Archive for the 'Police' Category

WTVR.com:

HENRICO, Va. (WTVR) –Ruth Hunter, a 75-year-old woman, said she was tied up while State Police invaded her Henrico apartment.

She said officers told her during the raid what they were looking for, and court documents also show the information. She said she had nothing to do with the investigation.

Virginia State Police said a drug investigation is what prompted a Henrico County magistrate to issue a warrant for an apartment in the 5600 block of Crenshaw road.

The woman claims that officers ultimately arrested a man who lives two doors down from her.

“I thought someone was breaking in to rob or kill me,” Hunter said.

Seconds after her front door flies open Hunter said she heard a voice yell “Police!”

“…Took my hands with a tie-thing and said ‘You’re under arrest’ and started asking questions,” she recalled. “The more I told them I didn’t know these people, the more he continued.”

Hunter said that police left her apartment and went two doors down, while she was left handcuffed with a zip tie.

The fiancé of the man arrested says she was there at the time, and asked CBS 6 to hide her identity

“Just so happened they came to the apartment and they got it mixed up,’ she said.

State Police cite an ongoing drug investigation as why they can’t comment any further.

Ms. Hunter doesn’t say, but I suspect the LEOs pointed rifles at her head.  They can’t comment any further because they screwed up, and we wouldn’t want the public to get wind of things like this, would we now?  They may start to question why we have to do raids like this in the first place.

At 75 years old, it’s seriously in doubt that she posed any threat to anyone, much less the police, and the fact that she was zip tied is obscene.  Hey, but at least the LEOs got to go home safely at the end of their shift, and that’s what’s really important, right?

TechDirt:

This insight into how police think the public should interact with them is certainly enlightening. (via this tweet and Amy Alkon’s Advice Goddess blog)

The backstory is this: a woman was walking down the street when a motorcycle cop approached her, asked her if she lived in the area and if she would talk to him. She says his approach made her feel uncomfortable, so she refused and continued on her way.

“I thought that maybe he was flirting,” she said. “I just thought it was odd, I thought it was odd. I wasn’t really sure but I felt uncomfortable because there wasn’t anyone around.”

She says she was worried he might not even a real cop, so she refused to stop and began jogging away from him.

“He just crept along beside me on his motorcycle and he started saying, ‘Hey ma’am! I want to talk to you. Hey stop, ma’am! I want to talk to you.’ Then my anxiety rose even higher,” she said.

This was followed shortly thereafter by the cop dismounting, chasing her down, tackling her and placing her under arrest. The police chief claims this arrest was for “walking on the wrong side of the road,” (as well as “evading arrest” and “resisting arrest”) despite the fact that the woman wasn’t ultimately charged with anything.

Even if the preceding events could possibly be dismissed as hearsay, or something tainted by false impressions and emotions, there’s the police chief’s responses to questions about this interaction.

Whitehouse Police Chief Craig Shelton says this:

Shelton says by law you’re not required to stop and talk to an officer if there’s not a lawful reason for them to be stopping you.

But then he says this:

“Normally if a police officer pulls up, in my opinion, it’s awful odd for somebody just to take off and not want to speak to the police officer,” Shelton said.

Let’s rehearse this one more time for the uninitiated among us, even if the police chief is lying and knows it.

Do … not … ever … talk … to … the … police.  Ever.  Got it?  Good.

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.