Category: Law and Order

What Woody Said

Big Brother, Surveillance Society

In one of his rare funny moments, Woody Allen once referred to people glued to their cell phones as “connectivity assholes”.  Here’s a story which, if true, provides ample proof of the pitfalls thereof:

Amazon reportedly shut down a customer’s smart home after the delivery driver claimed he heard a racial slur coming through the doorbell, even though no one was home. 

Brandon Jackson, of Baltimore, Maryland, came home on May 25 to find that he had been locked out of his Amazon Echo, which many devices, including his lights, are connected to.

Yeah… so much for that “convenience” that people are always bleating about when the discussion moves to “smart homes”, “self-drive cars” and all that similar nonsense.

So don’t complain when Big Tech, or Big Brother, or Biggus Dikkus turns off your lights, takes your house through “emininent domain” then bends you over the desk and gives it to you good and hard in your connectivity asshole.

Targeted Action

Law and Order

…so to speak.  Tribe Reader Brad sends me this little example of governmental initiative:

LOS ANGELES — The largest city in California took a step closer to establishing an Office of Unarmed Response to develop alternative responses to some emergency calls, KNBC reports. 

Los Angeles City Council approved a motion Tuesday that has the framework of what the Office of Unarmed Response will look like. The framework outlines the scope of funding, staffing, work and determining primary objectives.

The motion required the chief administrative officer to create a program within 120 days for performance management and evaluation of the city’s Unarmed Model of Crisis Response Pilot. The data collected from this study will be utilized to inform the development of the Office of Unarmed Response.

The council also directed the Los Angeles Police Department to provide a report within 90 days, listing the 911 calls that can be appropriately redirected to alternative response models instead of involving armed police officers.

Now before we all start falling about with laughter, let’s consider this one seriously for a moment.

As much as I’m a supporter of the “Kill ’em all, let God figure it out”  school of law enforcement, I will allow that some situations absolutely do not require an armed cop on the scene.  A good example of this is when the Heavy Boot Of Officialdom is applied to the neck of, say, a child running an unlicensed lemonade stand on the public street, someone littering in a park, or someone playing loud music in their apartment, or “domestic disturbances” — you know, when a man and a woman can no longer deal with each other’s shit and start yelling and screaming.

Likewise, someone breaking the speed limit or driving without current vehicle registration does definitely not require an armed cop to enforce what are, after all, simple misdemeanors.

What all the above situations require is a cool head, a counselor if you will, to speak kindly to the miscreants and persuade them of the folly of their ways.

I see nothing but satisfactory outcomes.

And I think the City of Angels is the perfect laboratory in which to test this laudable initiative.

Street Justice

Crime, Law and Order

Of course, when some dangerous asshole tries doing dangerous stuff in public and promptly gets taken down, who else would step up but Mr. Race Hustler himself?

Sharpton: Failure to charge Marine in chokehold death of Jordan Neely will encourage vigilantes

One can only hope.

And no, I don’t care that the asshole was Black, and the hero White.  Asshole is asshole and hero is hero;  had the roles been reversed, I’d be saying exactly the same.

Also:  Semper fi, Marine.

Not Incompetence – Not Anymore

Immigration, Law and Order, Two-Minute Hate

This is part of a much larger personal story, but I just want to share with you something I said a long time ago.  I’d just launched a major new marketing program involving supermarket customers, their buying and their support for that new program.  Three days after the program’s launch, I went to look at the store sales figures to see how it had all shaken down.

The IT department had lost all the data.  Worse still, they couldn’t tell me when they’d be able to show me any data, going forward.

In a rage, I stormed into the CFO’s office and told him what had happened.  If anything, his shock was greater than mine.  He’d seen my sales projections, my gross profit projections and likely market share gain — but all that was gone.  I looked at him, and said, “It is really difficult for me to come to terms with such gross incompetence and profound indifference of its consequences.  I cannot begin to understand how such incompetence even exists in a huge corporation like ours.”  He looked at me, and nodded.  Then I said, “In fact, if I were a paranoid person — which I’m not — I would actually ascribe negligence on this scale to sabotage.”  And I turned and left.

I have had the same reaction to this situation in south Texas.

Law enforcement officials are seeking a “Mexican male” in connection with a shooting that left five people dead in Cleveland, Texas, Friday night, Fox News reports.
The San Jacinto Sheriff’s Office received a “harassment” call and responding deputies found four victims shot to death and an eight-year-old boy critically wounded. The boy was transported to a hospital, where he died.
All of the victims are believed to be from Honduras, according to San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers.
Capers said his office received the “harassment” call at 11:31 p.m.
Capers said law enforcement is actively searching for the “Mexican male subject” believed to be the shooter and have “a copy of his consulate card.”
He said the Mexican man “has been known to shoot his .223 in the front yard, which is evident from the shell casings in the front yard.”
Capers believes the suspect has fled the area.

