Calling All Cars

 “Serving as a police officer is the toughest job in our country. As they put themselves on the line to keep us safe, they deserve our gratitude and support.”

William Barr, former Attorney General of the United States

One of the great pleasures of my retired life is the close connection I have maintained with many of the fine police officers and sheriff's deputies with whom I served. Yesterday, in an uncharacteristically full day of extroverting, I got to spend time with two of my favorite former co-workers, with a chance to listen to their thoughts on how law enforcement has changed, and how it has remained a tough job done by tough people.

And, I had a few margaritas.

I had this in mind when, this morning, I read about the protest in Downtown Denver after the passing of Luis Garcia, a sixteen year old shot near his school several weeks ago. By all accounts, Mr. Garcia was a dynamic young man with a bright future, someone who should be looking forward to spring break. Instead, it is up to his friends to rally in support of the idea that school is a place of learning, not a battleground.

It is in the American tradition, expressed by Senator Ted Kennedy at his brother Bobby's funeral, that we see wrong, and try to right it, see suffering and try to heal it, see war, and try to stop it. The young men and women, marching in the streets of Denver today, are following their birthright - to honor their friend by marching for change.

One need not be solidly in one camp, nor another, on the subject of gun laws to see that there are those individuals who cannot be permitted to possess any kind of firearm. Whether they have proven themselves incapable of following the law, are still too young to understand their rights and responsibilities, or are the victims of some unfortunate mental infirmity, reasonable restrictions have been recognized since our country was formed. I happily dismiss extremists on both ends of the spectrum and settle firmly within the majority of Americans who agree that there are things about which we can agree.

(However, comma...)

The Colorado Legislature will, in it's limited wisdom, pass laws that limit a citizen's right to keep and bear arms. There is some discussion about raising the age of gun possession to twenty-one, to enforce waiting periods and things of that nature. Of course, there are a multitude of laws that already curtail those rights - concealed carry requirements, guns that are illegal to possess, limits on how they can be sold and to whom. There are the major statutes, making it illegal to murder someone. The list goes on at length. There is only one problem.

Enforcement of these laws falls on the police, those same individuals and organizations that so many have chosen to vilify. With respect - how many of today's protesters against "gun violence" would also embrace aggressive, albeit legal, proactive policing in their community targeted at those individuals who are the source of violence and mayhem? Does anyone believe that there will be a "Police Our Community" protest in which large swaths of the anti-gun marchers also participate?

Another of my favorite former co-workers sent me an article today in which a police administrator suggested that officers respond to property crime calls with "lights and sirens" to deter and dissuade suspects from completing, or even contemplating the activity that is epidemic in our neighborhoods. It would "Increase the visibility of our police department," the chief said. "Many of the criminals don't fear death. They fear incarceration."

Imagine that. I think I learned that at the Colorado Law Enforcement Training Academy. In 1979. Police aggressively, honorably and for the benefit of your community. That's how crime and violence decline.

Let's demand that from our local governments.

Nothing Up My Sleeve...

“It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”
― George Washington

Cruz v. Arizona, 2023

Decided today, this case is an application of a fairly complicated doctrine that says, in essence, that states are free to apply their own laws, except when they are not. Got it?

The case involves the sentence of death to one John Montenegro Cruz, for the murder of a Tucson Police officer. Here is how a local paper describes the encounter:

The 2003 incident stems from an investigation of a hit-and-run accident by Hardesty and Benjamin Waters, which led to a nearby apartment where they found two women and Cruz, who fit the description of the driver. Cruz identified himself as "Frank White."

As Hardesty and Cruz went back to the car, Cruz leaned in as if to retrieve something and then took off running. Hardesty chased him on foot; Waters drove the patrol car around the block to cut Cruz off.

When Waters turned the corner, he said, he saw Cruz throw down a gun. Hardesty's body was immediately discovered. He had been shot five times; four of those shots came from no more than a foot away.

The Tucson jury sentenced Cruz to death. The argument is over whether the jury should have been told that an alternative sentence of life in prison carried with it no possibility of parole. The trial judge, during sentencing phase, declined that instruction. According to Arizona law, that was within his discretion. According to a complicated application of federal law, that should be the end of the story, unless it isn't.

Boiling away all of the legal gymnastics, this opinion was authored by a justice who does not now, nor will she ever support capital punishment. In countless death penalty cases, she votes in favor of making it hard enough that it is impossible to apply, or in opposition to it ever being administered. At all. Ever.

