Archive for the 'Police' Category

WUSA9:

WASHINGTON – An officer in the Metropolitan Police Department’s first district “dry-fired” an unloaded weapon at the head of another officer during a roll-call meeting on Saturday afternoon, possibly under orders from a sergeant as part of a training exercise, four MPD sources tell WUSA9.

Those sources say a Sergeant later told officers in the room that they had secretly ordered the officer to unload his weapon and then pretend to fire on his colleague as part of a “training exercise” on situational awareness. The officer then pulled the trigger of the unloaded weapon while pointing it at the head of an officer until it audibly clicked, the sources say.

Both the officer who allegedly fired the weapon and the sergeant who allegedly ordered him are assigned to regular duties, pending an internal affairs investigation, MPD spokesman Sean Hickman tells WUSA9.

“I can tell you there are about seven different versions of the incident that are out there,” MPD Chief Cathy Lanier told reporters on Monday. “I’m not sure which or how many of those that you’ve heard, but I prefer to wait until I see some facts and some direct statements of what happened before I make a judgment.”

Several MPD personnel who have heard of the incident, which has been widely discussed in police circles online and elsewhere since the weekend, say they are furious that such a training exercise might have been ordered.

Another officer could easily have drawn their weapon and killed the officer who dry-fired at their colleague. Some sources say at least one officer did pull his weapon on the officer during the confusing moments surrounding the incident.

“You shouldn’t be doing that kind of training. This is police academy 101. You do not pull your weapon out of your holster and display it, especially in a roomful of cops,” said Michael Tabman, a former Fairfax County police officer and FBI special agent.

Tabman ticked off multiple ways the scenario could have turned deadly, such as a round accidentally left chambered in the officer’s weapon, or another officer in the room opening fire to preemptively protect a colleague with a gun pointed at him.

“You just don’t put people in that fear and sort of invite tragedy, and that’s what this was—it was inviting tragedy. Thank goodness nothing happened,” Tabman said.

The rules of gun safety, one of which is observation of muzzle discipline, are based on a safety philosophy called “defense in depth.”  Hundreds of articles can be found monthly where officers routinely point their firearms at citizens, many of whom are guilty of nothing at all.  They have the mistaken notion that only their safety matters, and thus it’s acceptable to muzzle flag another person as long as that person is not another law enforcement officer.  The same holds true for the idea of putting your finger on the trigger of the firearm.  This is routinely done by law enforcement while pointing weapons at other people, one problem that has developed from this being negligent discharges when they are armed with handguns with a lighter trigger pull than previous service arms, or when armed with a handgun that doesn’t shoot DA/SA (like their previous service weapon) where the initial cycling of the trigger is harder and chambers the round as well as shoots it.  See also here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and many other instances.

The point isn’t to get into mechanical and tactical issues so much as it is to explain why police shoot their handguns when they shouldn’t.  They have been poorly trained, and their concern isn’t for citizens – it is only for themselves.  There is a problem with both training and intent.  But in this instance we see stupidity on display for all to witness.  Whoever ordered to this occur shouldn’t ever be allowed to own another weapon in his life, much less still be under the employ of a police department.

But the police are indignant in this case, their ox being the one that was gored.  We also saw this in the article entitled The second deputy pointed the weapon at the first deputy and – apparently unaware the weapon was loaded – pulled the trigger.

Via Townhall, this sad tale:

A San Francisco sheriff’s deputy accidentally discharged a non-duty weapon, a “baby Glock,” inside the Hall of Justice on Wednesday morning, apparently while trying to demonstrate the proper use of the weapon to a colleague.

The round narrowly missed the fellow deputy, but no one was injured.

San Francisco Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Eileen Hirst said the discharge occurred before court started and was under investigation. She was not able to provide details, pending the outcome of the probe.

“An accidental discharge of a firearm is a very serious matter,” she said. “We are all very grateful that no one was injured.”

