Cop Block

Some people out there, even our regular readers, get squeamish when we liken police to gang members. I’ll stand by that analogy, which I elaborated upon in another article -

Mostly, this comparison is based on the fact that police, like gangs claim ultimate dominion over a particular territory. They stake out these particular territories, and demand “protection money” for reasons mostly out of the control of local residents. If their demands are not met, they resort to violence.

They swear an oath of  loyalty to each other, and will cover up for each other’s gruesome crimes at the expense of good sense and morality. Officers have purposely failed to take reports, covered up evidence, and even turned a blind eye to sexual battery and torture by their fellow gang-members (see here). Those who do not abide by the code of loyalty are ostracized or otherwise punished (see examples here and here). They even have a gang color – blue.

See the full article here. As long as government police exist in their current form, I will never retract my sentiment in this regard. However, for the sake of argument, let us assume police are ordinary human beings like the rest of us. Fair enough? (More than fair, in my opinion).

When was the last time the public got their panties in a bunch when 5 armed men in dark clothing were shot because they were mistaken for intruders after they busted into someone’s house?

Probably never.

How about if the homeowner at issue was suspected of growing marijuana plants, and the armed men, dressed in dark clothing were allegedly there to “protect” the public from a dangerous weed smoker? If you still think it was an evil tragedy the armed men were shot, then it’s because you’re still thinking about police. Think harder.

Imagine your friend Joe has been growing a little pot in his living room. Imagine a bunch of your neighbors, against all scientific evidence, believe that because Joe smokes weed occasionally, he is a dangerous individual. Instead of knocking on Joe’s door, talking to Joe about his “problem” or asking him politely to refrain from smoking, or engaging in about a million other peaceful and civil ways of addressing the issue, at least twelve of them decide to dress in all black, arm themselves, and kick down Joe’s door to “solve” this frightening problem of weed propagation. They declare to you they have a piece of paper that gives them such authority and will present it to Joe as proof they have a right to seize his little plant. They kick down Joe’s door at night. As a result, Joe mistakes them for burglars and opens fire, killing and injuring several of them, while also receiving injuries himself.

What would you think about these neighbors? You would think they are insane. You would think they are fucking stupid. You would wonder why it takes twelve (or more) grown, armed men to give your friend Joe a piece of fucking paper. You would think they are juvenile, violent, self-righteous assholes who mirror something out of Lord of the Flies, who think reckless use of violence and guns is some sort of game (you’d half expect to find Piggy with his smashed eyeglasses lying amid the bloodshed). If you are a bit of a judgmental prick, you might wonder why Joe keeps such offensive plants if the consequences can be so severe, but even so, if you are a reasonable person, you would not blame Joe for opening fire in terror upon seeing twelve or more armed men in his house after having his door broken down.

On the other hand, because the juvenile, violent, self-righteous assholes who don’t know how to mind their own damn business are police, the public is horrified, and the media is soliciting donations for the fallen and injured police officers gang members (see full story here). This is a travesty. The media literally is soliciting funds and sympathy for a bunch of aggro psychopaths whose careless indiscretions created the entire situation to begin with. Meanwhile, the victim of all this is being changed with crimes, and will likely suffer draconian legal penalties.

No one forced these officers to enforce bad laws. No one put a gun to the heads of these upstanding members of society and said they had to arm themselves, put on dark clothing, and kick down someone’s door to “serve a warrant” because the suspect had a certain plant in his living room. They did it anyway, and as a result, 6 of them were shot and 1 died.

This is not to say that any of them deserved to die, or that death is an appropriate punishment for burglary, but really – what is there to be so sorry about? If they were ordinary people, Americans would be flabbergasted at why these idiots believed rounding up a gang of armed people to solve a non-violent situation was necessary. Americans would rightly question the intelligence of those who claim drawing guns and breaking into houses at night in furtherance of eradicating a plant somehow makes society safer.

Anyone who feels truly terrible for these wounded/killed officers, without acknowledging the officers’ own stupidity, recklessness, and unwarranted aggression that brought on these consequences has unfortunately bought into the police state mentality – that police can do whatever they want because different – or perhaps no moral and legal standards apply to them.

Last week CNN published yet another article claiming that violence against police officers has “spiked”.  The mainstream media continues to publish these claims without doin any research to verify whether or not the claims are true.

