I Gotta Say, Today Was A Good Day

If you grew up when/where I did, that line reminds you of a song.

My Darling Wife went grocery shopping and filled the entire floor of Bad Robot with goods, came home, walked out of the freezing and into the heat, and said for me to get the groceries.  Ok, no problemmo!  I stepped outside and could TASTE that it was freezing out there.  As I was gathering the first armload of evil, hateful, landfill-filling single-use bags, I noticed an unhappy phenomenon:

A car was coming up my street, creeping one mile an hour on the far side of the road.  'Who the [deleted] is this, creepin' up?'  I said to myself.  No harm no foul, though, yet, so I kept gathering groceries as the car passed.  Inside to unload, outside to reload the next load of groceries on my arms, and they have stopped two houses down.  Uh-huh.

Inside, outside to get the next load again and they U-turn at the end of  the block.  I thought they were going to pull into a driveway, but they were just sitting there on the street, now on my side, now facing me.  Uh-huh.  I pulled my (concealed) pistol halfway out of its holster, so the grip was entirely exposed and ready to grab.  I prepared myself for a sudden rush of acceleration and a drive-by shooting in my general direction.  The thought of what motion I would need to make to fully draw my gun.  I considered the possibility of a carjacking as I had an obviously-newish car standing open and probably would have the keys handy.

Inside, outside to get the next load again and they are creeping down my side of the street now.  As they passed, I put the Captain's Chair in Bad Robot between my face and their windows, in case they felt like seeing me real up-close like.  They slowed in front of my driveway, then continued creeping.  They stopped in front of the house next door.  No further activity.  Drive-by less likely, jacking more likely.  Make this next trip to unload extra quick.

Inside, outside to get the next and final load.  They started creeping again, and stopped a few houses farther down the street.  Well, no threat to me, probably, anymore.  Aimed rifle fire still possible but seems less likely.  I went inside and grabbed my camera and superduperzoom lens and took up a position behind the truck in my driveway and started watching and shooting.  Blur.  Driver gets out and takes something from the trunk, can't see what. Solid 2.5 second exposure got a license plate and overall car shot, as they close the trunk.  Blur.  They walk to the door.  Thinking now about murder in the night, ears open for a door kicked in, gunshots, screams.  Blur.  Taking pictures in the dark: impossible.  No passing headlights to provide illumination on target.  20-second automatic exposure times, blech.

As I was trying to get another good shot of the car, I heard a woman's voice pleasantly thanking somebody and a man responding, wishing her a good night.

And here I was, ready to have a shootout.

Well, at least I'll be ready . . . God forbid!

We're Not On The Same Wavelength

~or~ Infrared Inspection of Homes from Helicopters is Not an Invasion of Privacy

We had a discussion about this at work, and it became clear just before I dropped the topic that we were arguing from differing first principles. If you disagree with the following statement, you will also disagree with the rest of this post.

It is good police work and a positive good per se for policemen not on active "hot" calls, to be out on patrol roaming around "looking for trouble."

Their windows should be down, in case they might hear fights, screaming, or gunshots. They should have their heads on a swivel, in case they might see something bad happening so that they can stop it happening. What a policeman can see, with his unaided senses, from a public place, he has both a duty and a right to observe. He SHOULD be looking AT your windows to see if you are murdering your husband inside your own home.

But some people take offense at the idea that police helicopters with infrared imaging systems can look through your house's roof from the air and see the one hot room or closet where you have your grow lights, growing your illegal (untaxed) marijuana farm. I respectfully disagree with those people.

A policeman walking down a neighborhood street on a regular beat is good police work. A policeman driving a Ford Police Interceptor down the street on a random patrol is good police work. If the city has enough of a population that they 'need' a helicopter, they also need to have FLIR on the plane, so they can find a suspect hiding under a kiddie swimming pool or in a dense thicket of bushes. Assuming the city is busy enough to keep the police helicopter flying, having the infrared camera switched on all the time, scanning your houses below, is good police work.

This is only a matter of degree. You screaming bloody murder emits radiation with a wavelength of a few hundred feet (audible -sound- energy). This energy is radiated from your home, through the walls and windows and roof a little, but through an open door very much. It is readily viewable and recordable from public spaces outside your house once it has been emitted.

