Comfortably Numb- Good initiative, bad judgement

I want to visit a subject sure to ruffle some feathers. My analysis is not here to make excuses or stand up for anybody. My only intent is to visit the facts as I saw them.

Lets talk about the good cops.

Yes, I know. There are no good cops because if there were they would stop the bad ones. I hear this a lot from people. This is the same as correlating high minority areas with crime. Is there truth to the statements? Of course. Are there much deeper socioeconomic and political issues at hand than simple faulty deductions? You bet your sweet ass.

Good cops still exist, but their numbers are dwindling. Let's talk about a couple.

"Me and Jesus were zone partners" 
This is your officer that's been around since Carter was in office. He's old school but professional. He has, against all odds, survived somewhere in the ballpark of three decades in law enforcement. He's close or at retirement eligibility but sticks around.

He doesn't leave because he knows how bad things are. He sees how corrupt the world he spent his entire life in has become. He sees the people he's worked with, been friends with, his entire career turn into criminals once they climbed the ranks. He has played politics wisely and gained some rank. But he is outnumbered.

He stays for the good cops under his command. He stays to try and inoculate them from all the bad they are surrounded by within their department. He stays to try and teach them the right ways, no matter how few officers listen. At least there are a few.

He will try and make things right, but he will try to do it from within the system. This is his fatal mistake. He cant buck the system too much. If he has enough rank to actually change something, there is a high probability that he is a political appointee as well. This means he can be fired without cause, at any time, at the whims of his political masters.

He knows if he leaves there will be a power vacuum. He knows that void will most likely be filled by another criminal with a badge. A dangerously incompetent yes man is the best outcome he could hope for as a replacement.

But he's not all integrity and professionalism, he is human after all.
He has a pension to think about.

Retired on Duty
This is the guy who has around eight years till retirement. He hates what he sees. He wishes he could walk away. But he's so close. So close to that promised golden egg.

This guy usually doesn't have much rank. Maybe a little, but not too much. He's probably got an internal affairs file with a few suspensions, but these suspensions tend to be bullshit. Politically motivated fishing expeditions to screw with the guy because he didn't kiss the right ass.

He's usually jaded, in a horrible mood, quick tempered and foul mouthed.
He's the guy that refuses to revenue generate. He wont give you a second look unless you are committing a crime with a victim. He doesn't even know where his ticket book is.
He's the guy that will run into a burning building to save a stranger.
He's the guy that will take a bullet for you.

He's also the guy who married the stripper from his zone partners third bachelor party. He usually has at least two ex wives and a clowns car worth of children from multiple waitresses and bartenders around his beat. If he is remarried, the wife du juor will have a minivans worth of her own shit machines in tow.

He's tried to make things right in the past. All he got for it was a personnel file four inches thick, a transfer to a shitty assignment with shitty off days, and a slew of suspensions. The whole while watching the dirty ones move past him up the chain.

All he wants to do is watch the seconds tick by on the clock for the next eight years. If he cant do that, he'd like to at least help some people. He's just as content changing someones tire on the side of the interstate as he is serving an arrest warrant on a child predator.

He has been beaten, not into submission, but into apathy. He needs the job to pay for the hordes of screaming mouths at home. He's tried fighting the good fight, but lost every time. He has a mortgage, two car payments, a motorcycle, child support payments and three maxed out credit cards.

And don't forget about that pension.

Family Guy
This one is self explanatory. Married to his first wife, popping out their first couple of kids. This guy has a lot in common with retired on duty (ROD). Except everything this guy does is for his family. He sees the abuses, but he also saw what happened to ROD when he tried to report it. He doesn't partake in the corruption, nor does he condone it. He feels powerless to stop it.

He cant get suspended, he wouldn't be able to afford jr's t-ball lessons. He cant get transferred, he would miss family board game night. He cant say anything to put his family in danger, fiscally or otherwise.

He goes to work. He follows the law. He knows proper policy and procedure. Hell, he's usually even a pleasant person to have a run in with on the side of the road. He'll usually cut you a break if you're not being a dick. He causes little harm, but makes no waves.

