April 2015 – Page 3 – A Geek With Guns

Thousands Stopped By Minneapolis Police Department with No Cause

The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) has quite a reputation. From its program of picking up people on the street and getting them high on illegal drugs to the corrupt Gang Strike Force there has been little good to say about the integrity of the agency. Now it appears that there is yet another scandal to add to the department’s pile. Thousands of people have been stopped by MPD officers for no reason whatsoever:

Minneapolis police officers rarely record details of their encounters with people they detain but ultimately don’t arrest.

That’s the key finding of a civilian review board draft report that examined 385 “suspicious person” stops conducted by officers in 2014. In nearly 70 percent of those stops, officers provided no documentation of the interaction, other than noting how the call was resolved.

The draft (.pdf) released this week by the Police Conduct Oversight Commission, a unit of the Minneapolis civil rights department, could lead to changes in how police document stops of suspicious people.

I say they were stopped for no reason whatsoever because if there was a reason you can rest assured the officer would have recorded it. Unfortunately this is looking like yet another case where the officers involved will go unpunished. The Police Conduct Oversight Commission is merely looking for changes to how police document stops, it’s not attempting to have the officers charged or even fired.

Since no documentation regarding most of these stops exists it’s hard to tell if MPD was targeting people of certain races. Perhaps MPD is learning form the mistakes of other agencies and simply not keeping detailed records that could be used to make a case of discrimination against the department.

Parking Illegally isn’t Illegal When You’re a Cop

If you park somewhere illegally you can get booted or towed. It sucks when it happens because you end up paying out a sizable chunk of change most of the time. Unless you’re a cop. When you have a shiny liability badge and you park illegal you can arrest the person who booted your undercover car:

The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, stems from a run-in that happened after the troopers, Sgt. Joseph Patout and Master Trooper Christopher Treadaway, parked a pickup with a Mississippi license plate in a lot across the street from Kyoto, a sushi bar on Prytania Street, and left it unattended for about 30 minutes.

The attendant, Brandon Hardeway, watched the troopers go into the Japanese restaurant, whose customers weren’t allowed to use the parking lot, and booted the pickup after allowing a grace period of several minutes, said Hardeway’s attorney, Isaac Soileau Jr.

“He felt pretty confident that he was doing the right thing when he booted it,” Soileau said of his client.

After leaving the restaurant, the troopers demanded that Hardeway remove the boot from their Dodge Ram pickup, saying they were undercover law enforcement officers, according to the lawsuit.

After checking with his employer, Premier Parking Enforcement, Hardeway told the troopers that the company “extended courtesy” to official vehicles used by New Orleans police as well as “other plainly marked emergency vehicles,” the lawsuit says. The company, also known as Boot Man Inc., did not make the same accommodation for unmarked State Police vehicles, “nor was it required to,” the lawsuit says.

After Hardeway told the troopers he wouldn’t remove the boot until they paid a $90 fee, the troopers told him he was “interfering with their official duties” and arrested him, the lawsuit says, handcuffing him and “forcing him into the back seat of a police vehicle.”

As they say, you can beat the charge but you can’t beat the ride. Even though state law doesn’t exempt undercover police cars from parking regulations the cops were able to kidnap the parking attendant, who was just doing his job I might add ironically, and are requiring him to suffer through the court system in order to get compensation.

Those shiny liability badges also ensure that the officers responsible for this mess will go unpunished. The lawsuit is against the Louisiana State Police, the two officers’ employer. Since the Louisiana State Patrol is tax payer funded the lawsuit, if successful, will do little more than return some of Premier Parking Enforcement’s stolen tax money. In all likelihood the two officers will go entirely unpunished. At most they may lose their jobs. But they certainly won’t be charged for unlawful kidnapping as they should be. Ignorance of the law isn’t an excuse — unless you have a badge.

Touching Your Junk for Freedom

What’s to prevent sexual predators from getting a job with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) so they can feel up people? Not a damn thing as people flying through the Denver International Airport found out firsthand:

DENVER (CBS4) – A CBS4 investigation has learned that two Transportation Security Administration screeners at Denver International Airport have been fired after they were discovered manipulating passenger screening systems to allow a male TSA employee to fondle the genital areas of attractive male passengers.

It happened roughly a dozen times, according to information gathered by CBS4.

According to law enforcement reports obtained during the CBS4 investigation, a male TSA screener told a female colleague in 2014 that he “gropes” male passengers who come through the screening area at DIA.