You hitting your wife in the face emits radiation with a wavelength of maybe 400 to 800 nanometers, (visible -colors of light- energy). This energy is radiated from your home, through the windows very much but not as easily through the curtains, walls, or ceiling. It is readily viewable and recordable from public spaces outside your house once it has been emitted.

The grow light for your three cannabis sativa plants in the closet emits radiation with a wavelength of about 750 namometers to 1 millimeter (infrared -heat- energy). This energy is radiated from your home, passing fairly easily through walls and ceilings with no insulation, but not as easily through windows, especially windows with low-e glass. It is readily viewable and recordable from public spaces outside your house once it has been emitted.

No, you should not have to worry about perverts with thermal cameras spying on you and your wife making whoopee. No, in an ideal world, police would not 'need' helicopters with thermal imaging equipment. But your police have a helicopter with an infrared camera in the bottom of the nose of the aircraft.

If you do not want a foot patrolman hearing you scream, close the doors and windows. If you do not want a car patrol seeing your indoors activities, draw the curtains. If you do not want police to wonder why one room of your house is hotter than all the rest of the house, in a manner typical of a marijuana farm, insulate that room with aluminum foil.

In short: if you don't want a particular type of energy to be observed outside your house, it is on YOU to take steps to prevent observation. Police not only can but should observe your home from public places, both to check that you are okay and to see if you are breaking the law.

Yeah, No, I Still Wanna Be A Cop.

My Darling Wife is watching some movei where four police went to catch two Goblins. Involved were a crack ho walking out of an open door where two suspects were known to be hiding (problem) an attic search (nightmare) and a foot chase complete with the rookie getting lost because of not knowing the streets.

She said she's glad I decided not to do it. I told her I hadn't decided not to do it (but I did take the hint). But I still want in. Dangit. Well, I guess we'll see what happens.

One thing is for sure: the Police have few supporters as fast as me. If I had spare money and time, I'd spend it making their lives easier and/or safer if I could . . . but I don't.

Sunday Drivers

I saw enough moving violations and violations of good driving protocols to fill up a whole shift and go into overtime writing reports . . . and that was just on the way to Church and back. Who knows, maybe people are just being cautious because of the wet weather? You know, with high humidity & some clouds, you could go skidding off the road with no notice at all! Rain, of course, has no effect on braking ability so just drive normally.

Maybe the people are still sleepy, having just woken up from their naps in the pews?

Okay, So Maybe I CAN Take A Hint.

I want to be a COP. I've put in probably at least a man-week or two on paperwork, hours and hours and hours of physical training, and I hate both paperwork and PT. But I want the job, so . . . .

********
Two years ago I started getting a funny feeling. Less than a yearanahalf ago I went for a ride-along. Last fall I filled out the paperwork for applying to the local Metropolis' police academy. 50+ pages to fill out, with lots of chasing down obscure details about my own life. I went to turn in the application and they didn't want it at first. They had stopped allowing people to download the application a DAY after I downloaded mine. If I had not been really hot on the case they would have turned me away immediately; but I had filled it out in something like record time (2 weeks) and that showed motivation. They had 40% more applicants than they wanted so what would one more hurt? I was barely going to squeak in under the wire.

Then at work I did something I have done lots and lots of times. I jumped off a shelf to the floor. Not even from head height. All my little piggies but one got the message to pull up out of the dive, and I broke a toe. It's tough to take a physical readiness test with a broken toe. So I left my transcripts with the recruiters and waited.

This year came and a new academy class started without me. Then I caught wind that they were going to take applications again. I downloaded the new form and filled out 50+ pages again. The radio news said there was a line around the building on the first day of accepting applications. The recruiters said on the phone they were still taking applications, but to hurry. Instead of months like last year, they held the application period open for 14 days, and I got there on the last day. They barely took the application - but they did take it.

I make little enough money for someone with four children, but it (barely) pays the bills. The Police Academy is eight months long and it does NOT pay as much as my current job. My Darling Wife was supportive as we went through the books. It would cost us $3,000 for me to be a Cadet, and then an automatic raise would kick in and we would be okay again. That $3,000 was in the bank, and I could only be a Cadet because we had it to lose.

Then the garage door broke. And my car needed repairs. Okay, so we tighten the belt a little. Then the water softener went out. Tighter still on cash, but still on track for being okay to survive police academy's cadet pay. Then I turned up needing two root canal fillings and two crowns placed. Where's your $3,000 now, smart guy?

