“I can’t breathe!”

[Vashta Nerada]

Acerbic-tongued comedian and HBO talk show host Bill Maher blasted the NYPD and the city's police unions Friday, calling cops "New York's Whiniest" for participating in a work slowdown and turning their backs on Mayor de Blasio at funerals for two fallen officers.

"When did the NYPD start suffering from PMS?" Maher asked as he wrapped up his show "Real Time With Bill Maher."

"Seriously, if our deal with the police is that we have to constantly reassure them how much we love them unless they throw a tantrum, we're not supporting them," he said. "We're dating them,"

Maher, who claims he supports the police, lambasted the NYPD for what he called a "virtual work stoppage to teach Bill de Blasio a lesson for not saying he loves them enough."

"The cops were already furious with the mayor for not endorsing their novel crime-prevention tactic of choking random citizens to death. But purposely not doing your job? Turning your back to him at funerals? What did de Blasio do — get caught in a video with Ice Cube singing f--- the police?"

Maher admitted that the cops have a dirty job — but, hey, they volunteered for it, he said.

"It's like a proctologist coming home every night, saying, 'I can't believe I have to look at a------- all day," Maher said. "I do support the police and I understand their job is to look at a------- all day, but something outrageous has been going on in the Big Apple in the last couple of weeks."










It's Patrick Lynch, Not Mayor De Blasio, from Whom an Apology Is Due.

If PBA President Patrick Lynch's words and conduct weren't so incendiary, his words and conduct would be laughable. Rather than laughable, however, they are shameful and they are explosive. Mr. Lynch outlandishly asserted that Mayor De Blasio is anti-cop and that he has thrown the New York City police officers under the bus. Worse yet, he said that the mayor has the blood of the recently murdered New York City police officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu on his hands.

Are you kidding me, Mr. Lynch? And, then, on top of that you want the mayor to apologize to you and your membership. It is you, PBA union President Patrick Lynch, from whom an apology is due to the City of New York.

Mayor de Blasio never ran for Mayor of the City on an "anti-police" platform; once elected, Mayor de Blasio has never thrown police officers under the bus; and Mayor de Blasio most certainly does not have blood of the fallen officers on his hands. So, Mayor de Blasio does not owe New York City police officers an apology; and the repeated statements by police union officials that the mayor does owe police officers an apology is utter nonsense.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-meyerson/it-is-you-pba-union-presi_b_6445404.html

[Vashta Nerada]

The NYPD Slowdown's Dirty Little Secret

Cutting off low level arrests was supposed to be a bargaining tactic for police officers in New York, but not all of them want the slowdown to end.

The police slowdown in New York, where cops have virtually stopped making certain types of low-level arrests, might be coming to an end soon. For a lot of police officers, it'll be an unhappy moment, because they never liked making the penny ante collars in the first place.

"We're coming out of what was a pretty widespread stoppage of certain types of activity, the discretionary type of activity by and large," police commissioner Bill Bratton told NPR's Robert Siegel in an interview Friday.

In the rank and file of the police department, there are mixed feelings about the slowdown and a possible return to the status quo.

"I'd break it down like this," an officer in East Harlem told The Daily Beast. "20 percent of the department is very active, they'd arrest their mothers if they could, and they want to get back to work. Another 20 percent doesn't want any activity period; they'd be happy to hide and nap all day."

The officer added, "And then there's the great middle that thinks things are fine now as far as their concerned and all they want is good arrests."

The not good arrests, by implication, were all the low level infractions policed as part of the so-called "Broken Windows" approach to law enforcement, defended by both Bratton and Mayor de Blasio. It holds that one of the ways to bust high-level crooks is to crack down on seemingly minor crimes.

Between December 29 2014—January 4 2015, arrests across New York city dropped by 56 percent and summonses were down 92 percent compared to the same time last year.

It's not novel to point out that the police slowdown, which pitted the police and their unions against city hall, granted one of the central demands of the #blacklivesmatter protestors—an end to Broken Windows policing.

Less noted though, is how many police officers are themselves ambivalent about actively enforcing low level offenses, and how that bodes for the post-slowdown future of policing in New York.

Retired NYPD lieutenant Steve Osborne made the point in an op-ed for the New York Times that was sharply critical of both de Blasio and the protestors.

    "I have to suspend my disbelief," the officer in East Harlem said, "to see how sentencing a guy with an open container is going to really bring crime down."