CNN claims that the number of police officers killed in the line of duty during 2011 has increased by 14% over 2010.  That claim is simply untrue.  According to Officer Down Memorial Page, with 10 days left in 2011, there have been 158 officer fatalities.**  At this time last year there had been 156 officer fatalities.  The total number of officer deaths for 2010 was 161.  Despite claims to the contrary, 2011 is shaping up to be at least as safe of a year for officers as 2010.

One of the few things the CNN article got right was the fact that officer deaths due to automobile accidents decreased in 2011 when compared with 2010.  This drop in automobile accident deaths accounts for the decrease in total deaths.  The article then goes on to insinuate that because officer deaths due to gunfire will, for the first time in 14 years, outnumber deaths due to automobile accidents, violence against officers has spiked.  This again is simply untrue.  Gunfire deaths will outnumber automobile deaths this year, not because there were so many more gunfire deaths, but because there was a sharp decrease in automobile accident deaths.  The number of gunfire deaths so far this year stands at 62***.  The number of gunfire deaths for 2010 was 59.  Hardly the spike in violence towards officers the media would have you believe existed.  The most that can be said from the data is that the steady DOWNWARD trend that has occurred over the last 25 years seems to have leveled off the last few years, but two years of data can not tell us whether or not this stalled decline will continue. (Read more about the data for the last 25 years here.)

Steve Groeninger, senior communications director of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, asserts that the imaginary sharp increase in death toll can be attributed to budget cuts.  First, as shown above, there is no sharp increase in deaths, but let’s say that there was an increase.  Groeninger does not offer a single shred of evidence that it can be linked to budget cuts. Craig Floyd, chairman and CEO of the fund, makes the outrageous insinuation that violence against officers today can be compared to one of the deadliest decades for police officers, the 70′s. The average number of officers felonious killed each year during the 70′s was 126, more than double the average for the last decade.  There is simply no comparison to be made between those two decades, but Floyd would have you believe otherwise.  Both Groeninger’s and Floyd’s assertions are nothing more than gross propaganda aimed to drum up more support for the police and more public outcry about the budget cuts that they are facing.

But why does it matter whether violence against officers is increasing or decreasing. Isn’t all lost of life due to violence tragic?  Of course.  Death due to violence is a complete waste of human potential and is always tragic in my eyes, but the propaganda that is being fed to the public is also being fed to police officers themselves.  Combine this with the ever increasing militarization of your local police department, a very dangerous situation is being created for us mere mundanes.

It was recently reported that, thanks to a Defense Department program, known as program 1033, local law enforcement agencies were given almost 500 million dollars worth of military gear in 2011.  That is almost double what was given in 2010.  The militarization of  local police departments, a trend that started decades ago, appears to be accelerating.  Police departments are obtaining grenade launchers, helicopters, robots, drones, M-16s, and armored vehicles that the military no longer has use for.

Some police departments are even militarizing their waterways.  The Texas Department of Safety has announced that they now have a Navy, made up of a new armored, swift boat complete with six mounted high caliber machine guns.  The plan is to have a fleet of six of these boats.  There is no denying that the police have been thoroughly militarized.

Of course, the mere possession of this equipment is not necessarily cause for concern.  I frankly wouldn’t care if my neighbor had every single one of the above mentioned equipment. Every individual, including police officers, have a right to defend themselves with whatever equipment they deem necessary. The concern is that police departments all too often use this equipment,not in defense while attempting to bring in a violent criminal, but to go on the offense.  As police departments have become militarized, we have seen a dramatic increase in paramilitary SWAT raids for everything from low-level nonviolent drug offenses to investigating underage drinking.  Over the course of three decades we have seen the number of these paramilitary raids increase from about 2000 a year to more than 50,000 a year.  We no doubt will see even more as police departments look for reasons to use their new military toys.

We have already witnessed this mentality.  Radley Balko reported in September that a column in Tactical Response magazine encouraged SWAT commanders to “poach work” in order to stay active, even if it meant doing warrant service and drug raids. Balko notes that,

The author is actually suggesting SWAT commanders lobby to have their teams deployed in situations for which they normally wouldn’t be to ensure they’re in good practice. Put another way, he suggests they practice their door smashing, room-clearing, flash-grenade deploying, and other paramilitary tactics on less-than-violent people, so they’re in better form when a real threat arises. Never mind that there are going to be living, breathing, probably bleeding people on the receiving end of these “practice” raids.

The author seems to have no problem advocating the introduction of violence into an otherwise nonviolent situation.  You can imagine that police departments will no doubt want to “practice” with all their new toys as well.