“He related that when a male he finds attractive comes to be screened by the scanning machine he will alert another TSA screener to indicate to the scanning computer that the party being screened is a female. When the screener does this, the scanning machine will indicate an anomaly in the genital area and this allows (the male TSA screener) to conduct a pat-down search of that area.”

A major problem with a state is that it reserves for itself the right to violate anybody at any time. This is the nasty habit of attracting people who want to violate other human beings. Because of this you get enforcement agencies packed with people most would consider undesirable.

Compounding that problem is the problem of monopoly. When the state declares a monopoly on something and its power is used to violate people there are no alternatives. In the case of the TSA the only alternative to getting sexually assaulted by a TSA agent is not to fly since the state has granted itself a monopoly on airplane security.

Making matters even worse is that the state usually shields its agents from liability (which it can do because it has granted itself a monopoly on legal matters). Nobody was arrested or charged over this incident. Two TSA agents were fired and the Denver District Attorney’s Office decided not to file charges:

Earlier this month a prosecutor from the Denver District Attorney’s Office was asked to review the case but she declined to press charges because there was no reasonable likelihood of conviction and no victim had been identified.

I hope you continue to enjoy living in the freest goddamn country on Earth!

The Eschaton Has Been Immanentized

Michelle Bachmann has good news for us all. The Eschaton has been immanentized! That’s right, Jesus is coming back:

Former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) predicted in a recent interview that President Barack Obama’s handling of the Middle East was a sign of the End Times and that Jesus Christ would soon return to Earth.

[…]

But even though Bachmann lamented that Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran was “pro the goals of Islamic jihad,” she said that the coming End Times were a reason to celebrate.

“These are not fearful times, these are the most exciting days in history,” she insisted. “Talk about what you see in the newspaper. We can talk about God’s time clock and the fact that Jesus Christ’s return is imminent. Is there anything more important to talk about?”

Jesus is coming back and Obama is responsible. Thanks, Obama! As A Geek With Guns exclusive I’ve also obtained a photograph of behind the scenes of the Iranian nuclear negotiations:

Crossing the Thin Blue Line

One of the difficulties in holding police accountable in this country is that when an officer is accused of doing something wrong he is investigated by his fellows and usually found innocent of any wrongdoing. This thin blue line of cops protecting other cops is a breeding ground for corruption. When an officer does cross the thin blue line the vengeance dished out by their fellow officers can be terrible. Just ask Frank Serpico. His fellow officers attempted to get him killed on a drug raid because he spoke out against corrupt officers.

Smart officers who want to blow the whistle on their corrupt fellows lawyer up first. Even then the level police officers will sink to in order to exact revenge is frightening. A Arkansas lawyer who is representing some good officers that came forth against corruption found out first hand how low departments still stoop:

An Arkansas lawyer representing current and former police officers in a contentious whistle-blower lawsuit is crying foul after finding three distinct pieces of malware on an external hard drive supplied by police department officials.

The hard drive was provided last year by the Fort Smith Police Department to North Little Rock attorney Matt Campbell in response to a discovery demand filed in the case. Campbell is representing three current or former police officers in a court action, which was filed under Arkansas’ Whistle-Blower Act. The lawsuit alleges former Fort Smith police officer Don Paul Bales and two other plaintiffs were illegally investigated after reporting wrongful termination and overtime pay practices in the department.

According to court documents filed last week in the case, Campbell provided police officials with an external hard drive for them to load with e-mail and other data responding to his discovery request. When he got it back, he found something he didn’t request. In a subfolder titled D:\Bales Court Order, a computer security consultant for Campbell allegedly found three well-known trojans, including:

Win32:Zbot-AVH[Trj], a password logger and backdoor

NSIS:Downloader-CC[Trj], a program that connects to attacker-controlled servers and downloads and installs additional programs, and

Two instances of Win32Cycbot-NF[Trj], a backdoor

All three trojans are usually easily detected by antivirus software. In an affidavit filed in the whistle-blower case, Campbell’s security consultant said it’s unlikely the files were copied to the hard drive by accident, given claims by Fort Smith police that department systems ran real-time AV protection.

It makes you wonder what the officers who installed the malware on the hard drives were thinking. Did they believe their programs would bypass the lawyer’s anti-malware? Were they hoping he didn’t keep backups of the information he had related to the case and that erasing them on the laptop would ensure they were gone forever? Or were they hoping to install illegal material, such as child pornography, on his laptop in order to frame him? Who know. But this shows just how far officers will go to lash out against those who cross the thin blue line. Going after whistle blower’s lawyers is probably seen as nothing more than collateral damage to them.

