Or perhaps this post should be called “ready, fire, aim redux.”
Anyway, the big story around these parts is that LA cops have been taking panicky pot shots at women delivering newspapers in the early AM hours. Why? you ask. Oh, you know, the usual: some madman (formerly an LA cop) decided to go on a little killing rampage, and because he owns a vehicle and has a head and two arms, the police have been as terrified as abused altar boys seeking the protection and understanding of LA cardinal Roger Mahony every time they see any vehicle-owning, head-possessing, two-armed creatures out and about.
Two women who were shot by Los Angeles police in Torrance early Thursday during a massive manhunt for an ex-LAPD officer were delivering newspapers, sources said.
So they shoot them. Indiscriminately. Then they explain themselves a little:
[Police Lieutenant] Chase said that in both instances police came across vehicles they thought were similar to the one Dorner is believed to be driving. Neither vehicle was Dorner’s.
“Now it appears neither of them are directly related,” Chase said. “In both of them, officers believed they were at the time.”
Let’s repeat that: “Now it appears neither of them are directly related.” Just another litte mixup involving appearance and reality.
I do like this detail Bim:
‘Cause, you know, it might have been some dangerous commie rag, in which case, well… fair play.
Agreed, Bluthner. It is a nice touch.
Jesus Christ.
Just open fire in the general direction, and you’re bound to hit something sooner or later.
The willingness to shoot first and ask questions later might be prompted, just a little, by the knowledge that the suspect in question owns a fifty caliber sniper rifle.
The concept that the bad guy can kill you from over a mile away could increase a trigger-happy temperament.
One shouldn’t, if one has ever seen footage of police shouting, “stop resisting” while continuing to manhandle a prone arrestee, be surprised if law enforcement over-reacts under circumstances which to them are relatively normal, let alone when they’re scared as hell because someone has launched a campaign of retribution against them.
If the entire affair wasn’t so horrific, one could almost(almost, I said) feel a small portion of schadenfreude over their predicament.
I’m sure there are lots of wonderful police officers out there…
Back when I was a mental hospital orderly, I was told to escort a guy with some criminal history to this place for the criminally insane in the middle of nowhere, about 2 hours outside the city where I lived and work. A cop was also sent, along with the 2 ambulance guys. The patient, whom I’d been with as the emergency psychiatrist interviewed him, agreed to be medicated and tied down for the ride, so he was.
So…there were the two guys in the front of the ambulance, plus the cop and me. The cop was young, big and a real take-charge kind of guy; he hopped into the back of the ambulance ahead of me, until he realized that this move put him in the seat closest to the patient, who was strapped in. When it dawned on him, he turned to me and said, “No way, man. You’re sitting up there next to him.” The cop wasn’t armed and he was a complete fucking coward. He was also really dim. After the patient fell asleep, the cop kept asking me what made a guy like that go all violent on people (including cops). I remember saying something like, “I don’t know. I think he’s just really angry.”
Some more on the two women who were shot:
Police (like LA chief Beck) always trot out the stress excuse. What they never bother to do, however, is properly qualify their remarks: “True, we’re armed to the teeth and under far less stress than your average city bus driver, prison guard or homeless person. And, yes, we also make a really good living and enjoy the fear and/or respect of large swaths of the population…”
Bim,
If bus drivers and homeless people were armed, I have no doubt that, statistically, they’d be more dangerous than the average cop. Which is why, at least today, they aren’t. The point about training is the germane one. The military does a somewhat effective job of training people to not start shooting when frightened or angry: only “somewhat effective” because of the notable failures we hear about every day. But the kind of training and, especially, the ongoing discipline which achieves even this limited degree of success is way beyond possible for police forces, let alone the population as a whole.
That detail makes me think of the misery in London back in 2007, when the police, highly nervous because of the 7/7 tube & bus bombings, had a man they believed to be a terrorist/bomber under surveillance. One morning, as the suspect left his apartment, the cop watching his door was away from his post for a brief moment because he had to pee; when he came back just caught a glimpse of the suspect walking away around a corner.
