FBI

Are there two or maybe even three FBIs? On one hand we get all this noise from Congress about an FBI that can't seem to find crucial pieces of evidence, on the other hand we have an FBI engaging in lawfare against conservatives and on the third hard we have them arresting the mayor of NYC on corruption charges. Are there factions within the FBI: one full of incompetent nitwits, one full of coniving political scumbags and another one that is still trying to do their job? Or maybe it's divided into layers. The higher up the ladder you go, the more incompetent and corrupt you become, so the lowest layer is still doing good work. If the highest levels are rotten, can you trust the lower layers?

Police

Tam points out this story:

Cops: The Young versus The Old

over on Active Response Training. Good story.

Guns and Police

My wife told me about an incident she read about. Seems someone fired at a gun at the big Portland airport. Naturally everybody gets excited. It got me to thinking and I realized that the decrease in the level of support for the police may have led to an increase in crime, but it almost certainly led to people being more afraid. Not much on average, maybe a fraction of a percent (assuming you could even put a number on the amount fear you are carrying around), but that's on average. There are going to be people who are affected more strongly and some of those may feel the need to go out and buy a firearm.

Firearms are inherently dangerous. Any time you have firearms, there are going to be 'incidents'. Hopefully there won't be many and no one gets seriously injured. Of course, it isn't the firearms that makes things dangerous, it's the people handing them. Even without any firearms there are going to be 'incidents' involving dangerous objects like knives, clubs and rocks. Like I said, it's the people handling them that makes the objects dangerous.

I don't know, but I suspect that most accidental gun 'incidents' happen to new gun owners (I'm not even going to consider non-accidental incidents). All experienced gun owners probably had an incident in their past. If they were lucky nobody got hurt. Also if they were lucky it scared them enough to get their attention and taught them to be more careful in the future.

So we get a relatively quick change in support for the police, the level of crime goes up, people become more afraid and a bunch of people go out and buy guns. So now you have bunch of new gun owners so it should be no surprise that the number of gun incidents goes up.

Excitement at the Hospital

OHSU Emergency Room

Everyday is chaos at OHSU Hospital up on Pill Hill. It's nothing to be concerned about, it's just the way things are there, and probably at every big city hospital. The other day there was a little more excitement than usual.

Rumor has it that a woman walked into the Emergency Room carrying two bottles of kerosene. She then walked into the bathroom and set fire to the bathroom. Now she walks out of the Emergency Room with her shoes on fire. She goes to the bus stop outside the door and boards the bus with her shoes still on fire and vanishes.

You might think something like that would get the authorities excited, but you would be wrong. I looked on City of Portland Police website but could find nothing. So I sent an email to the chief of police. Here is the reply I got:

Hi and thank you for your email. It’s not possible for me to search all our records for an incident such as this.  It’s is also unclear if we would have been called. OHSU has their own police department and might have just handled it.  There are many many situations like this where police are either not called or it is resolved in a different way.  Best, Terri

Terri is a Public Information Officer (nonsworn)

Of course, all I have is third hand scuttlebutt, so it might have been nothing like I described. It might just have been somebody lighting a match in the bathroom to get rid of the stink, and the shoes might just have been steaming because they were hot-blooded. Who knows?

I like the original version of the story better.

 

 

Why do “good cops” cover for “bad cops”?

Chicago Police by Tom Bachtell

Badtux has a post about the police. I disagree with most of what he writes, but this time he has some good points.

Pedophiles

True Detective Season 3 (2019) Teaser Trailer | HBO
We've been watching the third season of True Detective where we have a pair of detectives investigating the disappearance of a couple of kids. Now wait a minute, didn't the first two seasons revolve around similar cases? I mean detectives investigate all kinds of cases, like drug smuggling and murder and fraud and arson. Why are they concentrating on cases involving missing kids? I mean, how many pedophiles are there?

