Nice to be one of the Praetorian Guard, Updated

isn't it?
The FBI agent who accidentally shot someone while dancing at a Colorado nightclub in June can carry his gun again, both on and off duty, a judge ruled Tuesday.
...
Bishop was recorded doing a back flip on the dance floor when his gun fell out of its holster. The FBI agent went to pick it up, and while doing so, he unintentionally shot a bystander, 24-year-old Thomas Reddington.

The agent was then seen placing the gun back into his holster before walking off the dance floor.
Plain old citizen did this, he'd already be either in jail or fined to death, or both.  Especially when you add in this:
The agent will still not be allowed to drink or use drugs while his case is pending.
Really?  So had he been drinking when this happened?  Again, plain old citizen caught drinking while carrying would be on his way to jail pretty damn quick in most places.  Hell, most places you cannot carry into a bar even if you're only having a soft drink.

But then, they aren't a Very Special Federal Agent.

Update:  was advised he was charged and pleaded to third-degree assault.  And this says he's no longer with the EffingBI.
Ever read any of the Joe Leaphorn novels?  In one he's reflecting on working with the feds and he'd decided that one of the only things that would get you in real trouble with the Bureau was doing something that brought even slight bad publicity to the sacred Bureau.  I'd guess this covers it.

'Accident' my ass

Video from Brachle's lapel shows him running up to a vehicle that Grant was sitting in with suspects and yelling "gun," then promptly firing his weapon.
'Incompetence', sure; 'stupid' definitely; an 'accident' this wasn't.  And if  a commoner had done such a thing, the people calling this an accident would've wanted them in prison.

From where Great Britain used to be, let's start with a truly dumbass cop

shooting someone in a classroom demonstration:
PC David Micklethwaite, 52, blasted telephone operator Keith Tilbury at point blank range after mistakenly loading a live round into a 'Dirty Harry' style .44 Magnum revolver.
They had a Model 29?
He shot Mr Tilbury while attempting to show civilian recruits how the chamber spins in a Magnum made famous by Clint Eastwood.
Because he was the Only One in the room qualified...
When he reached into a Quality Street tin Thames Valley's armourers used to keep assorted ammunition,(a lot of you are cringing at this point) he grabbed a live round.
He then took the Magnum .44 out of a holdall in order to demonstrate the difference between a revolver and a pistol, loading what he thought was a dummy round into the chamber.

Mr Tilbury, a former electronic defence industry worker who had shot in the Berkshire County rifle team, later told investigators he saw Micklethwaite aiming the weapon at him(Good grief!).
'I was getting up to move from my chair to move when I heard two clicks and then a loud bang.' As Mr Tilbury's classmates looked on in horror, he was thrown back onto the chair and collapsed to the floor.


Leaving behind this example of Prime, Grade A idiocy, we move on to
A mother and her disabled daughter died in a blazing car after police decided a campaign of terror against them by local yobs was not worth prosecuting, an inquest heard yesterday.

Fiona Pilkington, her family and neighbours asked for help more than 30 times but she was accused of 'overreacting'.
And just what, in their wisdom, was not worth prosecuting?
The yobs, some as young as ten, threw stones and eggs at her home in Barwell, Leicestershire, urinated on a wall, invaded the garden and pushed fireworks through the letter box, leaving the family 'under siege'.

Anthony was beaten up in the street and locked in a shed at knifepoint.

The final call to police came on the day of Miss Pilkington's death in October 2007, when she was told to 'ignore' girls trampling over her hedge and mocking Francecca, who had developmental delay and a mental age of four.
Whiskey Tango Bleepin' Foxtrot?
Yesterday coroner Olivia Davison put a series of searching questions to Chris Tew, who was then assistant chief constable of Leicestershire Police.

She said it must have been 'common sense' to want to help a family who were feeling 'victimised'.

