tvc184

Yeah, I can see the conservatives voting for an uber liberal gun grabber because of a campaign appearance. That mentality would suggest that conservatives and in particular since it is relevant to this thread, pro Second Amendment gun owners, would vote for Biden over Trump because Trump wanted to ban bump stocks that made non-machine guns fire like machine guns. There is no limit to the delusion of the left.

They had likely been getting away with it. They didn’t know that he was going to die.This was discovered due to the outcome, not from a use of force complaint. There seems to be two choices. A. It was a targeted attack because of some history with the deceased. B. It was an arrest that got out of hand but a group of officers that seemed to (choose all that apply): a. Be comfortable using excessive force. b. Were poorly trained and/or supervised. c. Should never have been hired but due to shortages and open/lax hiring policies….

A mental health unit might help from escalating a situation that is reasonably calm. Bullets flying around and guns being pointed tends to end de-escalation

I have seen cases where the verdict doesn’t seem to match the under oath answers in voir dire. An example is a person not believing in the death penalty but doing voir dire it is typically asked if a person can “consider” the full range of punishment. I didn’t know that the state could appeal a punishment.

The only thing that I can figure is that someone in the jury room pitched a fit at the 25 your minimum as a habitual violator and others went along with it. I am sure that the district attorney presented evidence that he was in fact a habitual violator. As you said, the penalty range for a habitual violator is 25-99 years. So at a minimum they had to assess at least 25 years. It seems like they went with only Manslaughter and its 2-20 option and ignored his prior felonies. Of course a jury does not know that but after finding him guilty, they could’ve hung the jury in the penalty phase. There should then be a new trial on the penalty phase only.

Democratic math. Unemployment is how many people are looking for work. It doesn’t include people who aren’t working and aren’t looking. So the spin is that this “lowest unemployment” is not how many people are working as it doesn’t include the people who have simply given up. The percentage of people working today is about 3.5% less than were G Bush left office. So a smaller percentage of the population is working and that is claimed as “lowest since” unemployment. So when people quit working, it is claimed as proof of prosperity.

This is the quoted definition of reckless. (c) A person acts recklessly, or is reckless, with respect to circumstances surrounding his conduct or the result of his conduct when he is aware of but consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur. You can see that is says “he is aware of but consciously disregards” the substantial risk. Criminal negligence quoted is: (d) A person acts with criminal negligence, or is criminally negligent, with respect to circumstances surrounding his conduct or the result of his conduct when he ought to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur. You can see the difference is “ought to be aware of” the substantial risk. So reckless is aware of the risk and says to heck with it. Criminal negligence is you should have been paying attention.

A no brainer verdict. Manslaughter in Texas is to recklessly kill a person. The difference between being reckless and criminally negligent is that criminal negligence is a head up your butt accident. An example is a person not paying attention when he should. Being reckless is an intentional accident. That is not a quote but it is the effect of the law. An intentional accident is where a person intentionally committed the dangerous act but the result was an accident. In this case the man intentionally drove an ATV where prohibited. That intentional act caused the death of child. While the accident and death were almost certainly an accident, getting on an ATV, starting the engine and driving where prohibited and where people felt protected, was not an accident. That by definition is reckless. Criminal negligence as an example would be driving down the road legally but not paying attention and accidentally running off the road. There was no intent to run off the road which is the head up your butt accident.

Chesty Puller is reported to have said something like…. They are to our left, they are to our right and they are in front and in back. They have us surrounded. They can’t get away this time!!

That potentially sounds like 1st Degree Murder(Capital Murder under Texas law). I have said it before but premeditated murder in Tennessee is death penalty or life without parole eligible.

Nationally there are about 5 homicides per 100,000 people. Per 100,000 is the way that crime is normally reported. Using murder as an example, if the national average is 5 per hundred thousand, a City the size of Port Arthur should have 2-3 murders per year. Beaumont should average about 6 yet they average about 14. In the last few years, Memphis, Tennessee has been average almost 30 per 100k. That is 600% more than the national average. Extreme? People for some political arguments like to say, crime can happen anywhere. Obviously that is true. The likelihood of crime however, can be astronomically different according to where you are. Locally is a glaring example of that. Tidbits like robberies are 700 per 100k in Memphis, 300/100k in Beaumont and 20/100k in Port Neches. Yes, crime happens everywhere. Memphis seems to among the worst.