Her problem ("She only has one?") is that the Constitution clearly permits the death penalty. Some states have abolished it, Johnny Rocket and the Supremes have diluted it, but in those states where it is permitted it is an option for situations where some asshole ambushes a police officer and then shoots them execution style.

Mind you, there is no question that this is the guy who murdered Officer Hardesty. Nor is there evidence that the sentence of death is improper. Nor is there any evidence that the jury wanted to sentence Cruz to anything other than death. Twenty years later...

Well, now Cruz will have to be resentenced under the terms of the Supreme Court's wisdom (as opposed to that of the citizens of a city who lost one of their police officers). The victim's friends and family will have to be located and invited once again to testify what it was like to know that their loved one died a violent death. They can dredge up the feelings of loss compounded by twenty Christmases without him.

Or, they can decide that the feelings are better left locked away. In which case this defendant will live out his life in prison.

Maybe.

All because someone doesn't have a good, legal reason to abolish the death penalty, so she's willing to cobble together a bunch of bad ones.
 

He That Troubleth His Own House

 "Austin police, 911 staffing levels questioned after street racers take over major intersection, injure cop"

Fox News, 2/19/2023

The video is extremely interesting. It appears that thousands of individuals, using vehicles and themselves as barricades, took over a major intersection in downtown Austin, TX last night and had themselves quite a time. Several cars are seen from a distance taking years of wear off of their tires - at least one passenger is leaning out the window as the car spins, and some especially impressive "fireworks" detonate in the midst of the bedlam. It does not stretch the imagination to assume at least someone in the crowd cranked off a round or two from a firearm.

Where were the cops, you might ask? There are two parts to the answer.

A city council member, witnessing what might be delicately described as a total breakdown in civil order, called 911 to ask for some sort of police response. Their dispatch center put her on hold for twenty-eight minutes.

When officers finally arrived...

Okay, when officer arrived, they were attacked with fireworks (which were actually more akin to rocket-propelled grenades) and, quite correctly, the officer put their car in reverse and beat a hasty retreat. A second officer was accosted by the crowd and that was also enough for him or her. 

The larger issue is - how come there weren't a hundred cops wading into the fray, popping off pepper balls and bringing order to their city?

Because many of them are working for different police departments, now. A year ago, in the delayed and largely politically-motivated aftermath of the George Floyd riots, nineteen Austin officers were indicted for a variety of "official oppression" and other crimes related to uses of force applied in the face of rioters. A cursory search of the outcomes of those indictments disclosed no convictions, a couple of dismissals and defense attorneys wondering when the local DA behind the indictments was going to get off his dead ass and discover a just outcome.

This DA, in admittedly left-wing Austin, came into office backed by a Soros-funded organization promising social justice. Maybe that's what they've gotten.

They also got a mass exodus of police officers. They got next to no applications to be Austin cops. They got their budget cut 30% (recently reinstated, but the damage was done). They got such a mess on their hands that they can't staff their communications center.

What the law-abiding citizens of Austin didn't get was protection from not just the criminal element, but from the mobs that form when human beings are relieved of the civilizing aspects provided by consistent and fair enforcement of the law.

Dirty Harry once observed that a negative outcome was "A hell of a price to pay for being stylish." It seemed stylish, in 2020, to penalize police officers and hamstring police departments that had nothing whatsoever to do with a death at the hands of a cop in Minneapolis.

Well, what do you think now?

A Temper Tantrum from the Bench

 

Ideological warriors whether from the Left or the Right are bad news for the bench. They tend to make law, not interpret law. And that's not what any of us should want from our judges. - Chuck Schumer

The first rule I was taught in law school... Okay, actually it was the second. The first was that the law library was a monument to the notion that consulting reference material was infinitely preferable to reliance on memory. It was a lesson so well learned that a generation of former police recruits will cringe whenever they hear someone say aloud: If only there was some book that had laws in it...

The second rule is an adjunct to that first - in a published opinion, the ruling judge is expressing a personal opinion (as opposed to a legal one) whenever they launch into a vitriolic rant that is devoid of citation to any authority in law, or fact. I encountered one such opinion out of Oregon's Court of Appeals just today.

It was axiomatic, at least according to my Con Law professor in 1986, that half of all constitutional law arises out of 1st Amendment lawsuits by, or about, individuals bearing fist fulls of religious tracts. One might amend that, nearly quarter of the way into the 21st Century, that the other half is now occupied by the 2nd Amendment right to keep, and bear, arms.

