The way things are.

How are things? The general consensus is: "Not great."

A quarter of the nation is unemployed, thanks to a novel virus causing international lockdowns for social distancing.

Large cities are powderkegs of "protesters" and police clashing.

Cultural wars are in full swing. We have strong evidence (hell, let's just say "confirmation") of outside influence by international online arsonists who are fomenting hate and discontent on social media.

The President says that he does not trust:
The news media.
Scientists and doctors.
Our nation's intelligence services.
Our nation's criminal justice system.

The Left is cast as being full-bore socialists who want to tear down free enterprise, and get rid of the police.
The Right is being portrayed as racist, war-mongering, radical conservative, gun-obsessed zealots who care nothing for the nation's environment.

Police are being portrayed as focused on killing or at least hurting people of color whenever they can get away with it, who totally would get away with it, if The Left let down their guard.

Every use of force by police is now suspect to the public eye, if there is not a long history of the actor being a dangerous criminal, and there is not beautiful video of the event, depicting the recipient of police force committing indisputably heinous crimes (i.e., not just against police) when the police step in and expertly execute maneuver which stops the crime.

Police are assumed to be part of an inherently racially unjust system.

Because of this, people have taken to the streets in demonstrations which have repeatedly become riots. People will en masse block highways, blocking other people, to "raise awareness" of their issue. (This, to me, is akin to punching out a random old woman to raise awareness about breast cancer.)

People are stressed.

Listen to me: 

WE WILL GET THROUGH THIS.  

We as police will adjust some of the things we can, and the public will have to understand what we cannot adjust.

A vaccine is coming, and the greatest nation on the planet will get back to work again.

The current dumbass President will leave office, and another dumbass President will assume the role.

Do not get worked up over what someone says over the Internet-- chances are, they're just some Russian 'bot trying to goad you into a position of rage, to contribute to our chaos.

I and my brothers and sisters in blue will continue to try. And dammit, we'll try to do better. We have to.

I am sorry for our collective Troubles, and I will take a drink when they are past. For now, the liquor cabinet remains shut, because we have work to do.

If you can, try to be understanding of that idiot neighbor of yours, and do something kind.
If you can, let that comment box with the flashing cursor in it go unfilled with furious text.
If you can, send a little olive branch to that person that you used to think well of, before finding that they were just a little over on the Other Side on some divisive issue or another.

Second-guessing.

There's nothing like reviewing a body camera, and a car camera, of footage of your use of force, to make you second-guess yourself.

I have had more than a few talks with another officer on scene about what we did, and what we maybe "should have done."

So tonight, when I watched the movie Sully on my computer, I was struck by the way we second-guess ourselves in life-or-death situations. This movie was about an airplane captain who saved 155 lives by making an emergency landing on the Hudson River, and how he then had to rehash the event over and over.

I thought about how my young subordinate officer had kicked himself for not having taken the shot on a man who had threatened him (and me) with a gun. I thought about how I may have made a mistake, also failing to shoot the armed man when he pointed his pistol at me.

I thought about how other officers, from other agencies, have told me that we had screwed up. How we had "been lucky." How we should have shot the guy.

And, watching the movie, seeing the depiction of Captain Sullenberger being second-guessed, I broke down crying.

I am so proud of my officer. I don't want to work with a man who doesn't second-guess himself on issues this important. My officer didn't shoot for all the right reasons. And it turned out fine.

I'm just so damned proud of him.

We did our jobs.

Work. Small Town Policing.

I haven't posted a lot, lately. I will admit to having been a bit busy.

While our PD is down a man, I've had to step up and work patrol as a shift supervisor, instead of doing my investigator gig.

Throughout the month of September and the beginning of October, I've been hit with pretty major Index Crimes. Small towns still have them, though not as much as bigger towns. Here's the problem: because we don't investigate them as often as the bigger cities, we're not as experienced at the investigations thereof. The good news is, that barring other cases landing at the same time, we have more time to focus on them.

In this case, we (A) lucked out, and (B) knocked it out of the park.

At the beginning of September, I had come in to the office on my day off (I find that I do that a lot, lately), and tended to some paperwork. I wore a polo with a badge and gun and ID displayed, and had on some decent cargo pants and athletic shoes on. On my way home, I made a traffic stop, and towed the vehicle. Toward the end of the stop, the on-duty patrolman was dispatched to a disturbance. Over the radio, he reported that it was actually a serial burglary in progress. I responded from my traffic stop, in time to meet a couple who exited their house, having fought with the burglar-turned-home-invader. They directed me in the direction the man had fled. I got lucky, and found him in a back yard, and coaxed him at carbine-point to lie on the ground. When my cover officer arrived and tried to cuff him, the burglar attacked him physically. Long gun in hand, I used appropriate force to prevent the man from getting to my officer's gun, or escape. The burglar was taken into custody with a pretty good bruise to his backside, and a couple of taser barb marks in his back. I worked the case.

Two weeks later, I was on duty, and responded to a disturbance. When I knocked on the door at the disturbance, the resident briefly pointed a gun at me, and later at the responding officer who covered me. He fired a round in the air. I set up a perimeter, and we eventually took him into custody. I got a warrant and we got the gun.

Last week, we had a commercial armed robbery. I was off that week, but I came in. My chief and I checked a neighborhood outside of our town, and located the suspect vehicle. I got a warrant for it, and canvased the neighborhood, and we met the robber that evening. I took the robber's confession, and we recovered the gun used.

Our cases are rock-solid, and we're going to get good convictions on all of them.

Now I'm back on duty after a week "off."

And I'm nearly done with the paperwork.