Fired and arrested? Does that make this case different since the officer have been held accountable? I will use Wikipedia to refresh my memory on the George Floyd death. Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020. Wikipedia: George Perry Floyd Jr. (October 14, 1973 – May 25, 2020) Officer Chauvin was fired on May 26, 2020 and arrested on May 29, 2020. Wikipedia: He was dismissed by the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) on May 26 and arrested on May 29. So before most people had ever heard of Floyd, the officer responsible had been terminated and with 3 days, arrested on May 29, 2020. Chauvin was put on trial and convicted less than a year later. So before a majority of people had heard of Floyd, the officer was terminated and with 3 more days, arrested. Protests then started and again according to Wikipedia, caused over one billion dollars in damages and continued for more than a year. Tyre Nichols was brutally beaten on January 7 and died on January 10. The officer were not fired until 10 days later. It took another 6 to make arrests. So let’s compare the cases. In Floyd the officer was fired the next day and arrested only four days after the incident. well, not comparing one wrong being more than another, in Floyd’s case the also leaned on his neck. In the case of Nichols, several officers beat and kick the guy to death. It took about a week and a half before the chief got around to terminating them and another week before they were arrested. So what took four days in the Floyd case, took almost 3 weeks in the Nicholas case. If this is about not being held accountable, which case more clearly demonstrates that? Of course this one has not played out yet but we there likely be a year and a half of protests and over a billion dollars in damages? It seems clear to be selective outrage. I wonder what the differences are in the cases???

On a side note; General Smith was from Texas.

Classic NIMBY….

🤣 Classic Chesty quotes also…..

This is how nonsense and rumors get started. A person playing “what if” speculates on something. The speculation gets repeated and it is no longer speculation. I have repeated this story but it is relevant. About 8-10 years ago our chief of police retired and they were looking for a permanent replacement but also an interim chief. Typically a city will move a deputy chief up as an acting chief until a permanent chief can be hired, usually after the obligatory….. “nationwide search!”. We figured that our city manager was going to go outside of the department even for the interim chief. They perceived the need for a change in culture which happens on occasion. Knowing that an announcement was imminent…. I was conducting our evening shift, shift meeting (some departments call it roll call, etc) and at the conclusion I made a spur of the moment decision. 🙃 Literally within a couple of seconds I made up a story that went like… ”Did any of you hear that the assistant chief of police of the Amarillo Police Department took a leave of absence at his agency and will be named our interim chief tomorrow?”. Of course, everyone said no… they had to, I just made it up. To follow up however (this was part of my scheme), I clearly said that it is probably a typical BS police rumor and had no truth. Forget that I even mentioned it. The next day as I was walking into the police station for my shift meeting, a lieutenant approached me and asked, do you know what time the assistant chief of police of Amarillo is supposed to be here? 😂😂 And that friends, is how rumors get started. In this case, maybe the guy was a former boyfriend of one of the officer’s current girlfriend. If so, they are in even deeper trouble….. But….. In an international news story like this, out of the thousands of guesses as to what happened, it only takes one person (although many people could have come up with the same story/guess) to surmise…. “I wonder if the guy that the cops beat up might have been dating one of their girlfriends?”. The people in that circle of friends will say “I heard (which is true) that one of the officers might have been dating the dead guy’s ex-girlfriend… while conveniently omitting the part about it being a BS guess. The next repeat won’t be “might have” but simply, one of the officers was blah blah blah…. Remember the Amber Guyger case from Dallas PD who she walked into what she thought was her apartment and killed the guy. Almost immediately I was reading that it might have been her boyfriend and she made up the story to get rid of him. It was complete nonsense but it was all over the rumor mill.

If that was true (and I lean toward BS but it is certainly plausible) then this is possibly 1st Degree and premeditated (which doesn’t exist in Texas) murder. In TN premeditated murder is death penalty eligible.

That is out of control people who likely should never have been officers. They exist. I wonder what selection criteria they used to put extremely young (in experience) officers in that position. This wasn’t patrol officers. It was a special unit probably to stop violent crime, probably by profiling. Was it based on “their” community which is what I have seen enough times… do they look like us? At times young officers are needed but they should be mixed with more senior officers. I don’t know if it is true but I heard that these officers were between two and five years in experience. What was their mission? What parameters were they given? This was not only a violent crime but a failure in leadership. I doubt this was 5 officers with no issues and no valid use of force complaints who all collectively lost it on this one incident because a guy ran. I have been in and initiated many foot chases and have never seen officers do that. I was driving (as the commander of a street crimes unit just like this) with another officer about 15 years ago. There was a call of an armed (aggravated) robbery at gun point…. of a police officer’s wife. We spotted the suspect and were in an unmarked vehicle. We jumped out on him and he fled on foot. The suspect was supposed to have a pistol on him but we didn’t see it in his hand but certainly he could have pulled one out and shot within a couple of seconds. (We had an officer shot in that exact situation who still has the bullet in him) This was not just a traffic stop we were on. It was a potential deadly force situation with a violent felony suspect who we had probable cause to believe was armed. We tackled him and he went to the ground face first but put his arms under his body. Was he going for a gun? My partner and I called for help (probably more like screamed in the radio 😂) and held on to both arms to try and keep him from pulling out a weapon. Yes it was pretty intense. Were we justified in using more force? Probably. A minute or so later two officers over 6’ tall and over 250 pounds each got there. Each one latched onto an arm and pulled them out like pulling apart a wishbone. He had no gun on him and apparently had stashed it. But… the probable cause was there to believe that he was armed after committing a violent crime and we actually knew the victim personally. If there was any justification to understand losing control of emotions, that might certainly be understandable in the eyes of many people. However, all that happened to the guy was that he was tackled and handcuffed. How to justify that much anger because a guy fled doesn't seem rational. Angry? Sure but this was out of control. Emotionally anyone involved including civilians would want to rough this guy up. This wasn’t a bar fight. imo…….

