Showing posts with label police. Show all posts
Showing posts with label police. Show all posts

Saturday, June 14, 2014

The NRA's "Open Carry" Movement Doesn't Work in Civilization

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President Obama has been in office for six years and in all that time he has never implemented the dreaded "Gun Grab" that rightwing nutjobs obsess about. In spite of all the school shootings and mass public shootings, people have more guns than ever, and Congress is owned by the Gun Lobby so they do NOTHING about it. And the school shootings continue.

Last Week President Obama once again spoke out on the issue in an interview with Tumblr, trying to get through to Congress that something must be done:



Full Transcript on WhiteHouse.Gov

I have to say that people often ask me how has it been being President, and what am I proudest of and what are my biggest disappointments. And I’ve got two and a half years left. My biggest frustration so far is the fact that this society has not been willing to take some basic steps to keep guns out of the hands of people who can do just unbelievable damage.

We’re the only developed country on Earth where this happens. And it happens now once a week. And it’s a one-day story. There’s no place else like this. A couple of decades ago, Australia had a mass shooting similar to Columbine or Newtown. And Australia just said, well, that's it -- we’re not seeing that again. And basically imposed very severe, tough gun laws. And they haven’t had a mass shooting since.



Our levels of gun violence are off the charts. There’s no advanced, developed country on Earth that would put up with this. Now, we have a different tradition. We have a Second Amendment. We have historically respected gun rights. I respect gun rights. But the idea that, for example, we couldn’t even get a background check bill in to make sure that if you’re going to buy a weapon you have to actually go through a fairly rigorous process so that we know who you are, so you can't just walk up to a store and buy a semiautomatic weapon -- it makes no sense.

And I don't know if anybody saw the brief press conference from the father of the young man who had been killed at Santa Barbara. And as a father myself, I just could not understand the pain he must be going through and just the primal scream that he gave out -- why aren’t we doing something about this?

And I will tell you, I have been in Washington for a while now and most things don’t surprise me. The fact that 20 six-year-olds were gunned down in the most violent fashion possible and this town couldn’t do anything about it was stunning to me. And so the question then becomes what can we do about it. The only thing that is going to change is public opinion. If public opinion does not demand change in Congress, it will not change.

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I’ve initiated over 20 executive actions to try to tighten up some of the rules in the laws, but the bottom line is, is that we don’t have enough tools right now to really make as big of a dent as we need to.

And most members of Congress -- and I have to say, to some degree, this is bipartisan -- are terrified of the NRA.
. . . The last thing I’ll say: A lot of people will say that, well, this is a mental health problem, it’s not a gun problem. The United States does not have a monopoly on crazy people. (Laughter.) It’s not the only country that has psychosis. And yet, we kill each other in these mass shootings at rates that are exponentially higher than anyplace else. Well, what’s the difference? The difference is, is that these guys can stack up a bunch of ammunition in their houses and that’s sort of par for the course.

So the country has to do some soul searching about this. This is becoming the norm, and we take it for granted in ways that, as a parent, are terrifying to me. And I am prepared to work with anybody, including responsible sportsmen and gun owners, to craft some solutions. But right now, it’s not even possible to get even the mildest restrictions through Congress, and we should be ashamed of that.



The President is telling the truth. If he wanted to confiscate weapons he would do that, but the reality is that anyone can buy a gun any day of the week. It is easy in America. You can buy guns at Gun Shows and Swap Meets. You can buy them at sporting goods stores. You can buy them online. You can buy guns at Walmart. You can buy guns at Target down the aisle from the diapers and baby food.

And now gun nuts want to parade around with loaded guns in the restaurants and stores! And far-right conservative state legislatures have helped them with their Old West Fantasy by passing "Guns Everywhere" laws.

But what about the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for those who don't want to see guns, especially while they are eating or shopping? Why do we have to live in a world where everyone is armed to the teeth?