He called it in, other teams of cops were alerted that that the terrorist was headed their way, and in the cross chat somehow they also believed they had been told he had a bomb on him.
They followed him onto a bus and into the tube and then, just as he sat down in his seat, rushed up and executed him. Without a word of warning, without even a chance to surrender or put his hands up or explain himself. Bullets straight into the skull.
Of course it wasn’t the right man. It was a man living in the same building as the suspect, of similar coloring and build. And he wasn’t carrying anything large enough to be a bomb, and his coat wasn’t bulky enough to conceal much of a bomb either. The police who rushed in to execute him weren’t even looking to see if he had a bomb, or indeed even stopping to check if he matched the photos they all had of the suspect, because they had been told it was him and they were concentrating on stopping him from triggering his bomb. They meant well. They executed an innocent carpenter from Brazil.
Another complex system fucking up.
This guy was acting like he had a(n amoral to the max) hollywood scriptwriter in his head. Probably he only had hollywood movies in his head, but as a watch implies a watchmaker….
A cabin. He goes down in flames in a cabin. That has to be part of some kind (of at least unconscious) Act 3 non-negotiable requirement in a good-cop-gone-bad chase movie that ends in the anti-hero’s vanquishing.
Not to mention he kills an innocent deputy in the final reel. The deputy. By the cabin.
GG has been caterwauling about how hunting this guy down is in no way distinguishable from hunting down AQ operatives in the Yemen. In his perfect, virginal 15-year-old’s world, of course, both would be a job for the police, revenge murder sprees and terrorism would just be different degrees of the same kind of crime. And our systems of justice, and our military, and our executive branch, and our laws of due process, would not be corrupted by the grey fog between enforcing the law and waging war. And everything would be sweetness and light, and crime would not pay and the guys in the black hats would end up behind bars.
But of course what actually happens is the fog drifts the other way. The more we confuse fighting crime with waging war, the more we end up waging war on crime. Which corrupts everyone and everything faster and further and deeper.
But why talk about difficult stuff like that when clearly there is HYPOCRISY! Oh look, more HYPOCRISY!
Bluth,
One of my best friends, one of the most civilized people I know, came back from Viet Nam, enrolled in my college, and like all of us started spending a little time down at the local watering hole. One night there weren’t very many people in there when he arrived. A big guy was picking on a little guy: not yet wailing on him but getting ready to, pushing him around, poking him and giving him all the usual, gleeful shit with his mouth. Bartender is ineffectually now-nowing and everyone else is just taking it in. Bill, my friend, takes exception, asks the big guy why he doesn’t pick on somebody his own size. Big guy takes a swing. A few seconds later Bill has bitten the big guy’s nose off.
In the aftermath, after everybody has told his story (and justified his own passivity) the local sheriff asks Bill, why? Why bite his nose off? Bill, seeing no reason to lie, explains that he had just that much self-control left: the way it was going, he could see that he was about to rip out the guy’s throat as he’d been taught, and the nose was all he could come up with in a flash.
Bill walks. Four years later a bunch of us are sharing a ground-floor apartment in Chicago. Bill is napping on the couch when a motor cycle backfires outside the window, maybe ten feet away. Somehow, lying flat on his back, he leaps into the center of the room, makes a sweeping motion with his arm, wakes up, and asks us what the hell just happened. We tell him. One of us makes the same motion with his arm and asks what that was. Bill just looks sick. We press him. He mutters, “Reaching for my rifle.” That sinks in: he woke up because it wasn’t there…
Every day I do a lot of different things but most of them are what I was trained to do, and I can’t remember the last time I considered what I was doing while I did it. I think most of us are like that much of the time. I think it’s pretty likely that this guy was like that too.
Nat,
I am completely convinced that much of what we imagine to be our own conscious will is in fact entirely after the fact story-telling. I mean stories we tell ourselves to make it feel like we are choosing a hell of a lot more than we really are in this life. I think we actually do make some choices, a few at least, but so many fewer than our brains/minds trick us into thinking that we did, that the gap, if generally recognized, would kind of threaten the very foundations of what humans have, for as long as they have been considering the matter, supposed was/is at the very core of their/our existence. So… Yes. Indeed.
