Sometimes you just get really tired of seeing the same old thing on a different day. You get tired of talking about it and just don't.
The other thing is something I've touched on before. How do you write something new and interesting about essentially the same subject day in and day out?
Sometimes I just throw in the towel and give up.
A couple things have been happening these last few days that I've thought about addressing but haven't until today.
Today, I was reading CNN when I came across a column by Ruben Navarrette entitled "Cops must face justice in killing of homeless man."
It made me mad once again, mad enough to start back in here.
First off Mr. Navarrette begins with the travesty of justice that occurred to those officers in Los Angeles from the 1992 use of force incident involving Rodney King.
As you can imagine the liberal Navarrette took the viewpoint that he considered the travesty to be the cops being found not guilty when in fact it was the media and liberals portrayal which was the travesty followed by even worse when the Justice Dept. caved in to the pressure from blacks and liberals to retry the officers on trumped up charges of civil rights violations of which of course, under pressure, the officers were found guilty.
He used that sad incident to justify somehow the need for the Justice Dept. to once again stick their noses into a police vs combative subject situation once again occurring in Southern California.
A crazy man fought with cops in Fullerton Calif. and force was used as he was not complying.
Several hours after the incident the man died.
Now this is something which is sad and something which a cop hopes never happens but it sometimes does.
The officers apparently are no longer working for the department and at a pure guess from reading stuff I'd say they were fired.
I want to say they were abandoned by their department but that would be from memory which for me isn't good. So I'll just say they were referred to as "Former" officers.
They were also charged with murder and other crimes to which they were found not guilty by a jury this week.
Navarrette is screaming bloody murder as are the whiny bleeding hearts and media over this man's death.
He is also demanding, like in the King mess, that the Justice Dept. come in and get these officers since they've gotten away with murder. He wants them to do what they did in the RK case which is try them a second time to get the verdict he and rest of his like minded ilk think "Should" have resulted from the trial.
Once again people like him want a certain verdict and cannot stand to see justice prevail and innocent police officers acquitted of supposed crimes which they did not commit.
His ideas about things are a perfect example of why a trial is important to bring out all the evidence in a case so a proper verdict can be rendered. His ideas like the media exemplify the bleeding heart mentality which exists and which he and those like him like to use to try a case irrelevant of the facts of said case.
He says because the suspect was screaming out calling to his father to help him that it somehow excuses the resisting, fighting and non-compliance which took place. A reader states the family said the man couldn't understand the police officers' commands because he was a nut case.
That I suppose means the cops are supposed to be somehow liable for the man's mental problems and not complying?
Excuse after excuse but what got me the most I suppose besides the attacks on the officers and the jury was that Navarrette insisted on repeatedly tying the RK incident to this one and specifically that in the RK case the verdict was the result of racism and in this one a result of prejudice against the crazy.
That bothers me to watch people in what are supposed to be responsible positions changing history and portraying things vastly different than what actually took place. Look at Carter today vs the reality of living through his sorry Presidency.
I was born and raised in Southern California. I was there in 1991 and later in 1992. I was there before that as well.
I had extensive training including law enforcement training, security training as well as EMS training at the time the RK incident occurred. That training included quite a bit in the use of force and in the use of the baton which was involved in the RK incident. This training included being certified in the use of the PR-24 side handle baton. That training covered many topics from types of blows to be used to possible consequences to using them.
When the heavily edited and looped RK tape surfaced I watched it along with so many other people and I listened to the media spinning a tale which had nothing to do with reality or facts.
I was both appalled and sadly accepting at the same time as I watched the Chief first stand by his officers and state he would not rush to any judgment until the facts and investigations were complete. I was saddened when he caved to pressure not long after and threw the officers under the bus in an effort at appeasement.
I watched as the officers were made scape-goats for this supposed racial injustice. I watched as they were vilified by both the public and their brothers in the police around the country.
I watched knowing they were screwed and they had no chance in my opinion for a fair trial not with all the blacks and liberals screaming for their heads constantly.
I ran into a black LAPD Lt. who told me if there was any justice in the world they would be found innocent because they did nothing wrong.
I agreed with him but I didn't think there was a chance in hell that it could ever happen.
I watched the video and could plainly see the force was more than justified and in fact that the officers could easily have used deadly force but didn't. Ironically it was their decision to try non-lethal methods to take RK down that led to the whole mess. If they just shot him and were done with it then there wouldn't have been any problem.
When the trial came I watched as much as possible of it and was not surprised when a lot of facts which had either not been mentioned or glossed over by the media came out. I watched as they went through the video, often second by second, as they analyzed it.
I watched as they brought out the use of force guidelines in place at the time. I watched as they went through the training which the officers had received from the department. I watched as over and over again the question was asked of whether the officers violated those guidelines through each second of the video and I watched as over and over again the answer was no.
I watched as they went through the training and use of a PR-24 baton and blow by blow if the strikes were appropriate to the circumstances and training which the officers had received in what strikes were and were not acceptable.
