tvc184

I have flown several law enforcement missions. We have used them for search and rescue, locating a stolen vehicle in a marsh after a tip, close up photographing of radio towers for repair and inspection of police and fire department radios, major crime scenes, real and training missions by SWAT and K9 units, making 3d images of building, and so on. We keep logs of every flight including training flights.

Texas has the most restrictive drone laws in the country. That includes specifics restrictions on law enforcement. There are also federal FAA regulations. You have to be a FAA licensed commercial drone pilot (called sUAV for small unmanned aerial vehicle) to fly for anything other than a hobby, it restricts how high you can fly, no night flights without an FAA waiver, no flying over people, all commercial drones have to be individually registered with its own numbers displayed just like a manned aircraft, etc. Then there are court rulings on unlawful searches.

See above. 😀

At least two police departments in Jefferson County have drone units with multiple drones each I command one of them....

What if I identify as a Cherokee?

They will probably do nothing unless their own fans want a change.

The Cherokee Nation has nothing to withdraw except an opinion. About 41 years ago a Cherokee chief said that he supported what PNG was doing and now another comes along as says that he doesn’t. PNG did not request nor need the CN’s consent to name their team the Indians in the 1920s. They are the PNG Indians, not the PNG Cherokees Whether they remain the Indians is up to them. The CN has the right to voice their opinion and have done so.

Is Indian offensive? Their national advocacy group in American government is the Bureau off Indian Affairs. www.bia.gov Their main rights organization is the National Congress of American Indians. www.ncai.org

An opinion can’t be horrible?

But if you are in Texas, you have to add and you have the right to terminate the interview at any time.

I think the birthing babies scene was Prissy, Butterfly McQueen, not McDaniel.

Tell it Sister!

I don’t think a Taser is deadly force but did the mayor use that as a reason for terminating officers and then in a different situation a couple of weeks later, use the opposite reasoning? Either you think it is or it isn’t but it shouldn’t be deadly force at 2pm but not at 7pm.

If Tyson said that, I agree with him. I believe aTaser is justification to use deadly force IF the person is in position to use it. Unless you are strung out on certain drugs, about 99.% of the time it was completely shut a person down. In a unanimous US Supreme Court decision in Graham v. Connor, they said that the use of force by officers must be viewed by what a reasonable officer in that situation would feel and not what someone may debate in a judge’s chambers several months later. They used the term “split second” decision and rejected the normal totality of circumstances standard. In that case the officers roughed to a completely innocent person who was having a medical crisis but it appeared as though he may have just robbed a store and was resisting. Even though the officers later found out the truth, that rare unanimous SC found in favor of the officers.

The folly of her statement, like in many such situations, is the claim that some minor crime shouldn’t end in a person’s death. That is the classic straw man. The police didn’t shoot him because he was sleeping in a drive-thru. That is silly. Sure, we can all agree that sleeping isn’t justification to be killed but that isn’t why he was shot. He was shot for attacking an officer and taking a weapon. Whether we agree on the use of force, he wasn’t shot for sleeping. That is an outright lie for political gain. We have seen the same kind of statements like for a person who the police were trying to arrest for misdemeanor marijuana. I was reading a case like that a few years ago. The guy reached for a gun and was shot. The article was titled, man shot for marijuana. No, he was shot reaching for a gun. It doesn’t matter why the police started talking to you, it is your actions that determine the use of force, not the reason for the interaction.

Yep. Bet they have their own private police force and aren’t living near CHAZ......

This is a tiny example of what is coming. The Seattle police chief made a statement that cover the takeover of one of their precincts by ANTIFA, their calls for violent crimes have tripled and they cannot respond. Here is part of that article... “Our calls for service have more than tripled,” she told reporters. “These are responses to emergency calls — rapes, robberies, and all sorts of violent acts that have been occurring in the area that we’re not able to get to.” [Hidden Content]

If anyone other than criminals want to do away with the police, they have a severe misunderstanding of what the police do. The people that would be devastated would likely be the people that are calling for their removal.

I agree, defunding makes no sense. Houston and San Diego just increased their police budgets, hopeful for improvements and training.

That is why I said it was political. Defund means to end funding or in other words, abolish. In politics, you can make up your own definitions.

Yep, like I said, the city no longer controls the police that patrol their streets. They will have the same number of cops .... they just won’t have control. Like the article said, 10% of the city residents are not black but the officers patrolling are 50% white and it causes the citizens concerns. Yep, the city abdicated that responsibility to the county. I am not sure when Camden went through this charge but I found their crime index through 2012 where they were up to 400% higher than the national average. So now they have cut that in almost half..... only 200+% higher than the average. My department started community policing in 1995. I guess Camden was a bit behind the times. As an example in this area, I believe Beaumont and Port Arthur police departments have a combined budget of about $70 million. So they both abolish their departments and refuse to pay the county. So now Jefferson County has to come up with $70M new dollars and find 400 new officers. Then an elected sheriff will dictate who patrols those cities and what rules they will have. Acceptable?