And they should get back little to nothing.

That is because G W Bush in his first term pushed for private retirement accounts just like a 401(k) with the SS funding but the Democrats squashed it like a bug. They did not want people controlling their own money. The Democrats did not want your money, to be your money

They wouldn’t even have to cut it that much.

A flat sales tax, ending all other federal taxes, would have to be 50% or more.

I worked in community policing under a federal grant from the Clinton administration. I never understood the point of officers “looking like the community”. I did not look like the people in the area that I was responsible for. I was chosen once by KFDM or by KBMT (I actually think it was both but it has been about 25 years ago) as officer of the week or month (I think one of them called it Texas Star) which was to recognize officers. About 8 years ago I was in a city housing authority to pick up some paperwork and passed by a meeting room. There was a committee of residents having a regularly scheduled meeting. They saw me passing by and called me into the room to commend me for the job that I was doing for them to make the public housing unit a better place. The manager said they had just been discussing the conditions in public housing and specifically mentioned me. I guess they didn’t care that I didn’t look like them. 1. It is true that it would barely make local news if it was not the police but fame gets attention. Alec Baldwin accidentally shot a woman and it’s been national news for over a year. Meanwhile, hundreds of other people might have been accidentally shot and no one knows. I understand that and so should everyone else. Celebrities draw more attention and interest from the public and the police are absolutely celebrities but by position, not by name. 2. Uhhhhhh…… ya’ think? Part of it is minority hires but part is because some (left side of the aisle) groups have managed to vilify the police and it is hard to draw recruits from any race. When I took the test almost 40 years ago there were approximately 200 people trying out for seven positions. By law, the test is good for a year or until all applicants have been vetted but within about four months they had to give another test because they had already gone through all the applicants. Of the 200 that took the, 39 passed and moved on to the background check. They could not find the seven qualified applicants from those 39 and that is why they had to give the test again. Now I have seen openings fo 10 people and 8 people show up to take the test. It is a considerably easier test with about a 50% passing rate instead of about 20% in my test. So maybe 5 people pass and we are lucky to hire 2. So they have moved from hiring 3% of the applicants being hired to about 25-50%.… and still can’t keep up with hiring. It takes about a year and a half to train a police officer to the bare minimum standard of working alone in a patrol car. It probably takes another 3 to 5 years to start getting enough experience to make better decisions and to effectively do the job. So if we have a police officer, leave the department either by moving on to something else, another department, getting fired, retiring, or whatever… it takes up to five or more years to actually replace the officer. While there are certainly higher-paying jobs out there, in my agency a person can come in at 21 years old with only a GED and start out at about $32 an hour with a minimum of five weeks a year vacation and three weeks off sick. There aren’t that many jobs with those benefits for a person with only a GED so benefits shouldn’t keep a 21 year old from applying. A rookie police officer by the time he /she makes overtime, makes about $75,000 in the first full year and it goes up from there. I imagine there are probably quite a few college graduates who would like to start out if $75,000, they toss in guaranteed vacation and sick time that cannot expire. 3. There is always more to the story because the story is not public. The more in this case obviously doesn’t justify the response. 4. The code of silence or the blue wall is a myth. It might exist between half a dozen friends but it does not go department wide. It also makes me wonder about the supervision in that department. I might start questioning the chief of police or the command staff on how they are setting standards and supervising. I don’t mean any of them condone this in the least and I’m sure the command staff is appalled and horrified by the results. It seems that somewhere they have lost control with their mid level leadership…. particularly with the street crimes unit… that they apparently call Scorpions??? I was in command of a street crimes unit for three years and it was absolutely my responsibility and those staff level command officers above me to make sure this didn’t happen. In Memphis they failed in my opinion. 5. No comment.

It isn’t semantics. It is ridiculous. The notion that commenting on CNN stupidity about race somehow does away with the murder is equally ridiculous. Should an entirely new thread be started about the same incident and stupid comments about the incident from the media? So when I mention CNN it is apparently diverting from the murder into politics but when you mention NWA it isn't? What did NWA have to do with this murder? Your comments are nothing but virtue signaling.

CNN put out an article that White racism caused or could have caused this. No, you can’t make this stuff up…..