We aren't playing the music just to hear the applause of others.

Domestic disturbance. A teen boy put hands on his mother. I arrived, along with a couple of other cops from our shift, because it was shift change, and I was the swing shift supervisor.

I found the shrugging mother, who was unhurt and refused to give a statement or press charges,  and the almost-unhinged 17 year-old son, who was carrying his stuff downstairs to put into his pickup. The mother told him that he could not take the pickup. He protested profanely that he made the payments of said pickup. I informed him that the pickup, and his possessions, until he was 18, were under her control. I told him to sit down.

He stood stock still for a minute, and then sat down reluctantly at the tall kitchen table.  I sat down, too. I've found over the years that both of us sitting down seems to bring a chance of calmness, even though it destroys any tactical superiority that I might have. Well, there were some other cops there, too. I asked the kid to take a breath. He was shaking. I told him to try to calm down. His jaw was clenched. He was furious. He asked if he could leave.  I told him that he could, but not with the pickup that his mother had decreed was not to leave. He walked out.

I spoke with his mother for a bit. She was at her wit's end. I told her to keep her chin up, and asked a few more questions about the event, which really was pretty much a non-police matter.

I walked out, and found my fellow officers talking to the boy on the sidewalk. He looked a little lost and somewhat petulant. His clothes and boots were in his arms, and we was going to carry them... where?  It was 104 degrees out. One of our officers, who was past her shift's end, offered to give him a ride to his father's house, in the next town over. It was a kind offer, typical of her, but also a savvy way to clear the call. I had 6 hours left in my shift, and asked the boy if he had eaten anything. He had not. I offered to buy him a Coke and a hamburger. He responded, barely in control of himself, that he did not wish to have anything to do with me, at all. It was clear that he was furious at me, which I didn't understand.

One of my officers, who is junior in rank to me, walked me away from it. "You told him to 'calm down,' Matt. You know that doesn't work. You told me that!" He wasn't wrong. The other officer, whom the boy was responding well to, gave the boy a ride home. I tried to figure out how I knew this kid.

Wait. Context!
For some reason, I hadn't focused on his name, and I had never actually been to this house before this. I had only met him once, at the high school, when I had interviewed him. I had worked for a month on his case about 8 months before, when his out-of-town girlfriend had accused him of raping her. I had worked hard on that case, and over weeks of investigation with witnesses and phone reviews and site visits had proved up that he had NOT raped the girl who had made an outcry. If the initial officer's report had been a little stronger, I would have charged his accuser with perjury, in fact. I had obtained an affidavit of non-prosecution from the "victim," and had cleared his name entirely, and labeled the case report "Unfounded."  I just had not associated that boy with this boy-- one and the same.

I was befuddled. Why was this kid focused on me as a thorn in his side? I had busted my butt to save him. The answer, of course, is that for 4 weeks, I had interviewed, and investigated, and collected evidence, and put off his mother's anxious calls for updates... and he thought that I had been gunning for him. In his mind, I had come after him with everything that I had, and missed. I thought back to my interview of the accused, which had taken place in a conference room at the high school. It had been more of an interrogation than an interview, to be honest. But it had given me some leads that I pursued to prove that the accusations against him were groundless.

In the end, do I want to be appreciated by the people that I serve? I think that's pretty natural to want. But honestly, there is NOTHING that I would have done differently about the rape case, because I arrived at the truth. In this case, I would have skipped telling him to "calm down."

Sex crimes

People ask me how I like my new job as an investigator. I tell them that the hours are nice, but I had no idea how much of my life would be spent sitting at a desk, going through pictures of phalli.

We live in a very, very different world than we did, 30 years ago.
When I was in my teens, I did not have a device in my possession which could pull up websites capable of meeting people around the globe, chatting with them anonymously in real time, and letting us take pictures and video of our genitals to send to each other. So there were not 13 year old girls getting extorted by foreign creeps who had talked them out of their clothes as well as their identities and social media accounts. There were not men posing as boys, meeting girls online. There were not men posing as fathers of pre-teen girls, soliciting sex from other women with their alleged daughters online. There were not men meeting up online with confused girls who had [literally] infantile fantasies.

We live in a very, very similar world to what we've had forever.
We have teachers having sex with students. We have brothers molesting their sisters, and making them cover it up. We have juvenile rape. We have adult drunken rape. We have buyer's remorse "rapes," in which the victim decides later to call the sex rape. We have enticing of minors. We have family members groping other family members in their sleep. We have teen boys stealing women's underwear.

Honestly? I'm thankful for the residential burglary and the identity theft cases that I've got to break of the monotony.

One of the common themes that I've seen has been repression of sex by the victim's family. In the last year, I've caught one and a half (just helped on one) cases involving a young woman from a sexually repressive family, declaring that she was raped when her family found out that she was having sex. I had a case in which the child's parents had chided the victim as a toddler for being immodest because she took her shirt off around the house, which seems to have contributed to the child not making an outcry for years of her brother molesting her. I've had a retraction of a victim's outcry, when her grandmother told her that she was going to ruin the family.

I'd frankly like to get back to putting other kinds of bad guys and gals in jail.
Please.

Things get better.

My elder daughter has moved home, after evaluating her financial situation. She didn't flounder; just just saw that she wasn't actually saving any money to pay for college. At the rate she was going, she would be forced to borrow money next year. She cleaned out her room, found her roommates a new renter for the room who was acceptable, and took back her old room in my house. And it's splendid having her home. She pays us a bit of rent, too. And she cooks and messes up dishes which I wash, because that's' part of the deal we made. And we drink coffee, and have her extremely conservative boyfriend over for dinner, and have lively political discussions with respect and love.