I watched as they were proven to be the official strikes authorized for use and in the end they only found literally one or two strikes by one officer I think it was that were not necessary and appropriate.
They also clearly showed in that case where that officer was restrained by another to stop any excessive use of force.
I watched as you found out that the video wasn't minutes but mere seconds long.
I watched as every strike was paired up with conduct by King which warranted said strike.
And in total shock and disbelief I watched as they came back with a not guilty verdict for those police officers.
I had also watched over the last day or two at most where some but very few in the news in LA started to backtrack from all the things they'd been saying trying to negate a year of complete BS which they'd been propagating. It was far too late by that point as well as in the days that followed.
I was ecstatic that justice had actually prevailed in the case. After watching and listening to a year of people wanting to crucify the officers, after listening to the blacks crying that this was their proof of everything just about with regards to the LAPD and police in general, to actually see a group of twelve people stand up and say screw you, you people aren't going to force us to carry out your plans was overwhelming.
They made it plain they voted based on the facts, on reality and on what actually happened vs what had been played up by others.
The officers were free as they should have been.
You know the rest, the blacks went nuts, other minorities joined in and hell broke loose in bad parts of town. The better parts just armed themselves and waited.
I had watched Gates, the LAPD chief who for a long time I had a great deal of respect for, turn tail and abandon his officers to the lynchmob which had been formed over this.
I had hoped he'd send in officers with shoot to kill orders to put a stop to the blacks' behavior once and for all, but he didn't. He would say that he had a choice of turning the streets into a bloodbath (My way) or just letting them run wild and he chose the latter to show the world what he and the LAPD officers dealt with on a smaller scale each and every day.
Another thing which was said around that time was even animals don't foul their own nest unless there is something seriously wrong with them.
This put animals above the blacks by a large degree.
Unfortunately this didn't work. There had been years of the "Black Problem" in LA and this whole thing was just the latest pile of shit from them and certainly not the last. The majority of decent people already knew what they were like and the idea for others there and around the country to "See" didn't work because they didn't.
It was a well known fact out there that if the blacks came into a neighborhood decent folk better get out because they very quickly turned said neighborhood into a pile of crap then go bitching about it being such a pile.
The media started analyzing what they had done and there were more admissions that they had portrayed the story in a manner that didn't show what really happened which resulted in the verdict which did.
Mr. Navarette now says that all the media attributed it to the white Semi Valley residents not wanting the blacks in their neighborhood and didn't want to punish the cops for trying to keep them out. That's not what at least a lot of the media was saying back then.
There were plenty of blacks, liberals and black community leaders who were saying it, claiming it and such but I don't remember the media doing more than repeating it.
Racism again, of course. I suppose now history has been changed to reflect it was just a bunch of white racists rather than a truly conscientious jury looking at the real facts and returning the only possible true verdict.
I'm surprised Mr. Navarrette failed to mention the other big thing the blacks were screaming then and for many years after. That it wasn't a riot but a social protest against racial injustice or some such absolute garbage. Maybe he's usefully forgotten that line of bull, too bad he didn't forget the rest too.
With blacks and others demanding something be done the Feds came in and under threat of more riots charged the officers again. Under the same constant threats they were tried a second time and a jury under threat of riot found them guilty. Some say because they packed it with blacks, some say because of the threats and some say because they kept whites out they were able to advance their racism theory much more easily.
In the end due to this injustice the officer's lives were totally destroyed along with those of their families.
Most importantly to some though was the blacks were appeased yet again.
At a high cost though as everything since then has brought about threats to riot especially when things don't go their way. Their favorite slogan is "No Justice, No Peace" which means "We get what we want or we'll riot"
Which brings us to the second part of this which is the Thomas case.
Mr. Navarette starts us off in that section lamenting that there hasn't been any rioting in this case like that of RK. (Said it differently but same meaning. Called it civil unrest)
He goes on to say that the jurors must not have watched the same tape as everyone else as if they had there wasn't any way for them to come up with the verdicts which they did.
Much like RK these type of people see only the story which they want to see and if it is different then someone is at fault for not "Getting it"
It doesn't matter what the evidence is or is not its simply that the jury didn't see it their way so they are wrong.
Mr. Navarette goes on to say such things as a cop remarking to others about the fight that he ran out of options and had to use the butt of his taser to strike the suspect somehow shows malice and ill intent.
I take exception to that. To me it shows an officer who ran out of options to use against an actively fighting and combative suspect and was forced to use what he had available to him as a last resort, his taser.
But that isn't how Navarette and his kind see this of course. Its some horrible something which frankly I'm not even sure how he arrives at but it is just because all the whiners say it must be so.
He goes on to say how this this nut job was a "Defenseless and compliant young man screaming in pain....etc. yet I had seen videos of this before and before responding watched the video CNN had up with the story showing I guess some of the supposedly most egregious parts of it and saw something completely different.
I watched very closely as officers fought with this person. I watched the suspect kick officers, try to kick them, struggle, resist, be combative and fail to comply with orders. I heard them repeatedly apply the taser to what appears to be no effect.