Well, the NRA says "good guys" should be armed to stop the "bad guys" with guns. But as we often see, even trained policemen are shot, as they were recently in Las Vegas - shot in the head while eating lunch at a Cici's Pizza. And a person with a concealed weapon who tried to stop the shooters was shot dead by the the same two sociopaths.

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Fallen Las Vegas Officers
Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo

The man who shot the cops, Jerad Miller, was a convicted felon who wasn't supposed to have guns, but he asked his friends and family for guns on Facebook. Then he bragged about going to Bundy Ranch where he paraded around with an assault rifle. In fact, he was told to leave Bundy ranch BECAUSE he was a felon! His wife legally bought the guns they used in the attack, but she gave them to her husband, which is a crime. These two thugs weren't patriots, but criminals who wanted to "Start the Revolution." They bragged to all the neighbors what they were going to do, but either no one believed them, or were too intimidated to call 911.

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More About Jerad and Amanda Miller:
Snark Amendment: Vegas Shooting
Inspired by Alex Jones and Bundy Ranch

A small faction of our populace has an obsession with guns and perceived glory as they fight against the very government that has held this country together for 250 years. Why do they want another Civil War? Why are they so hell-bent on everyone being just as bloodthirsty as they are? How can we possibly know when a person with a gun walks towards us in a store or restaurant whether they are a "good guy" just proud of the 2nd Amendment or a horrible monster who want's to mow us down to make a point?

A friend of one of the dead policemen wrote this essay:

Killing Cops Doesn't Make You a Revolutionary
Two wackos walked into a fast food restaurant, ambushed my friend Alyn and his partner, Igor Soldo, shooting them point blank as they ate their lunch. They then turned and yelled something about it being the “start of the revolution”, killed one other person and then themselves.

These two idiots didn’t start a revolution. They just ripped the life from two heroes as they ate. They took fathers from their children. They brought darkness into the lives of those who loved these two men. They traumatized people who witnessed the tragedy, probably for the rest of their lives. They left a horrific scene for dozens of police workers to have to process emotionally and mentally. And the greatest irony of this infuriating act of horrific stupidity and delusion is that if they were truly acting out of some kind of perverse revolutionary intent, they only hurt their own cause — whatever that is.



. . . These weren’t policy makers. They weren’t “Obama’s henchmen.” They weren’t hired drones of the “evil Koch Brothers.” These were two of the good guys.

. . . If you’re frustrated with government, if you’re worried about the republic, if you’re convinced black helicopters are watching you in the night, if you think Obama is a reptile alien sent to destroy the human race, or whatever is under your skin, do us all a favor: start a blog, write a book, go to a protest, join a cause, call a senator, call a talk show, run for office, do what people in a free society do, not what people in the Lord of the Flies would. And if you just can’t restrain yourself from going on a murderous rampage followed by your own cowardly suicide, do the rest of us a favor and do it in reverse order.
Shooting a cop doesn’t make you a revolutionary. It just makes things worse…for everyone.





















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Saturday, April 20, 2013

Captured! Boston Bombing Suspect Discovered in Watertown, Massachusetts

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Previous Posts:
Manhunt in Massachusetts
Praying for Boston and the Victims After the Marathon Bombing
On Snark Amendment:
Twitterstorm Over Media Chaos in Boston, Then FBI Smackdown
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Timeline of the Manhunt via NBC News

From NBC News
Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was under heavy guard in serious condition Saturday morning -- at the same hospital where victims of Monday's bombing are still recovering.
Federal investigators were waiting to question Tsarnaev, 19, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Chechen origin, hoping to uncover a motive for horrendous attacks that bookended a week of terror.

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. . . A door-to-door manhunt had just ended when a Watertown resident noticed blood on the tarp covering a boat in his backyard, peeked under and found the suspect, a relative told TODAY.

After a tense standoff punctuated by several bursts of gunfire, police grabbed the accused bomber, unleashing a celebration that had people cheering "USA! USA!" and dancing in the streets outside Fenway Park.

"CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won," the Boston Police Department tweeted minutes later.














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Friday, April 19, 2013

Manhunt in Massachusetts

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From USA Today
Authorities are focusing their hunt on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, the brother of the dead suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26. The Boston Globe reports that police fear Dzhokhar is wearing an explosive vest.

A federal law enforcement official said authorities have not yet searched the Cambridge, Mass., residence where the brothers were living, in part because of concern that it may hold explosives or be booby-trapped.

During the pursuit of the overnight and early-morning pursuit of the suspects, the official said authorities recovered a handful of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), including one in the possession of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. All of the devices appeared to be homemade "fused'' explosives.

Investigators have not found any formal links so far to an international terror group.

The Tsarnaevs are believed to have moved to the USA from war-torn Chechnya in 2003, along with other family members. Tamerlan was studying engineering at Bunker Hill Community College in nearby Charlestown.

From New York Times
At 5:45 a.m, Gov. Deval Patrick suspended service on all public transit services in the M.B.T.A. system in Boston. Vehicle traffic was also suspended in and out of Watertown, the Boston police said. The authorities asked all residents of the towns of Watertown, Newton, Waltham, Allston-Brighton and Cambridge to stay home and stay indoors. “This situation is grave, we are here to protect public safety,” said Col. Tim Alben of the Massachusetts State Police.

The authorities also said people in Belmont, near Watertown, should also stay at home.

“We believe these are the same individuals that were responsible for the bombing on Monday at the Boston Marathon. We believe that they’re responsible for the death of an M.I.T. police officer and the shooting of an M.B.T.A. officer,” said Col. Tim Albens of the Massachusetts State Police.

. . . In Watertown, helicopters circled overhead as just about every stripe of law enforcement canvassed the community of about 32,000.

The police scanner buzzed with activity, but at the area where media representatives were cordoned off, on the edge of town, the authorities declined to comment on what might be happening within the lockdown area.

The situation was so fraught that CNN decided to show images from Watertown only on a tape delay.


























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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Chris Dorner Stand-Off in Big Bear Causes More Than One Death

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I watched hours of live video streaming from a local CBS station in California yesterday as police engaged in a firefight and stand-off with Chris Dorner, a revenge cop-killer who has been on a rampage threatening to shoot anyone who ever wronged him.

Dorner's Complete Manifesto PDF via LA Times

From USA Today
Investigators were picking through the rubble of a burned-out cabin in California's San Bernardino Mountains on Wednesday, trying to piece together details of the violent last stand for a fugitive former Los Angeles police officer whose life apparently ended hours earlier in a barrage of bullets and blazing fire.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office said charred human remains were found in the rubble where Christopher Dorner is said to have been cornered Tuesday. "We have reason to believe that it is him," sheriff's spokeswoman Cynthia Bachman said.

A wallet with a California driver's license bearing the name Christopher Dorner also was found . . .

. . . Los Angeles Police Department Cmdr. Andrew Smith said it was "highly likely" that Dorner had been inside when authorities heard a single gunshot and saw the cabin burning in Seven Oaks, a small community in the San Bernardino Mountains, about 90 miles east of Los Angeles.

But Smith said that until Dorner's body is positively identified "or he's in shackles," the LAPD is continuing under "tactical alert ... as if he's still out there." Police will continue to protect dozens of officers and others threatened in Dorner's online manifesto.

SWAT teams had fired tear gas inside of the cabin as part of a "tactical operation" and were tearing down its walls to flush out Dorner, who had reportedly been driven back inside by police when he tried to flee out the back.

Police have not explained what started the fire in the cabin. Officers had thrown tear gas canisters into the cabin and shouted to Dorner to surrender.

Prior to the fire, Dorner's vehicle had been found burned out over the mountain from the cabin. He then took two women in another cabin hostage and stole their car, wrecked that and stole a truck from a man. When wildlife and game officials stopped Dorner, he fled into the woods, ending up at the cabin where the firefight occurred.