"More police productivity has meant far less crime, but at a certain point New York began to feel like, yes, a police state, and the police don't like it any more than you," Osborne wrote.

"The time has probably come for the Police Department to ease up on the low-level 'broken-windows' stuff while re-evaluating the impact it may or may not have on real, serious crime," he added. "No one will welcome this more than the average cop on the beat, who has been pressed to find crime where so much less of it exists."

Day to day, no one has been telling police officers in New York how not to do their jobs.

"It sounds very unusual," the officer in East Harlem said, "but I haven't seen any coordinated activity besides the union putting the message out and then saying jump."

It hasn't taken much effort to coordinate the slowdown because, as Osborne notes, average beat cops were never that excited in the first place with going after public urination and loitering arrests. To them, it was a distraction from stopping more serious crimes.

Broken Windows advocates argue that some cops always resisted more active policing. When Broken Windows was first introduced, they say, police officers had to be pushed, by Bratton among other, to adopt the active policing approach that brought crime down to its current historic lows in new York.

But as New York got safer, the methods rather than the results became the measures of success. More arrests meant better policing as the tail started to wag the dog.

Bratton himself has said nearly as much in criticizing his predecessor Ray Kelly's overuse of the controversial stop and frisk tactic that overwhelmingly targeted minorities.

"The commissioner and the former mayor did a great job in the sense of keeping the community safe, keeping crime down, but one of the tools used to do that, I believe, was used too extensively," Bratton said in March 2014.

Stop and Frisks have fallen considerably since their high in 2011 when 685,724 New Yorkers were stopped by police, but some numbers driven approaches remain embedded in the department.

As a detective in the Bronx tells The Daily Beast, "there technically are no quotas" in the police department "but you can call them what you want, "productivity goals," they are back door quotas."

And those back door quotas can put pressure on officers.

"I have to suspend my disbelief," the officer in East Harlem said, "to see how sentencing a guy with an open container is going to really bring crime down."

"Violent crimes haven't gotten worse in my little slice of heaven despite the slowdown on summonses and misdemeanors," the officer added. "We're still responding to robbery patterns. We haven't gone down in presence for the more serious offenses."

He acknowledged that it was too soon to say how such a policing strategy would play out over an extended period. "Whether it works will reveal itself over time. That remains to be seen."

Once New York is out of the slowdown, it's not clear what kind of policing the city will see on the other side. Will Bratton push the police to bring arrests back up to levels before they dropped off or will the department test its ability to back off?

Maybe there will be some new middle ground possible despite the bluster and rhetoric. According to The Daily News, the combative president of the police union is pushing for just a slowdown that's a little bit faster. As one police source told the paper, "He said they should go back to at least 50% of what they used to do."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/10/the-nypd-slowdown-s-dirty-little-secret.html

[Vashta Nerada]

DENVER (AP) — A teenage passenger who was in a car when a 17-year-old girl was shot and killed by Denver police has disputed authorities' account of her death, saying officers opened fire before one of them was struck by the vehicle.

The officers came up to the car from behind and fired four times into the driver's side window as they stood on the side of the car, narrowly missing others inside, the passenger said.

Police said in a statement that the two officers then "approached the vehicle on foot when the driver drove the car into one of the officers," who then "feared for their lives."


Monday's shooting was the fourth time in seven months that Denver police have shot drivers after officers said a car was being used as a weapon.

One witness reported that the officer was not hit until after shots were fired and Hernandez lost control of the vehicle because she had been struck by a bullet.

In the department's use-of-force policy, officers are discouraged from shooting at moving vehicles unless the auto poses a threat of death or serious injury and when there is no reasonable alternative that would prevent serious injury or death.

"Firing at a moving vehicle may have very little impact on stopping the vehicle," the policy says. "Disabling the driver may result in an uncontrolled vehicle, and the likelihood of injury to the occupants of the vehicle (who may not be involved in the crime) may be increased when the vehicle is either out of control or shots are fired into the passenger compartment."


Nationally, police departments for years have considered cars to be deadly weapons when they are driven toward officers, said Geoff Alpert, a University of South Carolina professor who studies use of force.  Officers have been found to have placed themselves in the path of moving vehicles for the express purpose of justifying the use of force.  

But there is a changing philosophy among policing experts to prohibit officers from shooting at moving vehicles.

