tvc184

A police officer who I worked with was at a public information/community relations school in Houston. I think it was mostly for the police but maybe other spokespersons could attend. It is a school to learn to put out news releases, conduct press conferences, etc. As one of his lessons (basically homework) for the next day he was given a set of facts known to him about a crime scene and he was supposed to write a press release. It may have been like, police called to a report of shots fired. They found a man shot 3 times with a 9mm and blah blah blah…. Lots of details. So as part of his homework, he called me. I wrote a basic press release and sent it him. I left out most of the details of what the police knew. The reason is that the law on statements by a suspect (basically a confession), requires certain rules, most of which is being able to corroborate (I think the wording is establish guilt) the statement. You can’t do that with information that was released to the public. Details such as caliber of a weapon, number if times shot or stabbed, which room, etc. cannot be used. Everybody knows those answers if you out it on the 6 o'clock news. So the next day in class the instructor (of all things, a news reporter) chose my friend’s release to read to the class on what NOT to do. It was read anonymously so as not to single a person out. The reason that it was wrong in the instructor‘s opinion, was because he did not have nearly enough details that were known to the officer writing the press release. My friend later told me that he spoke up in class and identified himself as the author. He the cited the law on statements and why it was unwise (but not illegal) for the police to release certain information until a warrant is obtained (then it is public anyway). He said the instructor put that press release on the table and went to the next one. The instructor didn’t even make a commitment….😂 It isn’t against the law to release most information to the public (except such as the name of a juvenile suspect) but it isn’t always wise either. I guarantee in this case they have clues but aren’t going to release them at this point.

The police have released no clues to protect the investigation.

The belief that the country was founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs, values or principles I believe is a fallacy. Religious? Absolutely. I believe that all countries until fairly recent history were based on faith and sin such as theft, murder, lying, adultery, etc. all had religious roots. But did non-Christian countries have the same beliefs? What distinguishes Christians believing that murder was wrong and Buddhists thinking it was wrong? Were the members of the Continental Congress deeply religious? Almost certainly. They mentioned it in writings. The US until independence was mostly governed by laws of France, Spain and Britain. There was no American law. There wasn’t an independent country of God worshipping people but rather several colonies who had different beliefs but certainly most were Christian. At declared independence and before the Constitution we were still a bunch of independent colonies and nothing like we now claim as a nation. The Boston Massacre in 1770 kind of kicked the call for independence. It really heated up in 1773 with the Boston Tea Party and hit the point of no return on April 19, 1775 with the shot heard ’round the world in Lexington. We however, were still part of Britain. It was over a year later before we even got around to declaring independence and declaring to become a separate country. With the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the war officially ended. There was still no Constitution creating what is our now country. The Constitution get ratified and become law in 1789, 13 years after independence was declared. Then the Bill of Rights almost 3 years later, like a week or two before 1793. So it took almost 20 years from the beginning of the Revolutionary War to the US actually being founded as a federal constitutional government. And why does the history lesson matter? Because in the Treaty of Tripoli in 1793 (and right after the Bill of Rights became law) which was agreed to by George Washington and with unanimous consent of the Senate, in one section stated, "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion”. So within a few weeks after ratification of the Bill of Rights noting very first freedom of religion, President Washington and the US Senate unanimously approved a treaty that said that the American government was not in any sense founded on the Christian religion. To emphasize that, the very first words in the Bill of Rights was not freedom of speech or assembly or the press. Nope, the first words were freedom of religion… started as Congress shall make no law. It would be a disgrace to Christianity that people were told by a country to be that. It trivializes Christianity into a political debate.

What is this Christian value that others don’t have.

Asking when Hunter was in the WH is like asking when Charles Manson murdered people. He was accused of that but was convicted and sentenced the death as part of the conspiracy. That where Hunter fits in.