Sources say that Rhonda Gaines, a 20-plus year veteran, brought the gun to work and that Sotero Santos accidentally fired it. Hirst would not confirm either identities but said that the person who fired the weapon is receiving a one-on-one refresher on firearm training, as is the deputy who brought the weapon to the courthouse.

[…]

Sources told NBC Bay Area that Gaines brought the handgun, a 22-caliber “baby” Glock, to work and was apparently not familiar with how it operated. She handed it to Santos and asked him about its use, sources said. The second deputy pointed the weapon at the first deputy and – apparently unaware the weapon was loaded – pulled the trigger. The round missed her, piercing an equipment storage cabinet, before lodging in the office wall.

I don’t do Glocks, but even so, I know that unless it’s had the conversion kit applied to it, there is no .22 Glock.  The department may have been referring to a Glock 22, which is a .40.  Either way, it’s a good thing this happened among people so well trained in the science of firearms use and tactical applications (unlike us ignorant civilians).  Otherwise, someone might have been hurt and the other sent to prison.

This video comes via KTRK.  Watch it all.

No he didn’t point a gun at the cop.  It’s as simple as that.  No he didn’t.  The video clearly shows that he pulled in, he got out of the truck and knocked his gun out of the floorboard of the vehicle (I’ve never done that with a gun but I have with my iPhone and wallet), reached down to pick it up, turned back towards the truck with it, placed it in the truck, and closed the door.  Then he was surprised by an off-duty cop who unholstered his firearm and didn’t observed muzzle or trigger discipline.  He pointed a deadly weapon at the man.  There was no excuse for this.  None.

The comments here are interesting.

“Overreaction on the part of the cop. Period. No harm, no foul,” and “Yep, shake hands and walk away.

So the cop should be able to do what I can’t without it being a felony, otherwise called assault with a deadly weapon, because you know, he’s a cop and all that.  And cops are different.

NRO:

In Chicago, two momentous things are happening at once. First, in the aftermath of the Laquan McDonald shooting — where a white officer shot a black teenager, who was armed with a small knife, 16 times, even as McDonald appeared to be walking away — Chicago police and prosecutors are facing a Department of Justice investigation and intense public scrutiny. Second, as the investigation and accompanying political controversy unfold, Chicago’s murder rate has surged by 84 percent, and shootings have almost doubled.

… Since January, [Chicago] officers have recorded 20,908 instances in which they stopped, patted down and questioned people for suspicious behavior, compared with 157,346 in the same period last year. Gun seizures are also down: 1,316 guns have been taken off the streets this year compared with 1,413 at this time last year.

Rogue police officers must be prosecuted, but we are increasingly demanding the impossible from law enforcement — that they maintain order in the streets in a manner that looks great on camera and breaks down neatly along demographic lines. But dealing with violent gangs, drunk, high, and out-of-control criminals, and screaming and vicious domestic disputes is often an ugly business. Moreover, crime rates aren’t evenly distributed demographically, so so stops, arrests, and police shootings won’t be either.

Listen to me, David.  I always go armed with a knife, and not a small one.  If a man is walking away, a cop has no right to shoot him, so says the Supreme Court in Tennessee versus Garner.  Cops can use their weapons for the very same reason I can use mine, i.e., self defense.  Nothing else justifies use of said gun, except if they are saving the life of someone else (and I can use that excuse as well if it’s true).  Cops can’t shoot people for walking away.  Don’t even toy with the idea of defense of a cop who shoots a man in the back for walking away from him.

And yes, someone is asking cops to do the impossible.  I’m not, but someone is.  They are asking cops to be at the receiving end of bad policy that has eviscerated the black family in the inner cities by handouts, making the father both unnecessary and meaningless.  What we are looking at in the inner cities is four generations of entitlement.  Cops can’t change that.  Cops cannot undo the affects of socialist programs that have impoverished and morally bankrupted the black population, and hard core policing tactics that violate the constitution aren’t the answer to bad policy.  At some point the chickens come home to roost.  In this case, many of the chickens are dangerous criminals, and the roost will be hellish, just as it will be with our open borders policy.