Mr Tew, now retired, said: 'Anti-social behaviour often occurs in residential areas when no actual crime is being committed. There's no damage or assault and it doesn't pass the threshold for a crime.'
So. Really. So in (fG)Britain nowadays, trespassing and property damage being beaten and assault with a deadly weapon(let me note, I think that over here in Dodge City Land forcing someone to go somewhere at knifepoint could be considered kidnapping, for that matter) and so forth don't count as 'damage or assault' and 'don't pass the threshold for a crime'.

Shit.

'It must be a motivating factor in being a police officer to stop a situation like this...So I wonder why someone did not decide this needed to be stopped?'

Mr Tew replied: 'I cannot answer that, sorry.' He said it was ' unfortunate' police had not linked Miss Pilkington's calls. An investigation had found 'too many cases were closed without further contact or additional resources offered'.
'Unfortunate'. Yeah, that's the word.
The inquest heard that none of the 16-strong gang was ever prosecuted. At one point one told Miss Pilkington: 'We can do anything we like to you and you can't do anything about it'.
Because the British government and police are apparently not worth shit in the case of plain citiz- excuse me, subjects of the Crown being threatened and attacked and having their homes damaged.


And finally, to some more of that wonderful National Health Service:
Two care workers who covered a dementia sufferer’s mouth with sticky tape to keep him quiet were convicted of assault yesterday.

Derek Maynard, 89, had a three-inch piece of Sellotape placed over his mouth because he had made a fuss about wanting to go to bed.

And, for my conclusion,
A young woman died in hospital after waiting almost two hours for a blood transfusion that could have saved her.

Sally Thompson, 20, bled to death after a doctor accidentally punctured her jugular vein during a bungled procedure.

Despite an urgent request to the blood bank at Manchester Royal Infirmary, she died one hour and 45 minutes later, before any arrived.
...
they sent an order down for blood but the bank said they were having trouble finding any crossmatched blood because of her disorder.'
I'm going to go into a bit of bitching here. 'Way back in the Cretaceous when I worked at the blood bank in Lawton, I was on call every other week. One of the hospitals in town needed blood, they'd call and I'd be paged. We kept a list of our own inventory plus what the hospitals had, so I'd go wherever and get it and take it over. In an emergency- for instance, someone bleeding out and needing desperately blood we didn't have, I'd call the nearest places that might have it, find it, and if I couldn't get it in time, or it was too far away, we called the Highway Patrol for an emergency pickup and delivery; they'd call the nearest trooper, by the time he got to the hospital or blood bank office it'd be packed and ready, and they went. If it crossed county or district lines, another trooper would be waiting, they'd move it over and blow. If no trooper available for a stretch, they could usually get the local sheriff's office to relay it. They'd hit the ER door and run it to the lab, where a quick & dirty check was done to make sure it could be used and in it went.

That was in the 1970's, in southwest Oklahoma; we got it done. And yet the National Health Service couldn't manage to.
'No crossmatched or uncrossmatched O-negative blood was supplied, despite it being requested during the resuscitation, and this was a significant failure,' Mr Meadows said.
No SHIT?

I've got a friend who accuses me of cherrypicking bad stories about health care in Britan(he loves the idea of socialized medicine); I keep telling him all I have to do is pull up the British news sites and the stuff is there. All the damn time. Jeez, what a mess.

Bad Cop behavior as a selling point::

VERY bad idea.

Yeah, this is just great, isn't it?

Here is a case of a clueless officer and an idiot prosecutor

getting the department and county in big trouble:
The ACLU today filed a federal lawsuit against Allegheny County and University of Pittsburgh police, alleging that officers arrested a Pittsburgh man for using his cell phone to record an interaction between officers and one of his friends.

Elijah Matheny, of the Hill District, was arrested on April 29 and charged with violating Pennsylvania wiretapping laws. Police said he recorded an incident without officers' permission.
As I recall, there was a case a couple of years ago in which the Supreme Court ruled on this; they said flatly that a LE officer in public has no expectation of privacy while performing his duties, and that includes people can take pictures or video. That's settled, so this was a surprise to read:
The county is named in the suit because after the initial arrest, officers called the Allegheny County District Attorney's office to find out if charges should be pursued. The on-duty prosecutor gave the go-ahead.
Then the on-duty prosecutor was either uninformed or a fool.

