Archive for the 'Police' Category

News from Wisconsin:

A cased rifle belonging to an officer with the Madison Police Department has been returned.

Officials say on Thursday the officer placed the gun on the back of his squad car, which he was about to drive from a MPD parking garage on Fairchild Street to the nearby City County Building.

The officer inadvertently forgot to move the cased weapon back into the squad, and it fell off into the roadway in the 200 block of South Hamilton Street. Realizing what had happened, the officer immediately went back to retrieve the case, only to find someone had picked it up.

According to police, on Friday the person who found the weapon was located.

Gosh, I hate it when that happens to me.  I simply cannot tell you the number of guns I’ve lost by sitting them on the trunk of the car and driving off.

Fortunately for him, they were apparently found by a law abiding citizen.  On the other hand, what’s the loss if not?  The taxpayers foot the bill for everything.  It’s not like it doesn’t happen to LEOs everywhere, right?

I have no reason to doubt the title of the YouTube post.  Holy crap!  Did they leave an M4 or AR-15 leaning up against the garage door while they tried to break into the house?  What was that dude in the truck doing with his time?  Eating doughnuts?

I think it might have been easier and done with greater tactical fidelity if they had gone up to the door and knocked. I hope they didn’t just go in and shoot the dog, leave the door all broken and walk away like most other SWAT raids. Or confiscate an ounce of marijuana and call it a success.

But then again, remember boys and girls, only law enforcement officers are trained and qualified in tactical operations while operating tactically and stress management ninja warrior techniques and are therefore qualified to handle firearms.  So who am I to talk?

LA Times:

Authorities say a federal agent accidentally shot a San Diego County sheriff’s deputy in the leg at the sheriff’s station in Lemon Grove while unloading a handgun that was seized by a joint task force Monday.

The deputy’s injury was not considered life-threatening, sheriff’s spokeswoman Jan Caldwell said.

The names of the deputy and the federal agent were not released.

The agent and other members of the unnamed task force recovered the .22 handgun while serving a search warrant in eastern San Diego County, Caldwell said.

But remember boys and girls.  Only law enforcement officers are trained and qualified in tactical operations while operating tactically and stress management ninja warrior techniques and are therefore qualified to handle firearms.  You aren’t.  No, really.  Don’t argue the point.  You aren’t.

It’s a serious question.  What happened?  He was standing still with his hands on the vehicle.

Denver Post:

SWAT officers raided a Mesa County home they believed to be full of methamphetamine early Wednesday, breaching its front door and breaking several windows, only to find inside an innocent family with five children.

Authorities from several agencies are now apologizing to the family, saying they had out-of-date information from an informant. The suspects sought by investigators had at one time lived at the house in Clifton near the intersection of 32 and E roads, officials said, but had since moved away.

“We are deeply regretful of the experience to which this family was subjected,” Grand Junction police and the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office said in a joint statement. “We have met with the family, including the children, to explain in detail how such a mistake was made.”

The kids range in age from 3 to 12 years old.

[ … ]

Heidi Davidson, spokeswoman for Grand Junction police, said investigators are still working to determine which agency will pay how much for the repairs.

“It should have been vetted better,” Davidson said. “We should have done a better job from the beginning.”

Davidson explained that investigators believe their informant, a woman, was not lying about the suspects she believed lived in the home and that an investigation into the alleged criminals remains ongoing.

“We don’t have any information at this time that the information was made up or fabricated,” Davidson said.

And there’s the problem right there, or at least one of the problems.  An individual – a single individual – can say something and dispatch an armed home invasion team supported by the officers of the court.  One individual.

The police sound more like a drug gang retaliating for some offense in the organized crime world than “peace officers,” yes?

PoliceOne:

We, as law enforcement officers, need to adopt the same mindset as that of the Marine Corps when it comes to job titles. In the Marine Corps, everyone, regardless of rank, is a rifleman first and foremost. The “job” he does in the Marines comes second. We’re civilian law enforcement, so our “job” to protect and serve comes first, but we need to have the mindset that each and every one of us is also a rifleman. We need to be equipped and trained as such.

