June 2015 – Deputy Matt & Others Who Serve

Can’t It Just Be “American Pride?”

Lately, America is being torn apart internally. We are becoming more and more divided on ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. And as time goes on, rather than getting better, it seems to me that it is only getting worse.

When I was growing up in California during the late 70’s and 80’s, no one cared what color you were or what religion you practiced. My neighborhood was very ethnically and religiously diverse, and it was awesome. All of us kids, whether we were white, black, Mexican, Filipino, Asian, Catholic, atheist, Jewish, Southern Baptist, Muslim, or whatever else, played together as a group. We had all the normal fights that kids do, “that touchdown doesn’t count” or “I tagged you out”, but never did race, gender or religion get blamed.

What has happened to this country? As a straight, mostly white male, of very mixed ethnic background, I’m amazed at what has become of the Great American Melting Pot. I once read a great analogy, and I can’t recall where I saw it, but the author said that the American Melting Pot had turned into a Salad Bowl. America has ceased to melt all of us, from such varied backgrounds, into one society, and instead we are like a salad bowl, all living in the same area but still very different from each other.

I was prompted to write this because of the attached image which I saw on a friend’s Facebook page this morning. I get the point of the meme, but I think they are all missing the much larger point. Our floundering, once great nation is being torn apart by all of those groups. We should be coming together as a country, not separated into groups. I am not remotely suggesting one forget their heritage, but realize it is only that; heritage. It is part of your background, and that is where it should be. We should all be an American first and foremost.

Picture yourself getting a “pride” tattoo. It will be your one and only tattoo. If your first thought regarding what to get is about your ethnicity or sexual orientation, then you my friend are part of the problem. Your first thought should be about “American Pride.” Until we get back to a time when being American takes precedence over being black, brown, yellow, red, white, straight or gay, we will continue on this self destructive path of being a divided, disjointed wreck.

Enough with the hyphenated Americans. I’m an American! What are you?

Anti-guner’s Logic Bending, Lies and Disregard for Human Life

In their continued push to pass more restrictions on American’s civil rights, a recent article on the notoriously left leaning, quite ironically named “Think Progress” (since they seem to lack both thought or progress) touted that “The Number Of People Who Use A Gun In Self-Defense Is Pretty Much Negligible.” In fact, they felt that so strongly, that is what they titled the article. As a conservative, and very pro-gun guy, I am used to being called callous and uncaring by the left, but the whole premise of this article screams of hypocrisy. It appears all the more callous when you look at the actual number of times they consider to be “negligible”, even if you were only to consider the incorrect numbers that they provide.

Also, somewhat noteworthy, this entire article is based around a “timely study from the Violence Policy Center (VPC).” If you are not already aware, the VPC is “an American nonprofit organization that advocates for gun control.” So, they are clearly an unbiased organization with no agenda…

Before I begin to correct their figures and attack their illogical conclusions, I will first and foremost point out just how callous and hypocritical these anti-gun zealots are being. The anti-gun left constantly proclaims that “if it would save just one life, then ___[insert proposed new gun restriction]___ should be put in place”. But wait, what about those 263 lives that were clearly saved by the use of a firearm? Do those lives not count? Who determines which lives count and which do not? I am pretty sure that those 263 people, and their families, do not feel so “negligible.”

Now to clear up their incorrect numbers, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, there were 8,855 homicides using a firearm in 2012 (the year they are using – which by the way, that total also includes LEO’s shot and killed that year). Since they are looking at criminal homicides, we must subtract all justifiable homicides from that number, of which there were 263 non-LEO justifiable homicides with a firearm (not 259 like they claim) and 423 LEO. That brings the total number of criminal homicides, with a firearm to 8169. Please note; that is not the 8,342 that they claim.

Now, if we are going to just consider non-LEO uses of firearms, as they suggest, that would bring the number to ratio to 31-1 instead of the 33-1 they claim. However, logically speaking, since LEO’s are included in the total number of homicides, then their justifiable homicides using a firearm should also be included. It we include those uses, then the ratio changes to 12-1, which is a significant change.