Into the fray comes a small county in Oregon, population fifty thousand. Citizens passed a law that made it illegal (and conveyed a private cause of action upon its violation) for the local cops to enforce any but local laws involving firearms and ammunition, local being those created in that county. In plain language, they created a firearms sanctuary. In addition, the law impressed the county sheriff with the duty to determine which laws are constitutional, and which are not.

The Oregon Court of Appeals struck this law down in a fairly conventional application of Oregon law, relying on a statute that prevents local governmental subdivisions from deciding as a matter of law that state legislation does not apply in their city or county. This is unquestionably within the authority of the court, and of the state of Oregon. Even gun rights advocates who argued as amicus have admitted this, much as they wished the case to have been decided differently.

Then comes one Egan, J. He writes a concurrence that is, in point of fact, shameful. He writes, in part:

As  explained  below,  both  counsel’s  argument  concerning UN  mandates  and  the  Ordinance’s  solution  have  their origins in the ideology of white supremacist nationalism which runs contrary to the tenets of our constitutional republic. (Egan, J., concurring, page 244.)

The problem is, of course, that As explained below is in the manner of "'Shut up,' he explained." The pertinent paragraphs in which he "explains" are confined to what is his own personal opinion, devoid of any attempt to cite law or evidence before the court, that the organizing principles of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) which he calls out by name are directly drawn from the principles of the Aryan Nation, and are white supremacist and antisemitic in character.

One need not support CSPOA, even in part, to wonder who put a burr under this dude's saddle. Anyone who has read A More Perfect Union knows what the author - that's me - thinks of the notion that a sheriff can disregard state and federal law merely because they disagree with it. I'm also on the side of Egan, J.,  Concurring when he cautions that empowering local officials to arrest federal ATF agents enforcing federal law is a recipe for disaster. Read the whole cookbook. It's pretty good, and I guarantee you'll love Cici.

Neither do I think it's a terrible idea for a sheriff to read a law, take counsel from his or her legal team, and conclude that it is unconstitutional. It is not unheard of that the legislature passes a law clearly unconstitutional on its face. It is not uncommon, especially during times of great moral hysteria, that state legislatures get a little carried away. Egan, J., Concurring suggests that it is exclusively the role of the courts to determine the constitutionality of laws. Although he cites as support Marbury v. Madison (1803) it is a gross overreach to suggest that Chief Justice Marshall ruled that only courts are empowered to read the Constitution and comport their official duties within its constraints. Indeed, every time a police officer makes an arrest, they are interpreting the 4th Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

That isn't the worst of it. Apparently emotionally unsatisfied with merely "declining the invitation to join in this extension of the 2nd Amendment's breadth" as he might have otherwise written, Egan, J., Concurring decides to label respondents' arguments as rooted in white nationalism and antisemitism. As near as I can figure, reading his essay in the light most favorable to him, it is because:

The  anti-democratic  ideas  and  quasi-legal theories propounded by the CSPOA and embedded in Second Amendment  Sanctuary  Ordinances  have  their  origins  in  the writings of William Potter Gale, who founded the posse comitatus movement in the 1960s. They also have their origins  in  the  writings  of  the  Aryan  Nation,  an  antisemitic,  white supremist group. (Egan, J., concurring, page 248).

I didn't write "citations omitted," because there are no citations to omit. What Egan, J., Concurring invites you to ignore is that he is expressing his personal opinion, not something based on evidence on the record. He also invites you to engage in a preposterous fallacy.

The Aryan Nation isn't a white supremacist group because of what it believes about the 2nd Amendment, whatever that might be. It is unapologetically racist in its core values. The disingenuous mention of Aryan Nation is supposed to link the argument in favor of the Oregon county's law and 2nd Amendment sanctuary principles, to white nationalism and antisemitism without actually offering anything resembling logic or reasoning.

The case was remanded to the lower court, the majority using a footnote to conclude that, while severability (a law being broken up into constituent parts, with some surviving scrutiny) was not "meaningfully addressed," it probably would fail, anyway. That doesn't mean a lower court wouldn't find a severability argument persuasive, and the case once again be before the Court of Appeals.

Egan, J., Concurring has demonstrated himself to be an ideological warrior, not an impartial jurist. As such, I presume we will see him recuse himself.

Yeah, sure. That'll be the day.

The Jungian Moment

 "Jungian archetypes are a concept from psychology that refers to a universal, inherited idea, pattern of thought, or image that is present in the collective unconscious of all human beings." Wiki.

Noting the passing of Raquel Welch.