And then it struck me: there are liable to be a heck of a lot of them. When I was a kid, homosexuals did not exist. Well, they did, they just hid in the closet and no one ever talked about it. Now we find that there are a heck of lot more than zero. Estimates range from one to ten percent of the population. Five percent seems like a reasonable estimate. And the line between homosexual and heterosexual is not always sharply defined. Sexual orientation seems to be kind of like autism or many other human qualities: there is a spectrum of preferences. So depending on which way the wind is blowing today, the number may be as low as one percent or as high as ten. So, given our lack of solid information, five percent seems like a reasonable guess.

Given that there is variation in what people find sexually attractive, it also seems reasonable to assume that a similar percentage of people (i.e. between one and ten percent) are sexual attracted to children. There might be a similar number who are attracted to old people, but we don't worry about that so much. If an old person suffers from some psychological trauma due to being sexually abused, well they are not likely to be around causing trouble much longer. On the other hand, with kids any kind of psychological trauma they suffer is liable to cause them to turn into screwed up adults, and society will be dealing with them for a long time.

Pia Zadora ca 1980

I remember seeing a picture of Pia Zadora back when she was a big deal (which would have been back in the 1980's). I couldn't understand what the big fuss about. To me she looked like a child, big boobs not withstanding. Boobs are all well and good, but faces have always been my focus. Just to be clear, I do not find children sexual attractive. Snot nosed brats rank right down near the bottom, right alongside homosexuals.

Homosexuality has become more accepted in society at large, and as long as their activities are kept private, between consenting adults, the verdict seems to be that it is okay. If I have to think about it for more a couple of seconds, I am repulsed, but as long as it is out of sight, it is out of my mind, and I am fine.

I don't think pedophiles are going to find that kind of acceptance, and given that sexual preferences are innate, I don't think it's going to go away, so detective shows are going to have an endless supply of stories.

I do worry (just a tiny bit) that when we fix all of societies other problems (like that is ever going to happen), pedophiles are going to become even more heavily persecuted, which could lead to some serious unpleasantness.

Death

Murders in Chicago vs. American War Dead
Kind of puts things in perspective.

Via Bayou Renaissance Man

Police

Portland Transit Cop

Recently I realized there is another reason to avoid mass transit: the police. Driving a car you are unlikely to attract a copper's attention, well, unless you are driving like a maniac, or flagrantly speeding. But riding on the Max you are very likely to encounter a copper checking tickets. Now, it's a not a big deal, but it's not a conductor, it's a cop, and this kind of thing smacks of the 'your-papers-please' kind of thing you run into in totalitarian regimes. I don't like it.
Today I read a story about a man's unpleasant run-in with the police which prompted me to comment that 'First rule of living in the first world is avoid the police.' I don't know where I got that, I mean I didn't grow up in the ghetto, and as far as I know my dad wasn't mobbed up, but that was certainly the impression I managed to collect.

Then there was another story I read about how people behave differently in different social settings, but the author uses a whole different set of words to describe it.

Previous posts about what's wrong with mass transit.

Police Violence

I get tired of hearing about police shootings, whether it's the police being accused of shooting someone or vice versa. The news reports all seem to be designed to produce outrage in the reader. I'm tired of hearing about it because all of the reports seem to be slanted one way or the other, no one seems to be interested in determining the facts, and even when they are, it's so wrapped up in a snarl of legal wrangling that it's virtually impossible to tell what actually happened, so don't tell me about it. If you are talking about a police shooting, I will immediately suspect of you pushing your agenda and I don't have time for that.

There are roughly:

• 325 million people in the USA
•     1 million police officers
•   60 million people are stopped by the police each year
• half of those stops were traffic stops

So cops, on average stop someone once a week. How many outrage-fueling violent interactions with the police happen every year? Is there one a week? One every day? Say there's one every day, call it 400 a year, that means roughly one of every 100,000 stops becomes fodder for the media. I suspect that is well below the average for a random explosion of anger.
    The world is a frustrating place. A large part of that frustration is caused by being hemmed in by rules and laws, rules and laws created by people who are skilled in the use of words. Not everyone is skilled in the use of words, and for those people, the world can be infuriating. It's a miracle we don't have a new mass murder on the news every five minutes.