Reporters got dangerously close to the violence yesterday while bullets were flying and two wildlfe and game officers were shot. One later died, while the other is in critical condition. Before dark smoke began to rise from the cabin, and as of today, the body has been identified as Chris Dorner. But I'm sure the story isn't over. There will always been those who think Dorner got away, or at the best think it was wrong to burn up the cabin if he was in there alive.





More background on Dorner:



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Saturday, December 1, 2012

Law Links ~ SCOTUS: Filming the Cops, Gay Marriage, Facebook Copyright, Jindal and School Vouchers

Justice77

I'm starting a new weekly feature called "Law Links" to alert readers to legal actions here and around the world. This has always been an interest of mine, and even more-so now that my daughter is a new attorney who just passed the Bar Exam and is in court every day.

SCOTUSBlog Gears Up for Supreme Court Rulings Next Week
Editor's Note: On Tuesday, December 4, we expect one or more opinions at 10 a.m. We will be live blogging.
On Friday, the Court has granted two new cases, Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. v. Bartlett (12-142) and Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. (12-398 ). The Court did not act on the same-sex marriage cases. Additional orders are expected Monday at 9:30.

Bloomberg: A Free Market Fix for the Copyright Racket
Even as digital technology has made reproducing, remixing and repurposing creative works easier -- with potentially enormous benefits for consumers and producers of new works -- the monopoly privileges of copyright have expanded. The result is a bizarre combination of rampant copyright violations, frequent encroachment on legitimate fair use, suppression of new technologies and business models, and the ever-present threat of draconian penalties.

Ars Technica: Supreme Court Backs 7th Circuit Over Filming Police
The United States Supreme Court rejected a request from a Chicago-area prosecutor to review a recent ruling that the First Amendment protects a right to record the actions of police officers as they perform their public duties.
. . . The Supreme Court's decision to let the Seventh Circuit's ruling stand is a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which spearheaded the case. The ACLU's chapter in Massachusetts also had success vindicating a First Amendment right to record the actions of public officials. The First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled police violated the rights of a Boston man when they arrested him for using his cell phone to record the arrest of a suspect. In March, the city agreed to pay $170,000 to settle his civil rights lawsuit.

Louisiana Judge Rules Against Bobby Jindal's School Voucher Program
The Associated Press said that (Judge) Kelley’s 39-page ruling concluded that the voucher program violates provisions in the state constitution regarding the Minimum Foundation Program, or MFP, which determines how public schools are funded. “The MFP … was never meant to be diverted to private educational providers,” Kelley’s ruling said.
What Jindal’s team has been doing is implementing a voucher program, potentially the country’s largest, as a result of a new law that in part allows the state to offer vouchers to more than half of its students, or some 450,000 students. About 10,000 have applied, with most of the slots given to Christian schools, some of which didn’t really have the resources to handle the influx. They also use curriculum that promotes Young Earth Creationism, the belief that Earth is no older than 10,000 years old — and that human beings lived alongside dinosaurs — despite definitive scientific consensus that it is billions of years old.

Wired: Magical Copyright Hoax Debunked by Facebook
A silly copyright notice is sweeping Facebook . . . with users attaching pseudo-legalese to their status updates in a misguided effort to prevent Facebook from owning or commercially exploiting their content. The notice incorrectly implies that Facebook has recently changed the copyright provisions of its user agreement. It then unnecessarily asserts a user’s copyright over his Facebook posts (you retain such copyright without posting a notice) and cites the “Berner Convention,” an irrelevant international treaty properly spelled “Berne Convention.” The notice then instructs Facebook to get written permission to make commercial use of the user’s content, which is pointless as Facebook users agree to let the social network make money off their posts when they sign up for the service.
Popular hoax-debunking site Snopes addressed this copyright notice in the spring and updated their refutation today. Also, Facebook has taken the further step of putting out a statement of its own:
There is a rumor circulating that Facebook is making a change related to ownership of users’ information or the content they post to the site. This is false. Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms. They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been.
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Friday, June 22, 2012

