tvc184

Why insult snakes???

Yes, million. I was just commenting on an Elon Musk thread and he was supposed to be worth over $300 billion.

Legally in my opinion, yes. I guess you could be a person that rides just for fun to watch your buddy commit a felony while knowing that if you get stopped, you’ll go to prison for the same felony while not intending to use any of the drugs, sell any of them, etc. It is certainly something that your lawyer can bring up at a trial in your defense. Of course then you’re going to have a hard time explaining why an argument got so heated while on the way to buy a felony amount of drugs that guns started being pointed and shots were fired. Let a jury decide who they believe. If I remember that fairly recent case in Silsbee, wasn’t there like three people from Port Neches in the car with one of them being a female? Was she actually in on the drug deal or was she driving with a boyfriend? I am fairly certain they charged her. But… Any part of the law can be used as a defense.

I think things design 50 or more years ago probably didn’t anticipate the traffic problems. Even if they did, there would probably be huge pushback. To have a public hearing by the state and say, we are going to spend many millions of dollars because 50 or 75 years from now that might be traffic issues. I think this entire project is supposed to be over $300 billion. Imagine if they came back and said, we have changed it to $1 billion because in 2075 there might be traffic issues that we can’t anticipate….. realizing that a majority of people using such a future renovation project have not even been born yet.

According to what they were on the way to buy and/or why, it could be a crime. It is criminal conspiracy for two or more people to agree on an “intent” to commit a felony by at least one person and any one person commits any overt act to accomplish the crime. So for conspiracy it has to be: 1. A felony discussed with at least two people. 2. Only one person has to intend to commit the crime. 3. The other person(s) might just agree to further the crime by an overt act such as getting the other guy(s) a gun to commit a robbery. 4. The overt act must take place. So what do we have here? Is any intent to purchase drugs a felony? If it is for a drug like heroin or cocaine, it is because mere possession of those is a felony. If there is quantity felonies such as possession of marijuana in a misdemeanor except (a) possession of 4 ounces or more is a felony or (b) you have purchased with intent to sell which is a felony. In this case it appears that you have at least two people in the car intending to go buy drugs. They are committing at least one overt act by getting the money together or making phone calls/texts to set up the deal or driving to the location. Remember that it could be any one person as part of the deal to commit the overt act so if there is a guy in Silsbee who got the drugs ready to sell, that is part of the intent. It does not have to be the guys in the car. If they were driving all the way from Beaumont to Silsbee just to buy two blunts to smoke and drive back and do nothing more, that is a misdemeanor and technically not a crime until the purchase is made. Maybe somebody would drive from Beaumont to Silsbee to buy a couple of blunts or joints but that seems like a lot of effort to smoke one or two cigarettes. I think there might be a reasonable belief that it might be at least four ounces of marijuana or another drug such as cocaine. Therefore if that can be proven (conspiracy) in like the case in Silsbee, self defense might not be a legal option in my opinion.

That is a relatively common occurrence. If you see any kind of crime article pop up on the Facebook news sites, you can probably count the seconds before you get a comment like…. “Oh… The race wasn’t mention so they must’ve been white!!!”. Oops…. It is like a number of people have comments saved to copy and paste and peruse the sites, waiting to pounce.

Roughly the same thing that is currently underway at Hwy 69/Hwy 73 in Port Arthur….. cleaning up those nasty bottlenecks.

Another guy went to visit a friend in the hospital and asked, what happened? The friend said I don’t know. I was at a bar and there was a couple of pretty large women down at the end of the bar and they had an accent. I walked over and asked, “ Are you two ladies from England”. One of them said “Wales”. I then said, “Okay, are you two whales from England”. The next thing I knew, I was in the hospital.

A man went to visit a friend in the hospital and asked him what happened. He said I don’t know. My wife and I were at the state fair and we were looking at the grand champion bull. There was a sign next to him saying that he had bred 300 cows last year. Next was a reserve grand champion and we saw that he had bred 250 cows in the last year. One of the runner ups had bred 200 cows. My wife commented on how these bulls were able to perform so often. The last thing I remember, I said something to my wife like yes but it’s not the same old cow. The next thing I knew, I was in the hospital.

Politics makes strange bedfellows….

I read that his net worth goes up and down radically because of all of his ventures but has been as much recently as $300 billion. He could buy Donald Trump 30 times over.

