tvc184

The GJ just No Billed the officers. Case closed. There will almost always be the lawsuit so the family can get as much money as they can no matter how justified.

I figure that Big girl is going out of character and just trolling. That reminds me of that joke I have said on here before. It makes it even more funny to me because it was told to me by an old Cajun I used to work for and I think English was his second language. A Louisiana sheriff stopped a guy for speeding and asked where he was from. The guy said, Chicago. The sheriff said, “Don’t lie to me boy, I see those Illinois license plates“.

They almost have to. A good attorney isn’t in the trial to be elected to office on popular opinions. He has to defend his sometimes indefensible client. He also has a reputation to maintain and ineffective counsel claims.

I am just completely guessing that some members of the jury gave no credit for her being a police officer. They gave him the max that could have been given to a civilian victim. I know that is one point the defense was making during the closing arguments. A little more nice but basically the defense attorney said why should police get extra protection. You could almost always bet that there are some cop haters on the jury. They could not deny the evidence but they could sure hold up the rest of the jury because even the punishment has to be unanimous. you could’ve had 10 jurors going for 50 years but if one or two said they would not agree to anything with more than 20 years max, then it would be a hung jury. Realistically there is a five year difference in the sentence. With the 30 year plea deal he would’ve had to do 15 calendar years to be parole eligible. With a 20 year sentence he has it in 10 years calendar year before parole eligible. If he has been in the County Jail since that night, he has almost 2 years credit. With a 20 year sentence he cannot get out on parole at the earliest before 2030. if he would have taken the plea deal, he would’ve been eligible in 2035.

Thanks. At one point early in my career a couple of officers called me a bullet magnet. In one incident on the night shift a car passed me going in the opposite direction and I heard the blast and saw the flames of probably a shotgun. I called the dreaded “shots fired” and started a pursuit. It didn’t last very long, maybe 12 blocks and we got him cornered and had guns pointed at him on a felony traffic stop. Even before the stop however, we saw what happened. It was an old junky out of tune car (back when we did tuneups) and was backfiring, blowing flames out the tailpipe. It just happened to be right next to me when it backfired so I heard the loud boom and saw the flash. it turned out just to be a drunk driver trying to get home. A couple of officers involved in the pursuit said something like, geez here we go again. 😂

The business advantage is that your weed is “better”.

It probably happens more than people think. I can think of at least 3 times that I have been shot at. I am talking about seeing the gun and flash or in one case pinned down with the rounds hitting the wall by me. I have been the supervisor on scene of at least 4 incidents of officers being fired upon including a patrol unit shot and a couple of other occasions I was a patrol officer when other officers were shot at including taking a round into the windshield. Particularly in my almost 20 years on patrol and detectives, there was not so much 24 hour news coverage and even though it did exist, everything wasn’t broadcast to the public. Even today what we see in the news is probably 5% or less of what is happening.

Not when you have an endless supply of customers. You're correct and they don’t intend to kill but it isn’t an exact science. Fentanyl is a lawfully prescribed medication but obviously extremely controlled. On the street who knows what quantity a person is getting.

Lacing drugs certainly isn’t new. Going back about 50 years where people said, this weed is “really good… uhhh…. stuff”. it was probably laced with PCP aka Angel Dust. It was a reason that some marijuana was giving that extra kick. It is like Speedballs or mixing heroin with cocaine. I think the fentanyl is being mixed with almost everything else now to multiply the effects. It is so powerful though and that’s what is causing the issues. It is like stupid powerful.

I will try to give an example of what I think would be Causation showing not guilty. The first fatal accident that I worked as a police officer was this situation. A guy is going the speed limit or nearly so in a residential neighborhood. A two year old child runs into the road between two cars and the driver probably did not even have time to see the kid. The child was killed. Did the driver kill the child? Absolutely. Was there other circumstances that caused the death? Yes. Was the driver going the speed limit the cause of death? No. Most of us probably drive through the neighborhood streets every day and we aren’t killing people. What caused the death in this case was a child running into the road in such a time and location that the driver never had a chance to stop and probably never even saw the child. Do you put him in jail for a criminal homicide in that case? No, even though he clearly killed the child, Causation shows us that he is not guilty. I believe that is the intent of the law. Now to play what if. What if the small child had been wandering down the center of the street and the man should have seen the child a block ahead of time? If the guy was intoxicated or he simply was not paying attention and he killed if the child went realistically he should have been able to stop hundred feet short of hitting the child, would he be guilty? Yes in my opinion. Both cases can be in the same neighborhood and the same child but in one case the driver had no culpability as it was not his fault that he did not see the child and in the other case it was the driver’s fault that he didn’t see the child. That is Causation. This if the section of that law. CHAPTER 6. CULPABILITY GENERALLY Sec. 6.04. CAUSATION: CONDUCT AND RESULTS. (a) A person is criminally responsible if the result would not have occurred but for his conduct, operating either alone or concurrently with another cause, unless the concurrent cause was clearly sufficient to produce the result and the conduct of the actor clearly insufficient. (b) A person is nevertheless criminally responsible for causing a result if the only difference between what actually occurred and what he desired, contemplated, or risked is that: (1) a different offense was committed; or (2) a different person or property was injured, harmed, or otherwise affected.

