Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Sowing The Seeds of A Crop of Trouble Trees

It's the time of the season for everyone to be cranking out their "best of the old year" and "what's to come in the new year" stories.  I don't want to go full tilt in either direction, but I want to pass on my thoughts about a few things that stand out to me, probably over the next day or so. 

Of course, one of the big stories of 2014 was the sudden war on the police.  Like everyone I regularly read, I'll recognize that there have been too many incidents of what can only be described as police getting away with murder and mayhem that any of the rest of us would be killed for.  There certainly are bad cops.  On balance, though, I come down with the guys who say that most cops are not bad cops and the ones who are doing wrong should be prosecuted like the rest of us would be.

The fact that there are some bad cops is not an excuse to execute random guys.  In my book, there's never an excuse to execute a random person.  If a particular person has violated you, how could executing someone in another city who has never seen you or spoken to you ever be rational?  (Deviant psychology never made sense to me, not that I've wanted to try to wrap my mind around that corkscrew logic.)  Yet we see it happening more often, now, with attacks in North Carolina, El Lay, Tarpon Springs, Florida, and Flagstaff, Arizona.   

We all know the Great Sage Barbie once said, "Math is hard", but the shooters need to know that since the majority of cops are good, the percentages say they're probably shooting good guys and shifting the balance of the forces to bad cops.  They are definitely shifting police to a more offensive standing and being more likely to shoot. 

On the other hand, this to be expected.  For at least one complete generation, if not two, every child who listens to the race hustlers has been taught that the cops are out to destroy them.  Like Comrade de Blasio himself.  Friday, Michael Bane wrote an excellent post "A Harsh Reality", and put it this way:
A couple of days ago before Christmas I wrote a really searing blog post on the complicity of our so-called "leaders" on the LEO assassinations in New York. I decided, upon reflection, not to post it. I thought I needed to make some different points...yes, Barry and Eric and Al and Bill are complicit in the delegitimizing of the police that led directly to the deaths. The concept of delegitimizing the agencies of representative government by the creation of chaos is one of the standard — and most reliable — tools of the leftist/fascist revolutionary.

The idea is to "prove" that the government no longer has control of its own streets or that, in fact, the legitimate authorities are actually agents of oppression (the war on cops); to "prove" that the legal structures of the representative government no longer work (the war on the courts and the grand jury system); to "prove" that the legal protections of the old system are insufficient responses to the "new" social environment (the war on due process waged in many arenas, including on college campuses on the so-called "rape culture"); to "prove" that the leftist/fascist concept of "social justice" cannot be met by the existing representative government and therefore demands a new system.
You should go RTWT - a couple of pages, but good.  Michael, like me and many other gun bloggers, feel that this is going to get worse before it gets better.   As the Investor's Business Daily puts it, the "The Left's War on Cops Has Begun".
There's little doubt where the blame lies: with the race-baiters and communist organizing groups who have taken their cues from the wink-and-nod encouragement from political leaders at the top.

Leaders from President Obama to de Blasio have embraced the radical "narrative" that all police are "Bull Connor"-style predators on black people, along with the de facto message that the police do not have the right to defend themselves in a confrontation.
It doesn't take much reading to find that ANSWER and other communist groups are pushing these demonstrations. 

Step back for a second.  Several observers, like Bayou Renaissance Man for one, have expressed concern about ISIS lately.  For one thing, there are credible reports that ISIS is in the US already, with it being widely reported that the terror organization is/was planning to blow up the Memphis/Arkansas bridge over the Mississippi.  Meanwhile, the US is hampered by a leadership that simply doesn't understand ISIS, according Major General Michael Nagata, special forces commander in the Middle East.  In my mind they don't just "See No Islam" as said in that article, they have no desire to.  They believe that if they just talk with ISIS, the group will abandon their lifelong held views and just love us - possibly the most vain, hubristic thing you'll ever hear.  

ISIS was also called out recently for training small children, 10 and under, including training them to decapitate blond, blue-eyed dolls.  The idea, of course, is to desensitize them to the brutality; to make children think beheading is a Holy thing, and not an act of barbarism.  I'm sure you'll all remember the stories of the Australian jihadi's son holding up a severed had with pride and happiness.  (Pictures here but content warning for the squeamish)

So I ask you: how is this indoctrination of ISIS children different than the indoctrination by Al Sharpton, Saul Alinsky, Frank Marshall Davis, and the others who trained generations of black Americans to believe the police want them dead?   
Michael Ramirez.  It took me a few seconds to realize that was a hand controlling the puppet and not bizarre pants. 


