THIS Is Why You ALWAYS Notify the Police of Drills...

The folks at AT&T learned an important lesson last week: if you're going to hold an emergency preparedness drill, you should "reach out and touch someone" by notifying the local emergency responders, AND your employees. AT&T didn't think of that little aspect... and caused all sorts of holy hell in the Windy City. According to AT&T officials, they were holding "video training" to familiarize key employees with the facility's active shooter response plan. One aspect of the plan involved a facility-wide text message advising staff of the attack. Since they hadn't thought to notify staff, or include the standard "THIS IS A DRILL, DO NOT RESPOND OR TAKE ANY ACTION" verbiage in their broadcast message, many employees took the notification to be legitimate, resulting in panicked calls to police, fire, EMS, news media, loved ones, and so on.


https://blockclubchicago.org/2019/07/18/active-shooter-drill-in-loop-goes-epically-wrong-after-police-workers-not-notified-in-advance/

https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/07/18/active-shooter-drill-gone-wrong/

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-police-active-shooter-false-alarm-loop-512904561.html

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-loop-active-shooter-drill-20190718-menvndwqlnfutmfjuvztk3i5yq-story.html

Drills and exercises are an essential part of an organization's emergency preparedness posture. They allow participants to act out their responses -- hopefully appropriate responses -- to simulated emergency situations. An example we're all familiar with is fire drills in school (not that you should take the time to line up in size place and hold your partner's hand...). Those of us "of an age" will remember the old "duck and cover" drills of the Cold War era, as if a school desk would protect us from a nuclear detonation.

There are two broad categories of exercises: discussion-based and operations-based forming a continuum from the easiest to arrange and hold -- the seminar -- the the most complex -- the full-scale exercise. Ideally, an organization intent on practicing or improving its preparedness efforts would go through the steps in order, allowing them to catch and correct problems earlier in the process, when fixes aren't as complicated (or expensive) to achieve. It also allows the organization's staff to become used to the process. The idea is that by practicing these responses, should the event actually occur, staff will have "experienced" the situation often enough to not panic.

Unfortunately, America generally does not begin planning for a disaster until after the disaster has occurred. Shortly after 9-11, Bush administration officials said "no one had considered the possibility of intentionally crashing planes into buildings," despite the fact that merely 60 years earlier, the Japanese had done almost the same thing, with their kamikaze pilots intentionally flying their aircraft into Allied vessels in the Pacific. Plus, Tom Clancy's 1994 novel, Debt of Honor, ended with a Japanese pilot intentionally crashing his 747 into the Capitol Building during the State of the Union address... a full seven years before 9-11. And it was already proven that planes collided with buildings: in 1945, a B-25 bomber, enveloped in dense fog, crashed into the Empire State Building in New York City.

Rick Rescorla, whom I have mentioned before, was British-born, and had experience in both the British and United States military, plus police experience in Rhodesia and London, before becoming director of security for Morgan Stanley. After the destruction of Pan Am Flight 93 over Lockerbee, Scotland, in 1988, Rescorla became interested in terrorism, and asked a friend with extensive training in the field to examine the (then) Dean Witter offices at the World Trade Center. The friend said the most likely spot for a terrorist attack was in the basement of the building, in the parking garage. Five years later, Islamic fundamentalists parked a truck full of explosives next to a main bearing column and detonated it.

After the botched response to the 1993 WTC attack, Rescorla decided to institute a series of regular evacuation drills, feeling that lost productivity and lost income was far less important than ensuring the safety of the Morgan Stanley employees. Of the 3,700 Morgan Stanley employees at WTC on 9-11, only six perished: Rescorla and five other security staff who were helping other tenants escape.

His recurring drills were key to the Morgan Stanley staff keeping their wits about them as they evacuated, despite announcements from the Port Authority that the buildings were safe and no evacuation was necessary.

Drills work, but they have to be accomplished appropriately.

