Last year, my meek mild-mannered mumsy office manager was pulled over by an angry small-town cop in breach of her Fourth Amendment rights. The state lost in court because the officer’s artful narrative and the usual faked-up-after-the-fact incident report did not match the dashcam footage. Three years ago, I was pulled over by an unmarked vehicle in Vermont and (to put it mildly) erroneously ticketed. In court, I was withering about the department’s policy of no dashcams for unmarked cars, and traffic cops driving around pretending to be James Bond but without the super-secret spy camera. The judge loathed me (as judges tend to), but I won that case. In 2014, when a police cruiser doesn’t have a camera, it’s a conscious choice. And it should be regarded as such.
And, if we have to have federal subsidy programs for municipal police departments, we should scrap the one that gives them the second-hand military hardware from Tikrit and Kandahar and replace it with one that ensures every patrol car has a camera.
Category Archives: Crime
Peggy Noonan: The Crisis on the Border – WSJ
Meanwhile some in the conservative press call the president incapable, unable to handle the situation. But he is not so stupid he doesn’t know this is a crisis. He knows his poll numbers are going to go even lower next month because of it. He scrambled Wednesday to hold a news conference to control a little of the damage, but said nothing new.
There is every sign he let the crisis on the border build to put heat on Republicans and make them pass his idea of good immigration reform. It would be “comprehensive,” meaning huge, impenetrable and probably full of mischief. His base wants it. It would no doubt benefit the Democratic Party in the long term.
The little children in great danger, holding hands, staring blankly ahead, are pawns in a larger game. That game is run by adults. How cold do you have to be to use children in this way?
Via Guns Save Lives: Why I Carry: Georgia Man Beheaded, Wife Feared Abducted
While most of the crime stories I report here are defensive gun uses, sometimes we need to point out crimes that didn’t result in a defensive gun use as a reminder to why we carry.
In this case an elderly man, Russell Dermond, in Georgia was beheaded inside his own home and it is thought that his wife, Shirley Dermond was abducted.
The Dermonds lived on a lake front property and authorities say that it is possible the suspect entered the property from the lake.
Russel Dermond’s head has still not been located.
Based on evidence at the scene, police do not currently believe Shirley Dermond is a suspect and believe she was most likely abducted.
via [Video] Why I Carry: Georgia Man Beheaded, Wife Feared Abducted.
Female inmates sterilized in California prisons without approval – Health and Medicine – The Sacramento Bee
"As soon as he found out that I had five kids, he suggested that I look into getting it done. The closer I got to my due date, the more he talked about it," said Christina Cordero, 34, who spent two years in prison for auto theft. "He made me feel like a bad mother if I didn’t do it."
Cordero, released in 2008 and now living in Upland, agreed to the procedure. "Today," she said, "I wish I would have never had it done."
The allegations echo those made nearly a half-century ago, when forced sterilizations of prisoners, the mentally ill and the poor were commonplace in California. State lawmakers officially banned such practices in 1979.
HuffPo – What Cop T-Shirts Tell Us About Police Culture
Within the more militarized units of police departments, the imagery can be even stronger. Former San Jose, California police chief Joseph McNamara told National Journal in 2000 that he was alarmed when he attended a SWAT team conference the previous year and saw “officers . . . wearing these very disturbing shirts. On the front, there were pictures of SWAT officers dressed in dark uniforms, wearing helmets, and holding submachine guns. Below was written: ‘We don’t do drive-by shootings.’ On the back, there was a picture of a demolished house. Below was written: ‘We stop.’” In his 1999 ethnography on police culture, criminologist Peter Kraska writes that one SWAT team member he spent time with “wore a T-shirt that carried a picture of a burning city with gunship helicopters flying overhead and the caption Operation Ghetto Storm.”
14-year-old at the center of “NRA T-Shirt Controversy” now facin – WTRF 7 News Sports Weather – Wheeling Steubenville
A rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe – The Washington Post
They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails.
via A rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe – The Washington Post.
7-year-old faces felony charges for BB gun incident | CharlotteObserver.com
A 7-year-old boy’s alleged errant shots with a BB gun will have him in a Catawba County courtroom this week, facing felony charges for shooting into an occupied vehicle.
Prosecutors in Catawba County have charged Sam Grant, in connection with a February incident off Buffalo Shoals Road near the Catawba community in the southeast part of the county.
Deputies say Sam, who turns 8 on Thursday, was outdoors shooting a BB gun. His parents told WGHP-TV of High Point that their son was shooting at an abandoned house across the two-lane road. However, some of his shots struck passing vehicles. Nobody in the two vehicles was injured, deputies say.
The boy was charged with two felony counts of discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle.
Family members told WGHP they were shocked with prosecutors’ decision to charge their son. His initial court date is Friday in Newton.
via 7-year-old faces felony charges for BB gun incident | CharlotteObserver.com.
Sex Abuse Scandals Rock the BBC | Via Meadia
I’ve said it before – you could probably take just the LA School District and have more sex scandals than the entire Catholic Church over the same time period.
It’s almost enough to make a person think that when a society casts sexual restraint and self control to the winds, the young and the weak become victims of a culture of exploitation and gratification. It’s almost enough to make someone wonder if unbridled and socially glorified libertinism rather than celibacy is the leading cause of the sexual exploitation of minors.
But no… Thoughts like that are much too depressing. That train of thought leads to the dismal conclusion that some sort of, well, original sin has twisted human nature so that terrible things happen in all our institutions, however modern and freethinking they are. Let’s stop that kind of thinking as quickly as possible; it’s much more comfortable to think that good resolutions, lots of police, and a healthy attitude toward recreational sex will make everything right. Eventually.
Lupica: Morbid find suggests murder-obsessed gunman Adam Lanza plotted Newtown, Conn.’s Sandy Hook massacre for years – NY Daily News
I don’t believe video games are the problem, or at least not the main problem. I think it’s the emphasis on self-promotion and the awful narcissism of our age that is the issue, without even mentioning mental illness, a broken home, and a mother who provided access to guns but not to help.
“They don’t believe this was just a spreadsheet. They believe it was a score sheet,” he continued. “This was the work of a video gamer, and that it was his intent to put his own name at the very top of that list. They believe that he picked an elementary school because he felt it was a point of least resistance, where he could rack up the greatest number of kills. That’s what (the Connecticut police) believe.”
The man paused and said, “They believe that (Lanza) believed that it was the way to pick up the easiest points. It’s why he didn’t want to be killed by law enforcement. In the code of a gamer, even a deranged gamer like this little bastard, if somebody else kills you, they get your points. They believe that’s why he killed himself.