The 10 Commandments are part of all Abrahamic beliefs or what is sometimes called The Three Great Religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The video, while probably factually correct, is nonsense. For example, an Italian explorer was hired by a Spanish Queen to sail west and he was a Catholic like virtually every person in Italy. So 500 years ago, 300 years before the US Constitution was written, an Italian hired by Spain prayed on his arrival in the Indies and that is proof of Christianity in the US founding? Two countries that ended up having no part in the founding of the US? The guide points out paintings on the wall depicting events from the 1600s? If nothing else from his explanation you might conclude that the US was founded as a Catholic nation. I wonder how that will be perceived by the protestants. Sorry Baptists, this is a Catholic nation! But wait! A president was a preacher! Of course that was 100 years after the founding of the US but let’s ignore that for now. I guess Jimmy Carter is evidence that the nation and the presidents were founded on peach farming. The Founding Fathers were deeply religious…. and rejected relgion as any kind of requirement for laws or office. Were stealing, lying, murdering, etc., mentioned in the 10 Commandments as well as common law through world history? Absolutely. I will bet you find that other kingdoms in Asia and Africa who did not practice Christianity, had the same common laws

This country was not based on Christianity. Certainly the members of the Continental Congress were deeply religious Christians.

Sedition by definition is words or conduct inciting peoplem against the government. Any public protest against any law could be considered sedition but protests are protected speech. Laws at times however have their own definitions of words or phrases which may be contrary to the common dictionary definitions. A quick example is the word “premises” means buildings and land but in certain Texas laws it only means inside of a building. You could be on the grassy area at a school but not be on their premises. By definition? Yes. By law? No. So what is sedition (Seditious Conspiracy) under the US Code (basically the federal government penal code)? It can be as little as 2 people (required for conspiracy) hindering or delaying a government function or seizing property by force that they have no right to…. such as trying to take over federal properties. So now we know that out of hundreds of thousands of people protesting, at least 2 tried to take over a building or hinder a vote. That’s your big deal? It is rarely used but under Texas law, if you participate in a riot then you can be charged with the highest crime committed at the riot. So thousands of people could gather for what started as a peaceful protest but turned violent. The law says that if you retired from the protest which is now violent, you are okay. If you stayed and took part in the riot, you for example could be charged with arson even though you didn’t participate in an arson. So because an assembly of people is there to protest and a majority is there to do it peacefully, it can turn into a crime to simply be there. In fact just being there can result in 6 months in jail. Tidbit: I believe the phrase “being read the riot act”, meaning to really tell someone off or chastise them for acting like idiots, comes from riot laws. Basically a government official (usually law enforcement) will actually read the law and announce that the assembly is now unlawful and to disperse. Does that mean the crowd gathered to take part in felonies? In other words, if hundreds of thousands of people gather but a handful in the crowd (remember that federal sedition law requires only 2) commit a crime, does that mean the crowd was part of some willing act to commit crimes? Does that mean the people protesting were doing so illegally.

Christianity and Islam have the same 10 commandments given by Moses.

My ex mother in law did that about 30 years ago. She made turkey gumbo from leftovers and it was good. She saw it in the internet. Actually it was a few years before the internet became public. 🤣 I had probably a common response of…. HUH?

Many of the cases (almost all) that are taught are not hard to understand and most a semi intelligent middle school student could understand. A lot of times officers try to take shortcuts to save paperwork and time and that gives us case law. Once an officer screws up or even does things correctly (which is many case laws), the appeals courts give us rules to live by, called setting precedent. In the landmark decision of Terry v. Ohio as an example, the Supreme Court gave us the 8-1 ruling that the police are allowed to stop a person who appears to be or about to be committing a crime. It also allows officers to frisk people for weapons. This case from the mid 1960s was written by Detective Martin McFadden. It was a (in my opinion) brilliant piece of police work by a cop that started working around 1925, so old school. Some people think old school means a strong but dumb cop. McFadden showed otherwise. MaFadden explained in his affidavit what he witnessed and using his experience (which he listed), he said that he believed that he was about to witness an armed robbery. He stopped the 4 men about to enter the store, put them on the wall and got I think 3 handguns off of the men. His detailed explanation of why he came to his conclusion stands today as the standard that courts use to determine if an officer had the authority to detain a person. That is reasonable articulable suspicion that a crime is about to be or has been committed. It is not probable cause which justifies a forced search or arrest. So in my opinion it is relatively easy to follow the law and case law. If officers mess up then it is likely that they were taking shortcuts or weren’t paying attention in training… or new rulings came out negating what was previously lawful (an example is AZ v. Gant overturning NY v. Belton). There are always gray areas and an officer should document what he saw, heard, smelled, etc., and what conclusions he drew from that. A trial judge will later make a decision on the officer’s actions. An appeals court may later judge the trial judge’s actions/decisions.