He's also invested heavily into his career in policing. He been around for a handful of years. He started young, hired in his early twenties. Now he's started a family. He could leave law enforcement, but then what? Policing is all he's ever known. Would anybody in their right mind leave a secure career with a wife and newborn at home?

Plus he's got to think about that pension, and future college costs.

Do you even gun, bro?
This one is tricky. This is not the time to debate foreign policy. Take the following for what it is.
Military combat veterans, in my experience, make some of the best cops. They also make some of the worst. I'm talking combat military occupational specialists. Infantry, reconnaissance, armor, medics, cavalry, etc etc. with real world experience.
But it only works if they understand that they're not at war anymore. That citizens are not the enemy. This is what differentiates the good from the bad.

The good vet joins the force for obvious reasons. They joined an all volunteer military with the good intentions of serving their country. They went oversees and did what they thought was proper. But they saw some things over there that made them start to question all the 'murica propaganda they had so eagerly bought into.

Now they're back home. No real tangible job skills except good under pressure and hell in a firefight. They also miss the structure. Law enforcement is an obvious choice. Of course they remember the bullshit they saw in the military, but that's federal government for ya. Right? Local government is much more streamlined. They want to serve their communities like they wanted to serve their country.

They soon find out they were terribly wrong.

The smart ones get the fuck out immediately. They see it for what it is.
They've been through too much to be tricked again.
Others stick around for a while, usually kept there by a perceived lack of transferable skills.
They'll handle the serious situations, at times having to become belligerent with superiors over safety concerns. After they safely handle the situations, the supervisor who almost got everyone killed will get the credit, and the officer will have a suspension for insubordination to deal with.

Whether they leave after a week on the job, or 15 years. They all finally come to the same conclusion.

Fuck your pension.

No Sympathy for the Devil- Dirty Business

People ask me why I left a successful career in law enforcement the way I did. Some say I acted like a child, pitching the proverbial fit over business as usual. Some say I'm an out of touch idealist who longs for an Utopian dream land. Some say it was my stubbornness that did me in.

There isn't one event I can point to as an my "ah-ha" moment. No deep epiphany that struck me like a bat to the back of the head. It was more like thousands of paper cuts that finally led me to bleed out. This isn't to say that some didn't cut deeper than others.

I was sitting in my office one day when I received a phone call from one of the local city agencies in my jurisdiction. They were requesting SWAT's assistance with the execution of a narcotics search warrant. As a team leader it was my job to evaluate all such requests to see if the warrant met our criteria to get involved. 

My team had always done a good job of weeding out hack requests from other agencies, including our own.  I'm not saying we were perfect, far from it. But nine times out of ten, we were going after some pretty bad characters. We had a threat assessment that had to be submitted to me by the requesting agency. This checklist contained information like criminal history, purpose of warrant, threats made, firearm information, mental health issues, etc etc. Each section had a corresponding numerical value. If the total added up to our threshold, SWAT would execute the warrant.

This was non negotiable.

Unless politics came into play.

We did a lot of narcotics warrants, but only if there was a credible threat of violence. If you're going after an international drug trafficking organization, you're going to want SWAT there. If you're going after JuneBug the neighborhood weed dealer, I didn't give a shit. Serve your own damn warrant. Our main purpose was arresting violent fugitives, hostage rescues, and barricaded gunmen. Not to shoot grandma's door off of the hinges for her cataract medicine. 

At least it was at one time.

I reviewed the case file sent to me, denied it, and sent the file to my boss. If I was the submitting officer, I would've been ashamed to send it over for a consultation. This particular department had a cowboy reputation for stirring shit up for no reason. The warrant was for distribution of marijuana. Their evidence, two ziplock bags with pot residue found in a trash pull over 3 months prior and a few anonymous tips. Great reason to run a tank up in someones front yard.

The trash pull is a favorite tactic of narcotic units around the country. If they receive a tip about a location, they will wait till trash day when you bring your can to the street and take it. They'll go as far as getting a spare, empty garbage truck and roll right up to your driveway to get it. This looks a lot less suspicious than an Expedition with blacked out windows stealing your hefty bags in the middle of the day. The bags are then taken to a secure area and the investigating officers painstakingly go through everything you've thrown out, looking for contraband that will give them probable cause for a search warrant. Trash pulls have been upheld by the Supreme Court, and it does not require a warrant to do one.