Last night at Church I was talking to a guy about what I might do "if the police thing doesn't work out."

That night, 59 days out from the admissions testing date, I got an e-mail from the recruiter saying if I didn't have a certain form already submitted, it needed to be submitted A.S.A.P. . . . and by the way, it usually takes 60 days to get this form back from Uncle. Somebody was supposed to let me know this form was necessary but it was the back-up email blast that let me know, and that was literally a day late. I began to think about the possibility of not making it into the police force. Up till then, I was thinking only of 1) getting in and starting a new career, or 2) getting in and not making it through to being hired on as a COP, and maybe going back to my current job.

False Dichotomy: (also called false dilemma, the either-or fallacy, fallacy of false choice, black and white thinking or the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses) a type of logical fallacy that involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are additional options.

Sometimes the owners of my company buy things I would not have bought. When confronted about these purchases, they will reply with "well you have to take what you can get, man!" but there has been a small sanity injection lately. After years of argument, it seems they are starting to realize that you don't have to take what you can get. You can also leave it where you found it and wait for a better deal.

I was on the way to work this morning and thinking about not necessarily having to take what you can get, and about the idea of this possibly not being the right timing for me to be a Metropolis Police Academy Cadet. I was also thinking about how our nice little money cushion was drying up pretty convincingly, and how if I REALLY pushed for it, I could still probably get in to the Academy. We could come up with the cash somehow.

I was merging from the surface streets onto the highway, and I went to roll up my driver's side window as I was thinking of all this . . . and the window would not roll up. I said a bad word, but it did not help the window go up. I got to work and opened up my door instead of clocking-in. Little pieces of drive belt fell out. I was thinking, "Hey, we have a drawer inside labeled 'BELTS BELTS BELTS' I wonder if . . . " and not one but TWO brand-new, never-used belts also fell out of the door panel.

I have been inside this door before. I do not recall seeing spare belts inside.

God doesn't send my phone TXT MSGS but it seems like this might be an awfully-close next best thing. I can NOT afford $300 or whatever to fix my window, but I can change a belt if I have a spare. I can NOT afford to lose $3,000 while I go through training anymore, either . . . and I think maybe I ought not to try. First a broken toe, then a broken wallet, and maybe I can stop at 2 hints before my house catches fire or something.

I see more ride-outs with the local PD in my future, but otherwise I'm not sure what to expect.

Getting Shot: YOU FIRST [deleted]!

Oh HELL NO! You pointing a gun at ME?

Before you watch the video or read the description, the following is the proper course of events when someone points a gun at a COP. For a non-COP, you can cut out the first four lines and skip straight to eliminating a deadly threat with deadly violence.

Goblin: ::points gun at COP::
COP: "PUT THE GUN DOWN!"
Goblin: "NO!"
COP: "PUT THE GUN DOWN OR IMMA SHOOT YOU IN 1 SECOND
Goblin: "FUCK YOU!"
COP's gun: BOO-YA!

This situation right here is a total fail. This [deleted] in front of the Sunbeam store has a gun. The COP shows up on scene and KNOWS he has a gun as we can tell because he calls it out on the video. The felon repeatedly refuses to drop the gun for a couple of MINUTES, pointing the gun at the COP most of that time. Then he goes around and takes cover AND takes aim behind a car, steadying the gun for a better shot? That's 200% past time for bullets to fly! Then BAM! Shot, hit, officer down. OTHER cops who were for some reason standing by take up their jobs again and shoot this [deleted] down on the sidewalk (with a few prominent misses, I'd hate to see what the store looked like inside!)

My (loud) commentary when the climax comes in the video below:
"SUNOVABICH! You couldnt see that comin?"

Here you are dialoggin for TWO MINUTES before YOU end up shot? And you SIR'd this [deleted]? You need to SHOOT this [deleted].



Hat tip: The Things Worth Believing In

FINALLY Austin Police Testing On-Officer Cameras

I hope they find them as useful as I think they will, and that the Austin Police Department ends up buying a camera to fit on every single officer in the field. SXSW as a testing venue was sheer genius. BZ to whoever thought that one up. Honorable mention goes to Chief Acevedo, who says he wants to hold off buying the cameras until they only cost a hand, vs. an arm and a leg, each.

If I am a Policeman acting in good faith, I want a camera to back me up when a defendant brings in a lawyer whose hourly rate is my weekly rate. If I am an innocent falsely accused, I want that COP rolling film constantly. If I am a drunk ass in a fight or a race hustler trying to put a protection racket together, not so much.