Central Banks aren’t Radical or Revolutionary

Radical, according to Google, means “advocating or based on thorough or complete political or social reform; representing or supporting an extreme section of a political party.” Revolutionary, according to Google again, means “involving or causing a complete or dramatic change.” I theorize that a majority of people who use these words haven’t looked up either in a dictionary.

Iceland made headlines recently by entertaining the idea of a, according to many, radical policy of giving a central bank the authority to print money. Many have even declared the proposal revolutionary:

Who knew that the revolution would start with those radical Icelanders? It does, though. One Frosti Sigurjonsson, a lawmaker from the ruling Progress Party, issued a report today that suggests taking the power to create money away from commercial banks, and hand it to the central bank and, ultimately, Parliament.

What in the gods’ names is revolutionary about giving the power to print money to a government controlled central bank? That’s a page out of the playbook of basically every other major nation on Earth. This is why I’m left to believe people who use the terms radical and revolutionary are entirely ignorant of their meanings.

A radical or revolutionary move would be to take the power of making money away from any central authority and allow markets to handle it. Markets are another concept that people are almost entirely ignorant of today. People often mistakenly believe that granting power to commercial banks to print money is a market solution. But markets are what happens in the absence of any coercive authority. In other words markets are the result of individuals making choices themselves.

If you want an example of a market solution to money you need only look to Emperor Norton:

Norton also issued his own money to pay for his debts, and it became an accepted local currency in San Francisco. These notes came in denominations between fifty cents and ten dollars; the few surviving notes are collector’s items.

Norton didn’t coerce anybody into accepting his currency. He merely created it and offered it in payment of his debts. His creditors accepted it of their own volition. A market solution to money is simple. Each individual is free to propose their own currency. Success is determined by whether or not people are willing to accept a currency in exchange for goods and services. No coercion is necessary.

Statists will come up with any number of excuses as to why money creation must be monopolized by the state. Most of them will then turn around and bitch that the state doesn’t print enough or prints too much. They demand control and they get pissed when that control isn’t used in the manner they prefer.

There are only two real options when it comes to choices. You can either give power to somebody else to make choices for you or you can make them yourself. In this era of statism the radical or revolutionary option is to make choices for yourself.

The Democratic Party Better Hope Elizabeth Warren Enters the Presidential Race

Hillary Clinton, a person so callous that she literally laughs about murdering people, has thrown her hat into the presidential ring. Her announcement obviously fired up the Democratic base, right? Wrong. As it turns out even the most pious Democratic supporters are having a difficult time justifying their support for a Republican. One of my friends, who is as pious of a Democrat as they come, posted the following meme on Facebook:

For as long as I’ve known him my friend has been a true believer in the Democratic Party. Anything the party said became gospel; facts to the contrary were always ignored or spun as Republican propaganda. When Barack Obama ran the first time my friend was one of the biggest anti-war activist I knew. During Obama’s second presidential campaign, after he spent four years proving he was as much of a war hawk as his predecessor, my friend dropped the issue of war entirely. Even he cannot come up with a better reason to support Hillary other than she’s not a Republican.

The Democratic Party better start praying that Elizabeth Warren throws her hat into the presidential race. If Hillary can’t even get the true believers of her party enthusiastically supporting her then it’s going to be hard to sell the majority of people in this country gullible enough to vote.

Government So Small It Fits In Your Bathroom

This weekend the Minnesota Republican Party had its State Central Committee Meeting. I’ve never attended one of those nor will I ever but I have friends who were there so I got to see some of the shenanigans that went on during the event. At first I didn’t think there was going to be much to write about. The meeting just sounded like another political party circlejerk where elected party politician ‘A’ says some nice things about elected party politician ‘B’ and is reciprocated.

But you can always count on somebody showing up to a political event and ruining it for everybody. In the case of this meeting, being a Republican Party function, that prize went to the Child Protection League (CPL). After looking them up I discovered that the CPL seems to be primarily focused on shaming members of the kink community and getting transgender individuals to commit suicide.

Via Rob Doar’s Twitter feed I was able to see the fly handed out at the meeting by the CPL:

There’s nothing like take a male model; dressing him in a wig, mascara, and unbutton pants; and using him to scare ignorant people into associating him with transgender individuals to get the old bigotry juices flowing. The CPL is trying to confuse people into thinking that transgender individuals are crossdressers and exploiting that confusion to insinuate that transgender individuals, specifically male to female individuals, are trying to gain access to the women’s bathroom for sexual gratification.

