Just An Earth-Bound Misfit, I
(No Kings, Ever!)

The cop who pointed a rifle at people during the Ferguson brouhaha is facing loss of his LEO certification. His lawyer is whining about "selective enforcement":

“There’s selective enforcement against Mr. Albers, in a situation where we have now seen at least a dozen officers in the selected photos having their rifles raised,” [Brandi] Barth said.

I've sat through some traffic dockets, now and then, and while I've seen defendants argue selective enforcement to the judges, I've never seen a judge give it any weight. When you get down it it, it's arguing "no shit, I'm guilty, but so were those other guys and you didn't nab them! No faaaiiirrrr!"

I don't know how such administrative proceedings go, but if that's the best argument that his lawyer has, he had better be planning on a new career.

This is just stupid beyond belief.

A Washington Post reporter who was arrested at a restaurant last year while reporting on protests in Ferguson, Mo., has been charged in St. Louis County with trespassing and interfering with a police officer and ordered to appear in court.

Wesley Lowery, a reporter on The Post’s national desk, was detained in a McDonald’s while he was in Missouri covering demonstrations sparked by a white police officer fatally shooting an unarmed black 18-year-old.

A court summons dated Aug. 6 — just under a year after Lowery’s arrest — was sent to Lowery, 25, ordering him to appear in a St. Louis County municipal court on Aug. 24. The summons notes that he could be arrested if he does not appear.

Arresting and charging reporters for doing their jobs is what happens in Russia and other Third World shitholes.

But it's becoming clearer and clearer to the casual observer that what we have in this country is, indeed, a police state. The cops view themselves as above the law, above reproach, and certainly not accountable to some pesky reporter with a press card and a tablet.

I'd almost like to see this case go forward, for maybe, somewhere along the way, a sober judge might look at the prosecutors and say "what the fuck, over?" But I have less and less faith that would happen. Between the Wars on Drugs and Terror, we have, mostly willingly, surrendered almost every Constitutional protection that once existed. I have no doubt that there are tens of millions of people who think that arresting reporters for reporting inconvenient truths is just peachy.

Officials in Ferguson, Missouri, say they will replace two recently planted saplings this week, including one planted in memory of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

The City Manager was fired yesterday and the Chief of Police quit today. The municipal court judge quit two days ago.

The Missouri Supreme Court has effectively put the Ferguson Municipal Court out of business by transferring all of its cases to a judge from the court of appeals, who will handle the cases as a circuit court judge.

That's a good first step. But it's only a first step. There are a hell of a lot of other towns that use their municipal court system as an ATM to fill the town coffers, and not only in Missouri. They all need to be shut down. Enforcing the law should be about public saety, not about revenue generation.

That's about what he said, in one of the lamest interviews given:

While the civil rights investigators portrayed a culture of rudeness and intolerance among Ferguson police officers, [Mayor] Knowles said he had never witnessed that. “When I’m looking … they’re actually pretty considerate to the individuals they deal with. Now, when I’m not there, I have no idea.”

Gack!

I do need to plow my own way through the Ferguson Report, which, by all accounts, is a scathing compilation of a police department that both exists to fund the local government and should be wearing white sheets while on the job.

Let's face it: There are a hell of a lot of police departments that couldn't withstand the same degree of scrutiny, either. You'd find the same levels of racism, including emails, there, too. It's systemic. There are a shitload of other towns or cities, just waiting for a similar spark to ignite an uproar.

But for now, let's just watch some Gravity Inspectors at work:

Cops choking people is prohibited by NYPD policy. In practice, not so much.

New York City’s longest-serving police commissioner, Ray Kelly, “routinely rejected” recommendations for disciplinary action against police officers who carried out banned chokeholds on civilians, and offered no explanation for dismissing the findings of the city’s independent police watchdog, a stinging report has found.

A prohibition with no teeth is not really a prohibition. It's kind of like gambling at a Casablanca saloon.

The worm may be starting to turn, though*.

Prosecutors in New Mexico filed murder charges on Monday against two Albuquerque police officers in the 2014 shooting death of a knife-wielding homeless man, a killing that sparked protests in the city over concerns about excessive use of force.

I have heard cops say "I'd rather be judged by twelve than carried by six." The bitter truth is that cops being judged by twelve is exceedingly rare. Most shootings are found to be justified. It pretty much takes putting a guy on his knees or on the ground an then shooting him in the back for charges to be brought. Even forming an impromptu firing squad has been found to be a righteous killing.