Heinous crime….. (not trying to beat a dead horse but hopefully educational) In the mid 1970s police in Arizona raided the home of Mincey for drugs. They had a valid warrant to enter and search. During the entry, Mincey and an officer got in a shootout that killed the officer and seriously injured Mincey. The fact that the officers had a valid warrant is not in question. Neither are the facts that there was the murder of a police officer and that other officers witnessed it. The police never gave up the crime scene that they had witnessed and were lawfully inside. So they called the homicide detectives and they stayed for about 3 days photographing and diagramming. While Mincey was in intensive care, detectives questioned him. He confessed. Mincey was convicted of murdering a police officer. His appeal made it to the Supreme Court. Arizona’s argument was that they were initially there lawfully and the seriousness of the crime scene. Mincey also appealed his confession. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the search of the residence required a warrant. The original warrant was for drugs, not dismantling the place once the search for drugs had ended. Basically they said that the Fourth Amendment didn’t say, you have the right against unreasonable searches and seizures and it involves the police as a victim. As to the confession, Mincey was reported to be semi- conscious so his confession was also thrown out. That vote was 8-1. I am teaching this part of constitutional law at LIT in Beaumont this coming February twice. Once at the basic academy and another time in a mandatory in service training, called core courses. I usually try to emphasize Mincey. A person’s rights don’t end at minor crimes.