Defund is to take away all funding. In Minneapolis’ case, the city council voted to abolish the police department. They cannot however because it is in their city charter (equal to a city’s constitution) and it has to be voted in by the voters. Politically people are coming up with all kinds of definitions such as Reduced funding, restructuring, contracting out, etc. The entire thing is political. Cities have almost always run their police departments at the bare bones cost. It is tax payer’s money so that is understandable, except..... do you want untrained officers? Many, if not most, police departments use the state minimums for officers. I would guess that most police agencies have no firearms training programs. The Cadets fire about 500 rounds of ammo in the police academy in five days and in many departments an officer can put in 25 years and never again have training. It goes for other areas. The state mandates 20 hours of training per year but it can be in any topic. Then something happened and the cry is for either more training or defunding which oddly are complete opposites. Yes officers get certain types of training mandated, particularly early in their career. For the first 4 years or so they are supposed to take “Core” courses or other mandated classes that the state has deemed as necessary. These are crime scene, Spanish, domestic violence, arrest-search-seizure, deescalation (recently added) and so on A 15 year officer might not have had any updates in those in 13 years however. You get out of the academy, run through these mandated courses as quickly as possible and then finish the last 30 years of your career. Then something happens and I have many times seen people use the phrase (when it is beneficial to them) “highly trained officers”. These highly trained officers then...... Hmmmm..... I think the entire defund craze is nonsensical. They cannot get rid of the police any more then they can get rid of nurses.

No, they would not. It doesn’t work like that. They have age requirements, different standards, different academies, different laws and so on. You can’t just transfer to another agency. I saw a guy on a Facebook forum (when they thought that Minneapolis was about to lay off all officers) say that there was no big deal because that state and county would just take their place. Okay, Minneapolis loses 800 officers. So the state has 800 troopers sitting around waiting for something to do? Nope.... I looked up MN state police and they have only 591 troopers in the entire state. Do they could completely strip the entire state and cover just over half of ONE city? The county had very few actual street cops but mostlt runs the county jail (which is pretty much the standard). ...,,and again, that is one city. The federal government has completely different laws. They enforce the US Code and state/county/local police enforce their state Penal Code... which are all different. It would be like if all doctors quit, couldn’t veterinary assistants take their place? They are both in medical fields. Then.... let’s assume that you could simply have the state police hire all local officers immediately and forget all of the stuff I just mentioned. You would have the exact same officers patrolling the exact same streets but now the city council who is mad at then would have no control at all over them. All that would do is to stop their own authority and have another government have complete control over the same area that you used to control. To say this isn’t well thought out (by people calling for it) might be the understatement of all time.

BPD is a civil service agency That means that there are legal practices that must be adhered to for hiring, discipline and promotions It is intended for fairness and to get the good ol’ boy system out of the police department. Examples are promotions must be done by test score after all officers have had the books for the test listed for at least 90 days and at least a 30 day notice of the test, All tests must be done at the same time and location (no secret tests) and each candidate has 5 days to file appeals of test questions. Hiring must also be done by test scores in order with all candidates tested at the same time and location. Civil Service mandated rules can be changed locally only by a collective bargaining contract if the city and union agree during negotiations. If I remember correctly Beaumont changed the hiring state law by contract. They changed from the state mandated hiring the highest score first to a 3 tier hiring system. A minority (Black or Hispanic), a female and the a white person (or something similar). I guess by that system there could have hired a Black female, any female and then a white female since a female could be in multiple categories. But... I wasn’t working for them so.... I just remember the case. Also if I remember correctly, a White male (who I believe had a brother working for BPD) scored high enough to get hired (“maybe” even #1 on the test) but he was not hired because..... there were not enough candidates that passed on the first two lists. Like maybe they hired a Black officer but no female candidate passed everything so no “second” tier. They could not get to the qualified third tier so the White candidate who passed everything could not be hired because he was White male. Or so my fading memory goes. I “heard” that he settled or was awarded by a jury, 6 figures and BPD changed their discriminatory hiring practice immediately. I may not have all of the details correct but think I am pretty close. I an fairly certain they had a tier system by race and sex and it cost them...

Systematic is a buzz word right now. Every complaint is a systematic problem. I heard Joe Biden today saying something else was systematic Systematic: Involving a system or plan. So the claims of systematic racism, most in larger cities, is a claim that the city officials are sanctioning and condoning the racism. In Baltimore,MD where there were riots after Freddie Gray’s death, was it systematic racism that caused it? The mayor, police chief, driver of the police van where Gray died, the main suspect (van driver) and the judge hearing the cases were all the same race as Gray. So was it a conspiracy by all of them to do away with Gray’s civil rights? In southeast Texas, we have Port Arthur where the entire city council, the mayor, the municipal court judge, the city manager, the city attorney and the police Chief are all of the same race. As the definition of systematic says, it is planned as part if the system. So when people are protesting locally, are they saying that the systematic racism is these leaders?