They Used to Lynch Horse Thieves

Remember when I said when the police can’t or won’t enforce the law, citizens will begin DIY law enforcement? It bears repeating: Police are actually there to protect people who have been accused of crimes and protect those people to ensure that their rights to a fair and impartial trial are protected. Once people feel like there is no justice to be had, they lose respect for the law. Anarchy can be the only result of this.

That happened on Friday afternoon in Birmingham, AL. A man whose car was stolen didn’t feel like the cops were doing enough to find his stolen vehicle. They tracked it down to nearby Birmingham and followed it. When they eventually confronted the thieves, a shootout ensued. Two thieves received life threatening wounds, with two others being hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries. No bystanders were hit. The police can’t have citizens making them look incompetent, so they want to arrest the owner of the vehicle for taking the law into his own hands. The press refers to the thieves as “victims” of a shooting.

The running shootout caused 2 miles of the Interstate to be a crime scene, with shell casings littering the roadway. This happens because the police can’t or won’t enforce the law. In the nine years that I have lived in this house, my vehicles have been the target of attempted burglaries twice: Once resulted in no arrest. The second time, the burglar got probation and his record expunged, even though he broke into four vehicles, stealing one of them. One of the cars broken into was a police cruiser that he stole a fingerprint reader from, another was a truck where he stole a handgun, on top of stealing one of the vehicles.

In the last 23 years, I have had 13 interactions with with the police, and I can’t say that any of those interactions were positive:

• 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 the above story to a GF in 2012 and that one copied the scheme. When I beat it in court, she openly told the judge that her new boyfriend was a cop, and he would find a reason to have me arrested. My attorney asked the judge to make sure that statement was entered into and part of the record for the trial.
• 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 when he claimed to be a cop and tried to “arrest” me but wouldn’t show ID or a badge. 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.
• In 2022, I was assisting in the treatment of a patient who got violent with me and had to be physically restrained. He was a retired NYPD detective. He swore that I attacked him for no reason and tried to choke him. He called me a “punk ass bitch” and said that he was a retired NYC police officer, and that he would find me on the street and “fucking kill” me. I was interviewed by police detectives, and suspended without pay until I was cleared of criminal wrongdoing.
• In January of this year, a woman threatened me at work. She threatened to follow me home to see where I lived, then wait until I went to work and murder my family. I formed my employer to call the police, but they did nothing but take a report. That’s fine. At least there is a record if I have to smoke the crazy bitch at the end of my driveway.
• Then I watched a police officer use his Taser to attack a prisoner while the prisoner was shackled by all four limbs to the hospital bed.

As the wheels come off, you will see more and more of this. People WILL lose faith in our legal system. Things WILL get much worse.