Tag: sacramento bee

Sacramento Bee Hates Cops, Even The Good Ones

Sadly, four days ago there was another random school shooting.  This time it took place at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, CA.  The 16 year old suspect walked onto the campus, pulled a low capacity handgun out of his backpack, and in 16 seconds, shot six other people and then killed himself.  The Sacramento Bee has reported extensively on it, all of it except the part about three off-duty cops acting heroically that is.

Sadly, this incident once again proved that no matter how much gun control you enact, gun control cannot prevent mass shootings.

In the four days since the shooting, the Sacramento Bee has published a total of 13 news stories about the incident.  They have covered the victims, the suspect, the search for the suspect, the trauma suffered by other students on the campus, the need for more gun control, just about everything you can imagine related to the incident.

What is noticeably absent from the Bee’s coverage however is a single story about the three off-duty cops who, without any of their cop gear or any regard for their own safety, ran into that school toward the gunfire and saved kid’s lives. The fact that those three cops, each from a different agency, ran in to help is not remotely unreported by other news agencies though.  In fact, their deeds have been the subject of a number of news stories.

The ABC7 story, titled “Saugus High School shooting: 3 off-duty officers were first on scene of deadly rampage” talks about the incident.  Right near the top of the article, they name the three cops.  “Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Daniel Finn, Inglewood police Officer Sean Yanez and Los Angeles police Officer Gus Ramirez were dropping off their children Thursday morning at the Santa Clarita school when they saw scores of children rushing off campus.”

The KTLA story is titled “Off-Duty Officers Were 1st on Scene of Saugus School Shooting”

Your Central Valley ran the story “Off-duty officers were 1st on scene of Southern California school shooting”

Insider titled their piece “Off-duty officers were the first responders to the California high school shooting — because they were dropping off their own family members for school”

USA Today ran this headline: “Off-duty officers rushed to Saugus High after hearing shots: ‘Their actions saved lives'”

And the list goes on.  News outlet after news outlet, big and small, ran stories highlighting the heroic actions of three off-duty cops.  These are the actions that we want to hear about, the type of men you want to be in uniform, and just about everyone understands that, except the cop haters at the Sacramento Bee.

On the other hand, over the five day period running up to that shooting, the Sacramento Bee ran, re-ran, and ran related stories to a piece they wrote, titled “California’s Criminal Cops: Arrested and convicted of crimes, but still on the force.”

That extremely inflammatory piece ran on the front page of the actual print version of the paper, and was pushed heavily by them on their social media accounts.  It was a very long piece, which discussed some earth shattering misdemeanor crimes committed by a total of 630 California cops over a 10 year time span.  According to the article, the number one offense committed was non-injury drunk driving while off-duty.

Using the numbers provided by the Bee in that article, which includes the fact that California has a total of 79,000 sworn officers, the math boils down to this: every year in California, 0.008% of the cops in this state commit a minor crime.  That is less that 1/100th of a percent.  Yet the Bee dedicated six months to researching the story, and ran it and ten other related stories for five days straight.

Just for comparison sake, let’s take a look at the California Assembly and Senate. Between the two houses of the state legislature, there are a total of 120 members. During the last 8 years (since 2011), 5 members have been convicted of crimes ranging from money laundering, grand theft, voter fraud, racketeering and gun smuggling.  Some quick math tells me that on average, 0.5% of the California State Legislature is arrested every year.

Last I checked, one half of a percent is much higher than 8/1000 of a percent, yet we don’t see the Sacramento Bee running a single story deriding our elected law makers as a group.

For as long as I can remember, going back to my youth when at 13 years old and I had a paper route, the Sacramento Bee has made a living off of spreading hatred toward law enforcement.  That is one of the reasons I delivered The Sacramento Union instead of the Bee.   Sadly, the Union went under many years ago, and since then, the Bee has gotten even more lopsided without another paper to keep them in check.

Even now, when they have a very simple glaring opportunity to share a story about three cops doing absolutely heroic stuff, they choose to completely ignore it.  In fact, the only mention they made of those heroic actions was one single sentence buried deep in their article discussing the dead suspect.  If this does not give you insight as to what motivates them, I’m afraid nothing will.

F*ck the Sacramento Bee!

Anti-Cop Activism Disguised as News

Capture“There are other things they could have done” (photo caption) says someone who has zero training or experience in the job, and almost no life experience.

