End of watch.

In a medium-sized county, you don't know every cop, but you eventually hear about the recipients of the clown awards. We had a local guy pass, and I didn't know anything about him. Ergo, he wasn't a bad egg.

It was time to go pay my respects.

I took my wife, at least partly because she had never been to a cop's funeral, and might need to know what to expect. And for the company, because I'm selfish.

The place was packed with family and friends, and with police and fire personnel, along with dispatchers and EMTs and paramedics. A lot of us parked on the grass.

The ceremony went as they go. There were prayers and testimonials and a few funny stories. Having not known the man, I tried to pay attention. Finally, the deceased officer's chief directed those of us with radios (I was in uniform and thus was one of them.) to turn on our radios and monitor the officer's agency's dispatch frequency. As I did so, I realized what was coming, but my wife did not.

The chief called dispatch under his call number, and we waited. County dispatch beeped an alert tone, and called out the deceased officer's radio call number. No answer. Dispatch called it out again. No answer. Dispatch called it a third time.  Dispatch then announced the officer's end of watch date, and thanked him for his service.

The room, filled with a disproportionately high number of young-to-middle-aged men, pretty much as one ducked our heads into our hands to wipe our eyes.

That end of watch call* always gets me.

__________________________________

*Here's a version that I found on YouTube, which was vaguely like what I heard today.

September, this and that. Curmudgeon.

--I'm training a rookie. He's a nice guy, but I'm not used to having another guy in my patrol car. We're joined at the hip all shift.

--My daughter just turned 16, and I won't let her take her driving test until I'm completely satisfied with her ability with the manual transmission Honda that I'm giving her. She's really coming along, though. Something finally just clicked with regard to her feathering the clutch while revving an underpowered engine (there's just not that much compression left after all these years). I want her to really GET the joy of using your gears to maintain a perfect speed and keep you at the top of your power curve while downshifting through a downhill double-S curve, and then accelerating out of it, never touching the brake. I also love that she will know how to drive whatever she chooses to drive.

--I'm getting old or something. I've been really noticing lately how people let their kids interrupt adult conversations to have their say. I'm talking about 4 and 5 year-olds, lately. I'll be dealing with the parent in an important issue, and the parent will stop down to hear what the kid has to add. Which, of  course, means that I have to stop down to hear it, too. There is this egalitarian philosophy that seems to have pervaded the world, about how Everyone Has A Right To Give Their Opinion. Except that: that 4 year-old's opinion was not sought. It did not add to our understanding of the situation. Grownups were talking, and you have now rewarded undesired behavior.
I weep for our future.

--I get some evil looks when I casually mention that someone's kid is "kinda high maintenance, isn't he?" Oops.

--I bought some stuff from an older gent that my mother knows. He has Parkinson's and was clearing out some of his gun stuff. I got some dies and a bunch of bullets and a whole bunch of fired cases, along with some .44 Mag ammo  and some other reloading tools, for $100. I expressed interest in the old reloading manuals that he had, and he asked for $15 more. I only had a $20, and he didn't make change. Ah, well, I came away with a pretty good haul. That said, I don't have a 7mm magnum, for which a lot of the cases, bullets, and some dies were for. Also I got a bunch of cases and bullets for .22-250, which I don't have. (I would LOVE to have a Savage 99, but I'd rather it be .250-3000 or .300 Savage.)  There was a case of 12 gauge shotgun shells which touted the "New Plastic Hulls." There were 20 round boxes of .44 Magnum for under $5.00. I bought a couple of large shallow TupperTote boxes to put it all in, and put the lids on them, to keep the dust out.

--It never occurred to me to go visit the guy without taking my dad along. Those kind of treasure hunts are right up his alley.

--Now I'm the parent haranguing his 7th grade daughter into using her agenda planner every day to be organized about studying for tests and getting assignments in on time. I have to stay on her, or she won't use it. She protests that she's not organized. I answer that that is EXACTLY why she needs to use it. All the time.

--I'm wanting a new car for me. I'm thinking about a nice reliable used Tacoma 4dr pickup.

--This crappy low/no-carb diet of mine has caused me to lose a belt notch or two this past summer, and about 20 something pounds. I will grudgingly admit that the diet works. Eh.

--Some dudes are up on my house right now to put on a new roof. We're negotiating it into gutters as well. Getting excited about putting gutters on your house pretty much makes you an Old Man.

--Get your prostate checked. And donate to Kilted To Kick Cancer, which my buddy Ambulance Driver and others are raising money for.

Controlling one's own destiny.

Well-known and well-thought-of firearms trainer Louis Awerbuck passed away this week.


I never met the man, but I’ve friends who knew him (like Tam and Rich). I have of course read his stuff for years.