Finally, I will address their faulty logic.

1) Both the author of this piece and the people at the VPC (not to mention the vast array of other anti-gun organizations) consistently fail to account for is the number of times that a firearm is employed in self-defense, yet the suspect is not killed let alone the number of times the gun is not even fired.

2) If 259, or 263 using the corrected number, or 686 (arguably the number that should be considered) lives are “negligible,” then why do 9 (Charleston, 2015) lives, or 12 lives (Aurora, 2012), or even 26 lives (Sandy Hook, 2012) count so much that they are used to justify restricting all American’s rights? What number is negligible?

3) There are an estimated 100 million legal gun owners in the United States. The percentage of them who use their legally owned gun in a crime (all crimes, not just homicides) annually is 0.07%. If you want to talk about “negligible,” then we should talk about that. In actuality, the overwhelming majority of guns used in crimes, including homicides, were obtained illegally and most times those guns are employed by persons who are legally prohibited from possessing guns. In other words, new gun laws will not have any effect on the criminals who already use them.

The anti-gun crowd and the left in general, especially left leaning politicians and pundits, love to paint the NRA and gun owners in general as heartless, uncaring, blood thirsty people. Oddly enough, the opposite is true. The difference is that we realize that the human being is the predator, and that the best way for anyone, no matter their gender or their size, to even the odds in a self-defense situation is for them to be armed, and to know how to use it. There is a damn good reason cops carry guns, and that is for self-defense.

As a career cop, who more often than anyone should have to, sees firsthand the consequences of “gun violence”, just like most other cops, I realize that the problem is not the gun. The problem, the true problem, is the violent person with no regard for human life who is using the gun. It is time for the left to stop blaming the tool and for them to face some cold hard facts; violent humans are the real problem. How about we stop all this noise and start addressing the problem?

A night in the life….

I recently had an interesting encounter, actually it was pretty mundane and that is what makes it interesting. I was sent to one of those calls we all hate, the very sight of these calls will make most patrol cops cringe as we frantically look for a car to stop, a suspicious subject anything to avoid getting “that call” I’m no different, problem is I got blind-sided. I sent my log on and BAM! Dispatcher sent me the call right out of the gate (I think I need to make some Starbuck’s investments at the comm center). The call was a sex crime involving child victims, the particulars of the call aren’t important but it helps to explain my feeling of dread.

Very often a call like this can turn into a “One-call-wonder” kind of night. Long statements, lots of very emotional people and uncomfortable details. I know a few people who are geared towards these kinds of situations, I’m not one of them. These calls are emotionally draining to me, again really kind of irrelevant details. It was my turn at bat and time to go deal with what was in front of me.

Driving to the call I mentally prepared myself. The call was in a neighborhood that was somewhere between working class and ghetto, sort of a transition neighborhood if you will. As I walked up to the house there were two guys smoking on the porch, they looked a little apprehensive as I came up the yard. One of them told me to come in and brought out his wife and his mom (Grandmother of the kids in question).

And we were off…..I am got names, birthdates time etc. The call progressed as normal, lots of long stories and parts of the puzzle that make no difference to the overall picture. Mom was emotional, Grandma was emotional, Dad was angry. Overall everyone kept it together the best they could. They stayed mostly on topic and fairly articulate with the facts.

As the story wound to its conclusion and I had talked to the kids and all the supporting cast members there was still one major problem, I don’t know the address of the suspect. The family knew where the suspect lived but not the address. They told me they could show me, they tried to describe it but in the end I needed to locate the actual address. I offered to drive Dad to the location (I ran Dad’s criminal history on my way to the call, he is no stranger to law enforcement but seems to have put most of his troubled past behind him.)