A few hours later my boss is in my office. He explains after I denied the service request, the submitting officer took the file to his chief of police. He stated that the chief had called him wanting us to do the warrant anyway. His department had been having a lot of problems in the area of this warrant and they wanted to send a message to all the "thugs". He said they had a confidential informant who stated the house was always full of armed "gangbangers". Funny, this confidential informant wasn't in the case file I looked at.

The argument went back and forth between my boss and the chief for a while. We stood firm that this was not a situation in which SWAT needed to be involved. While we might have been a bunch of heavily armed, militarized pirates who would fuck your world up if we showed up at your doorstep, we typically saved our special brand of violence for murders, armed robbers, kidnappers, and child molesters.

The Chief, not used to not getting what he wanted, did what any spoiled child would do. He went crying and screaming all the way to our main boss, the head honcho, the big hat. The chief and big hat also happened to be very close friends. So it wasn't a huge surprise when the word came down that we were doing the warrant, per big hat.

Needless to say I was pissed but nothing I couldn't handle. I was told I had to execute the warrant, but I wasn't told how. Armored vehicles, dynamic entry, flashbangs, tear gas, and shotgun breaching were the norm for high risk warrants. They knew this, they had seen it before and this is what they wanted. I had other plans.

I planned the operation like I would a barricaded gunman, and not like the usual high speed, no knock drug warrants we had done in the past. We would approach the house the following morning at 5am. We would surround the house, with an entry team on stand by to make immediate entry into the location if something went south. Once the house was surrounded, our negotiators would make a call to the house phone and instruct everyone to come out with their hands up. Once everyone had been removed from the house, only then would we make entry and secure the location.

I'm not going to put lives on the line for 2 empty ziplock bags. Needless to say, the narcotics officers were not happy when they were briefed on our plan the next morning. They were concerned with evidence being destroyed. I kindly advised them I didn't give a fuck about their evidence.

As we departed for the target location that morning, I had this recurring thought that I couldn't get out of my head. Like a recorded loop playing over and over.

This isn't right. What are we doing? This isn't right.

At this point in my career, I'd seen and done plenty of things I didn't agree with. Some trivial, some that are with me to this day. It bothered me every time. But this was different. SWAT had always been special to me. We were incredibly selective on who we put on the team and even more selective when determining what operations we undertook. This wasn't your typical run of the mill Rambo circle jerk SWAT team. We understood force had to be used appropriately according to each situation. We prided ourselves in not being like the rest of them. We tried our best not used as a political tool.

The operation goes as planned, which is a rarity in tactical operations. We pulled 17 people out on their front lawn in their pajamas at gunpoint that morning. Six adults and eleven children were in the house. Not a single one of the detectives persons of interest were at the location. Not a single weapon was found. Not a single person with outstanding warrants. No controlled substances were found, not even paraphernalia.

All in a days work I suppose. I got home that morning around 830am. I made myself a breakfast of vodka and percocet. When the pills started kicking in I went and laid down. As I stared at the spinning ceiling fan above my bed and felt the warm blanket of opiate sleep coming on fast, my mind still raced.

What are we doing? What the fuck are we doing?

Sabotage- 3 common cop personalities

Would you like a daily reminder just how completely and utterly fucked the law enforcement culture is in this country? Well, you're in luck because one needs look no further than the multiple pro law enforcement websites and forums floating around the web. The comments sections are teaming with some of the most vile, hateful, and ignorant statements you will find. If you suffer from high blood pressure or prone to fits of rage, I wouldn't recommend it.

I decided to head over to one of my favorite pro blowing childrens faces off with flashbangs sites today. Within 3 minutes I had read enough to make me optimistic about the end of the human race. I decided to bring the top three I read over here and have some fun. 

A little context, these came from an article discussing a local sheriffs pissing contest with the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The same guys that about got their asses shot a few months back by a bunch of pissed off ranchers.

