Tag: Law and Disorder

Selling Stolen Goods

I’ve pointed out the tendency for law enforcers to focus their efforts on pursuing perpetrators of profitable crimes. Law enforcers dump a ton of resources into fighting people who drive faster than the arbitrarily posted speed limit, violate the often ridiculously convoluted parking restrictions, and enjoy consuming verboten chemical substances. However, those same law enforcers will let rape kits stack up in warehouse, barely lift a finger to find a murderer, or respond in any way to a property crime. Fortunately, law enforcers have found a way to make fighting property crime profitable. Unfortunately, it involves them auctioning off the property once it has been recovered instead of returning it to its rightful owner:

A Pueblo couple’s car was stolen in June and later recovered by Colorado Springs police officers.

According to records obtained by the I-TEAM, Mary and Clyde Antrim’s Ford Crown Victoria sat in a police impound lot for more than a month—eventually racking up fees.

The couple says cops never called them to pick up their car. Instead, News 5 Investigates discovered police planned to sell it at an auction.

Colorado Springs police have nothing to say on camera about this case, but Mary Antrim is talking after she says police would not give her car back or answer her phone calls.

When she found out her car was going to be sold at auction, she called News 5 Investigates for help.

The most obvious thing that I feel I need to point out is that the Antrims shouldn’t be required to pay fees to have the law enforcers they are required to pay taxes to fund recover their property. Any costs incurred by the recovery effort should be paid by the thief. But that’s now how justice works in this country. Even though you’re forced to pay taxes to fund law enforcers, you’re also often forced to pay additional fees on top of that. This form of double dipping is fairly profitable for police departments but not as profitable as auctioning off a car, which is why the Colorado Springs Police Department probably “forgot” to inform the Antrims that their car was recovered and currently being held in an impound lot.

This situation isn’t even unique. Law enforcers have profited off of hocking recovered property before and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Colorado Springs Police Department gets away with hocking the Antrim’s car. There is precedence for doing so and the courts are usually pretty good about backing the badge.

Yet Another Isolated Incident

Cop apologists love to refer to bad cops as isolated incidents. But for being isolated there are an awful lot of them:

Maryland prosecutors have tossed 34 criminal cases and are re-examining dozens more in the aftermath of recent revelations that a Baltimore police officer accidentally recorded himself planting drugs in a trash-strewn alley.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said that, in all, 123 cases are under review in the wake of a scandal in which one officer has been suspended and two others put on administrative duty. Body cam footage revealed nearly two weeks ago showed one of the officers planting drugs when he didn’t realize his body cam was recording. The Baltimore Police Department’s body cams, like many across the nation, capture footage 30 seconds before an officer presses the record button. The footage was turned over to defense attorneys as part of a drug prosecution—and that’s when the misdeed was uncovered.

I can see why the two officers involved in the murder of Justine Ruszczyk left their body cameras off. Being absent minded about those devices can lead to a paid vacation and, I’m sure, a stern talking to about camera etiquette (i.e. being smart enough to turn it off if you’re going to do something that makes the department look bad).

While it’s nice that one dirty cop was caught this incident will ensure that the rest of the thin blue line is aware of the fact that their cameras record everything that happened 30 seconds before pressing the record button. Being aware of the feature will ensure that they work around it when breaking the law in the future. Furthermore, even when caught on camera planting evidence the officer is enjoying a paid vacation instead of being in jail like you or I would be. That alone should seriously piss people off but few people seem to care.

Idiots Harassing Idiots

It appears that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has been harassing one of the local militia groups:

To the FBI, they were part of a Minnesota militia group possibly gearing up for a violent showdown with the government.

Members of the group, called United Patriots of Minnesota 3%, say they’re nothing more than patriots defending hard-won liberties secured by a handful of forefathers who stood against tyranny.

No one has been charged in the investigation, which spilled into public view recently when a federal judge unsealed search warrants in the case. But the probe underscores the complexity of balancing protected speech with trying to root out domestic terror.

I wonder how many members of the United Patriots of Minnesota 3% are undercover feds. It seems like most of these groups have at least three or four. Sometimes I wonder if many of these groups are made up entirely of undercover feds. But I digress.

The FBI and the III%er movement are a match made in Heaven. One is a government agency that spends most of its time manufacturing terrorists to “catch” so it can declare itself a hero. The other is a group of individuals who claim that they will rise up if the government takes any of their rights but never does even though the government is constantly taking their rights. Both of these groups could write volumes about doing nothing.

I’m sure this case is going to be a laugh riot. The FBI is harassing the III%er’s for their speech (yet, ironically, they still refuse to rise up even though their First Amendment right is being infringed) so it really doesn’t have a case that anybody should give a damn about. But the case will result in choice statements made by the III%er members being made public. Those statements will show a lot of impotent rage, which is always good for laughs.