Michael Brown redux. A gentle giant who was merely trying to explain to the officer in a calm manner but the officer refused to discuss the case and used force unnecessarily against an unarmed person who had yet to be convicted of what he was stopped for or even arrested at that point.

Because nobody died (I don't think). I get it though. Call it what it is, a crime and then move on. That does not produce Clickbait however and does not further certain narratives.

The suspect is stopped with the wrong license plate, meaning it might be a stolen vehicle. That makes it a possible felony and heightens the risk to the officer. It is not like a person will not fight over a misdemeanor because sometimes they do. It is just much more likely if a person is facing prison time to want to use all means to resist. Then the suspect adds to that by trying to get away. Stop resisting arrest or detention. It is not difficult. Make bail and go to trial two years later. For all we know, the guy might have borrowed a license plate only get a citation. The officer does not know at that point and cannot read the guy‘s mind. The the idiot videoing saying stop talking to him like that. I am assuming he is commenting to the officer but not sure. The suspect during the struggle to resist arrest gets his hands on the officer’s Taser making him a deadly risk to the officer. It is likely a legal use of force: But….. In hindsight (covered later) shooting “might have been” premature. Only because….. in calm reflection of not being in the fight, the biggest threat of the Taser is to get the wires/leads (darts which are fish hooks-I think they used to use Eagle Claw and Mustad)) attached to you. This is maybe a 95+% chance of incapacitating you. I am only going to guess that the Taser darts had been deployed during the struggle. If they had, the Taser is still a weapon but is probably not as likely to cause incapacitation. With the darts gone, is mostly a pain compliance tool at that point….. maybe. It is also entirely possible that at least one of the darts was making contact with the officer. If so, it still has incapacitation capabilities by completing the circuit by the Taser making contact with any part of the officer’s body. That is a lot of what ifs. The United States Supreme Court said in Graham v. Connor that an officer in a use of force incident should not be judged in hindsight however. They said the officer is faced with a “split-second decision”. It was a unanimous decision that it must be judged through the eyes of an officer at that time, “even if it later may seem unnecessary in the peace of the judge’s chambers”. They ruled that “totality of circumstances” (used to determine probable cause) should not be used in this kind of case but should rely on the concept of “objective reasonableness”. That is determined by an opinion of, what would a reasonable officer determine faced with the same set of circumstances and who has to make that split second decision. The unanimous decision clearly showed that it is easy to sit in a judge’s chamber six months later and say something differently could’ve happened when sitting in the peace of the situation you are not faced with that life-threatening situation. It is easy to look back in a calm reflection and to say, maybe I could’ve done something differently. So without calm reflection of looking back at the video and not being involved, would a reasonable officer feel that he might be in danger of serious injury or death? Remember that the use of deadly force in self-defense, including by a civilian, does not require you to be in danger of only death but also a serious injury which could be a broken bone. At least going by Texas law I would say that it is likely justified.

With for a minute being the key phrase.

If it gets any tougher for BU…..

The problem with a lot of discussions/arguments are when a person/group defines, creates or redefines (changes) a word or phrase. If you don’t like a response to a discussion or can’t figure out a valid or plausible argument, change something. So you get critical race theory, white privilege, minorities can’t be racist and so on. I will give an example. A person will call out any minority for being a racist for words or actions. Like a Black person (the NY subway shooter) might say “I hate all White people”, the commit some evil act. There is no valid response nor should there be ask to why that pressure is not a racist. If a White person said I hate all Black people and started shooting them, we would obviously call that an act driven by racism. It would not even be a debate nor should there be. With no plausible response as to why it is not racism for a Black person to start targeting White persons, in comes the change. I have many times heard/seen the claim that minorities can’t be racist because… they were never on top or in charge!! Who came up with that definition? An online dictionary gives this: prejudice, discrimination or antagonism toward people of a specific racial or ethnic group. I guess they forgot to add…. but this definition only applies to White people. So when you can’t think of a good answer, change the rules. You can go to any forum, including this one, and sometimes see such redefining or inventing of terms. It is difficult sometimes on both sides of the fence for people to admit that everyone is basically the same. The main difference is the arguments created to prove that their side is more righteous and will do so by any means. That includes at times, changing language.

It is pure political BS and that includes the police administration and their city administration. I thought that yesterday when they had no idea his motive but KNEW it wasn’t terrorism. I think it didn’t fit their wishes, likely due to a racial component.

But then the rocks will be offended.

Wait, voluntary laws don’t work?