The Sacramento Bee, besides being  (quoting my dad) a “pinko commie liberal rag,” has a long history of not being friendly to law enforcement, but lately it has turned from unfriendly to downright adversarial.  This recent article is a perfect example of that, and does nothing for anyone except for the cop haters.

First, let me address the facts of the incident before we get into this latest piece of Sac Bee anti-cop propaganda.  In November 2016, in the very early morning hours (5am), Sacramento County deputies were called to a house in Fair Oaks where a strange man, Jesse Attaway, broke into a home, but was chased out after trying to get the home owner to hand over the keys to his car.  The suspect started jumping fences and tried to break into several more homes.  The cops received numerous calls about the man trying to break into homes.  Cops located the burglar and when they confronted him, at gunpoint, he refused to comply with orders.  He would not show his hands and kept turning away from the cops.  Finally, he pulled his hands out of his pockets in a rapid motion and pointed something at the deputies, who thinking it was a gun, shot and killed him.

Per the news stories from the time of the incident, which coincidentally was about the same time Alfred Olango was shot for doing nearly the same thing, it was indicated the suspect’s motions looked just like someone drawing a gun and taking a shooting stance.

During the follow up investigation, it was discovered that he arrived in the area driving a stolen car, which he stole during a burglary earlier in the evening in Rocklin, CA .  In addition to the stolen car, he had methamphetamine in his pocket and according to the autopsy, he was high on meth at the time he was killed.

So, let me sum up Attaway’s crimes just the night of his death.  Multiple counts of burglary, grand theft auto, attempted grand theft auto, possession of methamphetamine, driving under the influence, and his final act, felony stupid which is what got him killed.

Now for this ridiculous Sacramento Bee article.  It starts off with a touching tale of woe, sprinkled with fictional nonsense designed to make the reader emotional, because it is easier to get you on their side if you are emotional.  “On the one-year anniversary of the day their father was shot and killed by two Sacramento sheriff’s deputies, sisters Bobbi Attaway and Sierra Rivera returned to the suburban street where he died, and where they thought they could still see traces of his blood staining the asphalt.”

Uh, no, no you didn’t.  The blood is cleaned up by a professional hazmat cleanup company.  I’ve been to scenes of outdoor homicides only days later and there is no evidence of blood stains, let alone a full year later.  But hey, it makes a more touching story if they can see their dad’s blood stains, so we’ll just say they “thought they saw” some.

But wait, we should pile on more completely irrelevant nonsense like “a father the girls described as funny and non-confrontational.”  Not sure how often his daughters were tasked with arresting their dad, but oddly enough, people behave differently when they are chilling with their family as compared to when they are stoned, in the middle of a crime spree and get caught by the cops.  I know that might seem odd, but trust me, it is true.

“How could Attaway, 41, have methamphetamine in his system, as a toxicology report found, when his daughters never knew he did drugs?”  Uh, because they live in a bubble and did not pay attention to what their dad was doing, either that or they are lying about not knowing.

You see, this was far from Attaway’s first exposure to meth.  Hell, it was not even the first time the cops found meth in his possession, and the Sac Bee damn well knows that, or they should.  It took me all of 10 minutes to check the public court records for both Sacramento County and Placer County, the two counties in which this crime spree occurred, and the two counties in which Attaway had lived.  Lo and behold, Attaway had two prior arrests for possession of methamphetamine for which he spent three years on probation.  If the Sac Bee was interested in the truth, they would have offered that up, but truth is not what they are after.

Then they go on to talk about the “civil rights attorney” which is funny thing to call a guy who has a reputation in the area of pretty much making a living off of suing city and county government agencies, especially when the cops are involved.  Beyond that, they talk about all sorts of other things, doubts, policies, other unrelated allegations, just about anything else they could throw in there before they get down to brass tacks:  the shooting was deemed a good shoot by the homicide investigators, by the district attorney’s office and by the independent inspector general.  Yes, you read that right, it was a good shoot according to everyone.

But that has never stopped the Sacramento Bee from dragging the cops through the mud.

Hell, this time around, they are also throwing some of the mud.

Cue the poorly edited cellphone video of a sad teen.  Be sure to include family photos of the suspect smiling thrown in for that extra little tug at the reader’s heart strings…