I can see the officers doing a number of things to effect compliance yet not succeed.
I can see all this yet Mr. Navarette and those like him cannot. I had those making comments to my post state they saw something entirely different.
I don't know what though.
The one thing Mr. Thomas was not was defenseless and compliant that night from the videos I've seen. Not only that but while he's screaming for his daddy to help him he's still resisting and fighting the officers who are telling him throughout to stop fighting, and to relax amongst other comments of that nature.
One thing though which I do get very tired of is the "Facts to become known" syndrome which exists in a lot of these cases which has nothing to do with the actual event itself.
What becomes known the next day, week or month doesn't matter a single bit to what took place at the time of the incident.
The officers at the time had a car burglary suspect who was adversarial and non-compliant. Attempts to secure that were resisted and led to ever greater use of force as the suspect escalated the confrontation.
The suspect screamed in rage repeatedly at the officers as he was fighting them. He controlled what happened that night as RK did 20 odd years ago. Yet the officers now as then are getting the blame.
Now you hear that he was mentally ill, that he was having a psycho episode at the time, that he may not have understood the officers, (which I don't believe) that the call may have been fake just to get the guy away from where he was at in front of a business, that he wasn't on drugs or anything else etc.
The thing is not a bit of that matters at all. It never does.
Because the only thing the officers' actions can be judged on is what they knew, thought, believed and acted upon at the time the event occurred and whether those actions under law were justified.
Those things have an effect upon actions that will be taken in an event and its those things that get forgotten.
They thought for instance that he was on drugs because of the wild and super strength way he was fighting them and acting towards them.
It doesn't matter that he was found to be drug free and his aggressiveness and strength was a result of his mental problems.
The officers didn't know anything about that when the event took place.
Nothing found out later has any bearing on the event yet people keep insisting that it does.
Its like that case in Texas I think it was. Some guy attacks a cop who has to shoot him. After everyone is crying that the bad guy was such a sweet, caring, gentle, loving A student and had never been in trouble with the law or violent before etc.
It doesn't matter because that night he was and sadly lost his life in taking on the police. Same for the guy who all the cops knew was a nut case, he pulled that screwdriver and the officer shot him. All the rest is immaterial.
So it is here. The only question is was this guy fighting and resisting? Was he failing to comply and aggressive?
The answer is yes.
So Mr. Navarette's next to last argument is that like the evident "Racism" in the RK case to explain the jury's verdict so it must be here.
People don't like the mentally ill and therefore want the police to move "Those" people away from where they live. Just like he claims white people didn't want "Those" people in their neighborhood back in 91 and wanted the police to move them too.
That is his reasoning for why the jury looked at ALL the evidence and found the police not guilty.
Its also a conclusion in which he uses to call for the Feds to step in and via the Justice Dept. bring "Justice" to Mr. Thomas's family by going after the cops who were just found innocent with double jeopardy.
Unfortunately for Mr. Navarette Santa Ana has long been a minority majority in that city unless things have changed a whole lot. So there aren't any white racists to blame, then again the suspect in this is white so I guess they can't blame that.
But they do bring up the prejudice angle, matter of fact he says people in Los Angeles are saying the new RK are the mentally ill.
Well let me say this, mentally ill people should be locked up if they are that much a threat and that much of a problem. If they are so much victims in life as he and his kind want to make out then lets protect them and society and lock them back up like they used to be.
That way everyone is protected. They can get enough Thorazine to to not be a danger to themselves or others that way.
Wonderful drug that one is.
I feel like sometimes when I am arguing these use of force cases that I'm almost like advocating for cops to kill people and that isn't what I want nor is it what I'm trying to do.
Damn it though it sure does feel like it sometimes and this is one of them.
These cases are tragic, regrettable, sad, horrible for the families involved and most especially for the police officers who are faced with them.
They're certainly not what anyone wants.
But to crucify police officers for doing their jobs, to watch police chiefs abandon their officers to the wolves in so many of these cases because people start making noise and these chiefs don't have a set between them just makes me sick.
What makes it worse is to read the comments sections about these events.
Some are ignorance like the comments saying he didn't have to comply with orders from the police.
So many though are nothing but pure hate. I saw calls to kill the cops in the comments section tonight. I can't tell you the vast number of anti-police rants that were up there but it was sickening.
And it all stems from this liberal crap that has been indoctrinated into our society for many years now. There is no respect left for our men and women in law enforcement or at least very little from what I can see.
The concept of don't fight the cops and you won't get your ass kicked seems beyond the ability of so, so many to grasp. And further when they do get their ass kicked everyone takes the bad guys' side in it and wants to hang the police.
That didn't use to be the way things worked and I for one wish it still were.
So we now have Mr. Navarette and his ilk crying foul once again and calling for another injustice to be perpetrated on police officers in Southern California as was done 20 odd years ago.
Only this time I wonder if anyone will stand up for the officers to see one doesn't get done?
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