do it again, all the while they expect no one to be angry about that.

The police have had a real image problem for years. It is no surprise that when the crap hits the fan, many people are willing to watch them fry. What is happening right now is a direct result of the mindset that police have had- the US-versus-THEM, “thin blue line” horseshit that they have been following. Now they are paying for it, and the law abiding citizens will, too. You have lost the support of much of the public, and you have no one to blame but yourselves.

I have been saying for years that police need to police their own. They didn’t. So now we are all going to pay for that. The first thing the police need to do is what they should have been doing all along- getting rid of the douchebags within your own ranks. Prove to us that police deserve the powers they have been given. If you don’t, then there will continue to be a massacre of police department budgets nationwide.