Not to stop drivers. Nor to search pedestrians. David Savage reports in the L.A. Times.
Category: Police
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But they told me it was safe!
The maker of Taser stun guns is advising police officers to avoid shooting suspects in the chest with the 50,000-volt weapon, saying that it could pose an extremely low risk of an “adverse cardiac event.”
The advisory, issued in an Oct. 12 training bulletin, is the first time that Taser International has suggested there is any risk of a cardiac arrest related to the discharge of its stun gun.
Robert Anglen reports in the Arizona Republican.
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Gunshots or Firecrackers
Justin Fenton writes about a gunshot detection system in the Eastern. An interesting concept. Mixed results at best.
Cops, after a little while, get pretty good at telling the difference between gunshots and firecrackers. They’re very similar, but gunshots are kind of a shorter, tighter bang. It’s kind of hard to describe. But you would think a computer could better tell the difference. They can’t yet.
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Hard Core in Brazil
Just a week or two after Jon Lee Anderson’s excellent article in the New Yorker on drugs and favelasin Rio de Janeiro, drug gangs shoot down a police helicopter. That’s hard core. I mean, I’ve thought about shooting down police helicopters, but luckily I lack the .30-caliber anti-aircraft gun used to bring that baby down. Three police officers were killed. All together, 21 or so died in related chaos.
I can’t think of a worse combination than drugs being illegal andthe government giving up to control to drug gangs in the ghettos. It’s one thing to fight a war on drugs. It’s another to start a war on drugs and then give up large parts of your city away to the criminal drug gangs.
There are close to 5,000 murders a year in Rio de Janeiro. That’s a rate about twice as high as Baltimore and about 10 times as high as NYC.
“Rio is one of the very few cities in the world where you have whole areas controlled by armed forces that are not of the state.”Here’s Anderson’s latest update. And his audio slide show. Good stuff.
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Good news for states’ rights…
…and stoners. The Feds say they’ll lay off medicinal marijuana enforcement in states where it’s legal. This seems like a no-brainer.
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US Marshals: TV
I’ve got nothing against US Marshals. Or maybe I do.
I just got off a flight from San Francisco to New York on my favorite airline. Why do I like Jet Blue? Because they have TV. I love TV. And Satellite TV turns a 6-hour flight into a dream.
I mean, I love being in a seat with nothing to do but drink and watch Anthony Bourdain, the Dog Whisper, and whatever else is on all the pseudo-educational channels. Man lights fire in the wild after eating raw Zebra? Useful survival skills. Dan Zimmern eats bugs? Delicious! Fisherman pulling the ocean catch? Keep it real! Fox News is still pushing the Obama/Ayers connection? Hell yeah!
Today I didn’t have as much time for all those gems because I could watch not one but two good baseball games. Yeah, I was the dork keeping score in seat 3F. But it makes me happy so I don’t care what you think.
Between innings and pitching changes–I love baseball, but there’s no reason for a game to be longer than two-and-a-half hours–I watched, among other things, US Marshals: Operation Falcon. The show bothered me.
It’s a show that shows nothing but a bunch of heavily armed government agents coming out of military vehicles and busting into homes. There’s always drugs involved. And the Marshals are mostly white and the criminals mostly black. But OK, reality isn’t always politically correct. That’s not what bothers me. But I notice it.
The show never asks the big question. Why? Who are we doing this for? How many of these warrants really need to be served by a SWAT team? Is this something that the local police can’t do? Do the non-criminals in these neighborhoods really want the US Marshals busting down doors, throwing in flash grenades, and treating everybody like wanted criminals?
The questions certainly don’t come from the deep-voiced narrator that treats such police actions as normal, standard, and necessary to protect “us” from “them.” Maybe that’s what bothers me most.
The militarization of police is something to be questioned, not glorified. Sometimes QRTs and SWAT teams are needed, no doubt. But the image (and the reality) of soldier-like-police busting down door after door simply to serve warrants? I don’t like it.
I don’t like the rationalization of the US Marshals talking about how good they are for the community. I don’t like how they act and talk like they understand the way “they” work and the way “they” talk. I’ve assisted in some of the raids. Mostly by standing out back, using a telephone pole for cover, hoping the bad guy wouldn’t make a run for it. But hell, if I were wanted and I saw them busting in the front door and me standing out back, I’d make a run for it.
No, the Marshals and the FBI don’t know the neighborhood or the people. Hell, I didn’t know the neighborhood of the people all that well. But I knew it a whole lot better than them. At least I was there eight hours every night. They just roll up, make jokes about how horrible it must be for poor fools like me to police there, do their thing, and leave.
Marshals are hard working men and women (mostly men) doing a dangerous job. As a former cop, I appreciate that probably more than most. But the overuse of military tactics shown in the show is one of main reasons non-criminals in crime-ridden communities hate the police. Sure, sometimes they catch the bad guy (and sometimes they don’t), but in the grand scheme it doesn’t work. I can’t help but see the futility in all that effort to take one guy, one gun, or one kilo off the streets. Another man in prison; another criminal job opening in the hood.
I don’t root for the bad buys. I’m happy when I see them in cuffs. But I also know that when the Marshals roll away, 20 deep, the neighborhood isn’t suddenly going to be a better place. It’s going to keep on being the same place, a dangerous place. But now with one more person in prison and more boarded up front door.
There has to be a better way.
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No doctor without a police officer’s note
I just heard on the radio that Nigeria has changed its law that required a police report from the victims of gunshot injuries before these same victims could be treated for their wounds in a hospital.
Apparently one of the factors leading to this change was a high level of gun deaths.
Imagine that.
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Failing His Way to Higher Office
Radley Balko writes in Reasonabout P.G. County Sheriff Michael Jackson. He’s the guy who, among other things, led and defended the police actions in the set up and raid of Mayor Calvo.
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A strike against “zero tolerance”
Discretion is good. In schools. In society. And in policing.
Here’s an example of why it doesn’t work so well in school.
The law was introduced after a third-grade girl was expelled for a year because her grandmother had sent a birthday cake to school, along with a knife to cut it. The teacher called the principal — but not before using the knife to cut and serve the cake.
(Though something strikes me odd when a mother claims a six-year-old “wears a suit and tie some days to school by his own choice because he takes school so seriously.” Really?)
October 14 Update.