11 comments:

  1. I just have to say something here. I've read/watched the whole thing with Brown, Garner. And despite what Al & Co would like folks to believe, it ain't white/black.
    Its cops.
    Yes, I know there are good cops, one saved my life once. But there are many many bad cops, and their other brother cops cover for them.
    Cops lie. They lie and lie and lie. Judges ALWAYS believe the cop over your word.
    Cops see themselves as the sheepdogs, and at best they are.
    At worst, they are armed bullies with a seriously bad attitude and carte blanche to get away with murder.
    To tell the truth, I'm surprised at all the hue and cry over Eric Garner...this shit happens ALL THE TIME. And the cops get away with it. Only reason they didn't get away with it this time is that somebody had a cell phone and took a video.

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  2. There are NO GOOD COPS. There are bad cops who lie, steal, assault and murder and there are OTHER BAD COPS who turn a blind eye to this criminality and refuse to police their own ranks.
    ANY LEO who makes any effort to hold the others accountable is either harassed and abused till they quit or set up to be killed by not being backed up.

    Thus thereare NO GOOD COPS.

    People are reaching the tipping point. Modern media and the internet allows me everyone to learn of the extent of LEO criminality and abuse and they have HAD ENOUGH.

    Considering the depth and breadth of LEO criminality the real question that should be asked is how come so few cops have been killed in retribution. Frankly I'm amazed at how much abuse society has accepted meekly, our founding fathers would have gone to war against this government long ago. Just shows how far we have fallen in the past two centuries.

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  3. I am a former San Diego police officer who also spent ten+ years working for the California Highway Patrol. When I started, back in 1979, most of us being hired (in San Diego, at least) were still interested in helping people, keeping them safe from the predators in our society (along with the ones coming north across the border).

    We had bad cops back then too, of course. We had one in my academy class who was an actual member of the Aryan Brotherhood. He and I almost went fist-city during classes one day, when he started running his sh*t against a black guy in our class I was friends with. We only stopped because it meant instant expulsion from the academy. He partnered up with another Aryan when he got out on the street (yes, he managed to graduate from the academy).

    When I left law enforcement in 1995, I saw too many cops being hired who were unfit. Guys who shaved their heads, wore opaque sunglasses, fingerless "shooter/sniper" gloves, and loved jacking up citizens. We even had some in the CHP. There was one guy in our station in Northern Division who like to go on about the "mud people", and talked about how great the Germans were, that they got a bad rap in WWII. This guy dearly loved to write tickets to truckers who pulled off the road because they were falling asleep at the wheel and knew they were unsafe. Those of us who rode with him would hit the siren switch or our overheads (light bar) to wake up the truckers present, in hopes a few could pull out before he got to them. NONE of his partners wrote any themselves.

    Yes, there are still some good cops these days, but like our current schools, which are geared toward creating more socialists, today's departments are geared toward creating more _law enforcement_ officers than peace officers. And the few who try to speak out against the bad cops get fired, harassed, beaten, and sometimes are even detained for psych examination, on the orders of their superiors. All because they break "omerta", the silence of not snitching on their fellow LEOs, even when it is the only moral thing to do.

    It's all part of the game: the socialists want to create chaos and anarchy, tear down our country and change its values, to build an insurgency against government, while also creating cops and Feds who will abuse citizens and therefore feed the flames. This turns the cops - already looking at most civilians as the enemy - into counter-insurgents who see _all_ citizens as animals deserving of punishment and/or death. And many of those same cops are cowards who are so fearful of getting hurt doing their jobs that they will shoot at the slightest provocation - even _without_ provocation.

    This will not end well.

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  4. I watched the Eric Garner arrest and it wasn't a choke hold. It was merely a neck takedown used in football, wrestling and kids fighting. What killed Mr Garner was his asthma. If you ever knew anyone with serious asthma you would know that excitement and physical activity will trigger it and without treatment they cannot breathe. One could argue that the cops should have acted quicker to Mr Garner when he told them he couldn't breathe but as one cop on TV said that in their experience the petty bad guys always complain about everything when you take them down. "My arm", "my leg hurts", "I can't breathe" etc. What Mr Garner should have said is my asthma is choking me my inhaler is in my pocket, help me. But all the Monday morning quarterbacking and second guessing won't bring him back. So who was at fault? Should the cops just let ppeople go if they won't submit to arrest? Should they talk for a couple of hours until they convince him? What? The only logical answer you can come up with is when somene won't submit to arrest they must be taken to the ground and forcibly handcuffed. There is no other choice. That is exactly what they will do the nest time someone resists and the next million times. Perhaps every million times it will cause death. I know that for myself when a policeman tells me to put my hands behind my back so he can cuff me I will do it. To not do so is stupid.

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  5. “On balance, though, I come down with the guys who say that most cops are not bad cops...”