I think their defense expert testified that she was 6%-39% likely to die had she been wearing a seatbelt. I watched that part of the trial live on YouTube. I do not know how he arrived at those numbers however at the judge pointed out, she was almost 40% chance to die anyway. So I’m thinking about 50-50. I have commented on so many different forums about this topic that can’t remember if I did so somewhere on SETXSports. It is about the definition and Penal Code section on Causation. It basically means that you can’t blame me if it would’ve happened anyway. There was an article on one of the local television stations a few days before the trial and a local attorney gave his opinion on possibly some new evidence might make a difference. I think that’s just lawyer talk (in this case) as they are paid to argue. I have no problem with them arguing, that is their job. I just did not agree in this case and listed the reasons. The judge agreed with me. I Causation says that if your act caused the result, even if combined with another cause, would it have happened anyway? Then, is it also true that the other cause would have been clearly sufficient to cause the result? The defense gave their best shot saying there was a pet cat in the car and maybe that caused her death by distraction or they didn’t swerve fast enough or they were not wearing seatbelts. The way I read Causation is this, did Torres being intoxicated and driving the wrong way on the highway and hitting the car head on cause a death? If yes (obviously), was there another cause? Sure and at the very least, seat belts. In this case, was having a pet cat in the car and not having on a seatbelt caused their death or serious injury? No. They could’ve driven around the entire shift and that would not have killed her had it not been for intoxicated driving. With no head on collision, she does not die. In this case the judge did not allow the expert witness to testify in front of the jury. The hearing I watched live was after they had removed the jury from the court room which is not uncommon during a debate what is legal procedures for evidence. Judge Steven’s statement after that testimony outside of the jury, under Causation (he read the law aloud) was about the part where it says the other circumstance was clearly sufficient to cause the result alone. As the judge noted, the defense’s own legal expert said there was almost a 40% chance she would’ve died anyway. So how can you blame not wearing a seatbelt when your own witness almost makes it a 50-50 chance she would’ve died anyway?

Some of you people….. you think that just because there are many people dead that would not have died had they not taken the vaccine, it is a reason to be skeptical of the government. Now get in line and get your boosters!!! Be glad Big Brother has the answers.

People often say that Courts legislate from the bench. I usually argue the point that they do not legislate and rule only on constitutionality or the meaning or intent of a law. In cases like this however, it is obvious that she is using a democratic opinion (vote, not party) and not the Constitution. The entire premise of having a constitutional republic with constitutional rights is so a majority cannot overcome individual rights. And easy example is, at the moment approximately 13% of the country is Black. Could the other 87% gang up on the Black population and vote that they have no civil rights and cannot sue? Sorry, you are outnumbered!!! Rights do away with public opinion or popular vote. A Supreme Court justice has as much of a constitutional right of opinion as anyone else. That should not be used in a constitutional argument about a particular law however.

While most people would agree, Texas law is set out in generalities. A third-degree felony is 2-10, second- degree is 2-20 and a first- degree 5-99. A jury or a judge gets to say what is reasonable in each case. There are some enhancements like some repeat or habitual violators where a first-degree might go up a minimum of 25 years. I hope this guy gets at least the 30 years.

Why did you shoot the man who tried to rob you 8 times? My gun was empty….

All the time…. I think I am pretty well preserved (about to be 67, still have my hair, have no facial hair and almost no wrinkles but just heavier) which can be interesting when someone remembers me but I can’t recognize what they have morphed into. That is especially true with women. Lose about 45 pounds and dye my hair and I can enroll in high school…. NOT!!

Going through it mentally before hand is sometimes way more important than shooting skills. I spent 10 years on swat, have gone to police survival schools, etc., and I heard a taught lesson which I agree with. I have seen it personally and in police shooting videos. The body will not go where the mind has not already gone. You will always think about it before the action. If you were starting from scratch like something just happened in front of you that you had never contemplated, you might hesitate a few seconds because you have not mentally prepared. You might act quickly soon after but there will be a pause while your mind races under adrenaline to figure out what is going to happen in the next two or three seconds. If you have played out a scenario in your mind a few times and gone through what you were doing, basically imagining a shoot out, then you’ll act much more instantly. Your body will not go where your mind has not previously thought about it. It can be through scenarios in your mind over a period of weeks or months or years or it could be while you pause because something just happened that you had never anticipated. You can punch all the targets in the world and thinking that the silhouette you’re shooting at is a human. In my opinion that is not sufficient enough. I have never been to infantry training but I believe that when they were told to get down like to hear incoming artillery or they hear an explosion nearby, etc., they immediately hit the ground. They don’t stand for a three or four seconds and contemplate, hmmmmmm….. is that incoming artillery and could it kill me? No, they have thought about it beforehand. In my opinion it is the same principle with shooting. I have witnessed with my owner eyes, spoken with officers who have been there and watched videos and I am convinced that thinking about shooting beforehand might be more important than practicing shooting and not thinking. Anyway, training is great but not always a necessity. I might describe in another post some of the videos that I have seen including officers getting killed and you know it by their response to the threat that they have never thought about what they might have been facing.