Considering how many LE vehicles have cameras and voice recorders set up to tape every stop and so forth, kind of amazing how many officers get bent out of shape over someone without a badge taking pics; the only thing I can think of is that they know they don't have control of those recordings, so...

I'm going to have to call Sheriff Michael Jackson a disgrace

to that badge he wears.
The Prince George's County sheriff's office has concluded that deputies did nothing wrong when they charged into the home of the mayor of Berwyn Heights during a drug investigation last summer and fatally shot his family's two dogs.

The findings of the internal review "are consistent with what I've felt all along: My deputies did their job to the fullest extent of their abilities," Sheriff Michael Jackson said at a news conference.
Yup. And how much you want to bet, if one of those shots had killed or crippled one of the people in that house, Sheriff Jackson would be trying to blame them for it? And saying the same damn excuses?
"It's outrageous," he said. "Not only is he not admitting any wrongdoing, but he's saying this went down the way it was supposed to and he's actually commending his police officers for what they did."
Because breaking into a house for no good reason and killing dogs is apparently excusable as 'part of the job'.
Members of the SWAT team killed Calvo's black Labrador retrievers after deputies broke down his door and raided his home in search of a drug-filled package that had been addressed to Calvo's wife.

Law enforcement officials have since acknowledged that Calvo and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, were victims of a smuggling scheme that used a FedEx driver to ship drugs. They said the couple knew nothing about the box. County police, who were leading the drug investigation, have said they were unaware it was the mayor's house.
Two things: one, this is a raid that should never have happened. Two, that "We didn't know it was the mayor's house!" is interesting; like if it was, they'd have done it differently for a politician that for some stupid citizen without 'official' standing?
In an interview, Jackson reiterated his explanation that a scream by Calvo's mother-in-law, Georgia Porter, who saw officers in SWAT gear running toward the house, justified the shooting.

Porter "corroborated that she did scream out 'SWAT.' She admitted to that, and [Calvo] admitted to hearing that upstairs in the house," Jackson said. "That threw out the procedure of knocking and announcing, because now [officers were] compromised."
Three: notice how they keep saying 'admitted', like they were admitting guilt for something? Four, yeah, that sure justifies shooting the dogs, doesn't it? "...knocking and announcing..." my ass.

As I recall, at first they denied that the one dog was running away; now?
One dog was shot four times by the front door. Calvo has said his younger dog was running away from officers when it was shot twice, including once in a hind leg. Jackson said deputies thought the dog was running toward another deputy in the home.
Awww, isn't that a convenient excuse?
"I'm sorry for the loss of their family pets," Jackson said. "But this is the unfortunate result of the scourge of drugs in our community. Lost in this whole incident was the criminal element. . . . In the sense that we kept these drugs from reaching our streets, this operation was a success."
Not sorry apparently for an unnecessary raid that could have gotten innocent people killed, not sorry for scaring hell out of everybody but "this operation was a success." Except that they could have knocked on the damned door and acted like peace officers instead of strapping on their ninja gear and getting to shoot someone's dogs.

No, I'm not feeling charitable. I'm sick of LE officials excusing bullcrap actions because "They were following procedure" or "They thought the dogs were a threat" and all the other crap used to prevent the officers involved from facing any real penalty for what they do.

This has to be one of the more idiotic LE actions

I've heard of.
But here’s what really bothers me. In justifying the raid, Phoenix Assistant Chief Andy Anderson called Pataky’s site “an unaccredited grassroots Web site.” Um, Chief Anderson, who “accredits” web sites? This is the most chilling part of the whole thing to me, because the police and the courts in Phoenix have taken it upon themselves to determine who qualifies as “the press.” And here’s the thing: anybody with an ounce of ink in their blood knows that Pataky deserves First Amendment protection, but they’re unlikely to say it publicly, because “the (professional) press” thinks of itself as a special class of people and have railed for years against the likes of Pataky.

If Phoenix PD thought they had a public relations problem before... What moron thought this was a good idea, I wonder?


In the comments at knoxnews:

"Pheonix PD."