And this update:

San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers indicated Francisco Oropesa, the Mexican national who allegedly shot and killed five people in Cleveland, Texas, on Friday, has eluded police and “could be anywhere now.”
The FBI is warning people to stay clear of the 38-year-old suspect if they spot him, FOX News reported: “Reminder, if you see him DO NOT approach him. He is armed and dangerous. If you have a tip about his whereabouts call the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office at 936-653-4367.”
On Sunday, FBI special agent in charge Fred Smith said police and agents have just been “running into dead ends” in their search for Oropesa.
He added, “Right now, we have zero leads of him.”

And the last little cherry on top of this shitcake:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials provided updated information on the suspected killer of five Honduran migrants. Officials report that an immigration judge first ordered Francisco Oropeza Perez-Torres, 38, to be removed from the United States on March 19, 2009. ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers deported the migrant to Mexico later that month.
Subsequent to this, Oropeza illegally re-entered the U.S. and was removed, once again, in September 2009. He was removed two more times in January 2012 and July 2016.
In January 2012, a Texas court in Montgomery County (which neighbors San Jacinto County where the alleged murders took place) convicted the Mexican national for driving while intoxicated. The court sentenced him to an unreported period of incarceration.

So this murderous asshole has been deported before, not once but four times.  On his last entry into the U.S., he somehow got hold of an AR-15 rifle (despite all the fucking laws that exist to prevent felons and illegal aliens from possessing guns), with the depressingly-foreseeable outcome.

Between Immigration, local law enforcement, the Justice Department and the FBI, there has been not just one cockup, but a multiyear succession of cockups which eventually ended in the death of an entire, innocent family.

So, to go back to my original story:  at what point do we stop ascribing this disaster to gross incompetence, and start thinking about actual sabotage — a deliberate undermining of our immigration laws and the legal system?

By the way, a week after my meeting with the CFO, the head of IT was ignominiously fired.

Do not expect anything like this, though, to happen to anyone in government or the legal system.

Protecting Kids

Anarchist thugs, Law and Order

Well now, this is interesting:

Law enforcement officials with the Fort Worth Police Department shut down Antifa agitators over the weekend who counter-protested a small group of demonstrators from “Protect Texas Kids” who were protesting a drag show event.

One would think:  why?  Surely, if someone protests, and another counter-protests, then both are protected?

Well yes, except that this was Pantifa, and their “counter-protest” was anything but peaceful:

During the event, “officers observed a member of the counter-protest group, later identified as 20-year-old Samuel Fowlkes, approach the ‘Protect Texas Kids’ protesters and spray them with pepper spray.” 

And, even better, there’s video of all of it.  Note the paramilitary outfits of the Pantifas, complete with guns.

The FWPD are to be commended for not shooting these little fascist assholes dead.

Rough Men, Rough Justice

Crime, Law and Order

Saith Insty, who has said the same thing many times before:

But remember, ultimately the police aren’t there to protect the public from criminals. They’re there to protect criminals from the rough justice meted out by a public that takes matters into its own hands for lack of a better alternative.

Said in response to this:

Progressives nationwide have attacked police and law enforcement, alleging that our legal system is systemically racist and oppressive. They have caused recidivist criminals to haunt our streets and commit more crimes—and have refused to deal with homelessness in spite of the mental illness and drug addictions that so often afflict our cities’ most vulnerable. Numerous efforts to reduce the use of drugs have been rebuffed in the name, of course, of racism.
This approach has unleashed a crime wave and diminished our sense of safety on the streets. It is, therefore, unsurprising to see ever more law-abiding people seeking to arm themselves. As a result, there will be more guns out there, including in the hands of people who should never be near them.

And hot from the news desk:

This is the horrifying moment suspected Haitian gang members beg for mercy before a vigilante lynch mob stones and burns them alive. 
The mob beat and burned 13 men to death with gasoline-soaked tyres on Monday after pulling them from police custody at a traffic stop, police and witnesses in the capital Port-au-Prince said.
Six more burned bodies were seen in a nearby neighbourhood later on in the day, and witnesses claimed to have seen police kill them before residents set them on fire.

And it’s not going to stop:

Residents in the Haitian capital have put gang members on notice and promised they will be lynched if they attempt to seek vengeance for the deaths of 13 alleged accomplices who were stoned and set on fire.

Sounds okay to me.

Of course, pace the “there will be more guns out there, including in the hands of people who should never be near them” trope, one could (and should) argue that there are already guns in the hands of people who should never be near them — those people being gang members — and all that’s happening now is that ordinary people are preparing to take the law back into their own hands because those deputized to enforce the law are unwilling or being prevented from doing so.