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Manny Fernandez writes in the NYT that the scores of military and police-style vans, trucks and cars offered for sale on Craigslist and eBay have raised concerns for some law enforcement officials particularly after the Dallas attack on a police headquarters but officials say the vehicles appear to be legal for the most part, so there is little they can do. Jeff Funicello, for example, is selling his black 1975 GMC armored truck on Craigslist. The body is armored, and the windows are bulletproof. It has sliding portholes to point rifles from and a sprinkler system inside. Long ago, it transported money, and it was once the target of a shootout in the 1980s.
Of course, people have been driving reinforced cars long before the Dallas attack on a police headquarters. But the celebrities and executives who install bulletproof windows and other types of armor on their vehicles often do not want it noticed. Celebrity clients generally demand that the exteriors of their luxury armored vehicles look normal so they blend in. However those who buy and sell armored vans want people to look. And the popularity of apocalyptic movies and television shows has put a new twist and added a macabre cachet to such vehicles "This is America," says Funicello. "I should be able to have a howitzer or a bazooka if I want one. If I wanted to buy a fire truck, I could."
Original Submission
(Score: 2, Troll) by CirclesInSand on Saturday June 20 2015, @03:55PM
Every single cop will harass peaceful person for peacefully smoking marijuana. Every single cop will incarcerate a peaceful person who is peacefully growing a marijuana garden. Every cop will kill a person who doesn't consent to being abducted for peacefully having a garden.
That's all cops: it's the job. There is no such thing as a good cop.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday June 20 2015, @05:00PM
For no reason I have ever been able to fathom, three Caltech security guards beat the living crap out of me, hurled me bodily down a flight of stairs, picked be back up then dragged me out into the Ricketts House courtyard but because it was raining, dragged me back inside than all three sat on me until the police arrived.
The cop quite furiously and angrily demanded they get the Hell off me, then quite gently asked where I'd like her to take me downtown so I could recover at her headquarters.
At the time, Mechanical Engineering Professor Christopher Earls Brennan was the Master of Student Housing. He raced after us in his own car then angrily demanded to press charges.
"FOR WHAT?" shouted the cop.
"Michael is gravely disabled[1]. He needs to be in a mental hospital."
"If you don't leave Mike alone, I'm going to throw YOU in jail."
About six months later I happened to see that same cop again. "Don't I know you?" she asked. She knew damn well who I was but did not want to upset me. I thanked her for being so helpful that night.
"That's what we're here for."
It has been thirty years but even so I still love that lady cop like my own mother, and hope to find her somehow, so I can thank her for what she did for me in 1985.
[1] "Gravely Disabled" is a legal term of art. It means different things in different states. In California specifically, only a judge may determine that one is gravely disabled. That only happens when the mental health community has lost all hope that the mentally ill person can recover in any way. At that point a court-appointed conservator will be appointed to manage the patient's financial affairs, to look after their housing, medical care and the like. Even so one may still petition to have one's conservatorship revokes. Given that one has to be pretty far gone to be regarded as gravely disabled, Chris was pulling that claim right out of his hairy ass.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Saturday June 20 2015, @05:31PM
So what were the three people who assaulted you charged with? Did the police officer testify at their trial? How many years in jail did they serve?
How did 1 woman manage to physically remove 3 security guards from holding you down? Did the guards perhaps release you voluntarily? Why was she there in the first place, was she called there by the security guards?
Why did she threaten to arrest a professor and housing official for informing her that someone in her care was mentally ill?
What if you had a marijuana garden, and this messiah police officer noticed it? Would she have tried to arrest you? Would she and her accomplices have tried to kill you if you violently resisted being arrested?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday June 20 2015, @05:46PM
That is among my life's greatest regrets. I could have put them all in prison but at the time all I wanted was to be left alone.
If you don't know how one female cop can totally intimidate three big burly men who aren't cops then you don't know much about who the police actually do their jobs. "Games People Play" by Psychiatrist Eric Berne has a lucid explanation.
It's actually quite uncommon for law enforcement officers to be truly nasty people. They only act that way to obtain cooperation from suspects. I know from my own experience that I can defend myself from violent attackers by adopting that very same attitude.
The cops got off me when she shouted at them.
Chris Brennan called the police after they sat on me. I don't have a clue what law he thought I had broken; that many was profoundly delusional.
The California Institute of Technology is very disturbed place. I once happened to mention to an off-duty EMT that I was a Physics student their. "CALTECH HAS SUCH SPECTACULAR SUICIDES!" he shouted with great joy.
My friend Misha Mahowald made plain to the entire world's scientific community that she would win the Nobel someday then went on to hurl herself in front of a train at the age of thirty-three.
"The Caltech Community" as it calls itself is a cult. It's not a whole lot different from Scientology, the Moonies, the Kool-Ade drinkers from Jonestown Guyana or the Heaven's Gate UFO cult that all committed suicide in San Diego in 1997.