"Hello. I'd like to speak to your website accreditation officer."

"My what?"

"Well, your department's Obergruppenfuhrer, Andy Anderson, says that a blog's got to be accredited, or jackbooted thugs in executioner's masks, err, I mean 'devoted civil servants toting automatic weapons and wearing tactical balaclavas' get to kick in the door and grab everything they want to, and, well, I've got me a blog, and I kinda don't want that to happen."

"Obergruppenfuhrer?"

"Do I have to spell it out for you?"

There was a gun show today,

and it was friggin' amazing. Not a BIG show, just one of the average-size that usually sees a bunch of people looking and talking, some buying. There was a line about 100 people long when the doors opened, and when Dad and I left there was still a line. The place was packed.

Proving that there are greedy and foolish people everywhere were the dealers with 'real paratrooper SKS' rifles for- I kid you not- $1k. I almost said "You're out of your freakin' MIND!" when I saw that. One guy had an old S&W Model 10, decent condition; he wanted $425. It sold fairly quickly.

Ammo? A fair amount, and the only stuff that wasn't selling fast was the stuff that was WAY overpriced. As in $40 for a box of 20 rounds of .308, etc.

Lots of AR15 variants from different makers, what's now average prices, and they were selling. LOTS of them were selling.

President Barack Cartman The Obama and his AG 'The Cowards' Holder have managed, once again, to cause sales of firearms and ammo to go through the roof. Add that to the increased LE buying(Insty pointed to this piece on it), and... On the LE use, makes sense; if you buy crap like that silenced remote-control machine gun noted the other day, or an APC with a M2 on top(have you SEEN what .50BMG ammo sells for?!?), or a bunch of MP5 subguns for your black-suited Tac-Team to carry("Awarded Most Tactically-Equipped City, population 10,000 or less") you're going to go through a lot of ammo in training; if you don't, at some point some lawyer is going to ask "So you turned your officers loose with MACHINE GUNS and insufficient training? And (fill in the blank) is the result, and you think you should not be held responsible?" Which is apparently more important to a lot of people than trying to explain to the taxpayers why so damn much of their money went into lots of whiz-bangs for the department, etc.("But the Bugtussle PD has a Tactical Team, and we've got a bigger department than they do! We'll be laughed at if we don't have a SWAT team, and a SWAT team has to have tactical balaclavas and MP5 sub-guns!")

I've become firmly convinced that an awful lot of the SWAT & other tactical crap you see LE buying and deploying is in some part directly related to 'prestige'; and once they have it they have to use it to justify the expense, which leads to overuse/improper use, which leads to dead dogs and terrified families and "The officers were following procedure when they stuck a gun in your daughter's ear while the other officer was shooting the yorkie, so no action will be taken against them" excuses.

Which doesn't exactly make the public see you as Officer Friendly, guys; it makes them see you as "Those ninja-suited jerks who cover their faces because they're ashamed for people to know who they are."

Which is off the original subject, which was ammo and gun sales. I got a sales update from CMP this morning, look at this:
ORDER BACKLOG. Normally, we average receiving 2,000 - 3,000 sales orders per month and ship an order in 2-3 weeks. However, these are not normal times. Since October, 2008 we have been receiving 5,000 - 10,000 orders per month, which is several times normal. As a result, we are very backlogged and running several weeks behind on processing orders. Our staff is working up to 12 hours per day 7 days a week, and only today finished the 4,000 orders we received on 1 December alone....
Bold mine. Tad busy, those people are.

A few days back I went to Academy, where I've bought most of my .22 ammo for a while: the only .22 on the shelves was shorts; every other kind of .22 was gone, high-velocity, standard, everything. They had a few boxes of 9mm, a few .38 special, a few .45acp, and that was it for handgun ammo. Asked one of the guys, he said they get a shipment and within two days it's gone, and it's been that way for a couple of months now. Just to see, I went by Wally World(except for a few things that, for some reason they're the only ones who carry, I haven't bought there since the "We will suck up to Bloomberg no matter what" problem came up) and looked; they had shotgun and some rifle ammo, almost no .22 left and out of almost all handgun ammo.