Arthur Rizer, a Virginia lawyer who has been a civilian police officer and a military police officer pointed out to The Daily that police officers and the military are two very different things.

If we’re training cops as soldiers, giving them equipment like soldiers, dressing them up as soldiers, when are they going to pick up the mentality of soldiers?” he asked.

If you look at the police department, their creed is to protect and to serve. A soldier’s mission is to engage his enemy in close combat and kill him. Do we want police officers to have that mentality? Of course not.

We already know that innocent people die at the hands of police officers because “officer safety” is apparently more important than the publics safety, but we don’t know how many.  While the Officer Down Memorial Page enjoys a grant from the Justice Department, no such grant exist to collect the number and the names of those needlessly killed by the police.  The Innocents’ Project, created by Clyde Voluntaryist, is attempting to do something about this lack of data by tracking those needlessly killed by the police, using the internet.  Of course, this method has its problem, but even with limited ability to track all cases, the numbers that have been collected are quite troubling. According to the Innocents’ Project, 34 people have been fatally shot in questionable circumstances, 8 people have died after being shocked with a taser, 6 people have lost their lives in accidental deaths due to SWAT raids, and 6 people have died while in or being taken into custody, including the beating death of Kelly Thomas.  How many more died but didn’t make headlines?  How many of these deaths were due to cops that were so hopped up on the “War on Cops” propaganda that they were too quick to make their way up the continuum of force?  How many more deaths will we see in the future as the propaganda proliferates and cops are even more thoroughly militarized?

That is why it matters whether violence against police officers is really increasing or not.  When we combine military tactics, military training, military equipment, and military mentality with the never-ending expansion of things deemed criminal, making it inevitable that more and more people will interact with police officers, then add a big dose of  the endless propaganda about “increased violence” towards cops, we are left with a situation where cops are going to be even more taser, baton and trigger happy than they already are.  It makes for more dangerous streets, not for cops, but for the public.

**The number of officer fatalities quoted by CNN (166) came from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, whose stated mission ” is to generate increased public support for the law enforcement profession”.   The Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP), whose stated mission is to simply “honor America’s fallen law enforcement”, has reported numbers that have been consistent over the years with the FBI’s Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted reports (LEOKA) while the numbers you will find published by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund have not, so for the purpose of this discussion I use the numbers provided by ODMP as they appear to be more reliable. Also, ODMP has a name and a description of each of the 158 officers that have been killed, while the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund does not have a name and a description for all 166 of officers that it claims to have been killed.

***The number of gunfire deaths that you will find on ODMP for 2011 is 59.  One of the officers that is included in this count was shot and paralyzed in 1986.  He did not die until this year and the claim is that his death, 26 years later, was due to complications from being shot and paralyzed.  While it may be legitimate to claim such a thing, I excluded his death from the total gunfire deaths because his being shot in 1986 does not reflect on the amount of violence police officers are facing in 2011.

So we know that assault and theft will often not end with a cop receiving a pink slip.  So what will?  Well if you are a cop for the North Miami Beach Police Department, attempting to cast a “magic” spell may very well get you fired.  From the Miami Herald:

Two North Miami Beach employees — one a police officer, the other a department office manager — are in hot water after trying to enlist some supernatural aid in the form of what they believed to be a Santeria practice.

Their alleged target: City Manager Lyndon Bonner, whose plan to slash the police budget prompted protests and union outrage this fall.

Their mystical material: handfuls of birdseed which, according to an internal affairs report, they hoped to scatter in and around Bonner’s fourth-floor office at City Hall.

But when they tried to recruit a janitor to sprinkle the seeds, she balked — and turned them in.

Officer Elizabeth Torres told investigators she meant the manager no harm: “I want to clarify, that it’s nothing malicious and nothing intended to hurt that person.”

She was told last week she faced termination over the August incident, which took place against the backdrop of a contentious budget season. Unionized city employees must go through an appeal process before they can be fired.

Office manager Yvonne Rodriguez, who is not a member of the union, was fired last week for her role in the plot.

While Santeria practitioners have argued that their practice constitutes a legitimate religion and bristle at depictions of the practice as black magic or witchcraft, they acknowledge that public displays of their traditions can spook non-believers. And both adherents and experts say that the Afro-Cuban religion, itself an amalgamation of Catholicism and African spiritual traditions, does not count malice — such as casting harmful spells — as one of its principles…

Torres, a 24-year department veteran, told investigators she was motivated in part because she couldn’t attend union protests over budget cuts due to her work and school schedule. She said she does not practice Santeria but said she was familiar with the religion through family members, according to an internal affairs report released Wednesday.

