Monday, August 01, 2011

Two pieces of LE idiocy,

one from here:
A retired military translator who served in Iraq says he was treated like a criminal when agents from the DEA barreled into his Detroit home just after 2 a.m. Tuesday morning,
Why?
According to the report, the DEA was executing a search warrant for Tossa’s landlord’s son, who apparently uses Tossa’s one-story house’s address for mailing.
You know, considering all the possible ways for such a raid to go wrong, I think I'd want to know more than "He seems to get mail here" BEFORE I decided to put on my ninja suit and start kicking on doors.
"As soon as I opened the door, somebody grabbed me and took me outside and put me on the grass," Ramsey Tossa said. “The first thing I thought was they were terrorists who want to kill me because I served in Iraq.

The other from Down Under:
You can’t put anything over on the cops in Western Australia. They heard about the Norway massacre. They read that Breivik shot at a local gun range (gasp). So using unassailable logic and their years of crime fighting experience, they came up with a foolproof strategy to make sure nothing like that happens on their watch. They’re going to harass gun owners at the 231 registered gun clubs throughout WA…
WA Police will conduct random audits at gun clubs and shooting ranges across WA to catch unlicensed firearm owners. The move comes after the recent Norway massacre in which a lone madman killed 77 people, shooting 69 in cold blood.
Which makes a nice-sounding excuse for trying to fix their own screwup:
Of course, the effort may have other goals besides finding the next Breivik or Loughner. The shootings in Norway may be just a pretext for ass-covering and fee collection.
“Auditing of clubs and their members will ensure compliance and identify those persons who may be in breach, and as a consequence may be open to prosecution or the revocation of their licence,” a spokeswoman for Police Minister Rob Johnson said.

In March, The Sunday Times revealed that WA Police had lost track of thousands of guns and the firearms licensing system was in disarray.

Police admitted that the firearms infringement registry, which alerts police to unpaid gun licence renewals, had been deactivated in mid-2008 because of technical issues.

The admission came 18 months after a review by Auditor-General Colin Murphy found WA Police did not adequately monitor the possession, use and dealing of firearms in the community.
"Hey, if we start screwing with people on this excuse, maybe we can get our records caught up!"
Bleep.

6 comments:

Bram said...

Where do the Western Australian police do their shooting? Several different police departments use my club's ranges to practice and qualify. Start that shit and they can find a new place.

Firehand said...

Most agencies around here except the major PDs and SOs use public ranges; they can't afford to get land a build their own

Windy Wilson said...

“The first thing I thought was they were terrorists who want to kill me because I served in Iraq."

You know, that sounds like PTSD, to me. What would the Ninjas do if he started screaming and struggling as he lay on the ground, cap him for resisting a lawful f#@k-up?

Windy Wilson said...

Tens of thousands of vets returned from WW2, Korea, and even Viet Nam and PTSD did not cause an increase in death by cop because in those days the LE orgs did not try to serve every warrant using their sexy and expensive Special Weapons and Tactics group. They waited and got the guy in the local Piggly Wiggly, or at the hardware store. The Baby Boomer Generation seems to lack some elemental bit of sense of proportion, if nothing else.

Sendarius said...

@Bram:

The WA police used federal money and their position of authority to pressure a local gun club into ceding control of half its lease area for the construction of an "anti-terrorist training facility".

Apparently they are now out of money, and trying to abrogate the terms of the agreement regarding sealing the access road (among other things).

They continue to hire the other half of the said gun club's facilities for training other than "anti-terrorist". That is, they DID until recently - I heard that there was "an incident", and the club stopped them hiring.

Sendarius said...

PS

I heard of someone who had not been able to renew a gun license in WA for THREE YEARS due to the failures in the firearms owner database.

NOT "unwilling to renew", but totally UNABLE, as the payment process requires a renewal notice for processing, and the police were unable to provide one.