No one takes pleasure in this.  This isn’t schadenfreude.  This is called judgment.  Sometimes it can’t be stopped.

Buy guns and ammunition.  Be prepared.  Understand Herschel’s Dictum.  “There aren’t too many human interaction problems that can’t be fixed with a .45 ACP 230-grain fat-boy.”

Via reader Mack, this from The Rutherford Institute, and written up at Richmond-Times Dispatch.

A Hopewell man who filed a federal lawsuit against a Hopewell police officer who had him arrested and detained at a peaceful public protest while armed with a rifle and pistol has settled the case.

The lawsuit was resolved to the “mutual satisfaction” of both sides, the two parties said in separate statements. Specific terms of the settlement were not disclosed; the lawsuit was formally dismissed last week.

The nine-page complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Richmond in 2014 said Brandon Howard drew the attention of Hopewell police on Aug. 26, 2013, when he was seen displaying a 6-by-4-foot sign that read “Impeach Obama” on an Interstate 295 overpass.

He had an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder on a strap and a .380-caliber Bersa pistol holstered on his waist.

Howard had been protesting lawfully for about 30 minutes when a Hopewell police officer pulled up to the area on the overpass where Howard was standing and parked his vehicle. Three to five police cruisers arrived a short time later with their emergency lights flashing, the suit said.

Six to eight officers then got out of their cars with their guns drawn and commanded Howard to drop his sign and get on the ground with his hands spread above his head, the complaint said.

After Howard immediately complied, Sgt. John Hunter stated to Howard, “What do you think you are doing threatening people on my interstate?” Howard replied that he had not threatened anyone and was simply exercising his First Amendment and Second Amendment rights.

To that, Hunter said, “Not on my overpass you’re not,” according to the suit.

The complaint says Hunter then handcuffed Howard, with Hunter advising Howard that he was being detained but not arrested after Howard asked if he was under arrest. Howard was placed in a police cruiser and taken to the Hopewell police station without anyone informing him of his legal rights or providing him “with any basis or authorization for his arrest and detention,” the suit says.

Howard spent the following 90 minutes in an interrogation room, with handcuffs still binding his hands behind his back, but was never questioned during his detention, the suit says.

He was then told he was free to go, his weapons were returned, and he was driven back to the interstate overpass.

The complaint said the police violated Howard’s First Amendment right to free speech, Second Amendment right to bear arms, and Fourth Amendment right to be free from a groundless arrest when they confronted him with guns drawn and ordered him to the ground on the unfounded belief that Howard was violating the law by being in public with a rifle slung over his shoulder.

Howard’s suit sought “nominal compensatory and punitive damages in an amount to be determined at trial.”

The settlement “resolved the lawsuit to the mutual satisfaction of the parties,” according to a news release emailed Friday by the Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties advocacy group in Charlottesville that represented Howard.

Hunter said in a statement Saturday: “The parties have resolved this matter to their mutual satisfaction. As a gun owner, avid hunter and former Marine, I, John Hunter, respect and honor citizens’ Second Amendment rights. Similarly, as a citizen and former candidate for public office, I respect the rights of citizens to express themselves and engage in political speech as protected by the First Amendment.

“It was not my intention to compromise Mr. Howard’s rights under the Constitution. As a police officer, my number one priority was the safety of the public.”

Breitbart:

Police confiscated firearms from 74-year-old Ralph Gilbertsen, although he is not a felon or domestic abuser, and he has never been ruled dangerous to others because of mental illness.

Gilbertsen, who lives in Richfield, Minnesota, believes in Bigfoot and UFOs. And while he does receive treatment for a “mild” mental health disorder, the Star Tribune reports that a psychologist sent a letter to the judge in the case, stating that “Gilbertsen is compliant with his medications and poses no danger to himself or others.”

A former Marine, Gilbertsen is also a concealed carry permit holder, which means he passed the in-depth background check required to obtain such permit, and he was the proud owner of three handguns, until the police knocked on his door.