This is a positive good. Too bad it comes when Austin is totally out of money.

I Could Do This All Day

In Texas, if a COP is stopped on the side of the highway with his lights on in the lane next to yours, you have to either slow down 20MPH or move over to give him a clear lane by his car. In Texas, you can't have brake lights burned out on a car being driven on the public roads. Both of these will get you a ticket. Both of these tickets are SUPER EASY to avoid, but if you drive like you walk around the maul with your friends (in Condition White) then it's no wonder you did this today . . .

On the way to Church, driving down I-35, I saw blue lights on the side of the road and moved from lane #3 to lane #2. The joker in an older Taurus in front of us stayed in lane #3 and put a foot on the brake pedal. Not enough to actually slow the car, but just enough to show the world that they have a brake light out. When we passed by the policeman, I saw there was no other car stopped in front of the cruiser. The COP was probably finishing up his report on his last stop, heads down in his computer. IF the COP had been looking up, his next victim ticket just drove by, and it was an easy two-fer. I LOLd and explained it to my Darling Wife, and she LOLd too. The only thing that would have made it funnier is if they turned out to have 20lbs of weed in the trunk and admitted to it during the traffic stop.

If you just keep an eye on your car maintenance and move the heck over to give a COP some room, you'll be a couple hundred dollars less-poor when you avoid those tickets, people. This really is not that difficult.

"That's the Worst I've Ever Seen"

NP has apparently not seen what the Police do in other countries, but this is pretty bad.

The Chronicle reports there are seven Houston Policemen fired and four of them are up on charges . . . and Chad Holley needs to become a moderately-rich young man at the expense of the taxpayers of Houston. Holley was 15 years old at the time he did a robbery. This video shows him running from the COPs and being caught. He (of his own volition) stops running and lays down in total submission . . . and then the HPD proceeds to stomp him into the grass for a minute or two, even after he is well and truly in custody. Note the simultaneous TRIPLE-kick when the first few officers reach the prone and compliant suspect.

Officer Dave says: Hey Jim-Bob, cut out kickin' that boy! If a beat-down like this starts, it may just be time for one officer to be pepper-spraying another. This is totally disproportionate and inappropriate. Kudos to the Chief in Houston for taking swift action to discipline his errant officers.

********

Andrew Blomberg, Phil Bryan, Raad Hassan and Drew Ryser were fired after being indicted on misdemeanor Official Suppresion charges. Good.

Raad Hassan and Drew Ryser were also charged with violating the boy's civil rights. Dam' skippy!

John McClellan, Gaudencio Saucedo and Lewis Childress were fired without charges being filed. Good.

R.E. Abel III, K.W. Cockrill, M.J. Novak, R.J. Oppermann and I.M. Vaughn received two-day suspensions. Good.

********

In related news: that's a pretty nice security camera.

$2 Cash. No Taxes.

If there were an hypothetical situation wherein a person bought something from a retailer, and it were not in the vendor's inventory system, I am 100% fine with the customer slapping cold, hard cash on the vendor's barrel head.

That's against the law!

Okay, call the cops. Call the revenuers. Then, instead of straight $2 profit, we have two options:

Option 1) The company spends 15 minutes of employee time putting the item in inventory, generating an invoice, and recording the sale, and the state gets $0.17. The employee makes $15/hour so 15 minutes of time to register the transaction costs the company $3.78 for a $2 sale. It would be better for the company (financially) to GIVE the customer a $2 item than to register a transaction that must be manually entered.

Option 2) The company Regulatory Girl contacts the police. A dispatcher ($30/hr) spends 3 minutes ($1.50 from the State) entering the call. A patrol officer ($30/hr) responds and spends 45 minutes on the call and filling out reports ($22.5 from the State). The vendor now has to spend 6 hours dealing with the ticket ($90 from the vendor) and pay a $10 fine PLUS paying the $0.17 (with interest) in taxes they (the scofflaws!) INTENTIONALLY FAILED to pay on the transaction. Now between the State and the vendor there is a net WASTE of $120 from the economy

. . . over a $2 transaction.

********

Officer Dave says: "Who reported this? Seriously? You called the Police to report a $0.17 failure to pay sales taxes? You, ma'am, are a tool. My report will indicate a total lack of proof that this "crime" ever happened, and if you keep talking I might lay charges against you for filing a false report. Never do this again."