Right to Know

This officer is wearing a body camera on his uniform, attached near a button on his shirt. It records audio and video images. This photo was provided by manufacturer VieVu, one of the makers of body cams that Portland police have field tested. (VieVu)

 The Oregonian has a story about body cameras for the police. Actually, it's a story about the players involved trying to hammer out a policy for their use. 

Click here to read the story.

The story makes it sound like the police union is doing their damnedest to provide cover for their members. They might be, but there is another side to this story that didn't get mentioned. So I weighed in with my two cents:

There is a problem with making anything available to the public. That problem is that some people will choose the most salacious sound bites and scenes in order to create a click-bait item for the web. The more they can make it appear scandalous, the better. This kind of stuff can inflame the passions of all kinds of people, even smart, educated people, if they aren't paying attention. And that can lead to all kinds of trouble. Nothing better than a riot to sell newspapers, or advertising space. So I can understand the police department wanting to keep control over what gets released and when. Maybe if more journalists had real jobs, we wouldn't have so many muck rakers raking muck, and this wouldn't be a problem.

Hooper Heliport

Hooper Heliport Los Angeles. Downtown in the background. Click to embiggenate. The concrete slab on the top of the building just above the helicopter is heliport. It's a big place, large enough for a dozen helicopters easily.

The New York Times has a story by Geoff Manaugh about the Los Angeles Police helicopter squad.  Looking for pictures, I turn up this one which I thought was real until I looked at the page and realized that it was a screen shot from a video game.

Google Earth view of downtown Los Angeles, Hooper Heliport in the foreground.

Here is a similar view from Google Earth. The difference in apparent composition is presumably due to the radically different perspective derived from different viewpoints.

Inside the cockpit of an LAPD helicopter at night.

Horseshoes

Portland Policeman on Monty

Our walk back from lunch last Thursday took up through Elizabeth Caruthers Park where we encountered three mounted policeman hanging out and chatting with the citizenry. Standing about six feet away I could easily read Monty's name on the little brass tag hanging from his halter. Blow it up as much as I can and it still isn't legible. So there are limits to what a camera can do.

The horses were all wearing what looked like rubber overshoes. New to me.

Lessons from the Po-Po

Michigan State Police, 1950 Ford

Roberta goes to class and learns important stuff, and the closing footnotes might be good lessons for us all:

     To close, here's a hot tip from the Indiana State Police: "Do not tiptoe up behind an officer at a roadblock and tap him or her on the shoulder!"     (Entire class laughs.)     "No, this really happens, and more than you'd think.  You don't know what that officer was just doing, helping pull a mangled body out of a car wreck, looking for an armed suspect -- they are making split-second decisions."       The other officer added, "And please, for your sake -- can I borrow this smartphone? -- do not be doing this." He'd palmed the phone and put his hand behind his right hip; as he said "this," he brought his hand back into sight just above his holster and smoothly upward, and many of us flinched: it looked for all the world as if he was drawing his sidearm.  An effective lesson.

Guns, Police, Excitement!

Coming home from the grocery store this evening there were six police cars parked in front of Jackson Elementary School with their lights on. It looked like they had stopped three cars. There were several long guns and guns cases lying on the trunk on one of the police cars. All three of the civilian cars were SUV type vehicles. What's going on? Have they stopped a mass murderer on his way to wipe out the congregation at local church? Maybe they arrested a suspected Jihadist on his way to blow up the elementary school.
    I don't know but I suspect what happened is someone was carrying their guns from one house to another all innocent like and they got stopped for some minor traffic infraction, like forgetting to use their turn signal, or speeding or some such. The cop checks out the car as is his duty and notices the guns lying in the back and that was all it took for it to become the policemen's ball of the night.
    I'm pretty sure the law requires that guns carried in your car must be locked in the trunk. Didn't find anything that specifies that for Oregon, but I did find this on American Firearms Training:

Federal Law on Transportation of Firearms
A provision of federal law serves as a defense to state or local laws which would prohibit the passage of persons with firearms in interstate travel.
Notwithstanding any state or local law, a person shall be entitled to transport a firearm from any place where he may lawfully possess and transport such firearm to any other place where he may lawfully possess and transport such firearms if the firearm is unloaded and in the trunk. In vehicles without a trunk, the unloaded firearm shall be in a locked container other than the glove compartment or console. Necessary stops, e.g., gasoline and rest, seem permissible.

Since SUV's don't have a trunk, the guns were probably lying in the back in plain view of anyone peeking in the windows.

The Po-Po versus the People

Windy Pundit has a post this morning about people black getting shot by the police, that prompted me to comment:

I don't want to focus on just this case, or any one case, because crucial details are inevitably obscure, and any time you start digging into them, someone's emotions inevitably get stirred up, which tends to make any available information suspect.

I think the sad state of the economy has a lot to do with it. People who want a good job, but don't have one, are resentful of people who do. And people who do have good jobs are deathly afraid of losing them. If you are a police officer with a family to support, you are going to be loathe to give up your job with it's salary and benefits, so much so, that you might be inclined to ignore any internal problems your gang might have.

On the other side, we have neighborhood communities who have developed their own culture. I don't know whether it is minorities, poor people, or maybe it's just people who have warm hearts and have not learned how to be cold hearted capitalists, but they care more about their gang than any nit-picky little laws 'the man' might be trying to enforce.

The War-On-Drugs is part of the problem. Because the profit margins are so high, it provides people with a way to make a living. Because it's illegal, it is a constant source of friction between the police and those communities who earn their living from it.

Shooting in Nederland, Colorado

There was a shooting at a ski resort in Colorado today. An employee shot the manager at an early morning meeting. A Sheriff's Deputy tracked the shooter down and killed him. The Denver Post has the story. 

    So another nut-case goes off the deep end and people end up dead. Why am I writing about it? Because a friend of mine in Ohio has friends that live in Nederland. There were a bunch of people at that early morning meeting. It is only by the grace of god (or pure dumb luck, your choice) that more of them didn't end up dead. 

    I really wish there was a way to identify people who are ready to go over the edge. I suspect the problem might be that the people we should worry about are the ones who are on the fringe of society. Maybe they've been pushed there because of their poor social skills, or maybe they've gone there for their own reasons. People who are on the fringe don't talk to a lot of people, so there aren't going to be a lot chances for someone to notice that they might be getting a little close to the edge.

    Anyway, I had never heard of Nederland before, so I looked it up. It's just west of Boulder, got it's start in mining and now it has a ski resort. I've excerpted a bit from Wikipedia below.

Nederland, Colorado
with Tungsten (lower right), Caribou (upper left) and Eldora ski resort (lower left).

Nederland was established in 1874. The town started as a trading post between Ute Indians and European settlers during the 1850s. The town's first economic boom came when minerals such as tungsten, silver, and gold were discovered near Tungsten (east of Nederland), Caribou (northwest of Nederland, 1859), and Eldora (west of Nederland, 1875). . . .
In 1873 the Caribou Mine, at an elevation of roughly 10,000 feet and 6 miles northwest of the town, was sold to the Mining Company Nederland from the Netherlands. The high elevation meant fierce winds and deep winter snow, so the new owners of the mine decided that it was beneficial to bring ore from Caribou down to Middle Boulder for milling. In the Dutch language, Nederland ("Netherlands" in English) means low land, and based on casual usage by the Dutch miners, Middle Boulder came to be known as Nederland. (This is ironic, considering that the town's elevation is higher than 8,000 feet and most locations in the Netherlands are near or even below sea level.) In 1874 the town was incorporated and adopted Nederland as the official name. - Wikipedia

We Take It Because We Want It

Found this story in this morning's paper:

Tigard police seize 470 iPhones related to gift card fraud

Tigard police seized 470 iPhones as part of their investigation into organized retail fraud. (Tigard Police Dept.)