Cool Things Like This Never Happens to Me

There is probably some lucky Canadian with a slightly used grenade launcher:

A multi-grenade launcher fell off the back of a truck in British Columbia, Canada. A member of the Integrated Emergency Response Team lost their grenade launcher with ammo. Now the launcher is non-lethal and shoots gas grenades. However it is not something you want to have falling out of your vehicle.

Law enforcers losing weaponry isn’t all that uncommon. It happens here in the United States from time to time. Apparently not having to pay for their weaponry makes law enforcers careless. I do hope that some lucky Canadian came across the launcher and decided to keep it for their personal collection. It would make a neat conversation piece if nothing else.

Another Summary Execution

It’s a day ending in “y” so that must mean that a law enforcer in the United States murdered somebody. Oh, and will you look at that, one did! However, this story has a twist. The officers involved were heading to serve a warrant but ended up at the wrong address and, I guess, decided to eliminate all witnesses to their mistake:

One officer fired shots at the pit bull that hurtled out of the mobile home in Southaven, Miss., police said. The other officer fired at the person pointing a gun from behind the cracked front door.

They had been trying to serve an arrest warrant in an aggravated assault case at a mobile home in the neighborhood before the sudden explosion of gunfire Sunday night. When they surveyed the aftermath, they made a heart-dropping discovery: They were at the wrong home.

Ismael Lopez likely never knew why officers were at his door — or even that they were officers.

I already know that the cop apologists are going to blame the victim for having a gun (it’s funny how so many cop apologists simultaneously claim that gun ownership is a right and that possession of a gun is a valid reason for a cop to execute somebody) but the real takeaway from this story is that a man is dead because some idiot law enforcers couldn’t be bothered to verify an address. And this isn’t anything new. There are numerous documented cases of police officers performing no-knock raids at wrong addresses. As far as I know, none of those cases resulted in any officers receiving any meaningful reprimand and I doubt this case will either. Hell, we already know how the officers actions will be justified in this case, the man had a gun so the officers were well within their rights to murder him. Never mind the fact that that excuse wouldn’t work if your or I decided to barge into an innocent person’s house unannounced.

Retroactive Justice

After Castile was murdered the State went through his and his girlfriend’s social media records with a find toothed comb. Ultimately, as we learned during the Yanez trial, the defense wanted information to use to assassinate the characters of Castile and his girlfriend during the trial. This was a form of retroactive justice. The crime, the shooting of Castile, was justified by going through the victim’s history to find dirt to use against him. Although the murderer had know way of knowing any of the discovered information at the time of the crime it still allowed his defense to poison the well so to speak.

History may not repeat itself but it does rhyme. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was granted permission to search the home of Justine Ruszczyk, the woman murdered by Officer Noor:

Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) investigators were granted permission to search Justine Damond’s home hours after she was shot and killed by a Minneapolis police officer, according to court records.

A criminal law expert can’t understand why.

“I don’t understand why they’re looking for bodily fluids inside her home,” said Joseph Daly, an emeritus professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, referring to one of two recently-released search warrant applications.

[…]

According to court documents, investigators applied for the warrant on the following grounds:

  • The property or things above-described was used as a means of committing a crime
  • The possession of the property or things above-described constitutes a crime.
  • The property or things above-described is in the possession of a person with intent to use such property as a means of committing a crime, or the property or things so intended to be used are in the possession of another to whom they have been delivered for the purpose of concealing them or preventing their being discovered.
  • The property or things above-described constitutes evidence which tends to show a crime has been committed, or tends to show that a particular person has committed a crime.

Professor Mitchell doesn’t understand what the BCA is looking for because he’s look at the warrant through the lens of justice, not he lens of retroactively justifying a murder. The search warrant was issued in the hopes of finding dirt on Justine. With dirt in hand Officer Noor’s actions can either be written off as justified outright or, if the case goes to trial, justified to a jury by assassinating the character of Justine and anybody connected to her.

Actions like this will continue to widen the rift that already exists between the public and law enforcers. Unfortunately, I see no signs that law enforcers or their employers care. If they cared about such things, they would have taken steps to reprimand the bad actors in their departments early on. Instead they’ve either stood aside or directly assisted in shielding those bad actors from consequences. With this being the situation I feel justified in saying that The United States is already beyond the point where law enforcement can be reformed.

I Wish I Had Thought of This

I often find myself two steps behind the real geniuses of this world. For example, I never thought of setting up a fake website for a nonexistent law enforcement department to get the federal government to ship me military weapons:

If you’re not a US military or police buff, you probably have never heard of the 1033 Program. It essentially provides a bureaucratic means to transfer excess military grade weapons to local law enforcement agencies. Sure, you may not like local police departments having all types of military gear, such as grenade launchers, helicopters, boats, M14s, M16s, and so on.

And you probably won’t like how the agency seemingly doles out the weapons to anybody. All you have to do is apply, create a fake website, and the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) will oblige. Law enforcement experience is not required. There doesn’t seem to be a requirement that the requesting agency actually be real, either.