You can feel free to peruse my category on the U.S. Marines as long as you wish.  I know a Marine, and you’re no Marine.  The last thing I want is for a cop to see himself as first and foremost a rifleman.  Because he’s not, and because he shouldn’t be, even if he has the skills.

What Mr. Rayburn wants to see is every cop carrying a patrol rifle at all times, and instead of raising a handgun or shotgun at people, he’ll have a rifle to make urban situations and CQB much worse due to increased range and muzzle velocity.

It’s sad, really.  All of that gun control hasn’t helped a bit, has it?  And that open border policy and family-destroying welfare have made matters much worse, haven’t they?

But I’m certain that Mr. Rayburn doesn’t support peaceable men like me openly carrying rifles with them everywhere they go, else he would have said so.  His solution is to super-arm the cops rather than address the situation at its root cause.

Because cops are just like us, only better, and more elite, with more rights and latitude.  Well Mr. Rayburn, if you want to be a U.S. Marine, join up, take the training, and fly across the pond.  On the other hand, with the way things are now in the Army and Marines, I’m not so sure I’m saying much compared to what it would have been ten or even five years ago.

The saddest part of all is that cops apparently listen to this goober.  It’s a long way and a lot of water over the dam since the days of peace officers, yes?  Steel yourself for what’s coming, folks.

News from the great Northeast:

A New Jersey mother is demanding answers from the Newark Police Department after her 10-year-old son was chased by police with shotguns.

Patisha Solomon says her son, Legend Preston, was playing basketball outside their home when Newark PD officers mistook him for a 20-year-old armed robbery suspect.

Police approached Legend with guns drawn. At that point, Legend says, out of fear, he ran into an alleyway.

“I ran because they thought that I rolled the ball into the street on purpose, and they were just holding shot guns at me trying to shoot me,” Legend told ABC New York.

Neighbors who saw the commotion, quickly yelled for the police to stop — one neighbor reportedly “threw themselves in front of the guns to protect” Legend.

“He’s only 10 years old, how you all chasing him? He’s only a kid,” Jackie Kelly, a neighbor of the Solomon family told ABC News.

Goobers with guns.  It’s what they do, ma’am.  They’re dangerous to everything and everyone around them, including themselves.  You know, it might have been easier and more efficient if they had walked up to the kid and talked to the him.

The Washington Post:

Suddenly, the officer rapped on the rear passenger side window with his pistol. My daughter, who was sitting inches from the barrel of his gun, jumped with fear as the officer yelled at me to roll down the front passenger window, his service weapon pointed directly at me. I knew something was terribly awry and I tried to remain calm, keeping my hands visible as I slowly fumbled for the window controls in an unfamiliar car.

My daughter rolled down her window and I explained that we were in a rental car, that we had no weapons, and I was having trouble figuring out how to roll down the front passenger window from my driver’s side door. The officer didn’t listen, and kept yelling louder and more insistently, ordering me to comply with his request as he leered at me down the barrel of his pistol. My daughter panicked and tried to get out of her booster seat to reach forward to roll down the front window, and the officer screamed her at her not to move as he pointed his pistol at her.

Then, as I had my hands in the air, he yelled, at the top of his lungs, in a voice I will never forget, as my daughter looked on in terror, “Get your hands away from your waist or I’ll blow two holes through your back right now!” My hands were high in the air as he said this, and I was not in any way reaching for my waist. I was utterly terrified. I’ve heard stories of police yelling out false things like this before they unjustifiably attack someone as a way to justify the attack, and I thought this was what was happening to me. I braced for bullets to hit me and all I could think of was my daughter having to watch it happen and being left alone on the side of the highway with an insane, violent cop.

I would be terrified for my child too.  The report says that the officer thought it was a stolen car.  Whatever.  There is no excuse for this kind of behavior.  None.

With a child in the car, the officer should have immediately reassessed the situation and concluded that his information was likely incorrect.  It often is, witness so many wrong-home SWAT raids.  Furthermore, inability to figure out how a window works when under duress isn’t equivalent to being noncompliant with the officer’s commands.  The officer doesn’t know everything about the situation, and he shouldn’t have drawn his service weapon.