That reminds me of a case…. At the time I was a commander of the street crimes/gang unit. As part of that we sometimes ran prostitution stings. On one such occasion we arrested a woman for prostitution. She was wearing a loose dress but had no underwear of any kind. Normally after we made the arrest, the undercover officers would call in a marked patrol unit to transport the women prisoners. While waiting on a patrol car in this particular case, the woman said I really need to go to the bathroom bad but she was standing at the rear of our undercover unit in handcuffs. With that and she spread her legs about 3 feet apart and…… Splat, splat, splat….. Not to think that was as bad as it could get, she was crying about how upset she was and how bad she feels, she turned around with her bare feet and stepped right in the middle of it. Yep, stuff squishing up between her toes. The uniform patrol officer got there and had a comment like, you’ve got to be kidding me. He said I will be right back and came back about five minutes later. While riding around the area he saw where someone had bought a washing machine and the box was out by the road. He flattened it out and put it in the backseat of the Patrol unit and she sat on that to go to the police station. The things we see and deal with.

I would hate to be that arresting officer…..

We might not agree with the law but it is the law. The police can’t enact their own law and arrest people because they don’t like it. That appears to be exactly what happened in this case. I would go as far as to say that she should get a lot of money for unlawful arrest for a crime that does not exist and potentially charges filed on some of the officers for Official Oppression. Texas still has a law on the books that says it isn’t lawful to burn an American or Texas flag. The United States Supreme Court said that is unconstitutional. If somebody is making a lawful First Amendment protest and I arrest that person knowing or should know that I’m violating his/her rights, even though I don’t agree with that ruling, should I pay for that unlawful arrest?

In his first presidential election, Obama got 69 million votes. In his reelection he lost 3 million votes becoming only the second president to win reelection while being less popular in the last hundred years at least. The only other example I could find was the fourth term of President FDR. I don’t recall mid Romney being hated like you claim about Trump or everybody hates him but in his first presidential campaign, Trump got more votes than Romney. In his 2020 reelection bid, Trump got 5 million more votes than Obama ever got. All the Democrats turned out for what would be the historic first black president and yet Trump got 5 million more votes in his reelection campaign than Obama in his first. In fact Trump increased his votes from 2016 to 2020 by 12,000,000 more votes. While Obama lost 3 million votes in his reelection, Trump gained 12 million. Yes, Biden won, I think entirely due to Covid shutting down the nation for a year. In fact, Trump got the second most votes ever of any person in American history. Trump got more votes than Reagan and Clinton in their re-election bids….. combined. Imagine what he would’ve gotten if “most people” didn’t hate him. I think if the election was held again today, this most hated guy would be the winner.

Back in the days of Pagers….. I am talking the “cool” new age Pagers with alpha numeric where you could actually type about a three line message. I was on the swat team back then and we thought technology had come basically to an end. Normally when we got a swat call out for hostage or something like that from our “old” pagers, we would get the police department dispatch number followed by – 911. With the new alpha numeric pagers we could get an actual address and may be a brief description like hostage or barricaded suspect. But that’s not the story… the new style pager is. A person had their car broken into, I believe in Nederland. Stolen out of the auto burglary (felony back then) was one of the alpha numeric pages. The person/victim had the phone number written on the back of the pager however. The victim of the crime worked for one of the local EMS companies. I am assuming that it was standard that when the EMS company needed overtime, they would send out a group text saying something like, anyone wanting to work the night shift please call. Well that group text also went to the pager that was stolen and the person in possession of it saw the message. This person (suspect) thought, what great technology, now they are advertising jobs on pagers. She thought it was an advertisement for some company looking for Night Shift workers. So….. she called the number and said I would like to inquire about a job opening on the Night Shift. A quick thinking EMS dispatcher knew that a Pager had been stolen and ask the suspect, what pager number are you calling for. Of course the suspect complied and said I am calling from Pager number xxx-xxxx whatever. The dispatch put the suspect on hold and went and told the facility manager. The dispatcher then got back on the phone with the suspect and said can you be here at 4 o’clock for an interview. They have set up an impromptu sting. They called the police and we were waiting inside the manager’s office. Being a good prospective employee, the suspect showed up several minutes early and was told to go into the managers office. She did. When she looked at our officers said something like, “Uh oh!”. I was working that day but unfortunately not at the scene but I talk to the officers and read the report. So the suspect was using a stolen Pager and thought she was going to get a job and ended up setting up her own arrest.