Archive for the 'Police' Category

Times-News Burlington:

The Burlington police officer who obtained a search warrant for the wrong house in a drug investigation was present when the warrant was executed, but wasn’t able to stop deputies before they entered the house, police officials said Tuesday.

Burlington Police Chief Jeffrey Smythe called into Talkline, a local morning radio show on AM station WBAG, on Tuesday to discuss the incident, which occurred April 4 at a Mebane house outside of the police department’s jurisdiction, thus requiring the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office to execute the warrant.

Though the Times-News previously tried to get information from police on where Officer R.D. Hebden, who obtained the warrant, was while deputies entered the wrong house, Smythe explained on the radio show that the officer was present but was in the last of four cars to pull up to the site.

Smythe said sheriff’s deputies had already entered the house, located at 3264 Maplewood Ave., before Hebden could inform the ACSO lieutenant overseeing the operation that he had put the wrong address on the warrant, but that the officer immediately did so.

On the show, Smythe admitted the Burlington Police Department accepts the blame for the error, and mentioned that he had already apologized multiple times to the two residents of the house.

“It was due to a mistake on our officer’s part,” said Assistant Chief Chris Verdeck. “We’ve repeatedly apologized for our mistake and are investigating it thoroughly, internally, to try to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

The Sheriff’s Office has maintained that its deputies acted properly, and followed normal procedure for entering a residence at the address listed on a search warrant — which included a team of nine deputies from the vice and special operations units who went inside the house with guns drawn, ordering the residents on the ground and handcuffing them, said Randy Jones, public information officer.

Jones said one of the deputies carried a shotgun, one carried an AR-15 assault rifle and the others carried handguns. He said deputies knocked on the back door and announced their presence multiple times, to no response, before ramming through the door.

Once inside, the residents were ordered to get down and were both handcuffed while deputies conducted a walkthrough to ensure no one else was inside. He said once the scene was secured, Lt. Brandon Wilkerson, of the sheriff’s office, began to question whether they were at the correct location and went out to confer with Hebden.

The mistake of address on the search warrant was a result of Hebden selecting the wrong parcel while using an Alamance County geographic information system, said Lt. Brian Long, of the Burlington Police Department.

“Entered the wrong home …,” “apologized …,” “no response …,” and so on the clinically worded prose goes.  But there is nothing clinical about this.  Nine law enforcement officers crushed in a door and pointed weapons at innocent victims, thus endangering their lives, all over a mistaken address.

As a sidebar comment, if one of my readers does something like this, you would get charged with assault, reckless endangerment and brandishing a weapon.  And properly so.  But my readers wouldn’t do this.  They would ensure proper muzzle discipline at all times when in possession of a weapon.

The solution isn’t more apologies or radio talk shows.  The solution is to find another way to obtain evidence in criminal investigations that doesn’t involve ramming doors in or pointing weapons at people.  Note to LEOs: I couldn’t care less if you lose some of your evidence.  Use your heads and find another way.

My son Daniel did a combat tour of Fallujah in 2007, but his other deployment with the Marine Corps was a MEU to the Gulf of Aden and Persian Gulf (which both he and I think is a horrible way to throw away money if we’re never going to use the Marine Corps for anything on these MEUs except for humanitarian missions – but that’s another topic).

As the pre-deployment workup for this MEU, the Battalion underwent extensive training in evidence collection protocol and procedures.  At the time I dismissed this as an aberration and thought no more of it.  Then the Washington Post recently had this article, and it made me think again.

When U.S. Special Operations forces raided several houses in the Iraqi city of Ramadi in March 2006, two Army Rangers were killed when gunfire erupted on the ground floor of one home. A third member of the team was knocked unconscious and shredded by ball bearings when a teenage insurgent detonated a suicide vest.

In a review of the nighttime strike for a relative of one of the dead Rangers, military officials sketched out the sequence of events using small dots to chart the soldiers’ movements. Who, the relative asked, was this man — the one represented by a blue dot and nearly killed by the suicide bomber?

After some hesi­ta­tion, the military briefers answered with three letters: FBI.

The FBI’s transformation from a crime-fighting agency to a counterterrorism organization in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been well documented. Less widely known has been the bureau’s role in secret operations against al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other locations around the world.