Seriously-- I'm happy.

My younger daughter is engaged in competitive colorguard, and practices hard with the band, and is tanned and muscled, from long days for half the summer flipping wooden practice rifles, and spinning flags. She's in the choir, in a band of her making, and in the Art Club at high school, while taking every honors class that is offered to her. She's happy.


My wife and I took a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where we observed the total eclipse on 8/21/2017 in North Carolina, then drove to Kentucky to Mammoth Cave National Park and to Land Between The Lakes, before heading to Arkansas to go to Hot Springs National Park. We stayed in our "new" 15 year-old Coleman pop-up camper. We took pictures of elk and bear and flowers and hand-hewn cabins. It was fun. My wife and I were happy.
I came back and decompressed for a couple of days before starting my new job at work; I'm now the first detective that we've employed at our little PD.

Mama bear and two of three cubs that we saw with her. Zoom in to embiggen.

The night before coming back on, my boss texted me that we would start by hitting the range together; he'd bought a new gun. (Sig P220 Legionaire.) As I hadn't qualified with my personally-owned Glock 31 (Gen 3) as a main duty gun, I went ahead and brought it to qualify with, as well. There are few nicer things than shooting Other People's Ammo, on the clock, and for a good purpose. He shot more accurately, but my times were very fast.

Today, I was buried in new cases. Financial, Juveniles, sensitive nature cases. Animal cruelty. CPS cases. Follow-up on felony DWIs, and drug cases.

I'm happy.

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.

Shotguns: Let it. Go.

For my entire police career, I've been fielding Remington Model 870 shotguns. I know how to operate them, and have by choice gone hunting with them, to great success. I'm moderately okay with them on the trap and skeet ranges. I respect the 870, and have chosen it over other pump shotguns in the past.

Can we get over the pump shotgun, for police patrol work? Or at least create a double-action pump gun, in which the first shot is pumped, and the rest are semi-auto?

The last time that I pulled out a pump shotgun on a guy, I found myself broadcasting orders to the (himself shotgun-armed) actor over my patrol car's public address system, while pointing my temporarily-single-shot shotgun at the actor and speaking into the microphone in my hand.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: The day of the pump shotgun in patrol should be over.

There are ample quality semi-auto shotguns out there.

Responding to a comment from an old post.

I just got a reader comment about a post that I had written over two years ago, in which I was asked,

"Why is your off duty course different from your duty course of fire?

Wednesday, October 12, 2016 12:25:00 AM

The answer I gave was: "A worthy question. Frankly, we want our officers armed while off-duty, but we don't want them inserting themselves into every hazard which they might come across. By policy, if they carry off-duty, they are are to carry concealed. For that, and for convenience's sake, off-duty guns are typically much lighter and more compact than duty guns. They are frankly harder to shoot well. An Airweight Chief 1 7/8" barrel five-shot revolver just isn't as easy to hit with, as a full-sized Glock with good sights is. Our duty qualification far exceeds the state-mandated qualification minimums, includes multiple timed reloads, and shooting on the move. (In fact, 24% of our shots are fired while moving, at 10 yards.) Our off-duty qualification, however, meets the state mandate." For the past couple of years, we've considered differentiating between "Off-duty" and "Backup Gun" qualifications, but have decided not to. However, if an officer wants to wear a gun that he's qualified with for off-duty, but wants to wear it in uniform (say, for an off-duty gig, or if it is approved for carry on duty), he must shoot the full duty qualification course with it, from his proposed duty rig. The question may be posed: "Why aren't you holding your off-duty shooting to the same standard as you hold your on-duty shooting?" The answer is that, usually, the off-duty officer is not going to have the same duty to intervene as he would when on-duty. The off-duty officer is carrying, first and foremost, to defend himself and his family in the face of retaliation. Some of us will carry bigger guns (which are easier to shoot) during the cooler months, and then switch to lighter, smaller guns during the summer months. The fact of the matter is, we need to adjust our response to an off-duty deadly force encounter to meet what we are equipped and prepared to work with.

The opportunity

I was on patrol, and saw a little car pull through the parking lot of the convenience store to avoid the stop sign. I shrugged, and pulled it over at the next intersection. The driver dutifully pulled off the state farm highway, and onto a residential surface street. I approached from the driver's side, and introduced myself and explained why the driver had been stopped. He began to contest it, but I told him that I would need his driver's license and insurance. He handed over the insurance right away. Huh-- that's what most people have to look for. I asked him for a driver license. He hemmed and hawed a bit, and I asked him if he possessed one. With his palms up, he admitted that his was under suspension.

"Go ahead and step out, Jerry," I told him, as I stepped back from his door.

I could see it dawning on him: I had never asked his name, and he had never given it during this interaction. Yet I knew who he was.

I could hardly mistake those prison tats, and his scars and marks. I had been a jailer who had hated him, once.

"Hate" is a strong word. I don't use it a lot. But I had felt that emotion for this man, whom I had served many a breakfast in his solitary cell. Jerry couldn't be with other inmates, because he stirred up too much trouble. Maybe that was just the way he liked it, and something that he had figured out in the 22 prior stints that he had done at our jail. Jerry was an equal-opportunity criminal, who, in addition to dealing drugs, seemed to be working his way through the index crimes, though he hadn't yet committed murder, to my knowledge. Bored and in a cell all day, George would figure ways to screw with the jailers. Noisy arguments, spreading rumors to other cells (they could talk to each other), false reports about other inmates, false written complaints about jailers-- he did it all and more. And he had focused on being a particular ass to me.