That is what I was thinking. Plenty of shooting but not necessarily any formal training.

The Magnum Force Hogan’s Alley scene…. Where Harry Callahan/Clint Eastwood intentionally missed a target with the other officer’s revolver so he can recover the slug later to prove he is a crooked cop…. For those that have not seen Magnum Force…

Probably true. That reminds me about 35 years ago when I got off patrol on the evening shift, changed to jeans and a T-shirt and went to the bowling alley in Port Arthur about Midnight ….. remembering that this is about 20 years before smart phones were even invented and Xbox did not exist. There was a game called Hogan’s Alley (named after Hogan’s Alley …. a simulated city) where you put your quarter in and you get a revolver, naturally attached to a reinforced electric cord…. just like the telephones. I guess it was probably one of the first commercial laser activated shooting games. They were two different scenarios. I can’t remember if you had to pick one or the other. One scenario was where three rotating target would slide out from the right and maybe two or three seconds later they would flip for you see which was a bad guy(s) or an innocent person. They were relatively small on the screen. Of the three targets, there might be one or two bad guys. You had about three seconds to find the bad guy(s) and make kill shot(s) before the targets flipped back. That is still a popular training technique at a real shooting range for the military, police and even civilians. It is not only marksmanship but also speed in recognition of a target. I think the movie Magnum Force with Clint Eastwood they show a version of Hogan’s Alley. Anyway a few times I would go shoot the video game. I think it had three (or maybe five) misses and the game was over. A miss would be not shooting a bad guy or shooting an innocent person. While it was entertaining and fun, it was rather simplistic because the guns didn’t recoil and very little noise. One time like on a Friday or Saturday night there was a bunch of teenagers and young adults in the game room….. remembering that I was in my 20s. A couple of people were playing the game and I finally got my turn. Most of the people went three or four levels before their turn was over. Naturally other people were waiting to play what was a pretty popular game at the time. Other people were in line waiting and there were a few people standing around at other videos games. So I went through level one, then level two, then three, then four….. At about level 28 I looked around and I might have been 10-15 people standing behind me watching me shoot. Some guy in the crowd said something like, dude you should’ve been a police officer. Me?? No way!!! This is just for fun, I don’t wanna carry real guns. All the while having my 4” duty revolver under my tshirt…… 25 cent video game gun training, old school style.

I doubt that he has trained in active shooter however…. What is an active shooter? Like a lot of terms or phrases today, it is kind of a made up term, maybe with no real definition. I guess anytime somebody fires a shot, he is actively shooting but what does that mean in the media? The most commonly accepted idea of an active shooter is probably a person who is seeking out and shooting multiple people, usually in close proximity. If you would’ve told me my first five years in law-enforcement that I was en route to an active shooter call I would have said,huh? In police active shooter training, which I guess would be the same for a civilian if there is such a school, is the tracking down of a person shooting and engaging him in a gun fight or hopefully killing him before he has a chance to return fire. While anyone can train and there are certainly schools of how to engage and survive in a shooting incident, I kind of doubt that most civilians go to school that includes tracking down a suspect. From what I read, I don’t think this young guy did. He walked out of maybe a restroom and heard shots and looked up and saw the bad guy. He pulled out a concealed handgun, leaned on a wall for support and then fired shots. I am just going out on a limb and guessing but he has probably fired a handgun at least a few times with marksmanship training. That is to go to a range and aim at a target and pull the trigger. It could even be what is commonly called plinking or shooting cans at such. Mostly I’m just speculating on what may have happened. With the possibility of being completely wrong, I doubt that he actually has had any training in stopping an active shooter.

Hopefully it was because he had a compact pistol and it ran out of bullets. But you are correct, if two police officers would have walked up on the scene and both would’ve emptied their 17 round magazines in about four seconds, people would complain and ask why they had to shoot 34 times. Because he was killing people and we could not call time out to evaluate the situation.…..

If it has not been mentioned, I see that the Novavax vaccine has been approved. This is the first coronavirus vaccine that is more of a traditional type and not an mRNA vaccine.

The guy did a great job, period. At this time unless we see something radically different, any debate on that issue should stop. Of course there is always what if….. Certainly eight out of 10 hits on target at 40 yard is good shooting. At least from the way I read the story, the guy said he used a wall as a rest so he could more accurately aim his fire. In doing so he likely shot a man who was not shooting back. Basically it was like shooting a target from a bench rest. That does not detract whatsoever from what he accomplished but it might tend to show why he was able to get so many hits on target.

The White House has retracted that faux pas.