I opened the front door of the car and Dad says (as most people do) “I guess you don’t get too many people riding up front”

“No” I tell him “Not many”

We drove to the area where our suspect was located and Dad began the small talk.

“So how do you like your job? Being an Officer?” He asks

“I enjoy it” I tell him “but it can be stressful”

“I guess it would be, people can be crazy”

“Isn’t that the truth” I comment “seems more now than ever”

He is quiet for a minute then tells me “I guess with all the stuff people do now and all the cops not doing stuff the way they should it probably gets really bad”

I’m thinking the ice is getting thin, “I suppose” I begin “but more often than not most of those stories get blown up before anyone knows the facts. Once they get investigated there is always more than the little video or first story”

“I bet that’s true, I mean it seems like everyone is so quick to want to make their name off the cops doing something wrong it must be hard” He said.

“You’ve got that right, I figure there is always a camera watching me somewhere” I said, “but I can’t let that keep me from doing my job. When I get to a call all I know is what I hear on the radio and what I read on the computer” I motioned to my MDT just as a 245 stabbing call comes out a block away from where we are headed.

“Yeah that’s got to be hard, I mean if you don’t know what’s going on when you get there I guess it would take some time to sort it out right.” He paused then tells me “I mean if everyone would just calm down and let you guys do your job it seems like everything would just work out for the best”

Holy bomb shell Batman!! This guy gets it, he totally understands the big picture. About that time the updates for the stabbing come in, there was no stabbing just people yelling about a stabbing. Dad notices the updates and asks if that’s a good example not knowing what’s going on until we get to a call.

In the end we located our suspect’s address and went back to Grandma’s house. Our conversation continued along the usual topics and near the end he asks

“Do you sometimes have a hard time being a white officer?” (Did I mention the family I’m dealing with is black?)

“Well I figure if I’m not called a racist several times a night I’m not doing my job” I chided.

“Really?” He asked surprised “I can’t imagine anyone calling you a racist, unless they were guilty of something and that’s all they had”

“Yup” I said “that seems to be the normal course of things though, but I really don’t have time to think about race when I’m dealing with calls, it just people”

“Yeah, I can see that it seems everyone is so worried about race all the time”

We got back to Grandma’s house to wrap things up. The family invited me to join them for pizza (gotta admit I was a little tempted).

What’s the point of all this? I guess its just that there really are a lot of normal people out there still. We all get caught up in the headlines of the race-baiting nonsense, the carnival hawkers crying out about their wares. The pictures plastered on the TV or the computer screen and it is easy to get sucked in and constantly think the worst of people.

I’m no better, while I temper my reactions I do (if I’m being honest with myself) sometimes get that “here we go again” feeling. Recently FBI Director James Comey spoke about this very thing. Officer’s can become influenced by the environment in which they work, it can create certain preconceived feelings and change the way we look at people.

I agree there is some truth to that and I (we) have all addressed it before. However, it is so much more than just “race” it is the whole picture, the clothes, the behavior the posture, the location. The problem is that it has become almost Pop Culture to embrace the outlaw life, the Thug culture and walk the walk, talk the talk but not embrace the actual life. It makes it difficult to separate at times.

I guess that’s the whole point of this diatribe (and if you made it this far thanks for sticking with me) is that I shall remain optimistic. I complain and stomp my feet and point out the BS I read in the media, but in the end I know there are more good people who understand what is really going on in the world. Our culture, our society, is going through a transition of a strange kind, I hope that the silent majority will find the strength and the courage to steer us back to center before things get too out of control. We shall not let the race baiters win the day, lets get our focus back on country first, “American’s first” one people made of many cultures, that is what America used to mean and what it needs to mean again.

-Doc

PS- No info on the original call, Detectives will follow up and handle it and I am confident all involved will be just fine.

More on McKinney

Some much needed background, and a quick look at the twisted view of the left.