. . . Then the company loses $30 in man-hours as the employees all make fun of the whole affair instead of being productive . . .

Police Shoot Another Dog. Good.

A fuss is being made. A family says it is like losing their child. Here's VFD's off-the-cuff take on the latest COP-shoots-dog story being reported on the radio news:

Family has labrador retriever off-leash in the front yard, with an electric fence to restrain the dog.

No signs announce the presence of the fence.

Said dog has the habit of barking and charging when anyone comes around

A warrant needed to be served. This is a duty of the Police and a requirement for a stable society.

The person to be served no longer lived there, but the COP didn't know that.

COP approaches, and is charged by a bigass barking dog.

BANG

Family is on charges for having the dog off-leash

Family is all upset that their like-a-child-who-has-an-electronic-restraint dog is now dead

Officer Dave says: if your bigass barking dog is charging at me, and I don't see any restraint on it (leash, chain, etc) then your dog is about to be a bigass dead dog. Sorry. Oh, and here's a warrant for your arrest, which is why I came around in the first place.

If it's a little yip-dog, I might consider OC spray instead, but a big dog is a mindless killing machine until proved otherwise. It's up to responsible dog owners to restrain their dogs out of the house.

Come on VFD, a mindless killing machine? A frikken LAB?!

If you have a strong stomach, click this here. Much like a person with a knife, a dog can inflict up to and including deadly wounds on as little as zero notice. As in the case of a person with a knife, an officer is under no obligation to suffer bodily harm himself before eliminating an imminent threat to his own or someone else's well-being. Nobody told him the dog was going to stop short, roll over on his back, and wag his tail. If you've got over 40lbs of this coming at you, it's a deadly threat, regardless of how the dog's master or the local residents feel about the matter after the fact. Based on what I know at the moment, this was a Good Shoot.

********

I'm a certified dog lover. I don't recall a time when my family didn't have at least one dog, from six to a hundred and six pounds. I have dogs. LB has and loves dogs also, but when I told him about this story, he said that sometimes a COP has to send 'em back to Hell. NP is convinced he could fight off a dog. He admitted to never having play-rassled (let alone actually fought) with a dog, but that was obvious when he started talking about fighting one off. You can't fight off a full grown dog, and you shouldn't be expected to try, if one appears to be attacking and you've got a little friend handy.

6 Georgia Firefighters Reprimanded, 1 Fired For Jackassery. Good.

NP's reaction when I told him about this story was "I would sue. I'm not normally one to go straight for the lawsuit but . . . " and then some profanity ensued.

There was a car crash in Georgia. No big deal, it happens all the time, right?

It was a big deal for one lady, who suffered massive injuries in the wreck. She later died from her injuries.

One of the responding firefighters took a video of the suffering woman as she lay broken and dying.

That right there is where Officer Dave would step in and make the fireman delete the video.

Things being as they are, the video was saved and circulated within, then without the fire department; then it got out into the wild.

Eventually the video made its way onto the computer screen of the parents of the deceased.

Read that last sentence again.

A half-dozen firefighters who probably all should have done what Officer Dave would have done are being officially reprimanded. This one is going on their permanent record. This is a bare minimum of the acceptable response from Spalding County. That they intend to fire the [deleted] who filmed the video is proper, but it takes a little while sometimes to fire firemen, and he has already retained a lawyer to fight to keep his job. This fireman should be left out in the cold by his union (if any) and I hope he pays lawyer fees through the nose and loses his job anyway.

The jerk.

You See Officer, What Had Happened Was That, Uh . . .

Maybe I need to be a policeman. It could potentially save me having to explain unlikely things like this here.

On the way home from work today as I approached a 4-way stop sign intersection, sumdood coming from the street on the right straight-up rolled the stop and took off to his right (the same direction I was going). I don't mean "I thought I had stopped, officer" I mean "how fast can I take this turn on 4 wheels." Like the stop sign wasn't even there.

I was a hundred yards or so from my own stop and slowing to stop (for three full seconds, honestly!) and saw this shenanigan pulled right in front of me. For a couple of seconds I was fantasizing about hitting my blue lights and blasting through the intersection to write a righteous moving violation citation . . .

. . . and almost forgot to stop for my real-life-non-COP-self's own stop sign! DOH!