Makes you wonder: does our illustrious President and his AG and their various buttmonkeys actually believe that if they say "We have decided, for the safety of our communities, that you should surrender your guns and ammunition" that everybody will just do it? For that matter, do they actually believe that all LE agencies will happily take part? Or is it just that they're quite happy to cause the level of chaos that crap would start, in the name of pushing their Socialist Paradise schemes?

In ref to 'LE While Stupid' and 'Sorry Excuse For',

Very Helpful Commenter sent me this, and gave permission to post it:

I live in a bedroom community of 20,000 about 7 miles N. of the Seattle city limits. Last week my dog, Ozzy a 100lb pit was sleeping on the front stoop with the front door open behind him. I heard him "huff" a couple of times so I went to the door. One of our local minions of the law was standing in my driveway from where he told me Ozzy needed to be on a chain and muzzled. Since I'd never heard about that ordinance , I asked him for chapter and verse. I was told in no uncertain terms that it was his discretion and if I didn't have a muzzle or a chain on my dog, he could shoot him. I got the moron's name and badge number, put Ozzy inside and walked down to talk to the C.O.P., who lives four doors down the street to have a chat. I was so mad I was shaking. I told him what I just told you. Just after I went home, Officer Moron pulled his patrol car into the Chief's driveway. Ten minutes later he left. Just this morning the Chief stopped by to pet Ozzy and to tell me that Officer Moron had been terminated for cause because that was his third verifiable complaint of "Field Legislation". Or as the Chief called it, "Pulling ordinances out of his ass".

He also told me he was going to have a long talk with all of our uniformed officers about this sort of BS and how it was going to stop dead in its tracks. He also has little to no use for swat teams and tactical uniforms with face masks and full auto weapons. I told him it might be good for the officers to get out of their cars once in a while and simply take a walk through the neighborhoods to meet people as that might ameliorate the adversarial mindset some officers seem to be developing.

One other thing. A few years ago Police Officers out of the blue started issuing written warnings about picayune land use violations. Garbage containers too close to the street, lawns not neatly mowed, and RV's with one wheel on the grass in my and other's yards, that sort of thing. 20 or 25 of us went to the next city council meeting and told the city council, the Mayor and the City Manager ,whose idea this all was, that if things were so under control that the Police were being assigned "Hall Monitor" duties, perhaps we should cut the Police budget by 25 or 50 percent, and let some officers go. The city manager told us we were all a bunch of displaced rednecks and if we wanted to live like "White Trash" it was all right with her. Two months later we got a shiny new city manager with some sense. This place ain't Beverly Hills, ya know.

It's nice when you have A: a COP with a working brain and B: a city council who apparently realizes who both votes and pays the bills.

There's just something about some police officers and dogs

that leads to dead dogs.
Sharon Kulers heard her Dalmatian barking outside, so she made her way to the back yard.

She saw a Mount Olive Police Department cruiser pull up to the house behind hers.

Then she noticed the shotgun in one of the officer's hands, aimed at her neighbor's 45-pound Labrador retriever.

"I said, 'Please don't shoot that dog. He won't hurt you,'" Mrs. Kulers said.

The officer looked at her, then back at the dog.

A shot rang out -- then, another.

"I said, 'Why did you have to do that? You didn't have to do that,'" Mrs. Kulers said. "He said, 'It showed its teeth.' He said, 'We have a right to do this.'"

"It showed its teeth." At a stranger at the fence. So he shot it, as is his 'right'. Just bleepin' wonderful, isn't it? And the department was so considerate in notifying her:
Colby Mangum arrived home at 7:45 and was greeted by a note on her front door.

"It said, 'Call the Mount Olive Police Department about your vicious dog,'" the 24-year-old Mount Olive College graduate said.

Immediately, she thought of her Rottweiler, Bella.

"Because of her breed and her size, I could understand if she got loose and scared someone," Ms. Mangum said.

But "never" would she have imagined that the note was in reference to her 2-year-old, "undersized" Labrador.
Isn't that just so, compassionate?