The report found the women violated city rules with conduct that is offensive toward a fellow employee, conduct unbecoming of a city employee and conduct that brings the department into disrepute or reflects discredit on the individual employee.

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After reading about the atrocities committed by police on this blog, one has happened in my backyard. And just like many of those examples, police, again, get away with murder. Literally.

It began (click here for more) early in the morning of November 6th, 2010 in Mount Joy Borough, PA.. Robert Neill, age 61, called police like a dutiful citizen to report being harassed by neighbors. Somehow he ended up dead.

The government report, which of course is only one side of the tale since the other can’t tell his, reports that he became “combative and aggressive,” and was enraged when they tried to calm him down. Instead of doing the appropriate thing and leaving, they of course try to “do something”.  That something lead to his death. He was shot by Tasers, at least twice, as well as being pepper sprayed. The official cause of death was from an abnormal heartbeat (maybe because his heart was shocked with electricity).

I can imagine the scene like this: Mr. Neill calls the cops to complain about noisy neighbors. The cops arrive, find nothing, and try to talk to him. Its the middle of night, he’s already angry about the harassment, and now they don’t get what he is talking about. Understandable that he may have been angry at the whole situation. He walks toward them upset about why they can’t understand his complaint.

A normal person in this situation would try to talk, and barring that,  just leave and get out of there. Instead, the cops attack him because they feel “threatened” (AWWWWWW). They get more cops to attack him. Now, does anybody in their right mind expect an angry person who is being tased and attacked to get less angry? Only the protected class of government agents would think this is a good idea. So, he ends up dead because of their actions.

If this happened to anybody but government agents, they would be thrown in jail and charged with manslaughter. But predictably, since they aren’t lowly citizens, they are cleared of all wrong doing by the state Attorney General. (click here for more) There is nothing else released about the incident; no officer names and no justification except “the cops did nothing wrong.”

That is unacceptable in a just society. The cops should be in jail for their actions. Instead, their superiors and cohorts cover for them and the state justice system lets them get away scott free for killing a man, for a reason nobody knows.

I’m disgusted, and I’m going to go protest in front of the police station. Even if there is no official justice, at least I will make this murder uncomfortable for those responsible.

Matthew Butch

“In Egypt, at least 13 people have been killed and hundreds injured after two days of clashes between protesters and security forces.”

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This past summer I was arrested, in Marietta GA., for blowing a .01 BAC % into a breathalyzer at age 19; which is illegal in the State of GA.  I also received a fraudulent possession charge for less than a gram of marijuana; which will be reviewed in court. My friend Mario Sanchez admitted to the cops prior to arrest that it was his marijuana.  Records can be retrieved from the Cobb County Magistrate Court.

When I first arrived in jail, the sheriffs painfully ripped colorful yarn out of my hair.  Shortly after, I was stripped and asked to squat down while female sheriffs snicked behind my nude body. During this early stage of my experience I overheard the civil police and sheriffs taunting an Asian man’s name and dietary habits.  A Hispanic woman, who later learned she would be deported and separated from her child, was ridiculed for her ethnicity.  My Hispanic comrade, Mario, was inappropriately groped and ridiculed.  Meanwhile, the police who arrested me mocked my last name and continued to browse my cell phone, camera, and Ipod; all trivial matters.

I was placed in a female holding cell alone. Fraught with humiliation, I hysterically shredded the toilet paper given to me in the holding cell for the sheriffs to pick up.  A group of sheriffs flooded into my cell with body chains.  I was chained  around my waste and violently thrown into solitary confinement – “female observation”- where I accepted my fate and concentrated on meditating.  Occasionally I stood up to look out of the window.  A male sheriff sexually harassed me outside the window,  provocatively taunting me to show him my tongue.  I complained to a sheriff of the incident and was told I could go online and file a code violation “17.4”; an option that I later learned was not available to the public. In the meantime, I was barefoot and denied socks because, “I wasn’t in Macy’s”.

As is routine, I was taken from solitary confinement into the nurse’s office to undergo a Tuberculosis test injection. The room was unsterile and smelled of urine.  Without explaining the shot, the nurse asked me to hold out my arm.  Because I refuted her request, a police woman, Officer Jerked, ordered me to subdue my arm or I would be taken “upstairs where people shit on each other, shit on themselves, and will shit on you”.  In response, I kept my word and disgraced her barbaric occupation, Officer Jerked grasped my shirt collar and violently slung me back into solitary confinement.