That’s according to a new Government Accountability Office report. The government auditing agency created a fake website of a fake police department and applied for the surplus goods. The fake agency was handed $1.2 million in weapons, including night-vision goggles, simulated rifles, and simulated pipe bombs. The simulated rifles and pipe bombs could have been turned into “potentially lethal items if modified with commercially available items,” according to the report. Simulated weapons are used for training purposes.

And here I thought that the Bureau of Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) was the only agency that doled out military hardware to any criminal gang that asked. Apparently you don’t even need a legitimate criminal gang to get military hardware from the Department of Defense (DoD). Unfortunately, now that the Government Accountability Office (GOA) has made a stink about this the DoD will likely start exercising slightly more diligence in verifying that the organization requesting military hardware is, in fact, a legitimate criminal organization. If only I had thought about this first, I too could be cruising around in a Bearcat like my local police department.

Cops Helping Out the Suicidal

Are you felling suicidal? Call 911 and officers will be dispatched immediately to help you shove off of your mortal coil:

WILLMAR, Minn. (KMSP) – Two police officers are on standard administrative leave after a shooting that injured one man in Willmar, Minnesota Sunday night.

Two Willmar Police officers responded to a 911 call of a suicidal man at a home on the 400 block of 11th Street Northwest around 5:30 p.m. Upon arrival, the officers found the man in the backyard holding a gun.

I’m sure somebody is going to claim that the fact the suicidal man was in possession of a firearm demonstrated that he meant to commit suicide by cop. However, I feel the need to point out the fact that suicide by a cop is a thing. If you stop and think about the phrase “suicide by cop,” you will probably come to the realization that such a mechanism could only be reliable if the police were sufficiently trigger happy. If police officers weren’t sufficiently trigger happy, calling them in the hopes that they will kill you would be unreliable and suicidal individuals would likely opt for another method.

If you are concerned that somebody may be suicidal do not call 911. The operator who picks up will likely send a couple of police officers who will end up trying to kill the suicidal individual. While it’s true that such action technically prevents the suicide it doesn’t solve the actual problem, which is saving the individual’s life.

Another Feeble Excuse by a Cop Who Needlessly Shot Somebody

Officer Noor’s lawyer is apparently running with the defense that Officer Noor was startled and that is why he murdered Justine Ruszczyk. While that is one of the more feeble excuses given by a cop who needlessly shot somebody, it’s only one on a long list of feeble excuses. For example, and Eden Prairie police officer needlessly shot somebody in June. His excuse? Muscle memory:

Matthew Hovland-Knase, 22, of Bloomington, led police on a chase at 3 a.m. on June 20 that reached speeds of almost 100 miles per hour before stopping at Eden Prairie Road near North and South Lund roads. Sgt. Lonnie Soppeland got out of his squad car with his gun drawn — protocol for high-risk stops, he told investigators — but the gun went off, shooting the motorcyclist’s arm.

According to documents released to the Star Tribune on Friday by the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, Soppeland told investigators that firearm training earlier that month contributed to the unintentional discharge due to the muscle memory of squeezing the trigger.

“My plan was to hold the suspect where he was until back up arrived,” he told investigators three days later. “ … It was not my conscious choice to discharge my firearm. This all happened very fast, maybe within a matter of a second. I could feel the effect of the adrenaline.”

Funny, if I shot somebody accidentally all would not be forgiven regardless of the training I had received. But rules are different when you’re wearing a badge. Suddenly a negligent discharge becomes a valid excuse.

It’s true, most police departments offer lackluster firearm training. However, lackluster training is not an acceptable excuse for putting a bullet in somebody. Just as it was my responsibility to obtain adequate training when I acquired my carry permit, it should be an officer’s responsibility to obtain adequate training when carrying a firearm.

Government Kills Again

Earlier this month I wrote a post about the miracle a socialized healthcare. In its infinite wisdom, the United Kingdom (UK) ruled that Charlie Gard, a baby with a rare fatal condition, had to die in spite of the fact that the parents had raise enough money to try an experimental operation that could have saved his life. After almost a month of fighting with the UK government the parents have finally been forced to give up on seeking the experimental treatment. Too much time has passed and the doctor who was planning to perform the procedure said that he can no longer do so:

The parents of terminally ill baby Charlie Gard have ended their legal challenge to take him to the US for experimental treatment.

A lawyer representing Chris Gard and Connie Yates told the High Court “time had run out” for the baby.

[…]

He told judge Mr Justice Francis US neurologist Dr Michio Hirano had said he was no longer willing to offer the baby experimental therapy after he saw the results of a new MRI scan last week.

Had the UK government not ruled that Charlie had to die he could have been flown to the United States and a procedure that might have saved his life could have been performed. At the very least the parents should have had to opportunity to try it. But when the government has an iron grip on the healthcare system is gets to decide who lives and who dies and it doesn’t matter what anybody else says.