What started this mess?
The neighbor who called the police was "really upset," too, Ms. Mangum said.

She was in her yard collecting sticks and pinecones when she mistook a playful lunge for one of aggression, she told her neighbor.

"She said (Durham getting shot) wasn't her intention," Ms. Mangum said. "That wasn't what she wanted. Not even close."
Lesson if you live in Mount Olive: don't complain to the cops about a dog unless you want it dead.

When the officer showed up at her home, he showed no sympathy, she said.

"He was very cold, very rude," Ms. Mangum said. "He said, 'Well ma'am, that's procedure."

Nearly the same thing the shooter told Mrs. Kulers hours earlier.

Police Chief Ralph Schroeder said based on the report he has seen, his men were justified in using lethal force.

Calls to his office to get the name of the officer who fired the shots were not returned Friday. The notice left on Ms. Magnum's door was signed by "S. Parks."

They were called by a neighbor who said the dog was acting aggressive, the dog "showed its teeth" to officers, and even "lunged" at one of them, he said.

But at the scene, the department official sent to discuss the incident told Ms. Mangum that the dog was too far away to spray with mace, requiring two shotgun shells instead.

"From what I have seen in the reports, that is what it says. The dog was being aggressive," Schroeder said. "(Our officers) attempt to get the owner to control their animal. If we can't, you have to make the decision on what to do with it."
Please note, the dog was in a fenced yard. Dogs consider- rightly- their yard their territory to protect. Stranger shows up and dog 'acts aggressive' and 'shows its teeth', these sorry excuses for lawmen consider that excuse to shoot it. Just absolutely disgusting.

Town Manager Charles Brown said he had no comment other than he had heard about the shooting.

But he did say that that "any time an officer feels threatened, they have the right to respond to that."
'Any time an officer feels threatened'? By a dog in a fence? He has no problem with that?

Now, most PD's call animal control to check on an aggressive dog report, did they here? Why, no.
Wayne County Animal Control director Justin Scally said he is not aware of any calls made to his office from Mount Olive police in reference to the incident -- Thursday evening or since.

"Typically, the 911 center will contact us," he said. "But to my knowledge, we didn't get any calls Thursday."

But Scally did say that he is not aware of any incidents in which a dog was put down by someone on his staff due to aggressive behavior.

Well, obviously your staff is behind the times and not racking up the number of kills the PD is. You gonna get on the ball, or keep acting like an intelligent public employee?

This is a fine example of "I'm a Police Officer and I can do whatever I decide I need/want to", and a prize winning example of 'Law Enforcement- sorry excuse for' AND 'LE While Stupid'.

I have to add another 'Law Enforcement' category:

LE While Stupid:
A Labrador-pit bull was shot and killed by police inside a south-central home Friday afternoon inches from where the homeowner was showering.

"I was taking a shower, when all the sudden I heard this loud pop," Deanna Gonzales said. "I jumped out of the shower naked and saw my dog whimpering on the ground."

Officers were responding to a tip that Francisco Aragon, a 28-year-old wanted on felony and misdemeanor charges including escape, was at the Rio Grande Street house, said Colorado Springs Police Sgt. Tim Hogan.

The dog lunged at an officer, biting him on the right wrist, police said.

The dog then retreated and was coming back at the officers when a second officer shot the dog, police said.

"They had permission to be in the house, they did nothing wrong," Hogan said.

So far, sounds not bad, right? Here's the rest:
Gonzales' children let police into the house to look for the fugitive while Gonzales showered, she said.

Her daughter put Gemini, a 2-year-old Labrador-pit bull in the bathroom with her to keep him out of the way, Gonzales said

Police opened the bathroom door and the dog pounced.

Which takes this into the realm of "If the kids put the dog in there, and you knew it, and knew mom was showering, WHY THE HELL DID YOU OPEN THE DOOR?"

But, of course, the officers Did No Wrong:
Hogan said the officer took the necessary steps for self-defense.

"Sometimes that's the only option they have," he said. "It's just one of those things."

Friggin' moron.