He came to the attention of authorities after individuals at his apartment complex reported that he constantly talks about the government watching him; he particularly voices concerns that the CIA is spying on him. The Hennepin Community Outreach for Psychiatric Emergencies (COPE) called police about Gilbertsen after his apartment managers expressed concern about a series of letters he had written on CIA spying. COPE handles roughly 13,000 cases–only a third of which are face-to-face–and they asked police to escort them to Gilbertsen’s apartment in 2015. His guns were subsequently confiscated.

Richfield Police Department spokesman Lt. Mike Flaherty said, “Officers are often forced to make snap judgments about an individual’s mental health.” He added, “The street cops nowadays have to be a psychologist. People don’t wear nameplates saying ‘paranoid schizophrenic.’ So the police have to go in there and make judgment calls.”

Lt. Mike Flaherty is a paid, professional liar.  Officers aren’t forced to do anything of the sort he mentions.  There is no law requiring police officers to make any kind of judgment concerning mental health, much less “snap” judgments.  Street cops don’t have to be psychologists – he is lying and he just made that up to sound intelligent and defend his officers.

No, people don’t wear nameplates saying anything, because that would be illegal and stupid.  Besides, mental health is not an indicator of propensity to violence – so says the mental health profession of which the officer fancies himself and his officers.  So I guess they aren’t such great mental health professionals after all.  Perhaps they should stick with policing rather than trying to add to their jobs by doing illegal things like confiscating property that isn’t theirs.

The victim isn’t a felon.  He isn’t a domestic abuser.  His property was stolen – stolen by the very people who are supposed to hunt those sorts of criminals.  Throw the cops in jail with the general prison population, give him his guns back, and fire all of his colleagues who helped him get away with this theft.

News from Massachusetts:

LOWELL — Police confiscated four replica guns from a 22-year-old Lowell man Saturday afternoon in the first instance of the new city ban on such weapons being enforced, according to police.

Officers were called to the area behind CVS at 1815 Middlesex St., Saturday at 2:53 p.m., after getting calls reporting a man who appeared to have a rifle, according to police.

Officers found Sharif Eltobgi and two females, whose identities were not released, on the train tracks that run under the Rourke Bridge, and Eltobgi had four weapons that are banned by the new ordinance, according to Capt. Timothy Crowley.

Police say what the rifle callers saw was actually a pellet gun, and that Eltobgi also had two BB handguns and a starter pistol that are covered by the ban.

“This incident is a prime example of the alarm that can be caused to the public when confronted with a subject armed with a replica firearm,” Crowley wrote in a press release.

The City Council passed the ban on replica guns with a 7-2 vote at its meeting on Feb. 9 to address police concerns about the confusion that can be caused by such weapons.

William Taylor is responsible for this, the very same one who wants to review your essay before approving your handgun permit.

This is the Lowell police at their finest, protecting the public from Islamic terrorism and Hispanic and Latino drug gangs.  Don’t you feel safer?

And how long is Smith & Wesson going to stay in this horrible state before relocating to America?

News from the great Northeast:

First came the rat — and then, the rat-a-tat-tat.

A Harlem postal cop, startled early Thursday by a rambling rodent outside the W. 125th St. post office, accidentally fired his gun while investigating a building alarm, sources said.

Both the rat and U.S. Postal Service Inspector Neville Harper escaped injury in the 12:35 a.m. shooting that came after the rodent bolted suddenly from a pile of garbage, the sources said.

Harper was doing a perimeter search of the building with his service revolver drawn when the rat appeared and the gun went off, sources said.

I’ve heard of those guns that just “go off” with no one pulling the trigger, mostly from cops under investigation when their gun “goes off.”  But in this case, this particular gun “went off” when the rat bolted.  That must be some sensitive trigger (trigger pressure of, oh, I don’t know, a nano-Pascal?).  Those changes in air pressure when things move, you know.