There is something to be said for placing no dependence upon others, if that is your greatest fear (it is not mine). There is yet more to be said for going out on your own terms.


The freedom to decide how we meet our fate is ultimately what most of us who meet here and at my other haunts are talking about. No sane person wants to get into a gunfight. But nobody wants to have all of their options taken from them, either. Louis Awerbuck, it seems to me, made his career out of helping others to maintain their options. 

On Police Shooting Dogs.

Caleb posted about police shooting dogs. I responded there, but decided to bring it here as a post, as well.


This is an emotional topic.
I'm going to speak here as a cop, but also as an academic who has put 20 years into Criminal Justice studies. I ask that people not take this personally, and please don't take my words as those of all police.
_____________


1. Animals are property.
This one statement is going to get a lot of people riled up that I say it, but it's a fact. They are owned.  If someone takes your dog without your permission, and that person is caught, then they are charged with Theft, not Kidnapping.  Animals including dogs are bought and sold at a brisk rate.  
People know this to be a fact, but they cannot embrace it, when their dog is a family member to them. This is about emotion. Emotion, we know, is neither right nor wrong-- it simply is. But it can play merry hell with an equation built only on facts.


2. Emotions seem to trump logic.
If a cop serves a felony warrant, and uses a sledge hammer to break open a beautiful oaken door, people say, "Well, that's a shame about the door, but if the warrant was in order and the homeowner wasn't opening up, then it was time to open it however." If that same cop is met by a scared and aggressive dog that is doing what arguably is its job (protecting the household), but which is also endangering the cop with bloodshed, and the officer uses his weapon to stop what is the threat of what is, after all, property, from hurting him, the same logic often isn't used. It is short circuited by emotion.


3. Officers should not have to be bitten first.
I have been bitten on the job. I've gone to the ER and been treated and then bought new $70 uniform pants out of my own pocket, and never gotten recompensed for it. I've had dogs nip at me, and come charging into my taser and baton. I will die with clear scars left on my body that I have obtained from dogs attacking me while on the job. On a couple of occasions, I'll be honest with you: I should have shot the dog.

I have heard it said by people upset about a shooting that the dog hadn't bitten the officer yet. Given a large enough dog, a grown man can be permanently injured by a dog attack. Often it is shocking how small a dog can render lifelong injuries to a man. Without getting into breeds, we all know the breeds of dogs that are used the most for dog fighting, which are nowhere near the largest breeds. Sometimes a 40 lb dog is enough to permanently harm a man. Consider also the biological weapons in the dog's bite. Dogs left to roam and attack are often the same kind of dogs not getting their shots.


4. Officers should be trained better about dogs.
Jeff Cooper once said that a properly-trained police officer ought to be able to deal with a single dog attacking him. For the most part, I don't disagree, and that's frankly the main reason that I've never shot a dog that was attacking me while on the job. I have tazed them, and I have used my expandable baton, and I have used my steel-toed boots on them. A lot of the reason that I have not shot dogs when I would have been approved to do so by policy is because of #2, above: Emotions Trump Logic. I had a lieutenant get on to me about tazing my second dog attacking me in 2 months (both were pit bulls, and I promise you, both were in the immediate act of trying to get a mouthful of me. This wasn't a dog trotting up to check me out. One was airborne at me when the barbs hit.), because Taser cartridges are more expensive than pistol cartridges. He may have been speaking tongue in cheek, but I pointed out that I was able to resolve the problem without having our department featured in the news for "Another Cop Shoots Another Dog," and that's a win.  (Also, I was in a vey residential area, and I don't like skipping pistol bullets around if I can help it.)


I will say, though, that modern expandable batons were mostly built more as pain compliance devices than as bone-breaking weapons, and they are surprisingly ineffective at rendering incapacitating injuries. To this end, the old second-growth hickory batons were FAR superior. The main feature of an expandable baton is that it is always on the belt of an officer. Strangely, most cops seem to forget about it. That's a two-pound chunk that they carry on their belt every workday for years, but they literally forget to use it. This is frankly a training issue.


5. There are times to shoot the dog.
When there is more than one dog coming after the officer, all bets are off. It is my professional opinion that packed-up dogs attacking a person need to be met with deadly force, unless we're talking about Chihuahuas or Pekinese or teacup varieties of canines. (In which case, proper footwork is key.) 
During documented high-risk incidents, when the dog comes after an officer engaging in something that needs his undivided attention, shooting a dog may be the best option, keeping in mind #1. If the officer is swinging away with his baton to defend himself against a dog, he is not focusing on the other threats around him, be they a felon to arrest, or traffic. This last paragraph is not going to make me popular, because of #2.


6. We could bear rethinking the dog issue.
Because the dogs are such a hot topic, and so ubiquitous, we might re-think ways of dealing with them? How? I don't really know. Shin and forearm guards for warrant service where dogs are known to be come to mind, but I really question how effective they would be. I will tell you that tasers are of questionable use if you don't have a means of securing the animal while it's down. Catch poles might be a good piece of kit to bring. Dart guns are basically non-starters, because the amount of sedative that will put a dog down immediately is generally the amount of sedative that will kill the dog. Also, these things are time and resource-consuming. When you are going in to extract a felon, things need to move along rickety-tick.


For officers making a routine call upon a house for an administrative or non-emergency purpose, teaching them to survey the area before walking into the yard is worth doing. If a dog moves up aggressively, back off an call animal control.
We need to keep in mind Robert Peel's 2nd, 3rd, and 4th principles.


7. A lot of this problem could be fixed by talking to the dog owners.
I've already said that we need to do away with no-knock warrants except in hostage situations.
Knock on the door. Call them.  Tell them that you need them to put their dog up. Sometimes that's what it takes. It kills the element of surprise, but not the dog. This isn't always possible, but it's possible sometimes:
"Hello?"
"Hey, Mr. Smith? Bob Smith of 123 Any Street?"
"Yeah? Who's this?"
"This is the police. We're out front. And out back. We have a warrant for your arrest/ to search the house. We are in uniform, and in marked patrol units. We need you to put the dog away and come on out. If we have to come in, and the dog attacks us, we'll be forced to shoot the dog, and none of us ever wants that. Please comply immediately."
"Okay, I'll put the dog in the kennel/bathroom/closet. Don't shoot. I'm coming out."
This happens. Not all the time. Sometimes it's not feasible. But it does happen. Maybe it could happen a little more.


I know of one incident in which someone whom I know personally was actually held hostage by a family member of hers, who had put their pit bulls in different bedrooms around the house to prevent SWAT from entering. He was drunk, and actually fired random shots during the stand-off. He finally permitted his hostage to leave. After the hostage-taker finally gave himself up, the former hostage convinced the officers --who were going in to clear the house-- to permit her to secure the dogs. The dogs were upset and would have attacked the strangers when they entered the bedrooms unaccompanied by her. My congratulations to the flexibility and professionalism of the North Richland Hills Police Department for handling that situation the way that they did.


8. Finally, I will say that Generalizations Fail.
When we say "There is NEVER a reason to" do thus and so, we are almost always stating an error of fact.  When we say, "An officer should ALWAYS respond to X with Y" we will pretty much always be forgetting about an exception. But guidelines would be a good thing.


It would be really nice if people-- thoughtful people-- didn't have a basis to state that it looks like some cops basically just look like they wanted an excuse to fire their firearm. On the vast, vast majority of the time, it's not true. Let's be sure and make that point by finding ways to limit when we have to do so.

Getting all parental and stuff.

My 14 year old's friend dropped by the house at 7:45 this evening, asking my daughter to come play some tennis with her. I offered to drive them, because the farm-to-market road at that time is no good for walking on.

While en route, my daughter's friend mentioned enthusiastically that she's losing weight for summer. She said that she had just had a granola bar to eat for the whole day, and that she had gone swimming for five hours, and had hoped to play tennis now for another 3 hours. I had earlier explained that my daughter would be coming back home at 9:30 tonight.

The friend mentioned that she was going to be taking some diet pills to help her lose weight.

I signaled, pulled over onto the shoulder rapidly, and parked. I put on the hazard lights for traffic to pass me. I adjusted the rearview mirror so that my daughter's friend could see my eyes while I spoke to her:

"You will NOT be taking diet pills. If I find out that you are taking that shit, then you will not be permitted any access to my daughter. Do you understand me? Yes? Furthermore, you need to eat a little more often than once a day. You will lose plenty of weight being active and consuming 1200 calories a day, assuming you nibble all day long. If I must call your mother, I will."

My daughter was stunned in embarrassment. I merged into traffic, and dropped them off.

I went back home, and called her mother. I would want her to call me, if the tables were turned.
She said EXACTLY the right thing: "Oh, hell, no.  Her cousin has diet pills and is under a doctor's supervision. She's not going to touch those things. Thank you so much for calling."

I felt better.

That kid best not make a single false move, or she is cut off.  I had my eye on her, anyway. Fortunately, every single one of my daughter's other friends are sterling.

Handshakes. Do it right.

--I shook the hand today of yet another healthy grown man who didn't know how to shake hands. Friends, practice doing this correctly:
1. Open the strong hand (usually one's right) and blade the four fingers together.
2. Stick that blade of fingers straight out, vertically-oriented, with forefinger on top and pinky finger on the bottom. They are pointing in the Z axis, and stacked along the Y axis.  
3. Stick the thumb out at about a 45 degree angle from rest of the hand, looking at the hand from the rear (along the Z axis). If the hand is looked at from the back of the hand (along the X axis), the thumb should be seen to project out at a slightly acute angle from the hand, at say a 75 degree angle.
4. Hold out the hand thusly, and push it toward your target hand-shaker. Do NOT push it out all the way. You MUST retain some tolerance for the push to dock with the target's hand.
5. Glance briefly at the target's hand, and then look him in the eye. He will also attempt to shake your hand at this point, or will create an awkward moment. It is imperative that you believe that he will not leave you hanging.
6. When the target has similarly fixed his hand into shaking position, you push your open hand toward his so that the web between your thumb and forefinger firmly meets the web of his hand. This is mandatory. If this is not performed, start over.
7. Upon pushing hand webs together, ONLY NOW MAY YOU grasp the target's hand firmly, and shake it once or twice.
8. Do NOT try to break the target's hand. But don't just sit there limply like a dead fish, either.
9. It is okay to glance at the hands during docking, but during the shake, one is expected to look the other in the eye.
10. For special affection, gripping the arm of your target during the shake is permitted. This is called The Preacher's Handshake.

I shook the hand of every citizen that I met during traffic stops and calls, today.

Thoughts on violence.

--This nation is split right now. There is little in the way of a "conversation about guns and violence." It is two sides, squaring off. It's not pretty, and it's not really effective.

--Under the New Public Service model of governance, we are supposed to engage in a dialogue until we decide what to do, without regard to completing our goal, or achieving a real consensus.

--Those of us interested in maintaining the right to keep and to bear arms are acting calmer than those who blame firearms for the violence in which they are used.
This isn't because we're less upset. 

--Belief that ONE SINGLE POLICY will stop the violence is pretty naive. Thus, even though I believe that there are things that we can and probably should do to reduce the violence, I don't present them and then nod self-assuredly and declare "that's what will finally fix the problem."

--I've said before and I will say again that this nation has a serious problem in identifying and managing our mentally ill. We don't even deal with the emergent ones.

--If I truly believed that we could put the genie back in the bottle, and eliminate all firearms from this planet in an attempt to rid the planet of gun violence, I might well consider it, even though I agree with Marko's excellent essay, here. But it's not possible, so why entertain the mental exercise? If we're going to do that, why not settle invisibility versus flight for a superpower?

--If guns are the problem, why is my life not steeped in violence? Even though I literally am dispatched to every call involving violence in my jurisdiction for half of every other day, I have seen very little in the way of gun violence in the last 12 years of service. I've never been shot at. I've never shot at anyone. I've never arrested anyone for intentionally shooting at another person (true story!). I've only a handful of times arrested people for pointing guns at others. This is in Texas, where private ownership of firearms is almost unrestricted: No limit to number of guns, no registration of guns, no waiting period, no state restriction on private sales, no state restriction on ammunition* or magazines. If you get it federally registered, you can even own an automatic weapon.

--Some folks will see that above comment and say, "well, he works in a small town, so that's different." Well, which is it? Either we're back-woods hicks who are armed to the teeth and seething in violence, or I'm working for Mayberry, and we all get along so great, no one would ever be so unkind as to shoot someone else.  It must not be the guns, though, because EVERY home here seems to have a collection of firearms.

--Firearms were virtually uncontrolled before 1934, then more so in 1968, and more so in 1986. Yet school shootings have increased almost exponentially since just the late 1990s. Why? Yes, there are more guns. Yes, more people live in urban environments. But those aren't the answer. The problem of mass shootings has grown far faster than the rate of gun ownership. Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman, when I saw him speak, opined that the problem grew in direct proportion to the proliferation of first-person shooter video games. Hm.  I don't think that blaming the games themselves is the answer. But I'll for damn sure agree that there's an inured effect upon the players to distance themselves from the perceived consequences of their actions. 

I see evidence of dissociative behavior among youth that I didn't see much before. Youngsters engaged in online debate move quickly to direct each other to kill themselves. We've got individuals scattered among us who genuinely don't see other people as real. We've always had such sociopaths (for such they are), but it seems like we've started distilling them, and creating a higher likelihood that we'll have to deal with them.

--I am real. And so are you.

--The world will never be Nerf'd. We cannot stop violence, much. But maybe we can attenuate it. Maybe we can actually get a handle on what we can do to help reduce the chance that future sick persons will decide to destroy others.  I'm going to try. Please try in your way, too.

--Let me know what you think. I'm interested.
_____________________
*Except armor-piercing handgun ammunition.

BR4 The Road Trip.

My departure was not well-planned. I threw some stuff into the car haphazardly, and forgot some things, and brought some things that I didn't need. Fortunately, when one takes a Subaru Outback station wagon all by himself, good packing isn't really necessary. Ambulance Driver came by the house on the afternoon, and we convoyed all the way to Sooper Sekret Site together.

Passing through some construction on the outskirts of Amarillo, I thought about how there was a helium plant nearby, and idly wondered, as a volunteer firefighter, if there were any special considerations for first responders there, with regard to what was basically an inert gas. I began giggling as I imagined the 911 call there:
         Dispatcher: "911, what is your emergency?"
         Caller: < Lollypop Guild voice > "Come quick, there's been an accident
                at the helium plant!" .< /voice >
 Well, it cracked my sleep-deprived ass up. I started to call A.D. in front of me, when we topped a hill, and drove through a scene of carnage.

Clothes all over the road. Debris. I swerved to miss what looked like a body. Already a silver SUV was parked on the right shoulder, with no lights on. I stopped, backed up carefully, and pulled in behind the SUV. I could see someone inside it. As I backed, I called Ambulance Driver, and told him that I was investigating and calling 911. He said that he was turning around and coming back.

I called 911 while looking over the car. No apparent damage. I've seen some cars roll pretty badly and still be drivable after the wreck, but you could see something that indicated that it had seen a wreck. I could see nothing. The female driver looked at me in her rear-view mirror as I made contact with Potter County 911. "What is your emergency?" she asked, causing my recently giggling mind to stop down for a beat with self-inflicted deja vu.

"Road blockage. Possible 10-50, unknown type. Copy out-of-state 28." I gave her the tag number and the location.  

"Oh, that. We've already had a call about that vehicle" the dispatcher said. 

"Well, send me a deputy again anyway, please. There's a bunch of debris in the road just beyond the crest of a grade, and someone is going to have a wreck avoiding it. At least one pile of clothes looked like a body in the road," I said. "It's not, though. I don't know what I've got. I'm going to make contact with the driver, and I'll call you back."

The driver was recoiling within her car, away from the window, as I approached. I could see a dog inside, and hear it barking through the cracked open rear window. I badged her and identified myself as a peace officer, and asked how I could help her. She flung open the door and began yelling at me. Without quoting here, I will tell you that she told me that she had been there for two days and that no one had stopped to help her. She said that her car was dead, and her cell phone was dead. She said that she had no food and no water during that time, and that her poor dog's stomach was rumbling from lack of food. I put my hand to the little dog's nose, and found it very moist. The dog licked my hand (I had been eating beef jerky as road food). Its tongue was very moist. That dog wasn't missing water. No food is bad, but it's water that I worry about.

We were on a significant highway, just outside of a city of more than 120,000 people, in a metro area of about a quarter million people. It wasn't like she was in the middle of the boon docks.

I interrupted her to ask about a traffic accident. She said that there had been none. I asked about someone else in the car. No, just her and her pooch. I asked her how all the clothes and debris got in the road. She got evasive and looked away as she told me that she didn't know how they got there. She amended her statement to say that they were like that when she got there. I looked at the SUV packed full of boxes like the emptied one on the ground. I looked at the slender women's clothes that were at a rough guess appropriate for a woman like the one that I was talking to.

I listened to the woman rail on a bit more. At about this point, Ambulance Driver came forward. He had his tactical light out (where was mine? Didn't I tell you that I packed poorly?), his hand was back behind his hip, and he gave me an eyebrows-up questioning look. I could tell that he had already at a distance been able to deduce what I had figured out: This woman was disturbed. She wasn't making sense.

I asked the woman if she was hurt or ill. She said no, and then said, "Well, I'm not feeling too well, right now!" I almost referred her to a paramedic that I knew nearby. But here's the thing: She was physically fine. She'd been moving around* just fine in that SUV. She gave NO indication of any kind of physical injury or trauma. She might have been emotionally disturbed, but she had made no indications that she was going to hurt herself or other people. She was clearly not telling the truth about it having been two days that she had been there, or of her having no clue about the clothing and stuff in the road.

"Ma'am, I'll get help. Stay in your car." I told her, and muttered to Ambulance Driver that she was 10-96.** I went to the back of her car, called 911 back, and updated them on what I had. They told me that a deputy had already been there, and left. "Well, send a deputy back here, please. She seems to have strewn things in the road, probably to get people to stop. You have a road blockage and a disturbed person here," I said.  I looked over to Ambulance Driver. "But we're leaving." He nodded. I hung up.  I hollered to the woman that a deputy was en route, and we proceeded on.

Back in the day, I would have stayed on scene until the deputy got there. I would have involved myself more. Possibly hours of my life I would have devoted to a person that didn't specifically ask for my help, when it wasn't my job to provide it.

As it was, I alerted the local authorities. I checked on her welfare, and on that of her dog. And I disengaged. It was my vacation.

__________________
*Some might say that she was gesticulating.
**Although he nodded at that statement at the time, A.D. later told me: "I didn't know that 10-code before, but figured, given the context, that it meant 'Crazy Person.'"

Because I'm An Old Man, Now....

I stopped a car with a pair of pretty 19 year old girls in it. They were tired, and maybe the passenger (the girl who owned the car) had drunk something, and maybe not. I let it go, because the driver was sober. I scratched out a warning ticket, and gave it to the driver, and asked where they went to school. They both mentioned junior colleges, to get their basics out of the way. I agreed that made sense, instead of what I had done, which was to go to UT for my 101 courses. They thought that was silly. I started to leave, but stopped for a second and said, "Hey girls: take this advice from a man old enough to be your father: Nothing good happens after midnight. NOTHING. Y'all be careful. G'night."

The laughed and drove off. I know that they heard me. I hope that they understood.

Awesome. Not enough, but awesome.

I love a movie grill. I can combine my dinner with my movie, and have a beer with my popcorn, and make it back home to the sitter without taking all night.

Down in Austin, one of the best of them is the Alamo Drafthouse. Now, I've never been to the Alamo Drafthouse, before. But I know that they are made of win. How? Why, I know this because, not only do they kick out a teenage girl who couldn't stop texting during her movie, but when she called to make a complaint, they posted her profanity-laced voicemail on YouTube, and on their blog. (Cussing bleeped, but it's clear what she's saying.)

My only complaint? They evidently ejected her with her aforementioned phone intact.

I get down to Austin a fair bit, and the next time I do, I'm getting a beer and a movie at the Austin Drafthouse, at one of their five convenient locations.

Shooting the kid.

The other day, Brownsville cops shot and killed a 15 year old boy who was brandishing a gun in a school with over 700 kids in it.

The family is upset, saying it was unnecessary use of force*. The boy was just an 8th grader. He was a Good Student**. He was a Good Boy. Active in his church. Not affiliated with gangs. It was only a pellet gun. They shouldn't have shot a minor and certainly not more than once, and DEFINITELY not in the back of the head. Tragic over-reaction, says the family.

Really? Let's listen to the 911 call.  Huh. People were bunkered down. The kid was roaming the halls of a school full of kids. He'd been told repeatedly to put the gun down. He was not in Taser range. He'd said that he was not afraid to die. He was displaying this:

I've posted my concerns about bullet magnets before, and written of an incident almost ten years ago with one. I recall how, at that time, when I presented the boy with his own Airsoft version of a CZ75 from my own holster, the kid didn't even recognize his own plastic gun:

In Brownsville:
The boy threatened people with the gun, which looked very realistic.
The boy talked about not being afraid to die.
The boy was mobile in a school full of potential victims and hostages.
The boy had been challenged, and refused to put the apparent weapon down.
Bullets from the gun of a juvenile kill people just as dead as those from the gun of an adult.
This was sadly a suicide by cop, performed by an unstable kid.

The Brownsville cops did what they had to do.
And that's a damned shame.



____________________________________________
*In that ridiculous story, the reporter does his Live! stand-up in Dallas, TX. Even using Google Earth to stretch a line from Dallas to Brownsville, it's 475 miles, and that takes you over the Gulf of Mexico. Google Maps says that the short route to drive it (through Victoria) is actually 529 miles. Why the network thought that it means ANYTHING to have the reporter stand outside in Dallas, TX is beyond me. It would make about as much sense to have a reporter stand outside of a mobile van in New York City to report on a shooting in Hampstead, NC. (which is the same distance by air.)


** Nothing like getting it right the third time. My 8th grader is only 13, and actually started 8th grade when she was only 12. By age 15, I was about 6'4", 200+ lbs, and wore my first beard as a sophomore in high school. Physically, I was indistinguishable from a grown man.

More evidence that I'm a grown-up, now.

Someone shared with me the link to a commercial put together by the folks at "Vooray," a youth clothing line. They made a pretty neat video by taking a Utah swimming hole, a pickup with a pulley attached to the receiver hitch, a bunch of rope and a four-wheeler, and accelerating some hard-scrubbed-but-clearly-fun-loving Utah youths down a greased hill-side Slip-'N'-Slide until they hit a ramp.

As much fun as the video looks, the whole time that I'm watching it, I'm thinking "those kids need sunblock! Were there any medically-trained responders on scene? That girl looks a little young to be out in that bikini with boys about."

I should just buy myself a walker and some Geritol, next time I'm at that pharmacy, I tell you.




_____________________
EDIT: The video is by the tremendously talented rising star video producer/photographer/videographer Devin Graham, who has his own blog.

Admittedly the best.

I just figured out that I'm a grownup. I'm 40, and have a family which I look around and realize that I'm the head paternal unit of.  I'm more than halfway to my retirement.

Most important, though, is that Christmas doesn't mean that I want anything, anymore. I want to be with my family, and to see the kids open some presents. I want to see them happy, yet not overwhelmed and spoiled.

This morning, my nine year old handed me a cup of coffee and a hand-made Christmas card. On the front was a monochromatic Christmas tree and the words "Merry Christmas! Daddy." On the inside was written:

I can't be your friend, but I can be your daughter-- and I am grateful for just that. Love, [Nine Year-Old].

Huh. Could have sworn she used a Sharpie. Can't figure out why the ink seems to be blurring.

I hope your day is filled with the warmth that is in my heart, right now.

What's important to you?

Last night, either by some mechanical problem with their vehicle, or through mischief, someone set a chain of fires along a stretch of highway near town. I was on duty, and was called to assist. When I arrived, the flames were 12 to 15 feet high, and running south with the 26 mph wind (and 25% humidity) at about the speed of a child running, or a man jogging. By this point, my sergeant was already driving a brush truck across the prairie while its lone fireman fought the fire from the rear deck. I looked at traffic, decided that directing traffic (on the north side of the fire) was pointless, and hurried west of the fire to flank it and get south of it. There were houses a mile south of there.

As I moved west on the highway, I observed several smaller fires that were smoldering in the south ditch, luckily stopped by the recently plowed fields just across the ditch. I grew angry.

I got to the south side of the fire, and started notifying homeowners. My spiel went like this:

"Howdy, I'm Matt G with the Podunk Police Department. There's a fast-moving, growing wildfire north of here, and it's coming this way fast. Pack up what's important to you, right now. No furniture. Get ready to go. I recommend that you leave immediately, but if you stay, please leave when you see the flames. Please know that our fire departments are doing everything that they can to protect your house, and more fire personnel are en route to do just that."

Then I would move to the next house.

What mildly impressed me was that no one argued. They got right to it. At one point, I parked my car in the driveway of one family, and after I spoke with the ~50 year old man there, I moved to the three houses next door on foot. After having warned those people, I walked back to my car, and saw that first man fast-walking with two apparently heavy suitcases to his pickup. He gave me a quick nod before tossing them into the bed and quickly going back to the house. I could hear a woman and a child speaking to each other through the screen door. "Good man," I said. I went on to other houses.

We got a few dozen rural houses notified before the sixth or seventh alarm seemed to turn the tide. They got the fire line slowed, and started mop-up a few hours later. To the best of my knowledge, no habitations were burned, and only minor sheds and such went up, along with fences and a lot of dry vegetation. (You recall that we're in something of drought, right? Worst one in more than half a century?)

So last night, I was touched when I saw that my friend Don Gwinn had written:

[I] realized something today that's kind of trite, but it hit me hard: I don't have any problems I can't solve. I'm rich. I may acquire new problems I can't solve tomorrow--an aneurysm could burst in my head tonight--but I have no debts I don't have a plan to pay off early, no work I can't do, no loved ones I can't connect with.

Which is not to say I have no debts, or that there's nothing I'd like to have and don't, or would like to do and can't right now, or that all my relationships with my loved ones are perfect, or that my work is easy or even always makes sense. But today I have the sense that I have way to handle all of it, even the stuff that's going to be hard, painful or boring while I'm doing it.

What's important to you? What would you take if you had 15 minutes?
Are your problems really so insurmountable?

TANSTAAFL

Longtime internet friend Larry Correia writes his hilariously on-point reactions to a Yahoo article about people who are getting out of paying their mortgages due to their own misplaced values, and are spun as heroes for it.

I laughed out loud. Seriously.

You want to fix the medical system? You want reform?

I've got a very simple law that we could pass that will go a LONG way toward medical healthcare reform.

Require that, within one business day, the healthcare provider give you a straightforward answer to this question:

"How much is this going to cost?"

Mom is in rehab for her new knee, which she had put in last week. The orthopedic surgeon called it one of the worst --if not the single worst-- knees that he's ever had to replace. He told me that Mom should have come in 10 years ago to get that knee swapped out. Mom's answer (she walked 150 yards in to the pre-op room, unassisted) is simply, "Yeah, but think of how far that replacement knees have advanced, in the last ten years." Good point.

Mom's a super star at rehab, and is actually being released early. This makes her cranky elder son very happy; we've been missing her next door. (Yes, I've been visiting daily, but it's not the same.) But when her family liaison person called me to ask me if I had any questions, I asked her, "What's the cost of this? How much are we saving daily by having her come home early? What is the average daily cost of her care?"

She didn't know, but turned me over to a person at their facility who could "better answer my questions." That lady didn't know, either. "We don't do any billing here," she told me. "That's done from the corporate offices in Pennsylvania."