I will tell you that I never retaliated. Not once. Not after having to explain away BS complaints about me (thank GAWD for CCTV and stored video) by Jerry. Not after having been made late going home to write him up (at my sergeant's direction) for starting another disturbance.

So, when I came across him on this traffic stop, I thought, "Huh. This feels like one of those tests which we sometimes have to give ourselves."

I decided not to arrest him for his suspended license. I issued him a citation for Failure To Present Driver License. I did not impound his vehicle. I asked him about drugs in the car, which he denied having. He offered to let me search his car, and I did. He then shook my hand, thanked me, and drove away.

I thought: man, there was your opportunity for a little payback. John Van Maanen might have been a bit disappointed with me; I had not kept "The Asshole" in check.

At some points, though, you just have to let a thing go, and I guess that I had. I'm a little embarrassed that it even occurred to me to turn the screws on old Jerry, just because of how he had been.

A note for "helpful" people.

When you see the police officer on a traffic stop in your neighborhood, yelling to him, and getting his attention, and asking if "everything's all right"-- that's not actually helpful. If things WERE getting tense, you're not then a reassurance; you are a distraction.

Please don't do this, good citizen. Please.

Brady disclosure.

In 1963, the US Supreme Court ruled (quite correctly) in Brady v. Maryland that any and all evidence collected and/or held by the state in a prosecution is to be passed on to the defense. To fail to forward all of it to the defense would result in a lack of due process, which at the minimum would guarantee that the defendant's case would be dismissed. Over the years, this has come to some interesting ends. For one thing-- if an officer investigating a criminal case takes 32 photographs of the exact same thing, but only 1 of the pictures is in focus, all 32 still must be included in the case file turned over to the defense.  The thought is that the first or the 31st picture might well have contained a shred of evidence which would have led toward the defendant's case.

For a prosecutor to possess information which could be exculpatory and not turn it over is not only grounds for dismissal of a case, it is grounds for civil, administrative, and even criminal sanction against the prosecutor himself.

This led to Brady Lists.

Occasionally, there are times when what the state's witness on the stand testifies to and what the prosecutor knows to be true don't line up. Maybe the witness was in error. Maybe the prosecutor's grasp of the facts were in error. Maybe a document which the prosecutor briefed himself with was in error. Or, sometimes, the witness just lied. When the prosecutor knows that a witness doesn't tell the truth on the stand, he cannot in good conscience put that officer on the stand again. Over the years, it became a practice for district attorneys to draw up forms which they had their Assistant D.A.'s fill out about questionable police witnesses. If an officer's name was on the Brady List at a DA's office, then the DA would either look for another officer with knowledge of the case to testify, or would dismiss the case. Presumably, they would also consider turning over their knowledge of the officer's alleged misdeed to the defense, if they had to go forth with the case.  But it didn't happen, because those lists were kept secret for a long while.

Until recently. Dallas County's list was just published, and Tarrant County just sent out disclosures about their lists to a bunch of defendants.

So it was that, a couple of weeks ago, my chief sent me a text:

"See the local paper's article [about the existence of Brady lists in our county DA's office]. Let me know if you think I should contact the DA office." 

I immediately replied: 

"Yes. You should. If we have an officer on staff whom our DA has deemed untrustworthy enough not to back, you need to know about it. Even as uncomfortable a topic as that is to contemplate."  

I went on to assure him that I doubted that we had anything to worry about.

I promptly forgot about the conversation until Friday, when the chief called me in and asked me with a stony face whether I had been worried about what the DA would say. I told him, quite honestly, that I hadn't been. I know that I rely on the other men in my department, and I know who they are, and know that they would not fudge the truth, even when it damns them. I would bet my life on it.

He smiled and told me that none of our officers in our small (less than 10 man) department was on the list, and that ours was one of the only departments in the county without a person on the list. I smiled with pride at the first part, but was a bit saddened and a little shocked by the second part of that sentence.

I have heard that some of these lists got combined with grading lists on whether the officer was a good testifier (Did he speak clearly, did he stumble over words, did he seem unsure of himself or frightened of the courtroom? Did he wear an inappropriate tie?), and thus it could turn out that an officer on such a list might have made only the error of being a shy person with bad taste in tropical neck apparel. I don't know if that is true or not. I do know that these lists are made and added to by young prosecutors who don't have to prove up their case. While some police unions and advocacy groups have questioned them, however, they have been upheld by courts. Getting one's name on such a list, ironically enough, brings up the whole question of due process again (which is how the whole Brady issue got started.). So, the best thing for an officer to do is to avoid all appearances of impropriety, and state only that which is known, and never, ever, EVER try to "wing it."

Okay, I'll admit that I'm a little bit proud of my department. But I'm not going to break my arm patting ourselves on the back about it.

Old tools

Way back in the day (30 or 40 years back), my Dad made up a transport belt. It wasn't much-- it was just a large leather belt with a large brass ring tacked on with a strip of leatherr and two rivets. He kept it all through his years as an investigator. While clearing out a storage unit of his recently, I saw it and asked if I could have it, since he's retired now. The other day, I put a large prisoner into it before putting him into my car. It's simple: you just buckle buckle behind him, with the belt passed through the brass ring in front. Then the handcuffs are passed through the brass ring, and his hands are cuffed in front. It's very safe, but FAR more comfortable to the prisoner. I am a fan of not hurting my prisoners.

A few days ago, I had a low-risk warrant to serve on my day off. I put on some blue jeans and a department polo shirt and an ID card, and put my pistol on my hip. I reached into my sock drawer, and got Dad's old sheep's leather 'cuff carrier from his days as an investigator, and put my cuffs into it, and looped it over my belt. It all went swimmingly, and the guy got booked in, in no time flat, without pain or injury. 