With the war in Afghanistan ending, FBI officials have become more willing to discuss a little-known alliance between the bureau and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) that allowed agents to participate in hundreds of raids in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The relationship benefited both sides. JSOC used the FBI’s expertise in exploiting digital media and other materials to locate insurgents and detect plots, including any against the United States. The bureau’s agents, in turn, could preserve evidence and maintain a chain of custody should any suspect be transferred to the United States for trial.

[ … ]

… FBI agents were regularly involved in shootings — sometimes fighting side by side with the military to hold off insurgent assaults.

“It wasn’t weekly but it wouldn’t be uncommon to see one a month,” he said. “It’s amazing that never happened, that we never lost anybody.”

Others considered it a natural evolution for the FBI — and one consistent with its mission.

[ … ]

In 2005, all of the HRT members in Iraq began to work under JSOC. At one point, up to 12 agents were operating in the country, nearly a tenth of the unit’s shooters.

It’s been routine to watch every little Podunk Hollow across America acquire MRAPs, and we’ve all seen the horrible result of the militarizaton of police in America with SWAT raids.  With former military snipers going to work for federal law enforcement agencies and former military in general finding work with law enforcement across America (which both Daniel and I think is a horrible idea), there may as well never have been a law such as the Posse Comitatus Act.  We have virtual military enforcing law and warring against citizens of America as we speak.

But this level of admixture is a new feature (to those of us who weren’t part of JSOC).  The professional military has welcomed both law enforcement officers and law enforcement protocol and procedures into its ranks.

The implications of this are perhaps enormous.  Quiet Man at WRSA points out that there are formal Army field manuals and doctrine and training documents for site exploitation, and remarks that “virtually everything they do will be ‘”joint” in the agency sense.”  Yes, and in the intra-agency sense as well.  The military is looking more like law enforcement, and law enforcement is looking more like the military.  For those who have been watching, this is likely not accidental, and is an evolution that is at one and the same time both immoral and lawless.  This admixture of law enforcement and military is probably irreversible and this fact will prove to be determinative as a catalyst in coming events.

David Codrea:

Corroboration could cause allegations against anti-gun California State Senator Leland Yee, for attempting to broker illegal arms deals, to pale in comparison, particularly since Sharpton is a national figure with the ear of the administration and a national voice via his opinion show on MSNBC.

Well, when you bed down with criminals, you lose moral authority.  And this administration lost it a long time ago with sundry things, like Fast and Furious, the Gibson Guitar scandal, Solyndra, and the list could go on a long time.

Mike Vanderboegh:

One of them (also probably in diapers when the FBI was immolating those innocents that he figured had it coming) said that I was a “crazy old douchebag,” or words to that effect. I indicated that when they got ahold of the guy who had invited me to come up from Alabama to speak that he should get in touch with me and let me know if it had been a waste of time. Then I left.

So, having learned nothing that I needed to know and as ignorant as before I drove back to where I am staying. My speech, it would seem, is entirely up in the air. In truth, they had not invited me to their meeting and it was well within their rights to ask me to leave, so I really bear them no rancor. But some of them sure don’t know shit from shinola about Waco.

What a strange meeting.  David Koresh was a rapist and child abuser and I have no connection to him, ideologically or in any other way.  But there were other ways to handle this than the way the ATF chose.  Burning an entire township down and harming innocent folk is the mark of rapists, and so the ATF became (or already were) the very man they sought to arrest.

Mike Vanderboegh:

I congratulated Ammon and told him that this was perhaps a pivotal moment in American history. He also agreed with me that it is impossible not to see the hand of God in all of this. I told him that it was my opinion that the empire would surely strike back, but that they would likely come at the Bundys and their supporters sideways next time. Still, it was a great victory, a pivotal moment, in the relationship between the federal government and the American people. Nothing will be quite the same after this, mostly because it has demonstrated to those whom the government would victimize that they only require someone with the guts to stand up to leviathan — and the armed friends to back them up in the argument.

Read the entire communication.  It is indeed a great victory, but the empire will indeed strike back.

WRSA:

Enjoy this #bundyranch thread at PoliceOne.

Go at it, boys.

In public.

Please.

LMAO.