In April, the U.S. Department of Justice recommended the Albuquerque Police Department change its use-of-force policy to prohibit officers from firing at moving vehicles, according to its letter to the city after an investigation into the department.

In 2011, the Police Executive Research Forum also recommended that the Albuquerque department change its policy, saying the practice put officers and citizens at a higher risk of harm.

[guido911]

Should I put sugar in my poultry brine?

[dbacksfan 2.0]

Should I put sugar in my poultry brine?

That or you can use this as a dry rub. 

http://store.nosoc.com/joes-stuff-21-oz/

[guido911]

That or you can use this as a dry rub. 

http://store.nosoc.com/joes-stuff-21-oz/

Thanks for the hint. In other news, a trooper was killed. BIG yawn coming from a few in this forum.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/state/oklahoma-highway-patrol-trooper-killed-one-more-injured-while-responding/article_3145d3c3-6efb-567f-a0a7-9101b04c7478.html

[Vashta Nerada]

Number Of Officers Killed In The Line Of Duty Drops To 50-Year Low While Number Of Citizens Killed By Cops Remains Unchanged


The go-to phrase deployed by police officers, district attorneys and other law enforcement-related entities to justify the use of excessive force or firing dozens of bullets into a single suspect is "the officer(s) feared for his/her safety." There is no doubt being a police officer can be dangerous. But is it as dangerous as this oft-deployed justification makes it appear?

    The annual report from the nonprofit National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund also found that deaths in the line of duty generally fell by 8 percent and were the fewest since 1959.

    According to the report, 111 federal, state, local, tribal and territorial officers were killed in the line of duty nationwide this past year, compared to 121 in 2012.

    Forty-six officers were killed in traffic related accidents, and 33 were killed by firearms. The number of firearms deaths fell 33 percent in 2013 and was the lowest since 1887.

This statistical evidence suggests being a cop is safer than its been since the days of Sheriff Andy Griffith. Back in 2007, the FBI put the number of justifiable homicides committed by officers in the line of duty at 391. That count only includes homicides that occurred during the commission of a felony. This total doesn't include justifiable homicides committed by police officers against people not committing felonies and also doesn't include homicides found to be not justifiable. But still, this severe undercount far outpaces the number of cops killed by civilians.

We should expect the number to always skew in favor of the police. After all, they are fighting crime and will run into dangerous criminals who may respond violently. But to continually claim that officers "fear for their safety" is to ignore the statistical evidence that says being a cop is the safest it's been in years -- and in more than a century when it comes to firearms-related deaths.

So, the excuses -- and the justifiable homicides -- mount. Even as the job becomes safer for police officers and crime stats continue to drop from their mid-1990s highs, the rate of annual deaths at the hands of law enforcement remains unchanged. According to statistics from the Bureau of Justice, 4,813 people die while being arrested by police officers. 60% of those were homicides.

Look at Seattle. As Reason points out, 20% of its 2013 homicides were committed by police officers -- 6 out of 29 total. A city with nearly 650,000 residents (and an infinite amount of chances to kill each other) only managed to outpace the city's ~1,800 officers by a 5-to-1 ratio. One homicide per 300 officers versus one homicide per 22,000 residents. Again, being a criminal shortens your lifespan, and officers will more often find themselves in dangerous situations, but the disparity here is enormous.

Efforts have been made over the past several years to make things safer for police officers. The ubiquitous use of bulletproof vests has contributed to this decrease in firearms-related deaths, as has a variety of policies aimed at reducing high-speed chases. But very little effort has been made to decrease the number of people killed by law enforcement. (Notably, Seattle's police chief attributes the high homicide numbers to not "effectively managing" interactions with people with mental health issues.) Some deaths are nearly impossible to prevent, but there are others where the situation has been allowed to deteriorate far too quickly or a shoot-first mentality has prevailed. The escalating adoption of military equipment and tactics has also contributed to the steady "justifiable homicide" count.

I'm aware that statistical aggregation isn't the same thing as moment-to-moment reality. Just because you're less likely to be shot today than at any other time in the past 100+ years doesn't mean today isn't your day. But the narrative push by officers to present their job as persistently deadly doesn't jibe with the death totals. The First Rule of Policing ("get home safe") is a crutch for bad cops. Cops are getting home safe now more than ever. It's those on the other side of the blue line that haven't seen their chances improve.

[guido911]

You read it here. Vashta is telling us that not enough police are dying to give a damn...