Dad's old leather is still working. 

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.

Work Stuff.

--I got called in on my day off. A woman had been threatened by her boyfriend. I took the report. During the time that I got her statement, I learned from the victim that he had struck her in the face, breaking her nose months ago. She had hidden it from her family and friends, and stayed with him. Her late previous boyfriend had also beat her up, and been convicted of it. It may not have helped my case, but I stopped in the middle of the interview to tell her:

"I don't care what you've done in your life which makes you think that you don't deserve better-- you deserve not to be victimized. You should have the expectation not to be struck by someone who says that he cares about you. It would appear that you don't think that you're worth that, but I assure, you are worth that. Your children deserve not to grow up believing that this is normal. It's not normal, and you must rear them to not put up with it. The only way that they will take that to heart is to see you not put up with it." 

She was crying at this point. Well, it was a thought worth crying over.

--I got a warrant for a search of a house. The actor was a violent felon, who had guns and was part of a drug distribution ring. Because we didn't want anyone hurt, we used a nearby SWAT team. Yes, I could have been part of the warrant service, but I don't train on this every day, and they do. I made clear that I did NOT want a no-knock warrant. (Per my philosophy on this issue.) They knocked, announced, and then used a distraction device to the back of the house before hitting the door. They weren't home. We seized some evidence, and left a list of what we seized. Our felon absconded, with a felony warrant in his wake, which is really as good as if he had been home. Better, even: he's gone away. Let him run.

--I learned of a warrant extant for a violent man who had stopped in our town at a local convenience store. He was a former member of one outlaw biker gang, and was a prospect for another. This second OBG is a much larger one, and was one which made threats against my father and his family, back in the '70s when I was a kid. (I wasn't permitted to ride my bike on the street until I was about 11. You know how much that sucked, in a country community without sidewalks?)  I found the guy, and verified his warrant, and arrested him and found some contraband on his person when I did so. I impounded his motorcycle, which belonged to the club. One of the clubmembers was present when I went about this, and I had to address him in a sharp tone. I have been told that I have inspired the ire of the club. Oh well.

--I have been trying to make peace between two families in town for years. They have squabbled, and I have listened to both sides. Neither can see the other's point of view. I have reached out to both sides, asking for understanding. Finally, one of the sides came to us and said that they would be willing to come to our peace talks. So, my chief and I are going to moderate some kind of neighborhood arbitration. We'll see how this goes. I'll admit that while I know what I want, I'm not sure that I'm skilled at getting us there. This is new to me. But if we can pull this off, we will have stopped a feud which has plagued the lives of people in two households for more than half a decade.

--I have trained up two rookies in the past 6 months. On the last day of Field Training Officer preceptor-ship, I told both of them a variation of this short speech:

"I was part of your hiring process. I know you, warts and all. I have ridden with you by my side for weeks and weeks, often in the middle of the night. I trust you. I trust you so much, that I am willing to let you be responsible for my family's safety. You won't have me looking over your shoulder to tell you what to do, anymore. That can sometimes make it hard to do the right thing. I'm probably badly paraphrasing C.S. Lewis when I say, 'Ethics is doing the right thing when there is no one there to see you do it.'  Your integrity is the most valuable thing that you own, and it may be sold, only once, and very cheaply. Guard it with your life." 

--One of the most valuable pieces of paper hanging up in our P.D. is a Post-It note which my chief put up a couple of years ago which says: "Don't be afraid to be somebody." It is hanging on the monitor of one of my co-workers' computers. I'm thinking of matting it and framing it.

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.

When It's Time To Gracefully Withdraw From Driving

Maryville P.D. had to clean up an ugly situation, caused by an elderly person who momentarily got confused, and struck 9 cars. Somehow, no one was hurt. The video's pretty impressive. 

Every year or two, I end up bringing a confused old man or woman into a meeting with his or her family, and we have a conversation about the eventual necessities of maturation. I have a talk that I've created, in which I reference how, when I was 11, I had to come to grips with the fact that I had to wear glasses. At  35, I realized that I couldn't run like I could when I was 25. As I advance into my 40s, I'm realizing that I'm soon going to need reading glasses.  Many people need canes as they get older, because falling could cause them to break a hip, or worse.  This is about accepting stages in life. Usually they will have similar experiences, and I encourage them to tell me about them.

My interactive talk is usually planned at 10 minutes, but tends to run more like an hour. Often there are tears from those involved. (Not from me. Not while in uniform.)

I get the elderly driver to turn over his or her keys, and promise not to drive again, unless cleared by a doctor.

I then inform the Texas Department of Public Safety Driver Improvement and Compliance Bureau that we need a Medical Advisory Board for this person, and I detail and include copies of call sheets for the calls for service which brought me to this conclusion. I have found elderly people lost and unable to find their way home in a town which they grew up in. I have found people with their foot on the accelerator as they chugged their car forward into another car, unable to figure out why their brake wasn't working. I have found people that had no idea that they were driving on a flat tire, having hit a bridge abutment and sideswiped another car. There is a point where a confused driver looks a LOT like an impaired driver. They can be very dangerous. And I have to be the instrument of the state which starts the process of taking this driver out from behind the wheel.

But here's the thing-- ANYONE can request this.
Just as anyone can call in a reckless driver, anyone can request that a person with medical impairment or simple old age be examined. Texans can fill out and mail in this form. If you have an elderly driver that you're worried about, here's further information from Texas Department Of Transportation.