Must read.  You’d better figure it out, boys.  Each and every one of you, individually, after talking with your wives and loved ones, after much prayer.  Your souls are at stake, and it will come to your doorstep.  You can’t avoid it.  Ponder the deep thoughts now.  Pick your sides soon and be faithful.

The Salt Lake Tribune:

A fully automatic M-16 rifle went missing from the Davis County Sheriff’s Office, probably sometime before 2006, according to an investigation by that office.

The U.S. Department of Defense provided 20 M-16s to the sheriff’s office in 1998. Except for a few training exercises, the rifles sat in storage until 2006, when they were issued to deputies.

But there’s no record of the missing rifle having been issued, according to a report from the sheriff’s own detectives.

“This investigation has been inconclusive as to where the missing weapon is,” a detective wrote in his report’s conclusion. “The weapon is listed” in a nationwide law enforcement database “and if that is how it is located, then a criminal investigation will commence.”

Davis County Sheriff Todd Richardson said last week it’s only a matter of time before the rifle is found. And anyone who knowingly possesses the rifle will be prosecuted, even if that person is or was a peace officer.

“If it was procured by somebody who found it,” Richardson said, “they are in possession of a stolen rifle and they’re going to suffer consequences for it.”

The Pentagon provided the rifles through its 1033 Program, which gives surplus weapons and other gear to law enforcement. Sixty-two Utah law enforcement agencies are eligible to receive equipment through the program.

Of course, there is a solution to this problem.  Stop the military surplus program for law enforcement, and make it illegal for them to have fully automatic weapons if we can’t.  The Hughes amendment that is good for the goose is good for the gander.  On the other hand, that wouldn’t stop incompetency by the LEOs, just incompetency affecting fully automatic weapons owned by LEOs.

I can’t solve all problems, just some of them.

Examiner:

On Sunday, the Logandale, Nev.-based Moapa Valley Progress reported that Dave Bundy, son of rancher Cliven Bundy, was arrested while taking photographs of his family’s cattle that are being rounded up by federal agents. According to the report, Bundy was violating an arbitrary “First Amendment” zone that had been established by federal agents. Worse yet, federal agents also deployed snipers against the man.

“He was doing nothing but standing there and filming the landscape,” Ryan Bundy said of his brother Dave. “We were on the state highway, not even off of the right-of-way. Even if they want to call [the area that we were filming] federal land; which it’s not; we weren’t even on it. We were on the road.”

None of the family members on the road were armed, but 11 BLM vehicles each with two agents arrived and surrounded him as he began filming the cattle, Paul Joseph Watson said at Infowars.

“They also had four snipers on the hill above us all trained on us. We were doing nothing besides filming the area,” Ryan added.

Bundy also said federal agents told them they had no First Amendment rights except in the areas so marked.

BLM snipers.  Because people filming are such a danger to everyone.  And because shut up.

Apparently these folks have never read that we have a due process right to record law enforcement activities.  Oh hell.  They wouldn’t care about it even if they did read it.

Herald-Tribune:

In testimony Monday before a Senate committee in Tallahassee, Electra Bustle, lobbyist for the Florida Sheriff’s Association, clarified earlier remarks she made on behalf of her client, stating that the sheriffs realize Floridians have both a right to keep and to bear arms.

“The sheriffs in Florida support the Second Amendment, and we encourage law abiding citizens to take full advantage of their right to keep and bear arms.  I wanna take just a few minutes to clarify some remarks I made in the House committee,” Bustle said. “I tried to make a distinction between the right to own and bear firearms, and distinguish that from a concealed weapons permit, and unfortunately I used words that created a sound byte that now has muddied up the water.”

Bustle’s comments were made before the Senate Military Affairs, Space and Domestic Security Committee, which debated and then passed SB 296, a bill that allows Floridians to carry firearms during a declared emergency and mandatory evacuation.

In previous testimony before the House committee, Bustle told the lawmakers that “there is a difference between owning a firearm and carrying one concealed on your person. Owning a firearm is a right. Carrying concealed is a privilege, and it is a privilege that is earned by showing a higher degree of training and proficiency with a firearm.”

Bustle’s previous comments set off a firestorm of controversy, especially amongst the state’s 7 million gun owners.