And remember kids.  Only the cops can be trusted with guns.

USA Today:

The owner of a dog shot and killed by police in 2012 will receive a $262,000 settlement from Commerce City in Colorado, according to a city spokeswoman.

On Nov. 24 2012, three Commerce City Police officers responded to reports of a “loose, vicious dog.” Police said Chloe, a 3-year-old dog, aggressively ran toward the officers. During the encounter, Officer Robert Price, shot and killed the dog.

The dog was first shocked with a stun gun and then shot multiple times. A neighbor took cellphone video of Chloe’s death, which was a key piece of evidence in the case.

The viral video showed Chloe cowering and trying to escape.

Price was found not guilty of animal cruelty charges in 2013.

The Animal Law Center says the $262,000 settlement is one of the largest of its kind.

Chloe’s owner, Gary Branson, was out of town when she was shot.

Okay, I have several comments after reading this, and after watching that horrible video in full.  First, dog owners should make arrangements for the dog at all times.  They are part of the family.  A loose dog when you’re out of town is unacceptable and irresponsible.

That said, the police are obviously guilty of animal cruelty and the one doing the shooting should have gone to prison just like Michael Vick.

The officer in the very first part of the video is an overblown, bloated fat ass, and doesn’t need to be on the police force anywhere.  The female officer is worthless, and doesn’t understand how to handle the dog.  As I’ve said before, “Voice commands are critical, and voice inflection, tonality and timbre (or tone color) make or break your communications with the animal.  Learn it.  Practice it.  Do it.  Take time with it, and if you live in a dense urban area where you cannot work with farm animals, travel on the weekends to a place where you can, or move permanently.  It’s that important.”

Within five minutes, I would have been petting Chloe and she would have been laying on her back with me scratching her belly.  The officers are hicks and goobers.  They know nothing.  They are worthless.

Just as bad as it pertains to future engagements, the final officer who shot Chloe – Robert Price – used his handgun with one hand, the other hand flailing wildly behind him.  No kidding.  Watch the video.  No, no, Robert.  Do it this way.

What the hell are they teaching these boys in Colorado?  Are they teaching them anything at all?  My God, I would hate to meet up with these morons, any one of them.  To me, they seem dangerous in their ignorance.  The dog was no danger.  The only danger was because of the idiot cops that day.  I hope all the cops in the Commerce City Police Department aren’t that stupid.

A final word about the settlement.  I hate it when the city suffers the financial harm for malicious acts of their cowardly police officers, but maybe with enough huge settlements of this sort, cities will begin to hire people who can think.

Robert Price should go to prison, and he certainly shouldn’t be allowed to have a gun.  How do you feel about costing your city $262K, Robert?  Pretty bad?  You should.  How do you feel about killing Chloe, Robert?  Pretty bad?  You should.

The Des Moines Register:

A Des Moines police officer accidentally fired his gun inside an office at the Des Moines International Airport while he was practicing his “quick draw.”

Officer Brady Pratt, 23, was inside an office at the airport Wednesday around 4 p.m. when he drew his gun from his holster to practice “his quick draw skills,” according to a police report. Pratt, who joined the force in 2013, “unknowingly” had his finger on the trigger and fired a round from the gun, the report states.

Another officer, Taylor Olson, witnessed the incident.

The bullet hit a ceiling tile above one of the office doors. It traveled through the wall and out into a hallway, landing in the hallway’s ceiling tile.

No one was in the hallway at the time, and nobody was injured.

Pratt reported the accidental shot to his supervisor, who then notified a lieutenant.

“Discipline is always a possibility when (officers) are negligent. The level will be determined by the circumstances,” said Sgt. Paul Parizek, a spokesman for the department. “There will be a very thorough review.”

Gosh, I hate it when that happens to me.  I remember the last time I was doing that.  I was in a shopping mall, with thousands of people around.  I didn’t shoot anybody, and I hope they go as easy on the cop as they did on me.  The police came and we all laughed, and laughed, and laughed.