Other states will have similar provisions, if you look.
Sometimes it takes a family member or loved one to put it all together. If Great Aunt Myrtle has had fender benders and senior moments in Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, the local constabulary probably won't have clued to it. But you know it.

Time to utilize one of the most powerful tools that a citizen has in managing the government: the Open Records Request. Get copies of the incident reports and/or crash reports involving Aunt Myrtle, and compile them into a time line, which you send to the licensing bureau, pleading for them to gently relieve Aunt Myrtle of her license. If they're like me, they won't tell her who sent them. Let the government folk be the heavies. Oftentimes, seniors won't listen to family begging them to stop driving, but they will abide by the licensing authorities's decision.

Remember, you're not taking away their driving-- you're helping to save them, and other people, from a dangerous situation. 

This and that: February 9, 2015.

--I worked an off-duty job last week, and am expecting a little bit of mad money from it. I'm going to buy me a Canon Rebel body, and then go lens shopping. It's embarrassing that I don't have any kind of DSLR, with my family.

--I took the helm for a week as the OIC of my P.D, while the chief was out of town. Nothing happened.

--I went to a Traffic Incident Management school for a couple of days, put on by the North Texas Council Of Governments. The instructors were great, and passionate about what they were teaching. They were fervent in teaching that, if you want to contribute to the safety of first responders and the public at large, you MUST clear the roadway quickly. Statistically, for every minute that a traffic incident continues, there is a 1 to 1.5% chance of a secondary event occurring. That's astounding. They had plenty of evidence to back it up, and were proponents of taking a quick picture of the crash, and using push-bumpers and-or chains to clear disabled vehicles out of lanes so that traffic could get moving again. The instructor said, "My dream is to see push bumpers put onto fire engines. I may retire the day that I see that happen."

Firefighters like to block off extra lanes for the safety of the first responders. The doctrine that these guys were trying to push was to get the firefighters on board with clearing the lanes, in the name of preserving the safety of the motorists upstream of them. I get that.

-- I've been working out again, trying to bring back the physical gains that I had made before the holidays. That left rotator cuff is telling me that I'm stuck at the amount of weight that I'll be benching for awhile, but I'm making nice gains on the eliptical machine, and on the abdominal curl machine. I'm trying to get my wind up, and strengthen my core. Everything else is gravy. Well, losing some more weight would be nice.

--Spending time on the eliptical machine got a LOT better, once I realized that I could use the little Galaxy tablet that my mother gave me for Christmas to watch Archer episodes on, with my Bluetooth headphones on. I, uh, had to turn it off in a hurry the other day when my Bluetooth wireless connection failed and the speaker began blaring the unfortunately blue dialogue at Missus Grundy, trudging away on the machine next to me.

-I taught my 12 year-old daughter the painless-until-resistance-is-encountered come-along hold we call "the Gooseneck." It's mostly used for escorting drunks away from a location. I should make sure that my 16 year-old is good with it, too. Lots and lots of times, just getting a belligerent drunk out of a confrontation will deescalate a tense situation into nothing.

-The Open Carry Movement guys in Texas have a very, VERY vocal minority who are frankly assholes. These asses will ruin it not only for the open carry proponents, but also for regular 2nd Amendment people. The most common method of the OCM activists is to carry (legally) long guns in public places in a prominent manner. It's one thing to carry a gun, and it's another thing to carry a gun at someone, as lots of these guys are doing. The nice thing about the Concealed Handgun License in Texas has been that the guy who wasn't being an idjit, and was following the law in keeping their gun concealed, was going to prevent a lot of foolishness in other ways. More on this, later; it deserves its own post.

--I called my best friend (a small business owner) and asked his advice on starting a small business. Two hours' later, we were kind of at an impasse.

--I refinanced the house, with cash back.  Just because you have cash sitting in the bank doesn't mean that you're wealthy. Not. At. All.

--When we refinanced, they made me sign my "signature" about 75 times throughout the hundreds of papers worth of documents. I say "signature" because the rep from the title company insisted that I had to write in script my first, middle, and last name each time. Who does that?!? I then had to sign a sworn affidavit that this was my "normal and true signature," and give and exemplar above the signing. I wrote for the exemplar my NORMAL signature. The lady with the title company pursed her lips and said that might not work, "because they're all supposed to be the same." I made clear that if I were swearing to the validity of the statement, I would see that it was true, and the only way to do that was to actually sign my actual normal signature on the exemplar line. I pointed out that her own signature below her notary stamp only included her first initial and last name. She countered that it was okay, because she had a letter from her attorney saying that this WAS her normal and true signature. I laughed and said that her attorney held no power to grant such status. But I signed the rest of the documents the way she wanted me to, to keep the title company (and my now-irritated wife, also present) happy.

--They had fresh Otis Spunkmeyer cookies on a plate in the middle of the table in the signing room of the title company. I thought that was odd. The lady from the title company urged us to take them, but we declined, as my wife and I are both on a low-carb diet. We finally took them home to our children.

--I've got to make a site plan for the new fence and deck that I'm putting up. Not one in five homeowners in my city gets a permit to do such work, but I'm getting one, because our municipal ordinance calls for one.

--I want a new backup holster for a J-frame, to put on my body armor. This is easier done when I wear the body armor under my uniform shirt than when I wear it in the external carrier. But I'd like to do it either way. Suggestions? I'm reevaluating.

--I'm also getting the itch for a new subcompact auto. I've been considering a Kahr PM9, or a Glock 42. I will say, though, for being a quality little carry gun, that PM9's magazine protruding from the butt by an 8th of an inch irritates me. Not flush, yet not obviously intentionally protruding. Ugh.