“The only thing I was trying to say in the House committee, was there is a distinction in Florida,” Bustle said Monday. “We absolutely have the right, and the sheriff’s support the right, to own and carry firearms, but in Florida, we are a concealed weapons licensed state, and as a result there are certain eligibility requirements required of people who want to carry concealed.”

This is rich.  So she said that there is a distinction between the right to bear arms and the privilege to carry them with you based on approval by the CLEO.  Then in order to “clarify” her wording, she said, there is a distinction between the right to bear arms and the privilege to carry them with you based on approval by the CLEO.  There’s nothing like muddying the waters and then repeating yourself thus muddying the waters.

Here’s the deal.  The waters aren’t muddied.  She said what the CLEOs think, and they think what she said.  She didn’t make a mistake either time.  The CLEOs continue to believe that they are “the only ones,” that special fraternity approved to be in charge of others.  But it goes beyond that.

When I took my concealed handgun permit class, I was already an experienced shooter, and was appalled at the horrible mismanagement of firearms by attendees.  Muzzle flagging and lack of trigger discipline were the order of the day.

It wasn’t like that in Colonial days, where men were required to bring their weapons to church and practice with them along with their families.  But do folks learn the lessons fairly well in lieu of the classes, or does weapons mismanagement cause untold deaths?

Well, let’s turn to Arizona where a law passed in 2010 recognized constitutional carry.  If these concealed handgun courses were so damned valuable, one would expect that the murder and negligent homicide rates would have skyrocketed after passage of the law.

They didn’t.  Turning to Arizona’s statistics (they included negligent and accidental homicide in murder), the numbers run like this: 2006 (462), 2007 (464), 2008 (404), 2009 (317), 2010 (343), 2011 (339), and 2012 (345).

Now let me explain in just a few words what this is really all about.  Revenue.  That’s right.  Money for the permits, financing expensive military toys and bloated salaries for LEOs.

In what must surely be one of the more stupid programs ever conceived, a New York SWAT team gets to go hunting.

An Erie County city is bringing back a bait-and-shoot program to reduce a surging deer population that’s causing damage to property and hazards to motorists.

The city of North Tonawanda used the technique from 2004 to 2008 to reduce the deer herd. Now residents are complaining again about too many deer.

According to the Niagara Gazette the program will be conducted by four police SWAT team members between October and March in two undisclosed locations.

Alderman Eric Zadzilka said the city had 77 car-deer collisions in 2003, and only 17 the following year after the deer reduction program was initiated.

Mayor Rob Ortt says meat from deer killed through the program will be donated to the Food Bank of Western New York.

Because, you know, it must be bad policy to issue off-season permits to local hunters, and such.  Because they aren’t special like the SWAT.  And we need to find some way to spend all of that tax money.

I find myself wondering if the cops are going to use MRAPs and machine guns.  Do they go deer hunting while tacticool?

CBS-DC:

A University of Virginia student is seeking $40 million from the state and seven Alcoholic Beverage Control agents who arrested her believing she had illegally purchased beer when she had bought bottled water.

Elizabeth K. Daly, 21, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Richmond Circuit Court, according to media reports. She alleges malicious prosecution, six counts of assault and battery and failure to appropriately train ABC agents.

On April 11, 2013, ABC agents confronted Daly outside a supermarket in Charlottesville. The agents believed Daly, who was then 20, was under the legal drinking age and had purchased beer.

Daly was charged with two felonies for grazing two agents with her vehicle.

Daly has said attempted to flee in a panic because the agents weren’t in uniform, one pulled a gun and another attempted to smash a window with a flashlight.

Daly spent a night in jail on felony charges of assaulting two law enforcement officers and eluding police. Prosecutors withdrew charges against Daly in June and her record was expunged in October.

In her lawsuit, Daly said she has suffered from a tremor in her right hand, intense anxiety and other problems since the confrontation.

As a result of the April 2013 incident, Daly and her parents “have incurred significant legal, medical, and other costs, and will continue to do so in the future due to the malicious, intentional” and negligent actions of the defendants, the lawsuit states.

A spokesman for Attorney General Mark Herring called the incident “incredibly unfortunate.”

Here is the summary.  Virginia ABC agents in plains clothes brandished a weapon at an innocent victim and attempted to smash the window of an automobile, endangering the driver (and any occupants that might have been there) of lifelong blindness from shards of glass, all over what they thought was a beer.  And the court officer notes this incident as being “unfortunate.”