1

If the BLM is in control of the land, their rules apply. Period. Nixon would be proud. Too bad if the Sheriff or other law enf don't like the laws. How dare a constitutionally elected sheriff defy the omnipotent bureaucracy. Fed Law tops local/state law. Obviously a Harvard law graduate If people don't like the BLM laws/rules, don't visit or go onto the land. If you dont like the bully, find another playground, preferably in Somalia. The problem with this country is everybody wants to do their own thing. Oh the horror!!!!!!! MUH FREEDOM!!!!!!!!

I know a lot of people like the guy who wrote this. This is the guy who will kill you over a plant, waving an American flag. He talks of protecting peoples rights while being the antithesis of those rights. He will kick your ass then demand thanks for serving the community.  He most likely has a morbidly obese wife and 6 shitty kids. He's probably prior military but most likely did not have a combat job. He was left feeling inadequate by his uneventful military service and now has a serious god complex fueled by his insecurities and perceived authority. He is the uber-statist. 

2

These folks in Utah are being ridiculous. Silly citizen and your silly rights. Comparing BLM law enforcement agents to the Gestapo or troops in a war zone is simply asinine. Simply asinine. There's just no comparison there. No comparison at all.

Anyone who would make such a comparison has never experienced life under a totalitarian regime or been in a war zone. Hmmmmmm... Secondly, the complaint about the weapons carried by BLM agents is dishonest and hypocritical. BLM agents carry the exact same gear used by local law enforcement in Utah. If he could only grasp that that's the fucking point.I don't doubt that these sheriffs have had poor experiences with the BLM in the past. But the complaints as described in this article are juvenile and sound suspiciously like political pandering. Yes, juvenile. Simply juvenile.

This is the flat earther. A SWAT team could show up at his house, kill his dog in front of his children and he would still give them the benefit of the doubt. He has no real opinion. All he knows is that an uncomfortable feeling comes over him when he hears something that goes against his state worship. He will tow the line to prevent cognitive dissonance at all costs. He is dumb, but he is dangerous. 

3

Not every agency needs a SWAT team. Alright, something we can agree on. Those BLM people need to stick with enforcing the laws in territory they control. Shit, here we go. If things get out of hand, call in the local team be it Sheriff or State. Oppression is so much nicer when you know the person stepping on your throat. Not some faceless bureaucratic.  When you have an agency like BLM showing up like the way did in this incident , it makes things worse. Sending a SWAT team for a non violent, victimless crime? Seems status quo. The Branch Davidian in (W)Aco incident is still seared in people's minds. Mass murder perpetrated by the government on live TV tends to stick with some people. A lot of innocent children burned alive in that Federal fiasco. Yes they did.  It's this kind of incidents that set off the nut jobs out there. Let me get this straight. Because the idea of men, women and children being burnt alive by our government disturbs me, I'm a lunatic?

 Incidents like this keep showing the erosion of the Tenth Amend. U.S.A! U.S.A! There are too many troublesome things going in our country. But I'm totally cool with bar-b-que'n a few toddlers. So moist and tender. I don't like the direction we are heading, it is down right scary. Scary like a run away government with unlimited policing powers cooking humans live with Bobby Flay?

This guy is so confused he doesn't know which way is up. I would say this guy probably has every Bill O'reilly and Sean Hannity book ever produced. Its probably safe to say his Ann Coulter collection has sticky pages. He speaks in Fox News talking points. He knows there is something terribly wrong in the world, but he cant bring himself to recognize that its state worshipers like him that are the problem. He is fine with violence as long as it fits into his belief system. He drinks heavily to deal with his confusion. He means well but is terribly misguided.

The three profiles I gave you are three very common personalities in the world of law enforcement. You can find them at any department in the nation.These are the people they groom for leadership positions. Very rarely will you find a career officer in a supervisory position that doesn't exhibit some combination of the traits I've talked about above. 

Let me know if you liked the article in the comment section. Wanted to try something different today and I had a good time putting it together. Requests for future topics and questions are welcomed as well. 