I get that. So, should the police be able to go into your home without a warrant and without probable cause? It is clearly a violation of the Constitution but during the unlawful raid, the police got video evidence of some disgusting crime. Look, the police violated your rights without question but the end it resulted in proof of a heinous crime. Should that be allowed? By what you and 5GallonBucket are saying, that seems perfectly reasonable. It only my opinion but you are willing to give up your rights too easily. Or perhaps those rights only apply to you? The minimum penalty for police misconduct, even if accidental, is loss of any evidence due to that misconduct. When I teach this part of constitutional law in the police academy, the case of US v. Tarry Jackson that is cited in the lesson plan. It isn’t because of it being a landmark decision. It isn’t. If I remember the case without digging out the PowerPoint or lesson plan, the police (I think it was Washington DC Park Police) stopped Jackson for a license plate light out. The police found out by computer that Jackson’s license was suspended and the temporary paper tag on the car didn’t belong to it (gee, that never happens). The police checked the car interior and came up with nothing. So they have a couple of valid but minor charges on Jackson and arrested him. The problem is that the officers really wanted to search the trunk but there was no apparent legal way to get in there. But WAIT!! Since the paper plate didn’t belong on the car, the officers used the Carroll Doctrine (Supreme Court case of Carroll v. US) which ruled that if probable cause existed to search a vehicle, no warrant is needed because it takes too long to get a warrant and if the police came back two hours later, the vehicle would obviously be gone. So the officers needed probable cause to believe that there was evidence of a crime that could be discovered in the trunk. What could that be? The officers dreamed up probable cause that evidence of a crime was in the trunk. As a side note, police are allowed to use personal experience and knowledge to help build probable cause. This is what those officers came up with. We have probable cause to believe that the car “might be” stolen (although a computer check did not show it as stolen) and “if” the car is stolen, it is our (officers’) experience that people often steal cars, put in fake tags and then hide the tags from the stolen car in the trunk. HUHHHHHH??? The appeals court judges said, What The….. Heck! After almost 38 years as an officer and 30 years of teaching, I have never even heard, much less experienced, the gibberish that those officers came up with. But that was what they came up with and wouldn’t you know it, they found a handgun in the trunk which was a felony crime. Oh well, the probable cause might complete nonsense but they managed to solve a felony crime. The importance of using this case in class is not that it is a landmark case. It actually is fairly simple and the trial judge should have simply dismissed the search as being without probable cause. The trial judge didn’t so it went to an appeal where we got the case of US v. Tarry Jackson handed to us. So why teach it? Because of a comment by an appeal court judge in the ruling. "These [Fourth Amendment rights], I protest, are not mere second-class rights but belong in the catalog of indispensable freedoms. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart. Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government." Uncontrolled searches and seizures are the “first” and most “effective” weapons of every arbitrary government. I think in the explanation the ruling brought up the Nuremberg trials after WWII when the Nazis were put on trial. Part of that was that Germany justified the injustices and deprivation of rights based on the outcome of good for the public. If we can just get these undesirables off the streets, we will be a better country. Violating individual rights (most effective weapon in arbitrary government) don’t matter if the outcome is good. That is why we teach it. So again, which rights are you willing to give up if the unlawful act “helps the public” (in the eyes of the government, not yours)? Be a leader. Be there first person on your block to sign away your rights and allow the police to search your car, your person or your home without justification. I can guarantee you that it will help solve crimes. If I could enter any home and search whatever I want or stop any person on the street and do the same, I can absolutely promise that many bad crimes will be discovered or solved. Is that y’alls solution? Or if the police violate your personal rights, should there be a penalty? So reasonable folks, which rights?

Maybe I am posting too much on this topic. Think of this though. The DA has the discretion to accept or dismiss the prosecution of any case. There is no obligation under Texas law to bring charges. The DA can refuse cases at his discretion. With that in mind, the DA is in my experience, usually not willing to push a questionable case. If the police possibly did anything wrong in the DA’s professional opinion (questionable detention, search, documentation, etc.) and that piece of evidence is critical to the case, the DA will likely refuse to prosecute. They aren’t going to dedicate time and resources to a case that in their opinion has questionable evidence. I could argue that the DA might win the case anyway or eventually win it on appeal a couple of years later. In many or most cases that isn’t going to happen. It might be more prudent in their opinion to dismiss the case and move on. With that in mind, this case has been presented to the DA. After reviewing the case, including how all of the evidence was gathered, the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office Juvenile Division determined that the case was not only solid, it had enough evidence to present this case to the Family Court to get the juvenile defendant certified as an adult. They could have very easily allowed the case to remain in the juvenile courts. Apparently the DA believes a good investigation was performed and has moved forward with what they think is a winning case. With all the rules, rights and laws to follow, at this stage it appears that the DA believes the police did a good job. A defense attorney will now get to scrutinize all of the police actions and don’t be surprised if those high school educated officers get their evidence submitted into trial.

That’s because freedom of speech is seen by some as a threat to national security, I mean, the political party in power.

And in a short follow up, yes we the police have to follow rights and laws but in a large majority of cases the police officer with the GED or high school diploma follows those rules and typically wins in court against attorneys with their Doctorate of Jurisprudence and affirmed by perhaps even higher trained judges including on appeals courts up to the Supreme Court.