Normally, they just get a pat on the back, no matter how bad the shooting is. In small departments, they may be later encouraged to find work with another department. In large departments, there is the "rubber gun squad" or working the motor pool.

Update: In Chicago, they're trying a cop for shooting a 95-year-old man to death with a beanbag gun.
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* On the other hand, what might be going on in Albuquerque is a little game of "if you're going to fuck with me, I'll fuck with you."

A Ferguson Police Department public relations officer has been put on administrative leave over his response to the destruction of a memorial to Michael Brown, the teenager who was fatally shot by a police officer.

The memorial included signs in the middle of a street near the Canfield Green apartment complex where Brown was shot. Photos on social media showed the mementos scattered, and they appeared to have been run over by a vehicle.

“I don’t know that a crime has occurred,” Officer Timothy Zoll said Friday in an interview with The Washington Post. “But a pile of trash in the middle of the street? The Washington Post is making a call over this?”

Running his mouth wasn't what got him in trouble, though:

The department said in a statement Saturday that Zoll misled his superiors about the contents of the interview, that he had been placed on unpaid leave, effective immediately, and that there would be disciplinary proceedings.

No surprise here: The Ferguson Po-Po immediately backed Zoll, at least before they did an investigation and found out that he had lied to his bosses.

"Pile of trash"... here's a test: Go and tear down a makeshift memorial to a dead cop and see what happens to you. They'll at least charge you with littering, after you fall up a flight of stairs at the cop shop.

Headline in the paper today: Police Pursue Reforms.

Right. We shall see. The city of Cleveland has entered into a consent decree with the Dept. of Justice after the DOJ found that the Cleveland cops were little more than brutal thugs with badges.

I don't think the worm has yet turned on this. As long as the cops can limit their brutality to mostly poor people, I doubt if there will be any sustained movement for reform. And yes, the po-po seem to be using race as a proxy for economic class, which is why the NYPD has gotten away with repeatedly frisking nearly every Black and Latino male in the city.

By now it's occurred to nearly every person with a carry permit that they are held to far higher standards on the use of force than the supposedly professional gun-toters. The cops (and I include the Feebies in this) can and do shoot damn near anyone or anything at anytime without the repercussions that would come down on a civilian who did the exact same thing.

Don't be fooled: The current "push for reform" is more the authorities trying to outlast the news cycle than anything else. Oh, sure, a few of the outliers on the brutality scale will be sacrificed. But real change in the use of force by police won't come until the Boyos in Blue lose their sense of perspective and begin wholesale abuse and killing of white folk.

But that day is not yet here.

The cop this time used a chokehold, which is prohibited by the NYPD because the improper use of chokeholds tends to either kill people or turn them into vegetables. But as tends to happen with local grand juries, the cop in question was given a pat on the back and told "attaboy".

Sure, this is all one big coincidence, right?

The Ferguson police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown has resigned, his attorney said Saturday...

There just is. Uber's strong-arm tactics. The VA willingly allowing a terminally-ill vet to die in pain because they were afraid he could become addicted, after it was the VA's piss-poor care that made him terminally-ill. Wingnuts crowing about the fairness of the Ferguson grand jury, when it was obvious that, from the start, the investigation treated the cop as a crime victim. Wingnuts who were noticeable silent when Bush and Cheney planted newspaper stories justifying the Iraq War (both before and after) and who are now upset that Holder has done some of the same to justify the "Fast and Furious" mishegoss.

Thing is, I'm getting tired of being pissed off. Doesn't anyone realize that what it takes, now, for a cop to be held criminally liable for shooting someone is to put them face down on the ground and then shoot them in the back? Doesn't everyone know that the "eggshell plaintiff" rule doesn't apply to cops?

Hasn't anyone realized by now that assuming the presidency is akin to putting on the One Ring? They all become enchanted, if not trapped, by their power and they only seek to expand it.

Meanwhile, store economists have missed have missed the underlying lesson of Black Friday: "The shopper coming out for those deals is very disciplined," according to a guy at Indiana U. named John Talbott, pointing out that shoppers are not making impulse purchases like they once did.

No fucking shit, Sherlock. People don't have the disposable income that they once did. Even with minimal inflation, wages have been stagnant for a very long period of time. Oh, it might be high cotton if you sell real estate in the East Hamptons or high-end cars, but for many models of cars and trucks, inventories are rather high.