[cynical]

What I read here was the first person to mention it expressed not one iota of sadness or sympathy for the family and friends of the trooper who lost his life. His death was only a chance to take a cheap political shot. I hope the trooper's family don't read this forum.

I might have to surrender my screen name to you, Guido. You really outdid yourself this time.

You read it here. Vashta is telling us that not enough police are dying to give a damn...

[guido911]

What I read here was the first person to mention it expressed not one iota of sadness or sympathy for the family and friends of the trooper who lost his life. His death was only a chance to take a cheap political shot. I hope the trooper's family don't read this forum.

I might have to surrender my screen name to you, Guido. You really outdid yourself this time.

Yeah. Because I have a huge history for showing no sympathy for those who serve this country...   And look at this thread this is posted in.

[heironymouspasparagus]

You read it here. Vashta is telling us that not enough police are dying to give a damn...

Noooo....a n d  y o u  k n o w  b e t t e r ....  spelling it out slowly so you can understand....  it means that too many civilians on the other side are dying and not enough people are giving a damn.  



Must be all that lawyer school stuff that blurs the thinking and interferes with the thought process - after all, who but a lawyer dressed up as a judge (Kurt Glassco) would tell a guy making a confession, "No, I don't accept that - you are gonna have to continue your normal life for 10 years while we watch you carefully to make sure you don't get drunk and try to kill someone again..."

But then, the guy confessing wasn't a poor black guy - he was an entitled, connected white guy....

[guido911]

Noooo....a n d  y o u  k n o w  b e t t e r ....  spelling it out slowly so you can understand....  it means that too many civilians on the other side are dying and not enough people are giving a damn.  



Must be all that lawyer school stuff that blurs the thinking and interferes with the thought process - after all, who but a lawyer dressed up as a judge (Kurt Glassco) would tell a guy making a confession, "No, I don't accept that - you are gonna have to continue your normal life for 10 years while we watch you carefully to make sure you don't get drunk and try to kill someone again..."

But then, the guy confessing wasn't a poor black guy - he was an entitled, connected white guy....

I know what that guy means. Trust me. And if you are worrying about the "other side", by all means give the biggest damn you want. I encourage it. Just don't crap on those that keep us safe in the process.

[heironymouspasparagus]

I know what that guy means. Trust me. And if you are worrying about the "other side", by all means give the biggest damn you want. I encourage it. Just don't crap on those that keep us safe in the process.

I don't crap on anyone who is truly trying to keep us safe in the process.  Never have.  Never will.


And I also don't feel at all safe with the recent past and current DA office regime and Judge Glassco's selective law enforcement.  Wonder how you would feel about those two offices if someone tried to kill one of your kids - by pointing an assault rifle at one and pulling the trigger from about 65 feet - and that person was given a pass because he was related to someone of entitlement??  Would YOU feel "safe"??  (I know the answer even if you won't admit it here, deep down inside you know the truth.)

As a side note to that - the Broken Arrow Police Department did a great job on the case and during follow up contacts, while no direct comments ensued, there was obviously frustration that all their good work was dismissed out of hand by the powers that be....  Tim Harris' office and Judge Glassco.  And yet, the people of this county still voted back the same old clique....

[guido911]

I don't crap on anyone who is truly trying to keep us safe in the process.  Never have.  Never will.


And I also don't feel at all safe with the recent past and current DA office regime and Judge Glassco's selective law enforcement.  Wonder how you would feel about those two offices if someone tried to kill one of your kids - by pointing an assault rifle at one and pulling the trigger from about 65 feet - and that person was given a pass because he was related to someone of entitlement??  Would YOU feel "safe"??  (I know the answer even if you won't admit it here, deep down inside you know the truth.)

As a side note to that - the Broken Arrow Police Department did a great job on the case and during follow up contacts, while no direct comments ensued, there was obviously frustration that all their good work was dismissed out of hand by the powers that be....  Tim Harris' office and Judge Glassco.  And yet, the people of this county still voted back the same old clique....

I believe in accountability. Believe me. That is not what this thread is about. This thread is about broad stroking the entire profession. And now, of course, it's about local judicial officials.

[Vashta Nerada]

Just don't crap on those that keep us safe in the process.

Cheer up, the guy shot in the back died:
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/state/man-shot-by-oklahoma-highway-patrol-trooper-in-january-dies/article_3a0000b7-13fe-5b08-b9d6-21067ab118c6.html