--Brian Williams' claims should not blow over. He has one job: tell the news. When he was on the trip in which he claimed to have his chopper hit by an RPG, he was covering a story. When he tells of what happened on that trip incorrectly, he is changing the story. This is a journalistic ethics issue.

--I contacted Tamara for help yesterday, to see if she had another outlook at a problem that I have: I've got a stolen gun report in which the victim DID write down the serial numbers and caliber and make of the guns, but not the model. Sadly, several common gun manufacturers (not Ruger, thank goodness) re-use serial numbers. So when I get "S&W .38, S/N XXXXXX," I can't put it into TCIC/NCIC, absent the model. I had several like this, which I can't put into the system. If the guy had a Model 36 stolen, which shares a serial number with a Model 10 and a Model 42, I cannot in good conscience enter the serial numbers as stolen, and risk the innocent possessors of the other uninvolved firearms being held as a suspect for Theft Of A Firearm (a felony, no less.). Tam tried to help me, but we just couldn't do anything. It's a shame-- the owner didn't remember much about the guns, and a thief may well get away.

--My favorite practice for logging guns is this: Take your driver license out, put it next to the gun, and photograph it in strong light next to the overall gun. Then put it next to the serial number, and take a closeup picture. Email the photos back to yourself along with a description of the gun, the caliber, the value, and SN and model, along with where you got it. Save the email in the cloud, to be found later.

--My Dad is en route to my house right now, so that I can take him to lunch. Then he'll proctor me to make me do a couple more modules of my EMT training.

--I reward myself after a module by watching an episode of Archer. I reward myself while working out by watching the show, too.

Warrants: how you serve them. (For the cops out there.)

I'm a garden-variety cop. My phone number is not zero, and I'm not a Billy Badass. I believe that I am competent at my job, though, and one aspect of that job is case development and evidence-gathering. Another is making arrests of those whom I have proven had sufficient probable cause to be taken to jail. If the event was on-view, I arrest them then and there. If I put the P.C. together after the fact, I get a warrant, and go arrest them later. 


I list here the steps to getting a warrant, because it seems like there are those who don't follow them, sometimes, and they make the news. Maybe we need to publish a primer, or something. So here's mine:


The first step in getting a warrant is to soundboard your plan against a competent cop. Sometimes this is your boss. Sometimes it's a peer with another agency. But explain what you're trying to do, and what evidence you have, and ask him or her to review your plan to check it for blind spots or subjective assumptions.  This is not just about being a professional-- it's about being fair to the suspect and to the system. Sometimes an investigator will miss a glaring reason why either:
1) The charge is incorrect or less appropriate than another charge,
2) The suspect is exempt from the charge due to statute or case law
3) The investigator needs to recuse himself from further investigation due to a conflict of interest.
4) Reason X, which hasn't been thought of yet.
Lots of cops don't do this, because they don't want to look like they're not capable of handling it by themselves. I used to be like that. Trust me: the seasoned cop soundboards, and does a better job because of it.


A second step (which is not necessary in my jurisdiction but which is a very good idea) is to run your proposed action by the local assistant District Attorney. He or she can often give advice about the procedure which is helpful (after all, they're the ones you're asking to prosecute the case in court). Just as importantly, though, you're getting a D.A. to sign off on your case, and take ownership of the case. This definitely helps.


A third step, in the service of a Search Warrant or Search And Arrest Warrant on a property is to go get photographs of exactly what you plan to search. Is it the shed behind 101 Main St? Get a few digital photos of it. Attach them to your Probable Cause Affidavit for your search warrant. Describe the property carefully in the first paragraph of the Warrant Affidavit.


Go take the affidavit and the warrant (You should have a generic warrant form on your thumb drive and on an office computer. Don't have one? Get one, right now. Save it. Make it editable. Don't wait until you need it; that's too late. Ask your D.A.) to the judge or magistrate. Swear to it, and get the warrant. Attach the photographs to it.  Make a copy of the warrant for the property owner/manager/tenant.


SERVE THE WARRANT YOURSELF.
I'm not saying "serve it all by yourself." But you will physically be there. Even if you need to assemble a team of 20 snake-eating Professional Operators (tm) to help you, you will be present when that warrant is served. You will brief everyone helping you on what to expect, and what you're trying to accomplish.  "They got the wrong address" is not an acceptable excuse. In such an instance, you, the investigator obtaining the warrant, have personally failed.


You will see that everyone on the warrant service team is attired in an easily-recognizable police uniform. Warrant service is not the time to go Office Casual. This is the time for badges displayed, patches displayed, and large patches with the name of your agency presented prominently. You will all carry police identification as well, which you will gladly present if at all possible to do so safely. Every officer present on the warrant service team will be identified, and their role given, on the call for service or incident report.


You will make contact in a courteous, professional manner with the homeowner or resident or manager, and state your business. You will present them with a copy of the judge's order to search the specified property. You will then make clear that you are going to follow that order at that time. While there is a clear imperative, here, this does not have to be an adversarial dialogue. Be respectful to that citizen; you work for him or her.

Document how you go about this. Roll video, with audio. I like car video, backed up by body cameras.


Secure the scene. Be courteous but direct. Screaming "Get On The Ground" and pointing weapons at people who happen to be there is not courteous. Don't point weapons at people just because you're serving a warrant and they're present. You need to be able to articulate why they were a threat before you point a weapon at someone.  I'm serious about this.


As I've written before, don't serve No-Knock Warrants unless there's a hostage present.


Leave a list of what you took as a receipt for the resident or manager. Have a scribe keep the list during the search, and photograph what you took and what the condition of it was.