Some people call it loopholes. I call it rights. The government can’t violate your rights in the interest of responsibility. A true loophole in my opinion is statutory (enacted by a legislature) law that forgets or makes exceptions for some acts. For example some people (not me) think it is a loophole in the law on how to purchase of a firearm. If you go to a sporting goods store and buy any firearm, you must present a license (such as a Texas license to carry a handgun) to prove that you have already passed a background check or submit to the checking of your background by computer at the point of sale or you are denied the right to purchase that firearm. However…. You could legally buy the same firearm on the street from a total stranger without either of you having ever identified or gotten the name of the other person. You have to pass all kinds of checks and produce valid identification to buy from a store but nothing at all needed for a face to face purchase from an unidentified stranger. That would be what some people call a loophole and in fact the media calls that the gun show loophole. Agree or disagree with that situation, it doesn’t go into the right against unreasonable searches and seizures (Fourth Amendment) or rights to remain silent and have legal representation (Fifth and Sixth Amendments). Does the government have to follow a bunch of rules called “rights”? Absolutely. Which rights are you personally willing to give up? It wasn’t the politicians that made those rules, it was the Founding Fathers who framed the Constitution. Again, which rights are you willing to sign away so that we can make sure that criminals are caught? I am not willing to give up any of my rights and the fact that the Constitution gives me as a police officer rules to follow doesn’t offend me. I understand the frustration but the rules can’t just apply to the “other guy”. Imo……

That would be correct. I would think it isn’t likely in this case. I watched a YouTube video a few years ago and a lawyer was talking about trials and evidence. I think his position was, you are not found “innocent” in a trial. You might not be found guilty however. I believe his argument went like, if a guy knows his transporting a kilo of heroin under the front seat of a car, he is guilty. No matter what a judge or jury determines or if the matter goes to court at all, he is still guilty of the crime. The crime did not vanish just because it cannot be proven. Then he went into his job as an attorney. Because of abuses in the legal system going back to English common law and statutory law, soon after the Constitution was ratify, we added the Bill of Rights to guarantee certain protections. His job as an attorney is at least partly to make sure all of the rights and other rules/laws are followed. One of the first things attacked or at least looked at by the defense is reasonable suspicion or probable cause, both from the Fourth Amendment under unreasonable searches and seizures. If the government (usually police) did not follow the rules, all evidence discovered “after” the violation, will be excluded from consideration at trial. In this particular case, you asked about the video. The question becomes in court, how did the police or district attorney come by the video? For example, did the police unlawfully detain a person and get the cell phone? If so the cell phone evidence would be excluded because of the unlawful detention. Let’s say the detention and seizing of the phone for evidence was completely lawful but the police then searched the phone later without a warrant. The detention could be upheld as lawful under reasonable suspicion and the seizure of the phone could be found lawful as possibly having evidence…. but the search without a warrant would exclude the video on the phone. So the police acted lawfully in the first two actions (detention and seizure of evidence) but unlawfully in the search of the phone. Therefore the phone search is thrown out. However…. Just to hopefully clarify that evidence is excluded “after” an unlawful action, here is a “what if”. As the scenario I gave, the detention was lawful. Let’s say that the defendant was the one detained and when the police stopped (seized) him, he blurted out “I didn’t mean to hurt the guy that bad and I didn’t get the phone because I couldn’t get it out of his pocket”. After that, the defendant’s phone was seized lawfully. The later unlawful search without a warrant removes the video from his phone but, the detention and blurting of of basically a confession would probably be found as lawful. If a person blurts out a statement without being questioned, it is generally allowed into evidence called a Res Gestae statement. An example of a Res Gestae utterance would be like the police responded to a crowd gathering around a body and the police officers responding made a comment to the crowd, “what happened”. A guy in the crowd then yells out, “I told that guy if he disrespected me I was going to shoot him so I did”. That would most likely be allowed for the officers to repeat in court because it wasn’t from a “custodial interrogation” which would require Miranda. So the simple answer is, yes, there is a legal possibility to exclude the video. I am completely guessing that the video was taken by another person and forwarded to others who later turned it over to the police. That would probably be a lawful obtaining of the video but you can bet that the defense is going to look into how the video was obtained.

That is what I was talking about. Usually if a am making something for the first time, I follow a known recipe almost exactly. I might then tweak it or experiment with it later. With this CG I used about 3 different ones in a kind of mix and match and didn’t measure anything.