This Breitbart article gives us some much needed background to that incident in McKinney, TX that I wrote about yesterday. As I previously stated in the Facebook comments where I shared that blog post, that incident was not racially motivated, and if you read this article, you will see I am not the only one saying that, nor is it just white people saying it.

I also have not seen much of the media coverage that these folks being quoted are referring to so I don’t know what the media has been pushing.

Knowing all this background, I understand why the officer was pissed. Hell, anyone doing this job long enough has probably gotten that hot at a call at least once in their career. The problem is when you let your anger influence your actions, and that is what appears to have been happening. I think that officer was still out of line in his behavior.

But also, like I said yesterday, I do not think pulling his gun was out of line. He had two people coming up behind him while he was trying to detain someone. They, by their own statements (see below HuffPo reference), were trying to free the girl. He has no idea what they are going to do. Pulling his gun in that situation is totally fine in my opinion.

Now, unlike some people who commented, I absolutely do NOT think he should be fired, or on meds, or forced to seek counseling, or see a shrink or any of the myriad of other extreme recommendations I saw. He should get an ass chewing, on paper, and be back to work.

He was pissed. He yelled and cussed at people. He detained a bunch of kids, some less cooperative than others, who were causing problems. As best I can tell, he did not injure anyone, violate any laws or anyone’s rights. He is guilty of being human and letting his anger out verbally. While it looks horrible on camera, and in my experience, usually does not help the situation, it is also not a federal offense that some are making it out to be. I don’t condone that behavior, but I do understand it.

Now for the flip side: Rather than talking to the responsible adults and homeowners who were present, in typical liberal lefty fashion, HuffPo gets their account from one of the 15 year old party crashers, and one of the people who is seen in the original video trying to stop the officer from detaining the girl in the yellow bikini. And not surprisingly, in their version, it was all about the racist white people and stuff…

If the following quote does not strike you as completely asinine, please leave my page and don’t come back:

“‘So a cop grabbed her arm and flipped her to the ground after she and him were arguing about him cursing at us,’ Thomas said.

When two teens went toward the cop to help the girl, they were accused of sneaking up on the cop to attack.

‘So a cop yelled ‘get those motherfuckers’ and they chased [us] with guns out. That’s why in the video I started running,’ Thomas said. ”
(emphasis added)

Please pay special attention to the sentence in bold. That is not the words of the 15 year old, that is the HuffPo author. YOU CAN’T DO THAT YOU FREAKING IDIOT LEFTIST MORONS!!!! That is a freaking crime! That attitude right there is a HUGE part of the problem we in Law Enforcement face. These idiots think it is ok to try and pull a subject away from the cops when the cops are detaining them.

My god the dumb stuff some people on the left think is absolutely beyond my ability to comprehend!
-Matt

Very Un-Pretty Police Interaction

I normally find myself defending police actions, but in this case, I find myself unable to do that. I hate to share stuff like this, but sometimes we have to. Facts are facts and the truth is the truth, and unlike the left, I refuse to ignore facts that I dislike in hopes that they will just go away.

Please disregard the juvenile title of the video, the video itself seems to have been taken by someone who was just capturing the incident and not injecting their self into it, and that I can appreciate.

I don’t know what happened before the camera started rolling (we never do) but from what I am catching, it appears that when the cops arrived to this pool party, a number of kids took of running (like kids sometimes do). Cops had to chase them, which I can personally attest that doing so in hot weather in a black uniform and a vest sucks. I get being pissed, but that is where I stop defending this guy.

Now, based only on what I see in this video, this guy (the Corporal or FTO – the guy with the stripes) is way the hell out of line in how he is behaving. In my opinion, one of his coworkers should have stepped in and tapped him out. He was too hot (angry) and needed to go chill in his car.

As for the part where he pulls his gun, in the comments on YouTube, I see some people freaking out about that. At that point, he is trying to detain a female (no idea why) and she is not cooperating, so he dumps her. Two guys come up behind him and look to be trying to stop him from detaining her, which is why he pulled his gun. The best thing anyone could have done in that situation would have been to tell her to cooperate so it could be sorted out later. Trying to pull a cop off someone (whether it is a legal detention or not) is never going to end well for anyone involved. Cooperate and sort it out in court.