And you friend Bill could have been my father. Though it was the war in Korea what did it to him. Wake him up from a deep sleep with a loud noise and you had better be able to out run him, at least for the few seconds (though they sometimes felt like minutes) it would take him to arrive in the present (peaceful) tense. Or else you got hurt. My sister ended up in hospital once, just for trying to sneak past his side of the bed to get to my mother’s side. Only she, his wife, knew how, or could, reliably, wake him safely.
But he never bit off anyone’s nose. That your Bill was able to consciously override the unconscious urge, at least to that extent, is pretty well operatically stark parable of the conflict every human grapples with as a birthright.
Bluth,
Yep. We can’t begin to function if most of what we do isn’t learned and then rendered unconscious in our earliest years. Listen to an adult describe learning to walk again after being bedridden for months. Listen to anybody over 25 try to speak an unfamiliar language.
We notice what sticks out. Two horrifying examples:
A house across the street from mine, a temporarily cleaned-up bit of scattered-site public housing into which appears an extended family that has clearly been run out of everything else the city had to offer. Communication by screaming only, competing boom boxes facing each other on the lawn, police visiting every weekend night. One day, dinner time (apparently) and a four-year-old is tasked with fetching the maybe two-year old, diaper-clad child from the mud-hole it’s been playing in for hours. Four year old walks up purposefully, plants herself, hands on hips, and hollers: Get yo mutha fukin ass in the house right now! And, the job done, walks calmly back toward the porch. Somewhere, a social worker is supposed to fix this; a succession of teachers will be the next to fail; after that…
A cheap-ish Chinese restaurant in Oxford, mid-sixties, an out of place city-looking guy sitting alone, reading his Telegraph: the loose, draped black jacket, the rolled-up brolly, the bowler on the table. Apparently he has ordered soup, because that’s what’s brought. Doesn’t like the look of it, flutters hand and casually sneers, “Take it back, take it back, I don’t want it.” Waiter isn’t buying it, protests: “Is what you order!” Chappy demurs, he thought it would be proper mushroom soup. Waiter really isn’t buying it now: “You order! You order! See: there is mushroom!” Chappy smiles. It’s the smile that did it for me. “Yay-essss. Well I sup-pose you might say it’s what’s called an am-bee-geww-eh-ty.” No doubt someone, somewhere, would have been very proud to have seen their offspring handle it with such aplomb…
But I’m not like these people. I was raised up right. Yes I was.
Nat,
And part of what you, and only a minority of humans running around loose, somehow, against all odds, seem to have learned and forgotten, is a grasp of probability. Which quite clearly eludes most homo sapiens. Sometimes I think if we could figure out a way to change that one (almost certainly hard-wired) defect in the programming, 3/4′s or more of the problems we face, and 8/10ths of the Republican dickheads in Congress, would cease to exist.
But how? Sometimes I think if Kindergarten was changed into a one or two year long casino for chocolate, but an anit-Vegas type casino, where the players (toddlers) were encouraged to figure out the odds and bet with them instead of against them, we might live in a much, much happier place.
[I take it as read that if you had crossed the street and helped the baby out of the mud you would have been risking pretty high odds of a life-threatening assault on your person by one of the 'adults' in said dwelling.]
Bluth,
Naw. See, I’d long ago put in my six-year stint as a professional mud-bound baby rescuer, and learned to instantly and unconsciously estimate the extent of my freedom from responsibility. The idea of interfering simply never arose, Now later… On the 4th of July the partying got a little out of hand after midnight and when they decided to make a little room for the spreading bonhomie by locking the toddlers in the trunk of a car: well, then I did call the cops. The next day the house was vacant again, and soon a nice, quiet family moved in and have been there ever since. Which solved the problem to the neighborhood’s satisfaction and demonstrated, once again, that the system really does work if you let it.