Under the guise of protecting the children, a guise favored by every politician, the CPL is showing it has no interest in protecting transgender children. If it did it wouldn’t be pushing state legislation that would further oppress transgender individuals because that oppression comes with an extremely high suicide rate.

In addition to showing the complete ignorance of transgender individuals the CPL holds this flyer also demonstrates the problem with political solutions. What the CPL is advocating is a state law. The estimated population of Minnesota is 5,457,173. That means the CPL wants a law passed that would mandate over 5 million people behave in a certain way. Specifically it would mandate that every public school in the state force transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender they don’t identify as. This would undo local decisions such as the policy enacted in Minneapolis.

Although I was raised Catholic nobody would accuse me of being a good Catholic. But there is one Catholic teaching I do greatly cherish and that is subsidiarity. Subsidiarity teaches that decisions should be handled at the most local level possible. Issues facing individuals should be decided by the individuals, issues facing families should be decided by the families, and so on. As much as I would prefer each school to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify as I would far prefer a piecemeal system where each school can decide its own policy than a blanket statewide mandate. Why? Because that would at least give transgender students an option to change schools instead of having to suffer the same persecution wherever they went. One may then ask why I wouldn’t prefer a state law mandating schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify as. My reason for not advocating such a law is because once the power to make such a decision rests at the state level it rest there forever. Since laws are arbitrary a good statewide policy could be replaced by a bad statewide policy after a single election. The more local a decision is the less people it impacts.

Ironically what I’ve just described is what small government advocates always pretend to want. Republicans usually claim to be small government advocates but many of them get excited every time somebody presents them with a state or federal law that would mandate discrimination against a group they dislike. Fortunately my friends at the meeting scoffed at this flyer but I know there are a lot of Republicans that agree with what it says. Widespread support within the party is the reason the CPL came to the meeting to hand out flyers. Until the vast majority of the Republican Party speak out against laws such as HF 1546 nobody is going to take it seriously when its members call themselves the party of small government.

Supposed Study on Violence Omits Violent People

Gun control advocates have spent a great deal of time and money trying to prove that their religious crusade is scientific. The result of this has been a seemingly endless stream of shoddy research. Their latest study tried to argue that nine percent of Americans have anger issues and easy access to firearms:

Almost 9 percent of American adults — or about 22 million people — have a history of impulsive angry behavior and have easy access to at least one gun, according to a study published last week in the journal Behavioral Sciences & the Law.

Furthermore, about 1.5 percent of people — about 3.7 million people — have impulsive anger issues and carry guns around with them when they are outside their homes.

What does the study mean by impulsive angry behavior? The paper is locked firmly behind a pay wall, like most of these studies, so it’s anybody guess unless they pony up. None of the articles discussing this research firmly define what impulsive angry behavior is and therefore the term is useless as it could mean anything from yelling at a misbehaving child to punching an unruly drunkard.

But this study has a major flaw:

(People whose job required them to carry a firearm, such as police officers, were excluded from the study.)

Why would a study about anger management issues and access to firearms leave out a portion of the population known for having anger management issues and access to firearms? The only reason I can come up with is that gun control advocates don’t want to ruffle the feathers of police officers because they know police officers are necessary to enforce any form of gun control. Therein lies the fallacy of gun control. Gun control requires guns to enforce and it is therefore not about controlling access to firearms but monopolizing it.

If you want to study the affects of anger and firearm access you can’t omit police officers. They are the perfect demographic for such a study because they also suffer almost no consequences when they act on their anger, which means you get a glimpse at what people with anger management issues really want to do with firearms. Without including them you can’t begin to estimate the impact consequences have. Somebody who suffers from impulsive angry behavior, whatever that is, and has access to firearms may pose no risk whatsoever because they still realize that there are consequences to using a firearm to act on their anger. Had the study included police officers one could estimate the value consequences have at preventing people who suffer from impulsive angry behavior from acting on their anger.

Leaving out the affect consequences have on behavior renders the study irrelevant. The researches could’ve asked people with impulsive angry behavior if they have access to an automobile and still learn nothing because asking that question doesn’t establish the affect consequences have at preventing them from ramming their vehicle into another vehicle that just cut them off.

Monday Metal: Meaning of Life by Disturbed

This week I’m going to go with something that tends to stir the pot. I consider Disturbed to be metal, which pisses a lot of metalheads off as they don’t believe Disturbed is true metal. Whatever. This is my blog and I get to make the rules. We’re listening to my favorite song by Disturbed, Meaning of Life: