How would you like to die?

Living well is best. Dying well is next best. Living badly is worst.

On Valentine's Day of this year, a horrible person murdered 17 people at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, kicking off an enormous clash about gun control, almost immediately.

The murderer was 19 a years old man, and had been identified as a dangerous person before. In fact, friends and counselors had called the FBI about him. He slipped through. It happens. He committed these crimes, and no one else is blame.

During the murders, there were heroes. A coach who shielded the bodies of children as he died. A 15 year-old ROTC student who held the door to get more kids evacuated out of the building. There were others.

One of those heroes was not School Resource Officer Scot Peterson, who "took a position" outside a door of the building where 900 students were, and listened to the shooting continue for four minutes. To make this clear: this man was an armed, sworn deputy, who was made aware of shooting in a school, where his primary duty was to see to the safety of students there, and he did nothing.

There are those who would argue that a man with a pistol has little to no chance against a man with a working AR-15. As a rule of thumb, it is true that any rifle is superior in a gunfight to any service pistol. And I could argue right back that in a majority of the cases in which a shooter was confronted by armed response, the shooter has either given himself up, or killed himself, ending the killing in either instance, for the vast majority of the cases.

But the odds are not the issue. The duty is. Each shot is potentially a student dying. Each moment's delay can mean yet another mother's child being taken. It is imperative to not-walk-but-run toward the sound of that gunfire, and stop the killing.

This deputy has trained with his weapon for over twenty years. If he hadn't settled this in his head beforehand, he was criminally negligent in his duties.

Some might say that the issue was his training. Back when I went to police academy in 1994, the training was to form a perimeter, and wait for SWAT. Certainly a single officer wasn't supposed to go in alone. (I clearly remember sitting in the back of the classroom, and thinking that this was a hill that I would die upon; I would take whatever write-ups they cared to throw at me, but I was going in.) The massacre at Columbine High School in 1998 changed that doctrine forever. The doctrine since the turn of the century has been to go in hard and fast and take the shooter out. We are specifically trained to step over and past the wounded, to rapidly close distance with the shooter, and take him out without any warning. This is as it should be. It is not a secret. It is how you help the bleeding and those yet unwounded.  How could a man or woman assigned to the duty of being a School Resource Officer not have studied this topic?

It is rare in one's life that one can recognize such an important crossroads, illuminated so clearly as this one.  One could absolutely guard one's own life, forsaking his moral duty to act, and die several decades later in one's bed, aware for the remainder of his life that he was living the life of a coward. One could swallow one's fear, and attack the killer, and fail. This would be horrible, because it would mean that one didn't stop the killer. But it's a worthy death, to die in the attempt to stop the murder of children. In fact, if an officer stopped the killer, but the officer was killed as well in the engagement, that is not a failure.  It is sub-optimal, but the goal was achieved: the killer was stopped. Dying while SAVING the lives of children is so much more preferable than dying of old age, after failing to even try. I am not suggesting that one should martyr one's self; I'm simply saying that one should fear the long life of a coward, rather than the quick and worthy death of a peacekeeper.  

My excellent friend and colleague LawDog said it better, here.

I was discussing this with friends recently, and one good friend cautioned (correctly, of course) not to give the impression that one should hope to find such an event occur. I agreed, but shared the following:

Back when I was a rookie working evening shift, I caught my first Sexual Assault case. My chief happened to drop by the police department at that time, and he took it off my hands. I had been flustered and out of my depth. My chief at the time was an expert at such cases. He said afterwards, “I am sorry that the event occurred, but I am so glad that it happened when and where I could do something about it.” He had skills that the average beat cop did not. He applied those skills to take care of the problem (the actor got 20 years, IIRC). I probably would have muffed it.

Living well is best. Dying well is next best. Living badly is worst.

Choose wisely. And train.

Pursuit of happiness.

My elder daughter, when in high school band, was very tight with her section members. She and several other horn players would literally have parties, exclusive to their section. As such, my wife and I got to know all of them. These were great boys and girls. I was professionally aware that NONE of these kids had ever gotten in any kind of trouble, and thus I approved highly of the friendship. One boy, whom we will here call Larry, graduated a year before my daughter, He went to college, and got a job. Lately he's been also helping out a lot with the youth group at the local church, as a youth leader. He had interviewed me about my work for a Criminal Justice class, and I just recently found out that he's majoring in that field. He's been dating a sweet young lady whom we will here refer to as Eva, who joins him in assisting with the church youth.

So, yesterday afternoon, while I was at work, I got a text from him:

"Hey Officer G, I have a favor to ask you. I want to ask Eva to marry me and I was wondering if I could get your assistance to help me." 

I asked what he had in mind, and ran it by the chief. I prefaced my ask with my personal perceptions of Larry to the chief. He consented. I told Larry that the gig was a Go.

After my shift, I picked him up at his house in my patrol car. I had him sit in the back seat of my patrol car. He was dressed nicely. We drove to a street corner near her house, and parked in a subtle location. He texted her mother to have her come over to his house. When she drove by, I fell in behind her, and pulled her over at a parking lot. I got out, unlatched Larry's back door, and stepped up to speak to Eva: "Miss, would you mind stepping out of the car?" She got out. I pointed at the rear of her car, and babbled for a few seconds while giving Larry the sign (I pointed at her). I told her that this was important, and then asked her to turn around. Larry was there behind her, on his knee, with a very large diamond ring held out. He had told me before that they had talked generally about marriage, but he had never gone through the formality of asking her before. She said "yes", and they wept as they hugged each other. I took a couple of pictures, and asked her to drive her fiancé home safely.

I went home, and informed my daughter of the role that I had just played in her good friend's engagement. I went back out to my patrol car, to make sure that the camera system saved the event in the highest resolution. Our new digital camera systems assign different storage resolutions for different types of patrol events, pulled from a pre-selected list of headings. There wasn't a listing for Marriage Proposal. I selected "Pursuit," which I knew saved at high-level. This pursuit had gone pretty well.

This is not who we are.

This is indefensible.


This is abhorrent.

No police officer can defend this action by Michael T. Slager, formerly of the North Charleston, S.C. Police Department. Happily, I haven't seen a single officer try to.

Go to 1:35 in the video, and watch as Slager tosses a black object down next to the body. Immediately after cuffing the dying man, he is seen jogging back to where the struggle began, and at 1:08 he picks up that object. I will bet you a month's worth of paychecks that the object is a Taser. I've seen them and handled them for years. It is a gun-shaped black item, seen when he drops it to be a figure L.

So, seconds after the shooting, Slager is tampering with the scene. Hell, that's a third degree felony here in Texas.

And about that shooting. Even before Tennessee v. Garner (1985), this wouldn't have washed with regard to the Fleeing Felon doctrine.  But even if it were legal, it isn't right. You don't kill a man whom you have identified, just because of brief struggle and he ran away.

That video is hard to watch, but I'm so glad that it was made, and released. Because it will help us seek justice. It won't be enough, but it never is, in any shooting of any human.

That's not us.

This is not who we are.

There is a story on National Public Radio about how the Governor of Alabama is apologizing for a recent incident in which a Madison officer body slammed a non-English-speaking Indian man for not complying with his verbal directions.


I made the mistake of reading the comments.


NEVER read the comments.


Many of the comments refer to how police will do such things. Many of them refer to how that's what happens in the Deep South.


I thought that liberals were supposed to be more understanding, and inclusive, and not given toward making sweeping generalizations about people?


The police chief apologized. The department fired the officer, Eric Parker, who performed the leg-sweep and put 57 year-old Mr. Patel down. Mr. Parker has been charged with a crime.


How many ways can we say this? We don't put up with that. That's not who we are.


Please quit tarring us all with that same brush.

Let's all get shoulder-to-shoulder on this one:

A South Carolina state trooper named Sean Groubert shoots a guy. The guy (Levar Jones) was reaching for his wallet. The last shot was fired as the victim was actually raising his hands and surrendering.

Oh, and the victim was black, with the trooper was white.

The race of the victim may or may not have influenced the trooper's perception of what the victim was doing, but if so, this cop was so badly out of check that nothing was going to correct it.

There is nothing redeemable about this shooting. This trooper needs to be fired (done), charged (done), convicted (soon), and condemned by all cops. This isn't us. This was a fool who should never have been allowed to slip between the cracks and be a trooper.

I'm sorry, y'all. There's nothing more that I can say. We're better than this.

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.

The Vocal Minority on No-Knock Warrants.

In comments on my last post, my good friend Old NFO stated that the sad thing was that I was beginning to become the minority in my opinion. I began to respond, and then decided that this needed a post all its own.

I don't think that's necessarily the truth. The problem is that too many cops are hearing a vocal minority who are declaring that our lives are too important NOT to do No-Knock Warrants, without really thinking it out:
1. No Knocks increase the likelihood of our being shot at.
2. The argument is meretricious-- the real hidden goal often is to protect evidence.
3. What about the innocents and those maybe not-innocent-but-not-deserving-of-being-shot? Shouldn't we protect their lives?

If we lay it out that way, I think  that the average cop will agree that No Knock Warrants have by and large had their day.

The vast, vast vast majority of cops do not serve No-Knock Warrants.

I've served a few felony search warrants (not that many, though), and I have never served a No-Knock warrant, in almost a decade and a half. I've never even been asked to do so.

The last felony search warrant that I served came closest, and that wasn't very close. We had a drug raid where one of our officers obtained a felony search warrant, and there was a discussion of obtaining  a No-Knock clause (the guy had a pistol), but in the end, we just beat on the door, and shouted "Police with a search warrant! Open up!" When no one answered after the given time, we opened the door with a sledge hammer, and announced ourselves repeatedly before securing the scene. The guy was gone, but his drug dealing operation (drugs, money, gun, files) wasn't. We taped the warrant to the broken door, and left with the evidence, and got an arrest warrant. Like you do.

In a small department, we do pretty much everything, which means that we act as investigator, entry team member, and bailiff. If a No-Knock Warrant were obtained in our department, I would have known about it. Not once in my career have I been part of such a thing.   This isn't a brag-- I don't think that the next department south or north has done one in that time, either. It's just not that common. So why is it that we small town PDs can get along without them, but the larger ones can't? I think that the answer lies in the mentality of the tactical commanders of SWAT teams.

The premier SWAT unit in the United States has traditionally been the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team (HRT). They have a very difficult and specialized job, which they are trained to do really well. Everyone wants to be the elite, and thus, tactical teams look toward that team as the standard to emulate. But here's the thing: hostage rescue isn't that common. The vast majority of the uses for tactical teams turns out to be high risk warrant service. But since hostage rescue does occasionally happen, they train for it, as they should. The problem comes when you apply training for this situation to other situations. When SWAT goes in on a hostage rescue, you can bet that the likelihood of someone getting shot at goes way up. We do NOT want that increased percentage of a shooting in an instance where we could prevent it, like a simple warrant service. But when you model yourself after a group whose primary role is hostage rescue, you can get into that mindset.

Bona fide tac commanders are the snake eaters in a department, and tend to be highly regarded. They are used to giving directions and being heard. They are used to looking at a problem and seeing how to overcome it. We need these guys. We also need to keep them in check, and check their influence on standard. Often, the tactical commanders have a good handle on when and when not to use force and surprise, but they will be misunderstood and misquoted by others. A culture develops where the guy who raises his hand and questions why we need to make "Dynamic Entries" is derided by those who don't actually know what the tactical commander actually would do.

So it is that we have a good number of guys who are infected with bad information.

Approximately half of the officers in this nation come from departments of 10 or fewer sworn officers. Those smaller departments do NOT have "SWAT teams," per se (sometimes departments will have task force teams). I think that most of the smaller departments do not have as much of a shift toward no-knocks, because they don't have a tactical team.  I am not against SWAT-- we need them, badly at times. They practice to do a difficult job which is everything about teamwork and very little about personal achievement. I do not think that the answer is to ban them. But part of the tactical training, especially for commanders, needs to be to recognize when to hold off on the "dynamic entries."

The only hostage rescue that I ever took part in, I played a tiny role of. A murderer had a child that he planned to abscond to Mexico with. He had holed up in a motel. I was one of the first ones at the motel, and with my patrol rifle I lay in prone overwatch on the door of that motel for about 90 minutes, waiting for SWAT to deploy. When they relieved me, I was grateful-- without a shooter's mat, I had found every little acorn under that live oak that I had set up under that night. The next morning, the tactical guys set upon the bad guy as he stepped out of the motel, and arrested him peacefully. Like pros.

And cheap at twice the price.

The only reason those two women injured in the inappropriate shooting during the manhunt for Dorner are taking the $4.2 million is because attorneys behind closed doors said, "Would you rather take the four point two million now, or wait five years to collect ten million dollars, by which time the attorneys have gotten the bulk of it?"

Yeah, L.A. would like to get that behind them, indeed.

The militarization of law enforcement.

In comments on the previous blog entry, Greg mentioned "the increasing militarization of law enforcement in this country."

I think that it's a concern worth having, but I also think that, by and large, our concerns are about issues more theoretical than practical.

We all shake our heads at the pictures of NYPD cops in full tactical gear (BDUs, tac vests, M4s, helmets) standing out front of their city administration buildings, and at cops going full-on dynamic entry on what should be a simple warrant service. We grimace upon learning that yet another federal agency has a SWAT team.

How about letting the U.S. Marshal's Service do the SWAT gig, and let the other agencies work with them for the most part? Oh, I can see having a Special Response Team within the Secret Service, perhaps. But the rest? They need to farm it out if for no other reason than economy. We don't require the silly redundancy. But more importantly, when you have a SWAT team, you tend to feel like you need to use it. The already unnecessary Department Of Education doesn't need to be looking at their jobs and saying, "How could we put our SWAT team to work solving this issue?"

But the fact is, those stories and pictures are in the news because they actually are news. The norm is not news. Sure, we definitely need to keep a weather eye on those guys and prevent them from becoming the norm, but day in, day out, the vast, vast majority of us never tac out, almost never pull the black rifle out of the trunk except for routine administrative purposes, and have never put on a helmet.

That said, giving a patrol officer some gear to deal with exigent circumstances as the first responder is NOT militarizing the police departments. Sure I've got a tac vest in the back of the car. I've put it on once in the past year, while setting up a perimeter around a mentally-ill armed man's house, and we took that guy into custody by knocking on the door and talking him into stepping outside. Yes, I've got a short AR in the patrol car. It's a damned sight better way to deal with an active shooter than trying to get lucky with my pistol.  Just because the military also use an AR-pattern carbine doesn't mean that having one in my patrol car is making me militarized. It's just an overlap in gear. I promise you that Marshal Dillon would have had one if he could have. I'll further point out that his Winchester lever rifle (which model? M.1892?) was pretty much the assault rifle of that era. (Yes, I am aware that I'm speaking of a fictional law enforcement officer, but I promise you that most people critical of militarization of law enforcement would probably like to see Matt Dillon. Well, that or Andy Taylor, but if you can't see the foolishness of that fictional rarely-armed Sheriff employing an inept family member deputy, then I can't help you.)

When you see that your local cop pulls a shotgun from his cruiser to answer a robbery call, you may notice that it's likely to have a black synthetic stock on it, these days. That's not a militarization issue-- it's a practical one. These days, you pay extra for wood over synthetic, and frankly, the synthetic is more durable, usually is lighter, is is less susceptible to water or oil soaking into it, and doesn't look bad when it's been scratched by daily patrol tours. When he pulls a carbine out of the car, consider that a single round of .223 into the bad guy is a LOT better than throwing stray rounds of pistol around a neighborhood (believe it or not, the .223 won't over-penetrate as badly as a duty pistol round will.) or a load of .33 caliber buckshot pellets that start off at 1300+ feet per second. And make no mistake, if a cop has to fire on a bad guy, I WANT him using a long gun. A properly-used long gun will end a fight far faster than a pistol. If it's time to shoot a threat, I want that threat shot well. I want the least number of shots taken. If a gunfight looks likely, I want that police officer picking up a fight-ending long gun.

That's not to say that I subscribe to the "show 'em you mean business, so they won't mess with you" school of law enforcement, because I don't. If a cop is on routine patrol, I want that rifle or shotgun secured. I don't like balaclavas, even on raids. I don't like cops wearing leather gloves when they're out on patrol unless it's cold or they're about to perform a pat-down. (This goes double --no, triple-- for fingerless gloves.) While I'm fine with cargo pants, I find fatigue type uniforms to be distasteful. I hate drop thigh pistol holster rigs for regular patrol. If a cop is wearing a tactical vest, he'd better be doing something tactical, like serving a warrant. (I almost wrote "high risk warrant," but a lot of people don't want to go to jail even for a misdemeanor, so I'll put up with being somewhat tactical on any arrest, so long as we're not unnecessarily kicking in doors on no-knock warrants for preserving evidence.)

As I had mentioned earlier, last time that I put on a tac vest and grabbed the carbine on a call, we were responding to a call of a heavily-armed mentally ill person who needed to be taken into custody and who had proven he was dangerous. We talked him out, and cuffed him, and got him some help, as police officers, not as a tactical unit. But we were damned happy to have the long guns, and the extra ammo, and the extra protection that the tactical vests provided, as we first responders from different rural agencies performed that role, that night. Then we put the gear back up, and went back on patrol.

Because we're not soldiers; we're patrolmen. And we are the police in what is not a police state.

Self-Justification

Tam, as she often does, hit the nail on the head:

"Having a dedicated Agency responsible for "gun crimes" creates an incentive to find and, if necessary, manufacture gun crimes in order to justify their existence."

It is not because I'm a generalist that I am annoyed at the BATF. Hey, I'm all for specialization, in complicated areas. I just recently did a sexual assault investigation with the assistance of a larger city investigator who specializes in that, specifically on children. (And bless his heart for that. I would get burnt out within about 2 months of that work.) Two weeks ago, I provided some intel to a detective who specializes in copper theft. (Note: detectives who work in such areas are GOLD MINES for info on the meth trade in their area.) When I have a financial crime, I know just the detective to call on for help, and she's brilliant. Time to lift fingerprints? I call a neighboring crime lab. Specialization makes sense, in a lot of areas. Those fellows are better at it than I am, due to their familiarity with the topic. They are all subject matter experts.

Large cities generally break down their police department's investigative bureaus into sections like Property Crime, Violent Crime, Sex Crimes, Juvenile Crime, and Homicide. That's fine; there has to be some way to delegate cases. But when you create an entire agency that specializes in a specific type of crime, you run into problems. What if that type of crime is down that year? Their budget could be in jeopardy.

The problem is compounded when the premise of the crime fighting is in question, in the first place.

But we have a system in this nation, good or bad, that dictates how guns are sold from dealers. It's hackneyed, but it's followed. As FFL licencees are generally quite law-abiding folks, the prospect of committing felonies rightfully scares hell out of them. So obvious straw purchases are not permitted. Clear felonies in firearms purchases are denied. Unless. Unless the aforementioned hackneyed system is intentionally sabotaged by the agency ordering its use, to create more crimes for that agency to investigate.

This would be akin to the FBI ordering that the back door to banks be left unlocked, and the vaults be left ajar, with the alarm passcode be scrawled in pencil on the wall next to the door.

I believe that I've mentioned before that using numbers to try to promote your own crime-fighting agency is a double-edged sword. Trying to pump them up is a Bad Idea, friends. Look, you chief administrators: You're spin doctors, right? Right. If crime stats are down, we all know that you can just say "Look at what an effective job that we've done! Our agency needs more resources to continue in our quest to stamp out crime!" And if crime stats are up, you get to sound the alarm that "Now, more than ever, we need more resources to fight the growing trend of crime!" You can serve it up either way. We all know that.

You don't have to make more. Got it?
_______

While at a nearby police range recently, I had to wait for the local ATF agents to finish their stuff. One of them, a friendly lady agent, chatted with me for a few minutes. I enjoyed our talk, but wondered if she was as annoyed by my shirt as I was by her hat. Her aftermarket custom hat was similar the standard ATF ballcap, but with the words "Mt. Carmel" embroidered in smaller letters below the agency letters. Marvy.

She didn't remark on my shirt, which I had ordered a decade ago through the assistance of the now-famous author and then fellow TFL denizen, Larry Correia:


I don't know if she understood the meaning behind the words "MOLON LABE." If she did, I suspect that she would have been confused as to why I, a cop, ordered the shirt, and why I, a cop, still wear the shirt.

Meanwhile, I don't have to guess whether the sentiment would have been understood by the Texas Ranger recently seen in the area with the Gonzales battle flag scrimshawed on the outside grip panel of his ivory stocks of his 1911 pistol.

But there I go, taking up for generalists. :)

We can't trust until we've unearthed the corruption.

Thanks for nothing, NOLA P.D.

You've helped create a national distrust of police that affects me every day that I work.

While the five New Orleans Police Department officers convicted today weren't found guilty of murder, they were found guilty of improper actions resulting in the unwarranted deaths of citizens, and the cover-up of the shootings on the Danziger Bridge.

I live a few hours west of New Orleans, and regularly am told that I simply have to visit the place. For the culture. For the food. For the history.

Y'all can keep that stuff. I'm not voluntarily going to a place where, when you're in trouble, you don't dare call the cops, because you're afraid that they're crooks, too.

Having never been to New Orleans, I have thus never left anything there, and have no reason to go there. From what I can see, it is our nation's greatest shame. Why didn't we just quit the town, after the hurricane?

We can do better than this.

I've cussed people while in uniform, before. I'm not proud of it. As a matter of fact, I'm generally ashamed of it. But it's happened.

The most recent circumstance was as I was investigating a Visiting Burglar who was loitering around downtown at 3:00 AM, with a car full of burglary tools. I casually asked him his name, and he lied to me. I knew it. He knew that I knew it, and my cover officer knew it. When a check of that name and date of birth came back as "No Record Found," (strange for a guy covered with prison gang tattoos), I investigated until my cover officer discovered V.B.'s real illustrious past, and that V.B. had a warrant. I told V.B. to turn around, so that I could pat him down. I asked him carefully and clearly if he had anything on him that could cut me or poke me. He assured me that he didn't.

The last pocket that I checked had a used syringe in it.

"What the f**k?!? G*dD***it, you said that you didn't have anything like that! S**t!" I blurted out. He began to apologize profusely.

Now, I have to admit that I'm scared of being poked by used needles from a guy like this, who was in fact a bug-carrier. Still, I should have conducted myself more professionally. If my chief or city council or one of my citizens ask me about this, I shall have to apologize for my actions. I already have apologized to the arrestee, just before I took him to jail, as a matter of fact. Apologizing for unprofessionalism doesn't excuse it, but it's the second step* in beginning to make it a little better.

_ _ _ _

Friend Gay Cynic passed on this little video of a Canton, OH police officer losing his mind over what he perceived as a late notification by a concealed carry license holder during the traffic stop.

I haven't watched the whole video, because I got to 9:08 before I couldn't listen to any more.** This isn't a "days off" offense. This is a "pack your stuff, and move on" offense. I would actually consult with the city attorney to consider charges against the officer for terroristic threats made against the driver. As a street cop, I'm disgusted at this.



______________________________
*Everyone knows the first step, right?
**Okay, I've listened to a bit more. It gets worse.

Another life lesson, learned at work.

"Sometimes, You Just Need To Know When To Give Up On A Case."

Important lessons like this are learned, when cleaning out your desk and file cabinet in preparation to move to a new office.

The argument goes on in my head: "Let it go."
"But if I could just find that other witness, we could..."
"That case is from 2008, Matt. Let it go."
"Maybe I should hold onto this tape for a bit longer...?"
"That case was adjudicated in 2010. Let it go."
"This training information would be useful..."
"...If you had a time machine, and needed to know about legislative updates for the session ending in 2009. Let it go."

The blank tape supply got a much-needed influx of newly-wiped tapes, and the shredder needed emptying twice, and the trash bin is overflowing with dead trees that gave the ultimate sacrifice sometime early in W's second term. And so it goes.

Raising my voice.

The other night, I found myself raising my voice at every call that I went to. Not good.

First shake out of the box, we had a domestic disturbance which turned out to be a felony assault. When the mother-in-law (whose house the couple was staying at) entered the room where I was interviewing the victim at the critical moment where the reluctant victim was beginning to give me the most important information, I ordered her to leave. I was firm, but not yelling. When she protested that it was her house (it absolutely was, but I was standing in the single room that was a felony crime scene), I yelled at her. She left. I didn't like doing that, but I liked the prospect of losing a statement from a timid victim in front of her mother-in-law even worse.

Next, I went to a fight in progress. One man, intoxicated, had a bloody nose. The other man had fled the party. The victim's wife was fainting. Her friends and family insisted on keeping her on her feet, walking about over a tile floor. (Why do they do that?) When I invited the staged medics in to check on the woman, the man stood in the doorway of the venue (not his house), and told us that there was no need for medics to look at her. I yelled at him, and told him to shut up. I probably should have been more gentle with that, but I don't like seeing people interfere with the medics on other adults' behalf.

A few minutes later, I saw the probable actor who had fled from the fight, running away. I gave chase. Like a ninja, he disappeared into the neck-high grass of a fallow hayfield. He wore black and ran like I had shot at him, when I yelled for him to stop. After a merry romp through the fields and local neighborhood, I cleared.

Awhile later, while on a traffic stop in the parking lot of a convenience store, a vehicle pulled up beside me in the parking lot. "My friend's been stabbed," the driver said. I went to his friend, now standing in front of the vehicle, (again, why was he standing?), and found that one of his lower jeans' legs was completely saturated with blood, despite a bandanna tourniquet above it. I almost had to wrestle him to the pavement to get his leg elevated. It was quite a stab wound, probably administered by the guy whom I had chased earlier. When he raised his boot, about a pint or so of dark venous blood poured out onto the pavement. At about this time, a deputy arrived as Dispatch warned me that the actor was probably on scene with me. We began to handcuff the occupants of the car to sort stuff out. The clerk from the convenience store came out yelling about something or other. I told her to go back in and not interfere. She stomped over and began to demand questions as the medics arrived, only to see the large amount of blood. She gasped heavily, and ran inside. After the medics had the man in the box, I checked what she wanted. She first asked me how she was supposed to clean that blood off the concrete. I said, "Use cold water," and began to walk back to my business. She began to argue, and I found myself explaining, again with raised voice, that if she interfered with my duties during a stop or a call again, that I would put her in handcuffs as well.

I wrote a couple of tickets and took my butt to the P.D. for paperwork. I had had enough yelling for the night.