Bluthner: “GG has been caterwauling about how hunting this guy down is in no way distinguishable from hunting down AQ operatives in the Yemen.”
Really? Have not been keeping up.
Anyway, never had any real interest in what’s-his-name, whose manifesto was stupid and whose choice of victims (Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence) showed him for what he was.
The only compelling part of the whole fucked-up story was how Southern California police reacted to their little – albeit grossly obese – creation. (Throughout the whole freaking mess, I often found myself asking, “What’s with all the fat cops?”)
A little credit where credit is due: Dorner could have killed many more people than he did, but he chose not to. His hatred was oddly focused. But there’s no excuse for gunning down Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence.
Bim,
Do I get credit for not killing all the people who piss me off? Do you? Does anyone? You are a gentle and generous soul, but I think that kind of credit would have to be just about limitless.
Bluth:
You don’t, but you WOULD if you were in the habit of going on murderous rampages…
Remember that nutjob Amy Bishop (U. of Alabama professor who was denied tenure)? She killed the head of the department, who, if I’m not mistaken, voted to give her tenure.
Bim,
there is a fascinating article in the most recent New Yorker about Amy Bishop. Exploring all the murk around what happened when she shot her brother when she was something like 15 (or thereabouts) and whether a well-meaning but inevitably wrong attempt to cover up intent/guilt then turned her into a pressure cooker just waiting to go off. Has to be said the article doesn’t resolve any of those issues at all, but it sure asks some difficult and painful questions.
If I was in the habit of going on murderous rampages, I would hope, for all kinds of reasons that someone would put me beyond the point where I could hurt anyone pretty damn quick. But I can’t imagine wanting credit for victims I hadn’t managed to kill yet.
I do see what you mean, though. For all that.
Bluth,
Yes, I read that a week or two ago, which is why I thought of it, though the story of Amy Bishop (and her husband) has always fascinated me.
I guess I like to think that I’m capable of praising a slight show of discernment, even in the ugliest circumstances…
See, the people who pretend they’re on your side (Quan the defense counsel, that prof at Alabama) are the very worst kind. At least the others admit that they’re your enemy — you’ve got to give them just that much. But those sneaky, gutless hypocrites who get your hopes up and then stab you in the back… “The smylere with the knyf under the cloke…” (See? Chaucer knew.) And those wives! “The tresoun of the mordrynge in the bedde…” (He knew too damn much in fact, way I see it anyway…)
Hostility merits hostility, with maybe a little extra thrown in depending on the injury. But betrayal? Life-ruining betrayal? Well, what does a life for a life mean, anyway?
In that cop’s “manifesto” or maybe in some note he left, he said Quan’s family had to die because Quan’s treachery had denied him a future family of his own. When that kind of thinking starts making sense, all bets are off.
“When that kind of thinking starts making sense, all bets are off.”
- Natasha
Good point. But what’s most amazing is how many people DO think that way and still manage to restrain themselves a bit.
Indeed. I only skim through quickly every now and then these days; I’m finding Greenwaldistan see,s to have become a foreign country whose inhabitants speak an incomprehensible language with an unfamiliar grammar.
I only look in now simply because I fully expect to see an Illuminati conspiracy uncovered one day.
Okay, just had a look at GG’s most recent, which is about the politically connected getting rich off their political connections; namely, the Podesta Group getting a contract with the Iraqi government.
Don’t really know what GG is spending most of his time on these days, but this piece is the sort of thing that the Michael Tomaskys and Ana Marie Coxes of the world never bother with. They are PURE PROVINCIAL, never having entertained a single thought about matters outside their sadly limited range. What made Tomasky worth reading, besides the comfortable-old-shoes predictability, was the stuff BTL. It’s true that GG BTL is a fucking wasteland (based on my admittedly brief scans), but at least Greenwald isn’t a cheap flack.
I once had some hopes for AMC, thinking a bit of a literary bent might add something worthwhile to her work, but, sadly, I was mistaken, just as I was about Obama back during the 2008 primaries. Oh well. Hope can be subdued but never completely crushed…
That’s my rant and I’m stickin’ to it.