Zimmerman Reenactment of Trayvon Martin's Killing

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You can judge the videos below for yourselves, but in my opinion George freely admits that he continued to follow Trayvon Martin after he was told to stop by the dispatcher, even though he says it was to get the "address for the police." Okay, so he was, indeed, following Trayvon to see where he lived, else how would he get the address? It's all semantic and rationalized in George's mind because he is lying about his real intent, which was to "shoot a goon" or whatever. He had a gun in his pocket and was itching to use it on someone he saw as a threat.

There wouldn't have been any physical fight or tussle in the grass if Zimmerman hadn't pursued this boy, who was minding his own business. Aren't all children in this country taught by their parents and schools to fight back if someone attacks them? Come on . . .

New York Times Story:

A collection of audiotapes, a videotape and a signed statement by Mr. Zimmerman were released on Thursday by his legal team, allowing the public to hear for the first time Mr. Zimmerman’s words to the police over the course of several days of official interviews.

. . . the extended conversations between Mr. Zimmerman and the Sanford police also show that detectives, particularly the lead investigator, Chris Serino, raised questions about parts of Mr. Zimmerman’s version of events. The police expressed puzzlement over inconsistencies or hard-to-explain moments in his statements.

Why wasn’t Mr. Zimmerman’s head more profoundly injured from repeated slams to the pavement, Mr. Serino asked. Why did Mr. Martin have only one wound to his hand, he asked. Why did Mr. Zimmerman, who said he was too afraid to roll down his car window when Mr. Martin approached, then get out of the car to follow him, he asked.

And what provoked Mr. Martin’s anger?

“What if, in his mind’s eye, which I can’t get into because he has passed, he perceives you as a threat,” Mr. Serino said, drawing no answer from Mr. Zimmerman. “He perceived you as a threat; he has every right to defend himself, especially if you reach into your pocket to grab your cellphone.”



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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Zimmerman Makes Bail and Gets the Hell out of Florida (because there are scary people with guns who might decide to shoot him - how ironic is that?)




George Zimmerman, accused killer of Trayvon Martin, made bail and now he's probably fled the state of Florida. That's okay - stay alive, George. We want you to stand trial and let the truth of that night come out.
From the AP
Even though authorities can pinpoint Zimmerman's location with a GPS ankle bracelet, that he must wear round the clock, the public may not see him again for some time. Zimmerman has waived his appearance at his upcoming arraignment next month, so he can stay underground if he wants.
"He's doing well, he's very glad to be out, trying to get settled in, still worried about his safety, but, you know, talking to his family and feeling much better than being in" jail, Zimmerman's attorney, Mark O'Mara, said Monday night on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360.
O'Mara declined to say if Zimmerman was in Florida, only saying his client will travel to several locations for his safety.
Other News related to Trayvon Martin:
Florida Case File of George Zimmerman 

Chief Bill Lee Resigns from Sanford Police Dept
But . . .  
Sanford Commission Denies Police Chief's Resignation
Because he has two friends on the Commission who think he is a "hero." 
State Attorney Norm Wolfinger Not Seeking Re-Election He wants to "spend more time with the family" ~ which is public figure code for "I ruined my career by not charging a vigilante in the obvious and stupid murder of a teenage boy armed with iced tea and skittles."
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Sunday, April 1, 2012

George Zimmerman's Abuse of 911



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Here's a list of George Zimmerman's 911 Calls.  Daily Beast: The 46 Calls of George Zimmerman

Like Gladys Kravitz from the old Bewitched show, he was the eyes of his neighborhood, seeing danger in potholes, in kids playing, in people having parties or even just walking down the street. It's hard to tell just what he thought these people were doing, but there seems to be a pattern of profiling anyone with dark skin. I had some neighbors like these once, but thank God they only griped about kids and never took it upon themselves to run down and shoot one of them.

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