But there is just so much to get outraged over and my tank is getting low. And frankly, I don't know what to do. There is a goodly percentage of people in this country who are just fine with cops gunning down non-whites. The people at the top mostly seem to embody the mindset of the Bezoses and Sandbergs who say, in essence: "I got mine, fuck you." Shame, protests, votes, riots, all seem to do nothing. The Democrats are inept, the Republicans are venal. Most of the people who seem to want to be president in `16 are unfit to run a town of 35. (Quite possibly, the worst thing we've done is to scrap the "smoke-filled room" method of nominating candidates. The primary system seems to generate a candidate based on the "Who's the Biggest Bozo", but that's a subject for another time.)

So I'm probably going to tone it down for awhile. Lots of people are still at it, plenty are in my blogrolls, so if you need to get pissed off, go there.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency Monday ahead of an expected grand jury decision in the case of Michael Brown.

While, meanwhile, the cops in St. Louis County continue to obfuscate and lie:

[Chief Jon Belmar of St Louis County] the police chief leading the response to protests over the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, has been accused of dishonesty by demonstrators after denying that officers shot at them with rubber bullets and claiming that only criminals were teargassed.

Reporters were teargassed. Clergy were teargassed. People standing in their yards were teargassed. All of that is a matter of record.

And the cops were shooting at people, including those who where only exercising their First Amendment rights, with rubber munitions. That Chief Belmar is hanging his hat on the distinction between "rubber balls" and "rubber bullets" is pettifoggery to an unseemly degree.

Update on this post: The St. Louis County police chief denies that he asked for the TFR. Not only that, but the cops are claiming that the FAA forced the TFR on them, that it wasn't their idea, nosiree.

The chief's characterization of FAA managers as "a couple of air traffic controllers" will probably offend both the FAA brass and the real scope-jockeys.

I fall back on the point that I asserted in the previous post: The operating assumption is that the cops are lying.

Remember when the FAA imposed a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) over Ferguson and some of us thought that it was there to keep those pesky news helicopters away, so the cops could more easily get away with whatever fuckery they had in mind?

That was exactly the reason for it. The justifications proclaimed at the time were bullshit. Not only were they bullshit, the cops kept clinging to their bullshit until it was clear, even to them, that the truth was coming out.

Here's a general rule: Whenever the police brass make public pronouncements on any topic in the news, every word they say is a lie, including the conjunctions and the articles, until proven otherwise.

In the first formal blow to the policing tactics being used in Ferguson, Mo., a federal judge ruled Monday that the “5 second rule” — a policy being enforced by some officers that required protesters to be moving at all times during demonstrations or be subject to arrest — was unconstitutional and violated the protesters’ First Amendment rights.

Of course, the po-po immediately issued a statement that they really do respect the Constitutional rights of the protestors, but we all know that's bullshit, don't we, Gentle Reader? They'd still be openly beating confessions out of people if they could.

Chris Hernandez, who has a lot of experience both as a soldier and a cop, writes about what the police and the legislatures will need to do in order to repair the widening breach between the cops and the public.

In a functioning republic, people who let the cops know what is going on are "concerned citizens".

In a police state, they are called "informers".

When occupying soldiers are on the street, the term is "collaborators".


There are some serious issues. First off, as has been discussed ad nauseum on this blog, is the issue of police militarization.

Second is that for most of the country, there is no such thing as an independent review of police actions. The same prosecutors who work day in and day out with the cops should not ones who are reviewing the legitimacy of police use of force. You don't have to look far to find where cops shot people in handcuffs and then had the shooting deemed to be justified or a suicide. Even the FBI, which gets involved in lots of cases of local police use of force, whitewashes their own shootings.

Third, the paramilitary mindset has to be broken. Cops call us "civilians". Well, so are they. They are "civilian police", or they are supposed to be. Their departments should prohibit them from wearing camouflage uniforms. They should not be running around in fatigue-style uniforms.

And maybe we all need to do something. If your local police or sheriff's department runs around dressed and acting like a bunch of wannabee militamen, then go to your city council or town meeting or county commission and say something. If they're not responsive, think about finding someone to run for the job who will be.

Ideally, the cops work for us, not just the rich and the powerful. But the only way we can get there is if we, as a people, start applying the heat. For if they feel enough heat, they'll see the light.

“This militarized policing thing – it’s all political chest-beating,” said [Alameda County] narcotics officer {Steve} Lenthe, expressing a view shared by many Swat officers and vendors who talked to the Guardian. “Americans have short memories and when something else happens all this knee-jerk stuff about military equipment will all be blown away.”

Let's prove to Officer Lenthe that he is wrong, shall we?

There will be a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

I'll bet that nothing comes out of it.