Beast of Burden- The politics of corruption

I started my career in law enforcement, like a lot of officers do, working in a county jail. I had been advised by some experienced officers that this was the best route not only because the department would pay for your peace officer certification but you learned a good bit about dealing with "criminals" being surrounded by them on a daily basis. I  learned the best way to deal with people was to treat them like human beings, not caged animals. More flies with honey like they say. Be firm and professional. Listen to them, talk to them, and take their concerns as legitimate and you're less likely to end up with a shank in you (although not always, as we will get to later). Now this isn't to say my short time working in the jail was all rainbows and lollipops. Even though the facility I worked in was considered one of the safest in the area, there was still a decent amount of violence that occurred. And a large percentage of that violence was caused, directly or indirectly, by the frat boy jack offs of the jails special response team, or SERT. This special duty attracted the kind of people who were too chicken shit to do any real kind of law enforcement outside of the jail, but would rather run around a secured facility dressed like a velcro laden batman ninja, beating the shit out of unarmed inmates. Use of force policy and procedure be damned, if you were on the Beaker Squad, you could get away with murder. Literally. I'll never forget my first encounter with their fearless leader, one of the most corrupt and incompetent law enforcement officers I ever had the displeasure of dealing with. This man would become the bain of my existence for the decade I was at the department. He would also greatly facilitate my final decision to leave law enforcement. He had been caught red handed breaking multiple state and federal laws throughout the years. After each incident, not only would the department sweep the evidence under the proverbial rug, he would also get promoted. During my tenure he rose to the third in command of the entire department, where he still sits today. Countless lives have been destroyed by this man and he gets a pass, every...... damn....... time........

Why the Beaker Squad you ask? Well, the piece of shit in charge of it looked exactly like above. A tall, lanky, twitchy son of a bitch incapable of telling an iota of truth about anything. The man is a pathological liar. I start this introduction to him today, but it will be an ongoing account. There are simply too many stories and too much to cover on the depth of this mans depravity for one entry so please bear with me. If you have read my previous blog entries I'm sure you've noticed a certain vagueness in my stories concerning exact locations and names. This is one, for my safety. Getting out of law enforcement and actually speaking out against it is the equivalent of leaving a criminal street gang and turning informant. People like me are not tolerated and they will do and/or say anything to discredit and harass whistle blowers. Number two, one of my final investigations before resigning has landed them in the middle of a large class action lawsuit that is still in the courts. I do not want to publish something that might interfere with the case. One day I hope to write about some of these incidents with full disclosure, but until things are settled in court, I must choose my words very carefully. 

So lets start with Beakers origins. This guy is your typical politician. Everything he has is due to his ability to pull the wool over most peoples eyes. He's egotistical, pathological, cunning and dangerous. He came from one of the predominate law enforcement agencies in the country. Sadly for him, his career there ended after being caught giving false testimony (perjury) and lying on a search warrant affidavit. This little slip up of his cost the tax payers of that county approximately 6 million dollars. He also likes to tell the story about how he was shot by a gang banger during a violent life or death struggle. In actuality, his tactical prowess allowed a citizen to take his gun from him and shoot him, claiming self defense. He was also, according to him, a super secret special forces commando in the Air Force during the Vietnam War. Hush hush, black book, CIA kind of operations. I guess he didn't realize that there's a nifty little thing called the Freedom of Information Act, and a simple submission form would land his military records (DD-214) at my doorstep. This fucker was a gate guard in the late 70's at a CONUS base. When confronted about it, he stated that it was just a cover story. Yeah, that's the kind of guy we're dealing with here. If you'd like links to the news articles confirming this information, feel free to send me an email or DM me on twitter.

After the 6 million dollar judgement, Beaker was pretty much run out of the state. A investigative committee formed afterwards named him one of the most corrupt officers in that department. That's pretty impressive for the size of that particular department. To rank up there towards the top while the agencies policies and procedures itself were criminal is no small feat. A real over achiever, this guy.

Fast forward a few years later and a few thousand miles away from his litigious adventures and we find him hired by another agency, the agency I would soon be working for as well. But he wasn't just hired as a line level officer, he was appointed by the head cheese to lieutenant right out of the gate. No background check, no references, straight to a supervisory position. What could go wrong?