Midway through the experience I was temporarily released from solitary confinement to contact my parents; after spending approximately 6 hours meditating alone between four white walls.  I could not reach them.  At this stage, I was having my fingerprints taken and was charged $1300 to bail myself out of jail.  The possibility of losing financial aid and getting transferred to the “population” of the detention center flooded my emotions.  I was allowed to sit with the rest of the new inmates and cynically watch FOX news, if I behaved.

My father contacted the detention facility and negotiated the bail with a sheriff I had complained to.  In the meantime, I overheard Officer Jerked and her fellow minions taunt my desire to report sexual harassment.  Nearly hysterical and humiliated by her jests, I told Jerked that I didn’t want to “see her, hear her, breathe the oxygen she was breathing, smell her, or taste her”.  She angrily charged me, scaring me further into my seat.  She tore me out of my shocked position and hoisted me into the concrete floor where I suffered a subluxation in the upper region of my spine.  Sobbing, I was thrown back into solitary confinement where I was given Fritos and red punch.

Several hours later, a sheriff entered my cell to inform me that I was being released without bail.

To cope with this experience, I want to voice this experience through the United States’ Media to inform the general public of the degree of corruption existing in America’s jails.  The Cobb County Adult Detention Center is the black heart of this town, slowly pulsating venomous blood throughout our streets.  Solitary Confinement has not yet been reviewed by the Supreme Court of its Constitutionality;  neither has sexual harassment, or unjustified physical abuse.  This injustice must come to a standstill.

In the words of Martin Luther King;  “An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”

I am currently gathering and organizing information to communicate this experience to Amnesty International in London, and I greatly appreciate any constructive feedback.

Amanda Constantinides

The recent video of a Manchester, New Hampshire student being violently arrested for what at most could be described as student misbehavior is just another example of the police abusing young people while they are in the care of the government’s school system.  You do not have to be very old to remember a time when it was rare for a school to have a full time police officer roaming the school campus.  Fueled by a media-generated perception that schools are a violent, dangerous place and by the resulting “zero tolerance” policies, this is no longer the case.

If a police officer’s role on school campuses was to provide security from internal or external violence, then their presence would not be so troubling, but instead of being limited to this function, officers are intervening in situations that are better handled by teachers and administrators.  In the past, misbehavior at school would result in a trip to the principal’s office, detention and maybe even a suspension for the most egregious behavior.  Today you are likely, at best, to receive a ticket and a stiff fine for disrupting class, using profanity, or being late for school.  At worst you may end up on the receiving end of a beating at the hands of an armed agent of the state.

A December 2010 report released by Texas Appleseed, a law organization with the mission of promoting justice for all Texans, details the increasing trend of issuing Class C Misdemeanor tickets to students as young as 6 years old.

“Criminalization” of student misbehavior extends to even the youngest students. In Texas, students as young as six have been ticketed at school in the past five years, and it is not uncommon for elementary-school students to be ticketed by school-based law enforcement…The increase in ticketing and arrest of students, in Texas and nationwide, has coincided with the growth in school-based policing. Campus policing is the largest and fastest growing area of law enforcement in Texas, according to its own professional association. With counselors stretched to handle class scheduling and test administration duties, school administrators and teachers are increasingly turning to campus police officers (also known as School Resource Officers or SROs) to handle student behavior problems.

In others words, teachers and school officials have abdicated their responsibility to discipline, or teach right conduct and instead have allowed armed agents of the state to enforce rules by punishment and extortion.  In the Dallas Independent School District alone, over 1,200 Class C Misdemeanor tickets were issued to elementary age children over the course of five years.  These tickets can cost a family as much as $550 dollars.  When Texas Appleseed released its report, Dallas ISD issued a statement saying that “Those who do receive tickets are hopefully learning that their actions have consequences.”    Having a student wash all of the desks in his class if he writes on his desk, is a consequence.  Keeping a student in from recess if he disrupts class is a consequence.  Making a student help the janitors clean the cafeteria for a week if he starts a food fight is a consequence.  Misdemeanor tickets are not consequences that help a child understand right conduct.  They do not teach a child why certain behaviors are wrong.  They are nothing but punishment and not even age appropriate punishment, at that.  Unless a 6-year-old has saved $550 in their piggy bank, my guess is that it is the parents that are forking over the money.