The checkout guy at King Soopers is something of a science fiction aficionado. Since I am not - Star Trek and the first three Star Wars notwithstanding - much of a sci fi fan, when he talks, I generally nod and agree. It's patter, anyway, something to pass the time while he scans the food items I've selected.

Last week, he asked if I'd seen Fantastic Voyage, the movie where a crew are miniaturized so they can be injected into a human body. "Was there a remake?" I asked. "I remember the original, from the 60s. And, all I remember is Raquel Welch and her form-fitting uniform."

Of course. I was a tweenager when the movie came out, and that's what had attracted my eye. I wasn't all that different from many of my classmates, I'd imagine. In many of her movies, she was the eye candy, the Jungian archetype known as sex symbol. She was there to be seen, not to deliver memorable and pithy lines to be repeated at opportune times in life. Don't hate - the 60s was a complex and confusing time.

She developed an interesting reputation as a professional, one that her gravitas as a personality allowed in an industry ripe with predators. Someone told her Raquel was too hard for American audiences to pronounce - she didn't care. She refused nude scenes, even as that seemed a rite of passage for women interested in a film career. She starred in a movie with actor (and former Syracuse running back) Jim Brown in which they engaged in a romantic interlude, at a time when laws prohibiting intermarriage between races had only recently been struck down. Her acting skills might be modest (someone remarking that "she can't act from here to there") but her screen presence was not.

I remember her as the mother of a love interest in the movie Tortilla Soup. Her character was outlandishly, if primly, forward in her pursuit of Martin Naranjo (Hector Elizondo), a widowed chef who was, in fact, interested in her adult, single-mom daughter. Ms. Welch's performance was both energetic and overblown, which played nicely against Martin's strong, silent type (and her "daughter's" understated but obvious charm). Toward the end Martin springs a surprise, leading Ms. Welch into a meltdown of epic proportions. A better actor might have played the scene differently, but the flamboyance gave it a comic twist that worked nicely into the film.

Raquel Welch - remarkable personality, memorable actor, film star well into her later years.

None But the Brave

 “A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.” Josh Billings.

"There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends." John 15:13

Remembering Graffit, Jefferson County K9.

I'm going to leave it to others, those officers who have spent their professional lives with a K9 partner, to describe what it's like to work the dangerous, demanding assignment of K9 handler. It's a difficult gig, one beautifully laid out by a friend in his wonderful book, Rocky. That's their story, and I'll let them tell it.

Yesterday, officers with the Colorado School of Mines police contacted a person sitting in a car on their campus. The investigation is far from complete, but the basics are fairly well established. Rather than submit to the lawful authority of police trying to keep their campus safe (the later, tragic events of the day on the campus of Michigan State University only emphasize the stakes) the person reacted violently, displayed a firearm and fled on foot.

Among the law enforcement officers who responded in support of Mines cops was a K9 team from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. I didn't have to be there to know they accepted the assignment willingly and without hesitation. Other officers needed help with a dangerous, combative suspect - of course they went.

The K9 teams at Jeffco SO are excellent - superbly trained, experienced, talented. K9 Graffit found the suspect. For some unknown reason, rather than surrender, the suspect shot Graffit. Officers returned fire, Graffit having given his life to save his deputy partner.

And here are the non-technical take aways. 

More officers arrived and - there are those who will find this hard to believe - successfully persuaded the suspect to surrender and took him into custody without further incident and injury. Read that again if you need to. Grieving the loss of one of their prized K9 partners, officers acted with professionalism and restraint.

Graffit was carried, covered in the American flag, through a throng of first responders, standing at attention. There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friend.

I am proud of the men and women who responded, who took care of business and who now mourn the loss of their partner. I admire every one of you.

Are You Back Already?

 

Repeat offenders are a major factor in Colorado's car theft epidemic, data shows

 Denver 9News headline, 2/8/2023

I would have never thought this was likely, but if 9News says so...

It was only one of the first things I learned in my freshman year at Northeastern University, 1972. It was true then, it is true now and was true every year in between. The majority of crimes are committed by a small group of criminals who resist efforts to deter them, short of what is genteelly called "incapacitation." That is, sending them to prison and keeping them there.

The trick, within correctional theory, is to distinguish those who could be rehabilitated or deterred from those who will commit crimes whenever they are free to do so.

And the first clue is - are they a repeat offender?

Bringing Back Shin Heat

"MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Beyond the beating, kicking, cursing and pepper spraying, the video of Tyre Nichols’ deadly arrest at the hands of young Memphis police officers is just as notable for what’s missing — any experienced supervisors showing up to stop them."