Tigard police detectives seized 470 iPhones worth $292,000 as part of an investigation into organized retail theft at Washington Square Mall and Bridgeport Village.Earlier this month investigators watched as a man used a large stack of gift cards to purchase iPhones at the Washington Square Apple Store. They followed the man to a rental car full of Apple shopping bags, Tigard police spokesman Jim Wolf said.
The man, along with another suspect, were stopped by police after leaving the mall parking lot. In addition to hundreds of iPhones, detectives seized hundreds of apparently fraudulent gift cards and receipts totaling $585,000.
Investigators also found that numerous iPhones had been dropped off at a nearby FedEx store where they were set to be shipped to Hong Kong.
Wolf said no arrests have been made in the case, which is ongoing, but investigators think the the gift cards are linked to counterfeit credit cards from Southern California.
-- Stuart Tomlinson, reporter for The Oregonian

Police seized a bunch of stuff, but didn't arrest anybody? WTF? This sounds a whole lot like what happens more and more these days. Police seize stuff just because they think it's suspicious. This nonsense got started with the War-On-Drugs [tm], but seems to be creeping out into anything that might net the cops some money.
    Okay, I have to admit it does sound suspicious that these guys had a whole pile of gift cards to go with their whole pile of iPhones, it really does look like major credit card fraud. But then I read the bit about the phones being shipped to China, and several gears clicked into place. This isn't fraud, or simple theft, this a turf war being waged by Apple, and the cops are being drafted to act as thugs-for-hire.
    What's going on is that there is a small market for hi-end items in Red China, but being as China is so huge, even a small slice of that market it big. Luxury goods manufacturers are exporting their goods to China, and because demand is high, they are able to charge a premium price for their products. The premium they are charging is so high that when other people got wind of it, they realized that they could buy these same products at retail stores in the USA, ship these products to China, pay all the necessary fees and taxes and still make bundle of money.
    The manufacturers don't want anybody cutting into their turf, so they are trying to squash these little guys. And these two guys buying phones are definitely little guys. That's why they had 'gift cards', not cash or credit cards. Someone gave them those gift cards for the express purpose of buying iPhones.
    So it probably wasn't the FBI that tipped the local Tigard cops off to this 'criminal' operation, if was more likely some agency in charge of regulating trade, like the Department of Agriculture.

Previous post on the subject here. Sometime in the last year (decade?) there was a deal going on downtown where you could make $100 by standing in line to buy an iPhone. At the time there was a huge local demand for these stupid plastic boxes, so I don't know whether this was just someone catering to local people who didn't want to stand in line or whether they were shipping them off to China.

Funny how Taiwan hardly ever makes the news anymore. 20 years ago Taiwan was in the paper weekly, if not daily. Now all we talk about is China, by which we mean Red China and nobody even mentions Taiwan. Don't want to piss off our Communist Overlords, I suppose.

Update two days later: I should have mentioned that Tigard is a suburb of Portland, Oregon.

Quote of the Day

Bert Williams, a black man, in blackface. Whaaaa?

 "It's no disgrace to be coloured. But it is awfully inconvenient." - Bert Williams

Just read two articles about a couple of black people who were harassed by the police for being in their own homes. Article 1 here. Article 2 here. This line was in the 2nd one.

What are the odds?

When I lived in Ohio I used to watch cop shows on TV. These shows invariably included a high-speed cross town car chase. They were great fun to watch, but because we didn't hear about such things on the news I kind of figured they didn't happen very often. Okay, maybe there was one a few years ago, and all the TV shows have used that one event as an excuse to include a chase in their show. Then I moved to Phoenix where the cops had a high-speed cross town car chase every week, if not every day.