Absolutely. Not only can be left out but not allowed by law or appeals court decisions.

You guessed it boys and girls, it is racist. According to a CNN article, they don’t use the term racist but go to length to show it more negatively effects people of color. CRT teaches that if you are born without a certain number of melanin pigments then you are a racist at birth. Then we recently learned that math was inherently racist. Please ignore that NASA might not have gotten rockets off the ground had it not been for many Black female math geniuses (maybe they didn’t get the memo). Next comes the clocks. Who knew that POC were negatively impacted by getting an extra hour of sleep in the fall? All we have to do is look at this from researcher Chandra Jackson…. “As for the inequities seen in sleep health, it’s not that White adults don’t also experience a lack of sleep and its health consequences – but people of color appear to disproportionately experience them more, and that’s believed to be largely due to social systems in the United States”. So we can clearly see that largely due to our social system, DST disproportionately affects POC. After doing further studies on these topics I feel that oxygen will be discovered to favor people with less pigmentation in their epidermis. [Hidden Content]

Yeah, that’s it. But I wrote so much in the new thread…. 🥲

I do a lot of cooking. Sometimes it is just to cook. I have cooked dinner many times for my shift at work including dispatchers, usually completely at my expense. Gumbo, chili, beans (usually Anasazi) and rice, Budae Jjigae (Korean Army Stew), Butter Chicken (Indian dish almost like Tikka Masala), Chinese BBQ (Char Siu), Pozole (rojo), shredded BBQ pork (pulled pork but not several hours of smoking) for sandwiches, Spaghetti, Zuppa Tuscana, Hot and Sour Soup, Thai green (or red, yellow, etc.) curry, Mongolian Beef (one of my wife’s favorites), Chicken and Dumplings, Mapo Tofu, Apple Dumplings (perhaps the greatest dessert ever) and so one. But…… The reason that I thought about this thread however, was that with all the different cultures and foods that I cook, I have never made Carne Guisada which is my favorite Mexican food. There was a thread on here quite a while back where a couple of us discussed Carne Guisada and which restaurants had a good version of it. Today I broke down and made it for the first time. There are mixes/seasoning you can buy such as Fiesta brand where you can just toss in some meat and water or broth and a certain amount of the seasoning. I think HEB has a version of it. I have heard that it is very good. I got adventurous and made it mostly from scratch. I say mostly because I didn’t make my own chili powder just like when I am making Butter Chicken I don’t make my own Garam Masala although I have seen recipes for it. The dênouement is, it turned out great. It is so stupidly easy that it makes me mad that I have not made it before. It is a lot easier than Pozole. That’s it I made Carne Guisada for the first time and I remembered the prior thread but couldn’t find it. 🤪

I believe most of us kind of thought that was coming. He now moves over to big boy jail and is likely facing up to 20 years or up to 99 years, according to the evidence. I hope they go for prison time but if indicted for Aggravated Robbery (99 years max, depending on injuries and attempted theft), it would probably be an easy plea bargain to drop it to Robbery (20 years max). The DA has the option to go to trial and go for the maximum sentence in front of a jury. They could also offer like 5 years and he would have the possibly be out in a couple of years on parole. So before he is 20, he would potentially be out but have a major violent felony permanently attached to him. If he continues, the next sentence won’t be so gentle. The DA could even offer 10 years and possibly out in 5. According to the evidence that can be brought to trial and shown to a jury, he and his attorney might be seriously interested in a plea. Of course he could roll the dice and take his chances with a jury and hope the horribly violent video doesn’t get him a major hit from a jury. Everything depends on what evidence can be brought to trial. Video? Confession? Witness statements? Medical records? If the DA has a solid case, the defendant better have a good attorney and hope for a good offer. Heck, the DA might even go for probation. With the new DA (DA Elect Kieth Giblin)?taking office in January, who knows?

This is a half hour video but an interesting watch considering your latest topic….. [Hidden Content]