February 7, 2023

Where were they, you ask. It's just a guess, but the experienced supervisors were back at their desks doing administrative chores. Such as:

Employee Evaluations

And not just the yearly document most departments (wisely) require their supervisors to complete. Many organizations also maintain formal periodic logs, designed to record an employee's performance. Technology has made this task a bit easier, but for a supervisor with six officers on his/her team, keeping up with logs can take an entire duty day or two per month. Since most sergeants work about thirteen days a month - you're looking at more than ten percent of their time just writing "Officer (whomever) was late to work, again." If you think this could easily be whittled down, since Officer Whomever has a constitutionally-protected right to their job, as an employee of government, profusely documented performance may be the only way to discipline/terminate a poorly-performing employee before they make it on to CNN.

Report writing faux pas

There are two kinds of these. First, there is the day-to-day review of the written work of a supervisor's direct reports. Computerization has made this task simpler in some ways, and more complex in others. Simply reading - for content, clarity, grammar, spelling...you get the idea - fifteen or twenty reports every shift takes up nearly an hour, sometimes more. In the more cumbersome systems, one might double that time if the reviewer has a heart, and fixes spelling and punctuation mistakes rather than returning report(s) to their author. Additional time is consumed ("80% of my time is taken up by 20% of my employees" is the common lament) making sure that a non-standard report rejected back to an officer isn't resubmitted immediately, without changes, in the hope that another, less exacting supervisor, will approve it without reading it.

There are also reports, fewer but still existing, rejected downstream (often by a Records Employee) for flaws related to national (read: Eff...Bee...Eye) reporting standards. This is not an inconsequential matter, and often takes a considerable amount of effort to resolve. Police reports are actually a form of data entry. Anyone reading this who wants to read further on this arcane, albeit demanding subject need only pick up a copy of A Miracle of Zeros and Ones. I still have some printed copies, if you want one.

All of this is another investment of ten percent of the average workday. For those keeping score, one fifth of the duty day is already accounted for.

Payroll

"JDE will make liars of all of us" a friend said. JDE was the payroll software that each officer used to record their time - sort of like an individualized punch clock done over a computer. This is how people get paid. It is also subject to this axiom: To err is human. To really (mess) things up, you need a computer. Each supervisor is responsible for making sure that their employees submit an accurate and timely payroll accounting every two weeks. The material elements are every employee, accurate and timely. This doesn't take all that long, even when the usual employee (me, for example) either doesn't submit anything at all, it is incomplete or inaccurate, or isn't done on time. But, it's still a solid hour of heartache every two weeks.

Oh. Finance works Monday-Friday, 8-5. Cops, and their supervisors, don't.

Computer Training

Sure, just complete the class when there isn't anything to do. Sitting in a supervisor's cubicle listening to the radio and working on computerized training - just because the radio is quiet (or routine) doesn't mean nothing is going on.

Return Voice Mail Messages, Emails and Misc. Missives

Citizen complaints, harangues from The Boss. Complaints from detectives about non-standard investigations. Birth announcements. Court. Training classes cancelled, or rescheduled.

All of this assumes that:

The supervisor actually cares.

The supervisor is there - as a 25 year employee I got 4 weeks off per year. Add training days, holidays (another two plus weeks off because street cops work on Christmas, eg.) and I might work not 52 weeks a year, but 43.

While we're at it - supervisors are evaluated by how well (and profusely) they complete their "Admin." In some departments, both pay raises and promotions are tied directly to a sergeant's reputation for prowess as an administrator.

Give that some thought.

By the way - Roll call and getting the previous watch out the door is an hour at the front end of a duty day. Getting a sergeant's watch home is an hour at the end. Twenty percent of a ten hour day is already accounted for before a supervisor even contemplates getting into a police car.

Many years ago, a friend who'd worked for another agency (known for its especially harsh winters) talked about foot beats he'd been assigned. In those days, the officers wore greatcoats in the winter, large wool items that extended below the knee. Good winter boots took care of his feet, and the greatcoat was a godsend. His shins were always cold. So, a couple times a night, his sergeant would pull up without notice and let him sit in the car for a few minutes to warm up.

"Hey," the sergeant would call out. "You want some shin heat?"

And they would sit in the car and catch up. "What's been going on, how are things? Anything fun to talk about? I'll be out and about if you need me."

It's what the profession needs now, more than ever. Shin heat from the Sarge.