I'm sure you're asking yourself how this could happen. How could this man who had perjured himself in a court of law get hired at another agency? How could this man, who had admitted to lying on search warrant affidavits, be policing again? How could a man with multiple civil rights violations under his belt be put in a command position? How could a man who can NEVER swear out another warrant due to his lack of credibility be put on such a pedestal? 

Horses. Him and my former boss raised horses. Politics in action.

Ghetto Gospel- The truth about traffic cameras

I'm convinced that the people involved in whatever government committee responsible for coming up with the brilliant idea of traffic cameras had the collective IQ of a potato with downs syndrome. About 10 years ago, these little revenue generating terminators started popping up all across the country. Tax addicted governments, already high from their first intravenous shot of post 9-11 cash from the feds, were delighted at the possibilities of automated theft. These things spread like a rash from Thailand after port call. Get that bore punched, Gents.

Home values were skyrocketing, job markets were booming, and the tax coffers were overflowing with cash. The county I worked for dropped millions of tax dollars on these cameras. Overnight, there was a camera on every damn light at every major intersection. Of course, they went on a media blitz and lauded this as the next big thing in public safety. Ignoring the few of us with a brain and the logical reasoning abilities beyond that of a crayon that were pretty sure this was actually going to cause more accidents. If someone comes to a yellow light that they know has a camera, they are either going to gun it to try and beat the camera or lock their breaks up to try and stop in time. Let alone the legal questions that arose. They also didnt take into account the massive operating costs that these cash cameras would incur. The maintenance fund alone was tapped out after the first few months into their first year of operation. So, guess what happened?

Traffic accidents at intersections with cameras increased by approximately 30%. Anyone with an elementary understanding of law could see that enforcement of these citations would not be upheld when their constitutionality was challenged in court. The government I worked for quickly discovered this after their multi-million dollar investment. If you received a traffic camera ticket and didn't dispose of it, unlike other traffic tickets, they could no longer put a bench warrant out for your arrest. All they could do was put a tax lien on any property you might have. So basically unenforceable, except for around tax time when they would just collect from your filing. This is not the case everywhere.

This didn't bother them too much, because the vast majority of people would rather pay the $50 fine online and be done with it. No one wants to take the time to go to court, plead not guilty, and wait for another court date. That's a total of 2 days off work, minimum, to handle a lousy $50 ticket. They know this, and they count on this. A fellow crosser of the blue line has written an excellent read right here that's definitely worth your time. If people knew how easy it would be to cripple the traffic courts, we might not be in the situation we currently find ourselves in.

So, down to the brass tax. You've gotten a traffic camera ticket. You have received a warning from the government that because you crossed an imaginary line that you are subject to legal extortion. If you fail to pay your penance, you face imprisonment in a cage. If you still refuse to submit your will to the state deity, have no doubt, they will send someone like me and he will kill you. That $50 fine isn't sounding so bad now, is it?

This article has been floating around the web for a while now. It is the best guide for dealing with a traffic camera ticket in my opinion. You can modify his response to tailor to any camera initiated citation. Remember, the burden of proof lies on the state. You are not required to prove your innocence. They must prove you guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. If you're not familiar with legal terminology, reasonable doubt is the highest burden of proof for the state. It means just what it says, a prosecutor must prove you're guilty beyond any reasonable doubt any juror might have. If a doubt exists in a jurors mind, they must be instructed to vote not guilty. This is very different than the preponderance of evidence, which is typically the burden of proof in civil trials. This is where the scales of justice analogy come in, where 51% would be enough to swing in a plaintiffs favor in such cases.

I recommend reading the articles linked to above. A lot of really good information. Below is the letter sent  in from the ballsy revolutionary from our second article to his supreme overlords concerning his death threats received by mail. Couldn't have said it better myself.