Sadly, I have a very sinking feeling we will be seeing much more of this video as some will try and use it as an example of some sign of institutional problems instead of what it is, one single cop who likely is a good guy who lost it on one call.

If anyone reading this has any firsthand knowledge of this incident, I would love to hear it. If you don’t want to post publicly on our Facebook page, please message it to us so we can share it anonymously.

Will the Media Ever Change?

In their never ending rush to get clicks, likes, follows, and more importantly, money, the media continues to run half-assed stories about “police brutality” when they damn well know they only have part of the story, yet they do it anyway.

A couple of days ago, State Troopers in Oklahoma were involved in a shooting in which a “pastor” was shot and killed. The troopers said the man attacked them, but the all knowing media ran with the stories about how he was just a good guy and no one believes the police version. What follows is a collection of headlines from a number of online stories. What shocks me the most is that the Huffington Post headline is probably the most neutral of them all.

That is just a quick sampling that I gathered in 3 minutes on Google. Would it surprise you (it should absolutely not) to find that there is more to the story? Would it be shocking to learn that the cops were not lying? Is there any way that the “pastor” did indeed attack the cops?

Well, wouldn’t you know it, there was video of the incident and those horrible, evil, lying cops were not lying.

Over on LEO Affairs, there is an article that discusses the incident in a little more detail. My issue here is the constant bombardment we are taking by the media, and their total lack of any accountability. Something has to be done to change this. Perhaps it is time for Law Enforcement as an entity to file a class action lawsuit against the major media outlets for slander and libel.

Is The Death Knell of the Print Gun Magazine Tolling?

And Can It Be Staved Off?

Preface: Let me start by saying this, I don’t know what the heck I am talking about. I’m not a journalist, an editor, an economist or a business major. I’m just a dumb street cop who writes for a gun blog, and has been lucky enough to have a few pieces published in a print magazine that I have long subscribed to.

However, I do have some expertise at being a consumer of gun magazines. I have subscribed to various gun magazines for nearly 30 years. Some subcriptions have come and gone, but a few I have maintained consistently for more than a decade.

So, what got me thinking about this? I’ve had a renewal for one of those long term subscriptions sitting on my desk staring at me for a couple months now, and I just got the second notice in the mail.

Why has it been there so long? Well because over the years, that magazine has gotten shorter, been printed on thinner paper, cheaper binding, and more importantly, continues to have fewer issues per year all the while the price has steadily increased. As much as I like the magazine, it has gotten to the point that I am wondering if it is even worth renewing anymore.

I know I can’t be the only person feeling that way.

And on the flip side, look at the overwhelming plethora of gun blogs, YouTube channels, and some of the newly emerging all-in-one gun websites like Full30.com. Those “new media” outlets offer the consumer, no matter how voracious their appetite is for information, an unending supply of information. Some of it is good, some is mediocre, and some is worthless, but that is okay because the price is right.

Some of the magazine publishers have obviously realized this because most of them have started up their own websites. The problem is, while they know what they are doing in print, their efforts at providing engaging online infotainment is a decade behind most of the better known gun related websites.

I will be the first to say there is a definite alure to holding those glossy pages with excellent full-color photos of the latest pieces of unobtanium. I will freely admit I do not want to see the print gun magazine go the way of the dodo, but I’m also a cheapskate, and the ever shrinking return on my investment in those magazines is actually driving me away.

As I said at the begining of this article, I don’t know what I am talking about, but if I could make one single suggestion to the gun magazine publishers out there, it would be to stop trying to reinvent the online wheel. You just don’t have the knack. Instead, consider teaming up with some of those sources that do have that ability as a business partner. Not only would it be mutually beneficial, but it actually might prevent your extinction.