Joselyn Alejandra Niño holding an M4 assault rifle. She was known as "La Flaca", or "Skinny Girl", and was an assassin working for the Ciclones, a Mexican drug cartel. She was killed in 2015 by a rival gang.

     Many action movies feature a cold blooded assassin. Once again I used to think that all these stories were based on one event. Then I started paying attention to the news, and while there may not be very many assassins killing people with precision using high-powered, take apart rifles, killing for business or political reasons is going on every day.

     Defibrillators have become somewhat common. They are being deployed like fire extinguishers. I wondered about the value of doing this. I mean, these things are kind of expensive, and is anyone's life ever saved by these things? I had never heard of it happening until my cousin told me about it happening at a group campout a couple of weeks ago. They were sitting around the fire after dinner and one guy just keeled over. Another fellow who worked for the U.S. Forest Service got the defibrillator out of his Forest Service truck, applied it, and save Mr. Keeled-over's life.
    So given my previous experience with extreme events, I am now willing to concede that deploying defibrillators like fire extinguishers might be a good idea.

Police Etiquette

Morpheus didn't say this. I have no idea if Mr. Fishburne ever said it or not.

Wondermark points to a Pacific Standard story by Ezekiel Kweku that talks about black people and the police, wherein I found this paragraph:

. . . the tactics I use to avoid being arrested or killed by the police have been instilled too deeply in me for me to forget. It is a carefully calibrated etiquette that feels like a delicate dance, . . . . Answer questions quickly, but not so quickly that you come off as snippy. If you have to move, move deliberately, but not so slowly that you look reluctant to obey or are stalling for time. Speak calmly and conversationally, but be polite and not too familiar. Answer questions, but don’t offer any information you don’t have to. And on it goes, each balance to be carefully struck, each parameter to be tuned in response to changing circumstances.

It struck me as I was reading this that these are the same rules that I follow. It was kind of surprising, because it made me feel just like I do when I am talking to the police. I'm not sure where I got these rules. Did my parents drill them into me? Or is is just part of being respectful, or perhaps 'showing respectfulness'? All I know is that I don't treat an encounter with the police the same as would with any other, non-police person.

OK, that's a post, but now I need a picture, so I go a Googl-ing and I find a very good article by Max Tucker entitled How To Deal With Cops. He covers the same ground from a slightly different perspective.

Part 1: Understanding CopsThe first step in dealing with cops is empathy. Seriously, it sounds like bullshit, but understanding them and relating with their position is critically important if you want them to let you skate on the stupid things you do. 

The 3 Things You MUST Understand About How Cops Think: 

1. Cops’ first and biggest concern is safety: I cannot over-emphasize this: The job of a police officer puts him in potentially dangerous situations every day, so everything he does starts with ensuring his personal safety. I’ve known and been friends with so many cops and all of them say the same thing: You’re always on guard because you never know what you’re walking into, and mistakes can get you killed. Every single cop knows other cops who have died in the line of duty. When an officer comes up to a car he’s pulled over or knocks on the door of a home that has reported a domestic disturbance, he has no idea who he’s going to be dealing with. You may understand that you are a perfectly nice, non-threatening person, but he doesn’t know that–he’s thinking about the guy who graduated with him at the police academy and got gunned down by a tweaker on a routine traffic stop last week. This concept—the primacy of personal safety—is drilled into them from the beginning of training onward, so understand that when a cop walks up to you he is–at the very minimum–suspicious and wary.
That is why the first minute of your interaction with a police officer—especially during a traffic stop or potentially dangerous situation–is so crucial. In this small window it is imperative you display the fact that you’re not a threat to him. This can mean hands up and open, a nice calm demeanor, a submissive tone, etc. Your specific actions depend on the situation, but everything you do upon initial contact with a cop should be about displaying the fact that you are not a threat. If you do that right, you will put yourself in a great position with the cop who has your immediate fate in his hands.