    There’s a problem here. You may be right, but you may be wrong – and there are institutional barriers that prevent anyone outside them from knowing which position is more accurate.

    The incentives of power dictate that over time, power-positions will be filled by an increasing percentage of persons who love power more than all other things. The test of power resides in its use; if you’re not using it, you can’t be certain you possess it. That would suggest that, in the two centuries since the formation of municipal police forces, the percentage of persons in police forces who are there because they love power rather than justice or public service has risen steadily.

    But we can’t determine how high that percentage is without the cooperation of governmental sources, including police departments, that have a natural interest in keeping us outside their walls.

    We are told, though not by official sources, that approximately 1089 civilians died at police hands during 2014. Semi-official sources tell us that from 2004 through 2013, an average of 55 policemen were killed each year in the performance of their duties. The ratio might be meaningful, but stripped of context we can’t be sure. Who was doing what to whom (and why) at the time of the death in question? Such details aren’t always available...and when they are, they’re seldom complete or ironclad.

    I’ll be writing more about this later today.

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  6. "Math is hard"

    Also hard is seeing where the "buck stops".

    Mayor DeBlasio accuses NYPD of running amok. DeBlasio is, as Mayor, responsible for operation of the NYPD. He does not seem offer any constructive rehabilitation plan for any problems, real or imagined, only egging on 'protesters'. If the people of NYC see problems with the NYPD they need to hold the Mayor responsible.

    President Obama is personally responsible for all Federal LEO behavior. While there has not been much hating on Federal LEOs, The President has repeatedly injected himself and race into local issues (Gates, Martin, Brown, Garner) 'suggesting' civil rights violations in those cases even after his investigators (FBI) has gathered sufficient evidence to exonerate the accused.

    One could argue that President Obama, with Water Boy Eric Holder, have violated numerous citizens civil rights by using the authority vested in their positions to intimidate those known innocents (witch hunts).

    The Executives are not alone ultimately response for their LEOs conduct - Every law, no matter how petty, may and will ultimately be enforced with lethal force. Is selling a loose cig really, ultimately, worth killing a transgressor over? Well, the lawmakers think so. And who is holding the lawmakers responsible for draconian laws.

    If the people don't want draconian laws they need need change who they vote for.

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  7. In theory holding lawmakers responsible would seem to be the logical necessity for controlling how government works. But as the statement attributed to Mark Twain goes " if voting made a difference it would be illegal". We have seen dramatic changes in the make up of congress in the past and another such change is due in the coming week. Historically such changes in faces have rarely been reflected by changes in the government. With the "stupid" party having just won the senate you might expect to see at least an attempt at changing things. In reality it will with a virtual certainty be more of the same for the next two years as we have had the past two.

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  8. Anonymous @11:28.
    Not only was it indeed a bar (choke) hold, but what a lot of folks without a medical background in addition to LE experience don't know is that it can cause edema (swelling) of other tissues around the trachea, further restricting breathing, even after the hod s released. And I had severe asthma as a child, so that doesn't get a pass, either.

    When they put this obese individual on his chest to cuff him - and then left him there too long, his own body weight contributed to the problem by producing "positional asphyxia" - not being able to inflate his lungs because of his own weight. That was the kiss of death for Garner.

    It wasn't murder, but it _was_ indeed negligent manslaughter.

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  9. Fran,

    Just wanted to comment that, by far, the largest number of LEO deaths are due to vehicular accidents, such as losing control during a high speed pursuit or getting hit by a drunk or sleepy driver while standing outside their vehicle on a traffic stop. So, if that 55 cop average is accurate, you can see how few cops die due to violence from the people they contact in the course of their duty.

    As a rookie, I was often scared at the start of my shift. Not about getting hurt, but about doing the wrong thing. There are cops, however, who are extremely fearful of getting hurt by the people they contact or detain. I feel certain some of them over-react, causing some of the shootings we see of otherwise harmless or innocent people.

    One other group needs to be mentioned, though. Even in my time - late '70s through the mid-'90s - we had what we called "felony cops". Cops who only responded to serious calls where they might get a chance to use their duty weapon on a "bad guy". Cops who looked forward to an excuse to shoot someone. Oh, sure, they justified it by saying they were helping to keep society safe by removing the bad element, but these cops weren't always that choosey about who they drew down on. I think there are far more f those kinds of cops on the street today.

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  10. Reg T. Look again. Elbow in front! The subject can speak! And after the neck hold is released the subject is still speaking. It is NOT a choke hold.

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  11. Anonymous,

    Look yourself, buddy. The arm was across the trachea. I've been trained in the carotid restraint ("sleeper") hold. The trachea/larynx _must_ line up in the crook of the elbow. The photo displayed by the press shows that was _not_ the case. Try again. You might state your experience and training - if any.

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