Finally, men like this give gun owners like me a bad name.  His trigger discipline and muzzle discipline are non-existent.  Even if it was a stolen vehicle like he thought, the presence of a child in the automobile should have made him stop and conclude that it wasn’t worth the risk of injury to the child, even if the driver drove away.  The driver will never actually get away.  He knows that.

Honestly, from my vantage point, I don’t worry so much about crime or assault.  My biggest worry is goobers like this who believe they are Mr. tactical, when their thinking more matches Barney Fife.  And I would bet every penny I had that if a negligent discharge occurred, killing the innocent man or injuring the child, the PD would have hired “experts” who testified that he did everything right.  He would have gotten away with it.

WKBW.com:

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) – Two separate police raids ended with pit bull dogs shot in their respective homes. Pit bull dogs were shot after police raided houses in the past week.

On the morning of Friday, July 29th, Michael Urban’s house was raided by the Buffalo Police Department, as their Narcotics Department executed 15 search warrants in the Lovejoy-Kaisertown area. Although BPD tells us a search warrant was executed for Urban’s home on Weaver Street, Urban says officers raided the wrong home, and that the description didn’t match him.

“5’11 210 white male and this is a 5’11 170 black male… I don’t look like either of those,” said Urban.

According to Urban, officers came into his home and shot his 18-month-old pit bull, Gotham, twice. A bullet hole on his kitchen floor serves as memory of that morning. The bullet made it through the floor to the home of the downstairs residents.

“What just happened?” Urban recalls what was going through his mind that morning. “As the bullet hole went through the floor through the ceiling, as the dogs blood is dripping through the downstairs apartment… who’s accountable?”

The Internal Affairs Division of the Buffalo Police Department has opened an investigation into the matter.

A similar situation occurred on Esser Street. According to resident of the home on Esser Street, Cindy Meers, her seven-year-old pit bull dog was shot by the Erie County Sheriff’s Office and Buffalo SWAT Thursday afternoon.

I saw you in the video, shit-for-brains.  You looked like this.

What a drag, huh?  Someone had you get all dressed up with no place to go except shoot a dog in the wrong house!  Here’s a hint to help you in the future.  A lot of records that y’all use, such as tax records, are out of date.  They lead to wrong-home raids.  Have a uniformed officer walk up to the front door and knock on it.  He can then ask the resident of the domicile who he is.  That will work better than what you did.

Or if you’re really scared of who might be in there, you can have a plain clothes officer watch the home until the owner comes out for work, groceries, or whatever.  He can’t stay in there forever.  Then he can do this.

Officer 1: Uh … this dude isn’t black, he’s white.  Maybe the wrong place.  How copy?

Officer 2: Uh … okay.  Copy.  Wrong place.

Officer 1: I just called his name, er … the name we think is his.  He looked at me like I was crazy.  I think we need to think about this.  Standing down.  How copy?

Officer 2: Copy that.  Standing down.  Let’s go get a doughnut.

If you are concerned about the high personnel costs of staking out the residence, you can sell off those helmets, AR-15s, EOTechs, Kevlar, Tac-lights, Comms gear and other unnecessary stuff.  We don’t really care about your war on drugs.

You went into the home of someone else, a home that wasn’t yours, onto property that wasn’t yours, and shot his dog.  You committed a home invasion, and it would have been morally justified to shoot every one of you dead.  Most of us aren’t okay with something like that unless it involves the immediate protection of someone’s life, such as in a kidnapping, and even then, I would rather you take a cold shower, find someone with brains and let them deescalate the situation.

But all of this only matters if you have a moral compass.  It doesn’t, and you don’t.  I had thought that I remembered something special about the Buffalo Police Department.  Ohhhh yes.  We have history with you.

According to use of force reports requested by WGRZ-TV under the Freedom of Information Law, Buffalo Police shot 92 dogs from Jan. 1, 2011 through Sept. 2014. Seventy-three of those dogs died. Nineteen survived.

To provide a comparison, Buffalo’s numbers more than triple the amount of dog shooting incidents involving police in Cincinnati, a municipality of similar size.