It was specifically because of Heaven's Gate that I decided to go public about my mental illness in 1997, after having survived a similar cult experience at Caltech.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Sunday June 21 2015, @05:50AM
That is among my life's greatest regrets. I could have put them all in prison but at the time all I wanted was to be left alone.
Well that may be something that you shouldn't regret. It wouldn't have been "MichaelDavidCrawford vs [3 security guards]", the trial would have been "State of California vs [3 security guards]". It was the police officer's job to see that they were arrested and charged (the only legitimate job that the police have), and this police officer didn't do it. It wasn't your failing, it was hers.
And it is very suspicious that she didn't. Perhaps you asked her not to? Or more likely the blue line extended to the little league cops and she didn't want to cause trouble for another uniform.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday June 21 2015, @11:05AM
I am an eyewitness to an incident of domestic violence in Portland. I called 911 then backed up the victims story. The police found the perpetrator but would not arrest him as the victim could not be convinced to press charge. She was concerned he would seek revenge.
Even had the lady cop been able to arrest them without my pressing charges it was clear to everyone that I just wanted to be left alone.
Sometime soon I will mail each of the board of trustees to request an apology. I'm quite good at Seoul; google cal tech suicide. Imagine the hilarity that would ensue were I to contact every high school physics teacher on the planet.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday June 20 2015, @05:49PM
I discussed this once with a Portland Police Bureau officer. He told me that whether it was unlawful to lie to a law enforcement officer depends on the context.
To make a false statement to a cop for the specific purpose of getting an innocent person arrested or held involuntarily in a mental hospital is unlawful.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday June 20 2015, @11:25PM
Actually around here (BC), the cops hardly ever hassle someone for smoking marijuana and will usually ignore a small marijuana garden. Of course for a big marijuana garden they will show up in their armoured vehicle and perhaps taser to death someone resisting being taken away.
(Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Sunday June 21 2015, @12:56PM
That may very well be true, but all it amounts to is "around here they don't always do their job". To me, it isn't an endearing excuse for accepting the job that they chose.
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday June 21 2015, @06:04PM
They're following the guidelines from their superiours in this case. For the RCMP it is the Provincial Attorney General (at least for the parts of the RCMP that are under contract to the Province as municipal police forces) and the various city police departments, their Mayors. It is a matter of priorities, waste resources targeting harmless pot smokers (they will bust you for toking and driving as they consider that dangerous) or target thieves, murderers, distracted drivers, or this month, enforcing the new laws about going slow in the fast lane.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Sunday June 21 2015, @06:10PM
like it or not, marijuana is against the law in most places. i don't like it and think it and all other drugs should be legal and regulated, but the police aren't to blame for doing their jobs - enforcing the law. the people who deserve the blame are the legislators who passed such laws, whether they wanted them because they're racist or because they stand to benefit, financially or otherwise, from it being criminalized. surprisingly, quite a few cops even agree [www.leap.cc] that prohibition should be repealed.
(Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Sunday June 21 2015, @07:52PM
Police put peaceful people in jail. Do the police give anyone else a pass for "just doing their job"? So ironic, maybe your job is to sell marijuana. "Just doing their job" isn't an excuse that the police would never accept from anyone, so why should we accept it from them?
Being a soldier on the front lines of a tyranny is not something that can be forgiven with "well you should blame the tyrants not the soldiers". Police know that what they are doing is wrong, or maybe some don't, and maybe some don't care: but they do it anyway. There are no good cops.
the people who deserve the blame are the legislators who passed such laws
Where are the physics books with the 4th law of thermodynamics that everyone keeps quoting to me? "The amount of blame in any situation is a constant." It's as if everyone believes that if you blame one person for his actions, then there isn't enough blame left over for someone else.
Well, I am fortunately quite capable of blaming multiple people at once. Try it sometime, it actually works. Police are guilty of making a life out of putting peaceful people in jail (and that isn't even getting started on "civil forfeiture", aka "theft is ok as long as you are a cop"). Legislatures are guilty of passing legislation promoting these things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2015, @11:49AM
uhhh, everyone, including cops have a duty to disregard and attempt to abolish any unconstitutional law. any law that is not even in the spirit of the constitutional is automatically unconstitutional! so no, they are not excused from being americans just because they put on a uniform. dumbasses across the country love to say, "they are just doing their jobs", etc. so were the nazis at the deathcamps.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Wednesday June 24 2015, @04:52PM
godwin's false analogy. the laws are still legal until the courts rule them unconstitutional and thus void. its the citizens' responsibility to nullify bad laws from the jury box if nobody can challenge their constitutionality directly. the police are not lawyers, their job is to enforce the laws not to judge them. the police already think they're above the law, picking and choosing which laws to enforce and which ones they should follow, and here you are actually endorsing that? fuck you, bootlicker.