Get out.


Send a return to the judge or magistrate, showing that the warrant was served, and what you seized.




Lots of cops say, "that's above my pay grade." "That's for the detectives." "That's just the way I was shown how, and we don't have time for that." 


Fellow peace officers, a search warrant is a very specific exception to rights held by our citizens. Take it seriously. Do it right. Even if you don't do them, know HOW to do them. If learning how is too much trouble, then go find other work, please. We've got this.


Let us be professionals.

"If I knew then what I know now." 2014 in review.

"On the last day of Pompeii
Thought I heard some poor boy say:
'Oh wow man if I knew then what I know now
I would've done more been more than I been
Had fun more sinned more mortal sin
Oh wow
If I knew then what I know now
I would've sent back that steak that was so overdone
Grabbed that big break while there was time time time
Made my life into a fantasy
Hot stuff for me to remember remember
And now that I'm a goner
All that lava rushin' 'round the corner
Oh wow-- I ain't complainin'-- only thinkin out loud...'"

Trout Fishing In America sang it best, but I can't find y'all a link to their performance of Michael Smith's great song about living for the moment. ;

Comes now the end of 2014, and we have lists of what came and what went.

We lost more and more of our Greatest Generation, and we lost some more of our innocence.

This year, our nation went from 18 states with legal same-sex marriage, to 35 who legally accept it.

This year, we saw more distrust of police than I've ever seen in my life, even while there is more oversight than there has ever been. When I got into patrol, we were just beginning to put patrol cameras into patrol cars, and soon after, made it required. I just saw a proposal for bills for the 2015 Texas legislative session, including two requiring that departments equip officers with body cameras, and apply for grant funding if they couldn't afford it. I reckon that we'll see body cameras on every uniformed officer within 3 years. And here's a prediction: I predict that we will see weapon-mounted cameras become standard within 10 years for police. Maybe even sooner. I predict some kind of automatic proximity switch will turn on the camera when the duty pistol is drawn from the duty holster.  Something to invest in, because they're coming.

This year, I had reinforced again that facts really take a back seat to emotions when people have an agenda to push. The Ferguson riots started with a rally cry of "Hands up! Don't shoot!" In fact, it turns out this was based upon a false premise. I had people tell me that, regardless of the facts in that shooting, the disparity in races in nationwide shootings throughout history give one reason to believe in racism on the part of the officer shooter. Think about that for a moment: the individual incident no longer matters: it's the perception of a trend that matters. Meanwhile, we cannot use criminal history of an individual as evidence of his most recent crime.

This year, we saw quadcopter drones with high-definition digital cameras really take off, literally and figuratively. This will have repercussions that we haven't even realized, yet. Heck, I've been pricing them myself, even. I had an 8 year old go missing at a park near a large field with a creek in it the other day, and was thinking, as I toned out the Volunteer Fire Department, how nice it would be to conduct a quick fly-over with a drone to find the kid. (Fortunately, a cold rain began to fall, which told me (when he didn't show up) that he was likely not outdoors. We searched nearby houses, and found that he'd made a new friend that he'd neglected to tell his mom about.) They can be run off of tablets with WiFi boosters, and you can get into one for well under $500 if you don't need high end and already have a tablet.   I can see hunters scouting their area with these. Home defense? Get one with an IR camera. Police work, good and bad? Sure. Fire suppression. Crop evaluation. Roof inspections. I think of those guys who inspect radio towers. This would be the greatest thing since sliced bread.

This year, we saw NetFlix, originally just a streaming service for movies and syndicated television shows, be taken seriously as another network, turning out its own produced shows of high quality that had Emmy expectations. My wife bought a couple of dozen shares of NetFlix a few years ago, and sold it for a nice profit a couple of years ago. Man, we wish we had held on to that, now!

Shoulda held on to some of that.

This year, we saw the economy of China become the largest in the world, and some people tried to make hay over that. Really? They've been the largest country (by population) all of my life. It's hardly surprising that they would have a bigger economy. Now, let's see what they do with it. We still have the biggest market and most revenues. Frankly, I'd like to see China be more careful with its environmental issues; we're downstream of them. 

On a personal note: 

This year, I saw my elder daughter learn to drive. She's not bad. I saw my younger daughter turn 12, and overtake both her mother and her elder sister (16) in height. I saw my elder daughter take the stage in a musical, and knock it out of the park singing in front of a full auditorium, the same semester that she had started choir. Then she started dating. (He's a fine boy. No, seriously.)

This year, I took my elder daughter to get two ear operations, and took my wife to have a gall bladder removed and have heavy sinus surgery. All of this, BTW, was since October. Given that we've never had any kind of operations in my little nuclear family before (we're a healthy lot), it's been nerve-racking. 

This year, we re-roofed our house and put gutters on it, and set up a cash-back refinance that will end up going through next week, with which we're buying a nice used Tacoma pickup. 

I lost a few pounds, this year, and then this holidays gained 15 pounds right back. 

Work:

This year, I trained a guy the way I wanted him trained. I sat on a couple of review boards, and did some background checks. I put some bad guys (real ones) in jail, and saw more than one find prison time. I also helped a few decent people who had made some technical errors in judgement get right with the law. I also helped a few people that just needed help. But I also got some people mad at me, and I just hope that I was doing the right thing when I did. 

I have seen evidence that I have the respect of my boss, whom I respect. I've gotten phone calls this year from officers calling me for advice when I was off-duty, and I will tell you that there is no greater compliment. 

2015 comes now, and I don't know what it brings me. But I hope it brings us collectively more peace.