To Whom it May Concern,

I received a letter claiming I committed a violation of a speeding law in the District of Columbia on 04/21/2012. As per the instructions, I am writing to plead ‘not guilty’ to this charge. Although this option is said to result in this matter going to court; it is my suggestion that the charges simply be dropped. This suggestion comes out of respect for tax payers, and my request that their hard earned money not be wasted in such proceedings. As there is no evidence of my involvement with this alleged ‘crime’, as well as the fact that I am not granted my 6th amendment right to face my ‘accuser’ (a camera); I see no way the government could prove my guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I also see find no legal requirement for me to implicate someone else in this process, as it is the government’s responsibility to prove a person’s guilt. It is also my 5th amendment right to remain silent on the matter.If it is the government’s decision to move forward in this matter, I would request copies of any evidence the prosecution may have of my involvement in the “offense”; as well as, all maintenance records for the camera(s) involved.

So there you have it. Fairly simple information that can easily be transferred to real world action. Every time I was in court and someone requested maintenance records, the case was immediately dismissed. The county shut down the camera a few years back. Once people realized how easy they were to beat in court, the revenue stream they had initially brought in started to slow. As years went by, the maintenance had grown from tedious at best, to down right impossible. They were simply malfunctioning quicker than they could fix them.

The gridlocked streets sit idly, by miles and miles of almost empty strip malls.  Where Saks Fifth Ave and high end jewelry stores once served the hordes of upper middle class and down right wealthy southern aristocrats, empty store fronts with broken windows sit. You can smell the excrement left by the homeless who shacked up in one last night (Thanks for the fuck shack, love Big Mike and the boys). Open air drug deals and every language but English are common. "White Flight" from the area has taken its toll on the local economy, just like the "White Flight" that originally brought so much wealth to the area a few decades back. Among one of the most diverse areas in the country, I'd say its still very much segregated.  The cameras still hang there in the intersections to this day like a fossil from a different era. An Orwellian reminder of the good old days of rampant government spending and unbridled growth on a local level.

3 Libras- Ex Cops 3 tips on dealing with police encounters

If I had a nickel for every time I've gone over the following information with someone, Id have a lot of fucking nickels. It's nothing new, but that doesn't change the fact that its some of the best advice out there in reference to dealing with law enforcement. I guess its time to throw out there that this is not legal advice, merely my opinions. You should always consult with an attorney in any matter of law. It would also benefit you to get familiar with your local laws and ordinances as well. Circuit, Federal and Supreme Court decisions are also good to study up on and are only fingertips away on the magic interwebs machine. Become familiar with qualified immunity and how your circuit courts tends to lean in those cases. Information is your greatest advantage.

So without further ado, here's Guys top 3 rules for dealing with law enforcement.

1- Start recording  the interaction immediately. Document from start to finish behavior of all parties involved. Keep this in mind. I see a lot of videos out there of blatant police misbehavior but its drowned out by the victims actions. If confrontation is your style, by all means rock it out. Just remember that your behavior might sway a jury and public opinion one day. We are already seeing a coordinated attack on popular police accountability groups by the media in the past few weeks. Be smart about it, don't spoon feed them a scandal. Remember, the Supreme Court has ruled on multiple occasions that it is perfectly legal to record police in public while they are performing their duties as public servants. As long as you don't interfere with what they are doing, they cant tell you to stop recording. I had nothing to hide when I was on the street. I respected the rights of the people I thought I was helping, but I know I would choose my words and actions a little more cautiously when I knew I was being filmed.

2- Shut the fuck up. That's right, I said it. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. My job as an officer is to ask questions to gather as much information as I can to find inconsistencies in your story. These inconsistencies may lead me to articulatable, reasonable suspicion to detain you or probable cause to search and/or arrest you. No story, no inconsistencies. Shut the fuck up. The only things we should ever say to an officer that approaches us is "Am I being detained?' and "Am I free to go?" If you're being detained, shut the fuck up. If you're free to go, be on your marry way shutting the fuck up the whole time. I think I've gotten my point across. If you haven't done so already, look up your states laws on what identification must be given to officers and when it must be produced. Information is your greatest advantage.

Quick note on traffic stops. You can always gamble, if you're inclined to such risk taking, to try and talk your way out of a ticket. I say gamble because that's purely what it is. There's no statistic I can give you. Being courteous will go a long way with some officers, others could care less. Some officers give mostly warnings, some would write their mother a ticket, and others are floating somewhere in between. Just remember that everything you say is being scrutinized for inconsistencies. My recommendation is be polite, but shut the fuck up.