At the 2007 National Association of School Resources Conference, keynote speaker, John Giduck, told the audience,

“You’ve got to be a one-man fighting force…. You’ve got to have enough guns, and ammunition and body armor to stay alive…. You should be walking around in schools every day in complete tactical equipment, with semi-automatic weapons…. You can no longer afford to think of yourselves as peace officers…. You must think of yourself [sic] as soldiers in a war because we’re going to ask you to act like soldiers.”

It is no doubt that this type of mentality that has led to many reports of officers using violence on students.  I have reported before about an eight year old being pepper sprayed, a seven year old being choked while having a seizure, a teenager having his arm broken while attempting to leave school because he felt ill, and of course, the recent video of a Manchester NH student being slammed into a table.  In all these cases the argument centered on whether the amount of force used was excessive.  The question shouldn’t be whether the force was excessive, but rather, why are police officers, absent violence on a student’s part, being used to enforce the administrative rules of the school?  Why is any physical force being used?

Of course there are many who blame the students when they are the victims of violence at the hand of the thugs in blue.  “They need to learn to respect authority,” is the refrain so often repeated.  But my question is, why?  Sure, as adults, you will most likely have to answer to an authority, such as an employer, but that is a voluntary relationship, it is not an imposed authority.  What possible benefit is there to teaching young people to “respect” an authority that has been imposed upon them?   Is it so they will gladly assist in herding people onto cattle cars?  Is it so they will shoot civilians when ordered to do so?  There is simply no reason that “respecting” authority should be seen as a noble virtue that should be taught to young people.  People who think deferment to authority is the only way to achieve widespread right conduct by people that make up a society must themselves be completely devoid of a moral or ethical compass.   Discipline should not be about respecting authority; it should be about respecting people.

I have said it before but it is worth repeating, the embedding of police officers in all government schools is just another symptom of the police state.  What better way to desensitize the masses to the polices’ bad behavior than have them routinely yield to the demands of an armed agent of the government on a daily basis while they are young?

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Kalispell,MT-      One evening I was having a drink at a Hotel Lounge with an old friend from High-School that I bumped into earlier in the day. As part of our catch-up discussion, he told me of his time in the service and why he felt the need to get out. He had some very strong feelings that apparently offended a group of servicemen around the corner from our table. My friend left and after paying the tab, I too left out of a separate entrance.

My girlfriend was getting off of work three blocks away and I was going to leave my vehicle in the Hotel parking lot and ride home with her. However, when I left, I was followed by the four angry servicemen who wanted to teach me a lesson in patriotism. Sometime during their assault on me, the police were called and they responded very quickly.

The men went inside and I was immediately treated as the suspect, searched, handcuffed, belittled, and sat on the curb. As the men were brought out and questioned, they had a few good laughs with the cops, shook hands, and were released.

Then I was asked, ¨Where’s the gun?¨.  Well, there was NO gun. They asked how I got there and I told them that I drove my vehicle that was parked in the lot. They asked which one, took my keys, and began to search my vehicle. One of them yelled out, ¨Look what we found”.   The officer accompanying me slammed me to the ground, put his knees into my chest, and drew his gun into my face saying, ¨Move, just F`ing blink and I’m gonna F`ing shoot you in the face, just move¨.

A Sheriff on the scene told the cop that he was out of line and to holster his gun and the city cop responded by telling him that he was out of his jurisdiction. He continued to wave his gun in my face and I could tell he really did want to pull the trigger.

So, back to what they found…a baseball bat. They came over and said ¨What is this?¨, as if they had just discovered an assault rifle. I wasn’t sure if it was a rhetorical question or what. I pointed out that it was a baseball bat, not a gun and that there is a HUGE difference. (Mind you I had not even entered my vehicle since I’d parked earlier on in the evening so how they were able to justify searching it was beyond me) Then, they asked very seriously and accusingly ¨Why do you have a baseball bat in your SUV?¨  I told them that if they would notice that the back of the vehicle was used for transporting my black lab as it had a dog blanket, black hair, and a big ball with teeth marks in it from when I would hit the ball for him to fetch…with said baseball bat.

They never cared to get a statement from me about the assault that had taken place; the issue now was what to do with me? I was charged with public intoxication, carrying a weapon, criminal mischief, and disorderly conduct. They did let me go in time to hitch a ride home with my girlfriend and meanwhile got my vehicle towed as well.

Jay Young