In my voyage back 400-odd years, I came across this:
Two Bills. . .the second for the enlargement of trade . . .were reported to the House. . . For the Bills, it is shown that merchandise being the chief and richest of trades and of greater importance than all the rest, it is against the natural right of the subjects of England to retrain it in the hands of some few as now it is. . .in that the mass of the whole trade of the Realm is in the hands of some 200 persons at most. The increase of wealth generally will follow by the ready vent to the merchants at a higher rate, for where there are more buyers, ware grows dearer. There will also be a more equal distribution of the wealth of the land, which is a great stability to the Realm and the contrary inconvenient to all estates, oftentimes breaking out into mischief when too much fullness doth puff up some by presumption, and too much emptiness leaves the rest in perpetual discontent.
(May 1604; the Bill passed the House.)
Squirrel,
I’d be living today in Illinishire if they’d kept that up for just a few years longer. By 1650 Boston harbor was a very busy place. It would have been a notable seaport in England, but the flow of “wares” was purely east to west. First I have to catch and skin a beaver, tan its hide and, sell it a broker (originally the Massachusetts Bay Company, which also fancies itself the guardian of my protestant soul) and watch it sail off to England. If I save enough of the pennies I get doing this, someday maybe I can afford to buy a beaver hat made back “home.” It was the same with almost everything I will ever own. Lord Koch and his fellow governors of the Hudson Bay Company (and the ABC Company and the XYZ Company) had grown from nothing to a veto-proof policy making body in almost no time at all. The prevention of manufacturing, by fiat and by law, in the colonies accounts — some of it directly, the rest indirectly — for 9/10ths of the grievances that led to the events of 1776.
It’s not that people didn’t see it. Adam Smith was a genius but he spoke for a significant segment of opinion, and liberalization of trade with the colonies had a significant constituency in Parliament from the beginning to the end of the empire. But the notion that the distribution of profits needn’t be a zero sum game had barely more traction with the majority in Parliament in the 1700s than it has in Congress today.
“locking the toddlers in the trunk of a car”
While sitting down to dinner one evening, innocuous mention was made of one thing or another. My father dropped his fork and he hastily exited the house(through our new laundry room with, get this, indoor plumbling), rushed to the 65 Plymouth and popped the trunk.
The day before, he’d been at his brother’s and captured a couple of kittens which were to be cannon fodder in the war on vermin. The cats exited the trunk post-haste and, uh, skeedaddled – never again to be seen on the farm.
Being the soft-hearted type, dear ol’ Dad took upon himself the task of making amends to the feline world. The cottonwood near our frontdoor soon sported, about five feet up into the vee made by the twin trunks, what had been a bunny manger. Cats were doled out meals in their new house, relishing their new status, lording it over the mutts now demoted to second place.
Whenever, after that, one approached the frontdoor, one was greeted with a cacophony of mews, a discord of . . . caterwauling.
Henry, the tom of the bunch, became so demanding that measures had to be taken. To the trunk of the Plymouth he went, down to Uncle Carl’s yard(some 20 miles distant). Despite the hospitality he received upon his arrival, within the week he had returned.
Without other recourse available, in our quest for peace and quiet, the cathouse had to be dismantled. And the trunk of that Plymouth remained de-populated until the early seventies, until the Sheriff appeared at the behest of the owner of the drive-in theater to greet the teenagers my brother had sequestered there-in to avoid admission fees.
On to the present, the vagabond Jeanvaljean has adopted my shop. His appeals for kibbles will commence in a couple of minutes, just as soon as I open my backdoor. Unbeckoned from the desert he appeared, into the land of Canaan. Unfed, I fear his wails will bring down either the walls of my modest abode or those of Jericho.
To prevent this tumbling, and to avert any future feline diaspora, an offering of Purina must be forthcoming. My shop remains rodent-free though, so Jeanvaljean’s pilgrimage is not without merit.