3- Don't consent to shit. Much like rule #2, you would be amazed at how many people gave me the permission to take them to jail. NEVER CONSENT TO ANY SEARCH. Ever. Period. If they're going to search you, it really doesn't matter what you say, but never consent. It gives your lawyer something to work with later on. If they give you the ol" "Im gonna get the dog out here" line when you deny them permission to search, calmly ask them if you are being detained outside the scope of the original offense (ie speeding), assuming this is a simple traffic infraction you've been stopped for. If you are, which you wont be if you followed rule #2, follow rule #2 and request legal council. If not, politely ask for your ticket and be on your way. It's a fishing expedition, don't take the bait.

That's it. Nothing new, but following these 3 simple rules will generally save you a trip to a tax payer funded cage. If not, you will have a good chance of getting some spending money when you get out.

Master of Puppets- Federal incompetence on display

The scene behind the community college was something right out of Hollywood. The feds had spared no expense on this operation. Giant 40ft+ command centers littered the perimeter of the parking lot. The hundreds of antennas became one with the pine trees that infested the campus. Nine local agencies, 6 SWAT teams from the area, and what appeared to be the entire FBI were involved. I gathered with the other team leaders in what had to be a $500,000 mobile command center with FBI and Homeland Security placards on every conceivable square inch of it. So much for discretion. We are receiving a final briefing before the operation begins. There are planes flying above each of the target locations providing a real time feed. It always amazed me that the feds always had the nicest toys, but still manged to be some of the most incompetent law enforcement officers I ever came in contact with. And believe me, that's saying a lot. Remind me to tell you about the telescope incident one day.

This morning we are involved in a joint operation with the feds. They have been conducting a years long investigation into a known drug trafficking organization in the area. It's 3am and we are attempting to dismantle an entire cartel. This was a well known cartel out of Mexico that employed some really nasty characters known as Zetas. The original Zetas were Mexican special forces, trained by the U.S. to do the really nasty jobs when the government needed deniability. After a while, one of them figured out that the cartels paid a little more for their special services and they became entrepreneurs. We were not only going after the cartel leadership, we were hitting their stash houses as well. Cartel stash houses have been known to have a Zeta or two hanging out with some pretty serious fire power on them from time to time. Now these guys aren't original Zetas, these are second and third generation but for what they lacked in the finer art of close combat tactics they made up for with reckless abandon, itchy trigger fingers and balls the size of cantaloupes.

There were warrants for 18 locations total, all had to be executed in a certain order at precise times so as not to alert the next target location. The cartels tend to have levels of security that are quite sophisticated. We split all the SWAT teams into two sections and assigned each section 3 locations. I had a section of 12 guys. SWAT would move in and hit the first locations at exactly the same time. This would ensure the cartels security blanket would be disrupted long enough to move on and clear the rest of the target locations. The plan had an unmarked fed car leading the jump out vehicle to the first location.  On the time mark, dynamic entries (lots of explosions) would be made. Once the team had cleared the residence and secured anybody inside, the feds would take over the scene and we would move to the next house. Easy enough right? All these moving parts, with different agencies, in a metro area of around 12 million people. Piece of cake.

We load into the van and follow the fed car to the first location. We park down the street and await the countdown to start the operation. After a few minutes its time to move. We slowly exited our vehicle and stack up behind our shield man (I know this is a lot of jargon that I haven't explained yet. Just picture like you see on TV with the little SWAT guys lining up and tapping each others shoulders before moving). The countdown begins. 30.....29.....

My position in the stack since being promoted to team leader was always towards the back. This is so I can coordinate once the raid begins. Its like directing a sick play or watching a violent puzzle and having to make split second decisions on how to solve it. As we approach the house I notice something isn't right. It doesn't look like the photos at the briefing earlier. 20.....19..... We're looking for a split level house, this is a two story. I split off from the team to go check the mailbox. 18.... 17..... I would always do this to confirm the address we are about to unleash hell upon is the same address that's on the warrant. 16.... 15..... Holy... 14....shit..... 13....

They had taken us to the wrong house. 12..... 11...... 10.....