Here is a modest proposal in an attempt to ameliorate the police state we have become.  Every law enforcement officer, federal, state, county and local, in America wears a camera beginning immediately.  The camera will be worn at all times when on duty by those who interact with the public (including LEOs from SWAT officers on to uniformed patrol), and failure to wear the camera will entail loss of job and deprivation of licenses issued by the state (such as driver’s license, hunting license, firearms license, etc.).

The video will be streamed to an independent third party, who releases the video upon request to any victim or his lawyer, and posts video of all violent encounters.  Law enforcement officers can then be held accountable for the same crimes we would be, namely brandishing, assault, denial of constitutional rights, lying under oath, and any of a host of other crimes.

It would be a start.

As a followup to my article Note To Cops And Survivalists: The World Is Full Of Animals, Embrace It!, Mountain Guerrilla posted a piece on animals and logistics (via WRSA), although he didn’t link back to my article.

Mosby spends some time rehearsing an Army field manual on animals and logistics, with some good suggestions for the proper use of horses.  Then he poses this.

Do you know how to ride a horse? I don’t mean sit on a horse in the lesson arena either. Have you ever ridden a horse across country, through the brush? Across steep terrain. Like I said, I’m not an expert, but I’ve done both of these enough to know…and witness…untrained people fall off horses all the fucking time in rough terrain, seldom with healthy results. Have you ever actually sat on a horse ALL day long? I helped some neighbors pack a camp into the Bob Marshall Wilderness area a couple of years ago. I’d always wanted to get into the backcountry of the “Bob,” and it seemed like a much easier alternative to walking in. What would have been a two-day round trip for them turned into a four-day trip because, after sitting on a horse for 16 hours straight on the ride in? I literally, could not walk the next two days, let alone get back on the horse to ride out. It was not pretty, at all…and I’m in pretty good condition.

Check.  All of the above.  I have fallen off, been thrown off, bitten, run over, kicked, and just about anything that can happen on or around a horse.  I have ridden horses all day long, and I do mean all … day … long, and gotten on to do it again the next day.  And the next day.  And the next day.  I have fed them, herded them, doctored them, and assisted them to mate.  If you’ve never witnessed horses mating first hand (and I’m not talking about watching the Discovery Channel), it can be a violent affair.  I’ve ridden with saddles and then also (in my much younger years) bareback over mountain tops along narrow trails while running the herd).  The hardest ride was bareback and (on a dare) without a bridle, only the halter.

From the age of fourteen and beyond into my early twenties, I worked weekends and summers at a Christian camp above Marietta, South Carolina named Awanita Valley (and Awanita Ranch in Traveler’s Rest).  We trained and trail rode horses, fed them and cared for them, hiked the trails and cleared them of snakes and yellow jacket nests (have you ever been on a horse when it came up on a yellow jacket nest?).

When we weren’t doing that, we were cutting wood, hauling supplies, digging ditches, and baling hay.  My boys did the same thing, and Daniel later (before the Marine Corps) worked for Joey Macrae in Anderson, South Carolina, an extraordinary professional horseman, breaking and training horses.  I have ridden in the rain, blazing sun, and snow.  I have seen my son Joshua and his horse buried up to his thighs in snow, and watched him ride the horse up from sinking in the drift and stay on him while keeping the horse and him safe.

Why is all (or any) of this important?  Because as I tried to convey in my earlier post, it is critical to have an understanding and mastery over animals, especially if what we think will happen in America really happens.  And Mountain Guerrilla is right about logistics too.  But I’m not so sure that the Army was the first to field this idea.  See my article on Marines and Mules.  The Small Wars Journal had discussion on the importance of animals to logistics long ago.

The problem is that the Marine Corps has forgotten the lessons, and I’m afraid that the Army will never really take them to heart.  The modern U.S. military is techno-weighted down, with gadgetry, doohickeys, and reliance on constant logistics.  The so-called big dog is a symptom of this sickness, as is the huge budget for DARPA every year.  Truthfully, I think this is all related to the effete pressure for gender neutrality in the military.