“The numbers are what the numbers are,” Buffalo Police Chief of Detectives Dennis Richards said in an interview with WGRZ. “Certainly, no officer takes any satisfaction in having to dispatch a dog.”

I don’t believe you.  I don’t believe you because there are other ways to accomplish the same mission.  I believe that you are a bunch of sadists, and I think the people of Buffalo should begin to think of you that way.  You’re a hazard to yourselves and the citizens and animals of the city.  You’re clearly incompetent, and you need to have your entire department cleaned out top to bottom, side to side, front to back, with everyone replaced, entirely new procedures, and a new perspective.

Finally, I was looking for an email address to ensure that someone in the Buffalo Police Department read this article.  I notice that you don’t supply any such contact information for any person in particular, you just give that idiotic form.

I’ve taken to avoiding linking or commenting on articles where the author gives no contact information.  I don’t consider Twitter accounts or Facebook pages contact information.  An author who doesn’t give his email address is a coward.  And a cop who shoots up the city without giving his email contact information is doubly a coward.  I find y’all despicable and loathsome.  I’m glad I don’t know you.  I pity the people of Buffalo who do have to know you.

KAGSTV.com:

In the first panicked hours following the ambush on Dallas police officers, the department released a photo of a man carrying a long gun as a person of interest.

But he was the wrong guy—and one who never broke any laws by carrying that gun.

“I also don’t fault Dallas police for immediately listing that person as a person of interest,” said Ray Hunt with the Houston Police Officers Union. “Just like anybody else that had guns on the scene, they would be considered persons of interest. That’s just called clues in police work.”

The worklist for police has gotten longer as more people will be sporting pistols and handguns through the state’s open carry law, which took effect this year. And at any scene, it may require more resources.

“It may take another officer to be there to watch that person to make sure that person is not part of the problem,” Hunt said.

But the Houston Police Officers Union is more concerned about the public.

“The number of people who were gonna be calling, because they’re not used to seeing that,” Hunt said.

So far, it hasn’t seemed too problematic.

Since January, the Houston Police Department says out of the tens of thousands of calls a month, only 62 were weapon related.

And out of those, only 19 were actual open-carry situations.

Considering the shootings we have seen around the country, it’s possible people are hypersensitive to weapons. So for now, police can only hope that dispatchers will determine how serious the threat is.

“If we find out that someone is carrying and they’re allowed to be carrying we are allowed to disarm them during the investigation,” Hunt said. “And then give them their weapon back at the end.”

So I reckon the sky isn’t falling and the bodies aren’t stacking up in the morgue because of open carry.  So much for the hyper-dramatic hysteria by the gun controllers.

But on to something the article said about LEO interactions.  “If we find out that someone is carrying and they’re allowed to be carrying we are allowed to disarm them during the investigation,” Hunt said. “And then give them their weapon back at the end.”

You … have … got … to … be … kidding … me?  Is the Houston police department really doing this?  Seriously?  Previously I had said this about the practice of LEOs unholstering weapons from innocent citizens.

If you’re a LEO and you actually touch another man’s gun in the process of a stop, or you have a partner touch his gun, much less unholster it, “secure” it or anything else you think you are doing to it, let me be as clear as I can be.  You … are … an … idiot.  If your procedures have you doing this, then your procedures were written by idiots.  You can tell them I said so and send them this article.

You have no business risking NDs or taking possession of property that isn’t yours, even temporarily, and especially since you don’t know of modifications that may have been made to the firearm that would make it unfamiliar to you.

Don’t do it.  Just say no.  I wouldn’t walk up and presume to take possession of another man’s gun at a range or while in his home.  You have no business doing that either.  It’s weird, creepy, and unsafe.

It makes no one safer, and it makes everyone less safe.  So in light of this, I have two questions for the Houston PD.

1. What basis in law gives you the authority to touch another man’s weapon if he isn’t being charged with any crime?
2. Given that there is a step change downward in safety if you touch another man’s weapon like this, why do your procedures have your officers doing such a stupid thing?

Submitted.