But she went on to assure me that the bill was to be sent to Mom's insurance companies, who typically covered most of these things, before we'd ever get a bill.

"But somebody, somewhere, knows what this costs," I protested.

"No, we won't really know, until we bill the insurance companies, and see what they pay," she told me.

This is ridiculous.

The attitude that it doesn't matter, because there is insurance, is the reason why the costs are spiraling.

On the first of this month, I changed over from my old PPO to a new Health Savings Account*. Thus, when it's medically-oriented, I want to know what EVERYTHING costs.

I know what I make per hour. I know what the overhead is for my job. I could, after checking a few figures, answer the question "How much does it cost to run the police department in Matt G's little town for a single day?"

Why is this so hard?

________________________________
*I've got a $3000 deductible to fill each year, before my account turns into a classic PPO. My job kicks in $180 a month to a savings account that I pay out of.

That which should be viral, but isn't.

I have printed LabRat's Rules For Relating and posted them on the wall at my PD. Then I promptly pulled them down.
They absolutely deserve attribution, but with attribution, I would shortly be "outed" as a blogger. (The guys I work with are nothing if not tenacious.)

I've similarly considered printing them in small pring, and handing them out to Select Customers as a public service.

At any rate, go read, and know that LabRat is wise beyond her years.

A Worrisome Gap, Indeed.

I didn't serve.

I should have. I regret that I didn't. I believe that I would have made a good serviceman. But for whatever reason, I did not.

I now attempt to serve my little community as a patrolman. I don't kid myself about what the job is, and I get paid, so I refuse to accept praises beyond my actual worth.

But every serviceman who signs up for the armed forces of this nation puts himself or herself at risk of being put in harm's way. Yes, even the pogues and the REMFs and the supposedly non-combat support personnel. All may be sent into a hostile country, wearing our nation's uniform. And in truth, our D.O.D. is famous for taking a physicist or an engineer, handing him a rifle, and telling him to march in the front of the line instead of plying his preferred trade. Guys that sign up for easy duty might not get it. That's the risk. They've all got that in common.

But we who do not serve don't often think about those who do, unless someone close to us is in the military. Even now, with our servicemen and women scattered around the globe on two and a half fronts, we forget. Yes, we do.

So I find that the words of Admiral Mike Mullen (head of Joint Chiefs Of Staff) hit home when he describes a gulf between our military and the nation that it serves. He said that we who are on the outside are more and more failing to grasp what those on the inside are experiencing, and what their needs are.

"This is important, because a people uninformed about what they are asking the military to endure is a people inevitably unable to fully grasp the scope of the responsibilities our Constitution levies upon them," he said.

Our jobs on the home front are varied, but we all have a duty to this nation. The first duty, it would seem, is to remember.

Maybe, in between the pouring of drunks back into their houses or into jail cells this three-day weekend, I can remind one or two citizens of why we have the holiday weekend. Because frankly, it's easier to forget than it should be.

I'm going to have to face it: I like people.

Look, I know that I'm supposed to be bogged down by the crushing weight of my knowledge of how sucky humanity is. I know that I'm expected to be all cynical, especially because I'm a cop, and know the evil that men and women do.

But I just can't muster the across-the-board disgust. The fact of the matter is, most people are just folks, and most of them are actually kind of interested in doing the right thing. And, without looking too very hard, you find that there are a lot of really nifty people out there.

There are area experts who are willing to share their knowledge, for free, just for the price of you asking them to.

There are bakers who will work hard to make something tasty, just to see you smile when you try their wares.

There are fellow travellers who will stop and help you when you're broken down, just because they really would want someone to help them.

There are store clerks who genuinely want to know if you're having a good day, and then hope that they can help your day get just a bit better by the time you've left.

Vine and I, while getting gasoline and soft drinks at an Omaha convenience store, found ourselves chatting with a friendly clerk. She was a middle-aged Mid-Westerner, with just a hint of Fargo in her voice, who smiled because she wanted to, not because the job made her do so. We walked out, pocketing our change, and commented on how that one person had managed to brighten our respective days. I sort of felt like this guy.

I don't expect you to become a fat, dumb, and happy person all the time. Not in the least.

But I do wish to remind you that there's a whole world full of decent, pretty awesome people, who did NOT make the news last night. People who put in an honest day's work for nothing more nor less than their pay, and go home at day's end to lead uneventful but decent lives. These people don't make the news. They're not "Everyday Heroes", because they're not heroes. They're just good people. That segment of society is under-represented onscreen, which means that people seem to forget that they are literally surrounded by good people.

This is not a rant. The day that I find that this blog has been reduced to nothing more than a vehicle for rants is the day that I close my Blogger account.

Will I be so comforted?

When I have to make that last trip out the front door, I hope I have someone like EpiJunkie to help me on my way.