But don’t you forget these lessons.  Plan ahead.  Learn how to make fire, how to purify water, how to fight, how to make your way around terrain, and how to navigate with maps and a compass (rather than using GPS like the liar Marine Corps officer candidates who were found out during officer’s school).

And learn animals.  Your life will be better for it.  This goes for cops too.  Lina Inverse makes an interesting point.

It just occurred to me that this puppycide policy is extremely unwise, because the desensitization works both ways. Every time a thug in uniform needlessly kills a family’s dog, that family in turn is that much more ready to return the favor someday….

It’s what Mike Vanderboegh calls losing the mandate of heaven.  At one time in our history, constables were respected and admired.  Children wanted to talk to them, show them respect, and even be like them.  Nowadays, with enough rifles pointed at women and children while screaming obscenities, with enough dead animals, with enough abuse and danger from cops, it may not be long before the people turn on cops.

If you’re a cop, you don’t want that to happen.  Believe me.  You don’t want that to happen.  You want to maintain the “mandate of heaven.”  If you lose it, you’ve lost everything.

Make sure to drop by Mountain Guerrilla and read his informed article.

There are two recent reports of dog shootings by cops in the news lately, one by the Nampa, Idaho Police Department, and another by the Mobile, Alabama Police Department (via David Codrea).  This behavior of reflexive, frightened shooting of dogs follows a pattern that we have observed before here and here, and just like we have observed elsewhere.

Before my children ever left home, they had been well-trained in at least rudimentary animal science.  They have been around animals of all flavor, knew how to ride, care for, train and (to some extent) doctor horses, knew how to raise dogs, and could handle themselves around most animals.  At least they knew when being around an animal required caution.  They knew how to build fire, rappel, and be at home in woodlands and mountains (although here I am diverging from the main subject).

If you are a law enforcement officer and know nothing about animals, are frightened all of the time around them, and cannot assert yourself at the proper time and in the proper way, there are options for you.  You can volunteer your time at local farms, ranches and dog breeders, and you can purchase and raise your own dogs.  You need to become accustomed to being around cattle, horses, goats, dogs and other such animals.  If you choose to ignore this gap in your training and life experiences, and you choose to run around frightened of everything that moves, but you relinquish your badge and gun, then who am I to infringe on your rights?  Do as you wish, and leave me out of it.

But if you choose to be that kind of person, where you ignore gaps in your knowledge and experience base, but you continue to carry a badge and gun, I think you’re a panty waist.  You are an irresponsible person who should feel bad about themselves, and you’re dangerous to those of us around you, and especially dangerous to animals.  You’re unqualified to have your job, and you are basically a liability to the community.  But I’m saying more than that.  I think you’re a panty waist.

There are only one or two breeds for which I would consider use of something like OC spray, and that would probably only be necessary if they were trained fighting dogs.  In any case, if you place yourself in a position where you are running from an animal while you’re on a call, then in addition to being a panty waist you’re an idiot.  You should knock on the door if you want an owner to secure his animals.  It isn’t any more complicated than that.

Now a note to survivalists.  You might spend time, money and energy on being prepared to survive in the wilderness, or perhaps being tactically competent.  But if your planning, education and preparation doesn’t include a moderate knowledge of and mastery over animals, then your preparations are incomplete and your calculus is faulty.  There are animals out there who truly can harm you, such as (in the West) brown bear, cougar and moose, and (in the East) black bear if they’re badly hungry, or feral hogs.

You need to know when you need dogs with you.  Daniel dispatched this hog with a fixed blade Ka-Bar, but he had pit bulls with him for strike dogs.  I won’t go into the mountains without a dog and gun.  A feral hog with turn on you and cut your femoral artery, and if he doesn’t respect you, a horse can turn on you and kill you.  Horses don’t love you or even like you.  Horses learn to tolerate you in what they consider to be a mutually beneficial relationship.  Know them.  Understand them.

And that’s the key, isn’t it?  An ATV will run out of fuel.  With the exception of certain necessary things such as worming medication, a horse is self feeding, and I would rather have a good Quarter Horse or Appaloosa than an ATV any day in most parts of woodland or mountain America.  You need to understand what animals can do to you, what they can do for you, and how to manage them the proper way rather than reading books or relying on the internet.  Or for LEOs, rather than shooting them because you’re scared like a little girl.