Right-Wing Extremism in Law Enforcement, Part I

All of us in law enforcement must be honest enough to acknowledge that much of our history is not pretty.[1]

~ Former FBI Director James Comey

I have been saying for a while – and the FBI has been saying it for years – that far-right extremists are actively infiltrating law enforcement and the military, and there is rampant and blatant racism within the ranks of those whose job it is “to serve and to protect.”

Law enforcement has always had its warts, whether in the “slave patrols” of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the widespread police corruption during Prohibition, the continuing corruption during the “Serpico Era” in NYC, the Civil Rights conflicts in the 1960s, or today’s open racism in places like Ferguson, MO.

Years before I entered law enforcement, my great-uncle, who had been a patrolman with the St. Louis County Police for 40+ years, told me that law enforcement was “the greatest calling,” about medicine, above the law, above even the clergy, and certainly far above politics. To paraphrase what Uncle Fred told me:

We are there on the best days and the worst days in peoples’ lives. We are there when they are born and when they die. We tell wives their husbands are never coming home, we tell parents their sons and daughters have been killed in crashes, we tell young children that they will never see Mommy and Daddy again. We hear their deepest, darkest secrets, we see their lives of despair. We see their lives crash around them. We must be confessors, marriage counsellors, referees, friends, disinterested strangers, often all at the same time. We must have the wisdom of Solomon and the compassion of Jesus.

Uncle Fred, by the way, never sought promotion, for in those days, the higher one’s rank, the greater the exposure to corruption became. Fred’s reputation for fairness and decency was widespread through St Louis County in those days: those being sought by the cops would surrender to him, knowing that he would not brutalize them as they were being booked (remember, this was before the days of Miranda and Brinegar and Mapp and Escobedo and Gideon) [2]

Police officers, and others in emergency services, see and hear and smell things no decent person should ever be exposed to. We pull wax-encapsulated corpses from our waters, we dig through fire scenes for charred remnants of what used to be living men and women. Sometimes, all we can do is hold their hand and comfort them as they die, trapped in the mangled wreckage of their cars, as they cry for their mothers (strangely, never the fathers). Sometimes, we can’t even do that, and all we can do is listen to them scream in agony as they burn to death because the Fire Department hasn’t arrived yet. We have cut down teens who hanged themselves because their parents couldn’t handle the thought of their children being gay. Yet, through it all, many manage to maintain the compassion and empathy that drew them to the job in the first place.

In fact, I believe law enforcement overwhelmingly attracts people who want to do good for a living – people who risk their lives because they want to help other people. They don’t sign up to be cops in New York or Chicago or L.A. to help white people or black people or Hispanic people or Asian people. They sign up because they want to help all people.[3]

But here I must respectfully disagree with Director Comey. But there are others, relatively few compared to the million or so sworn law enforcement officers in the United States, who enter the field for the wrong reasons: to address perceived wrongs against them, to settle scores, to make sure “those” people “know their place.”

There are far-right extremist groups – the Oath Keepers, the Ku Klux Klan, the Three Percenters, militia movements and other anti-government extremists – who are actively encouraging their members, both overt and covert, to enter law enforcement, to bend the mindset of the profession to more closely reflect their own warped views. The Verge, an on-line news organization, reported on research they conducted that identified at least 400 police officers as member of extremist groups, with approximately 150 being members of the most extreme groups.[4] Back when I was a police officer, back in the 1970s and 1980s, in Connecticut, there were large numbers of openly racist officers on the job; the situation has only gotten worse in the intervening 30 years. More recently, 14 San Francisco police officers were caught exchanging racist and homophobic text messages, including, “all ni**ers must f**king hang.”[5] Most of those officers remain on the job, as a court blocked disciplinary actions based on a statute of limitations. Even a cursory examination of the public comments on law enforcement news sites reveal truly vicious racist opinions being expressed by law enforcement officers and their supporters. For instance, the far-right website UNZ Review, in an article discussing the murder of Appleton, WI, firefighter Mitch Lundgaard, comments mentioned “two-legged brown turds,” and “the Negro,” and “Chicongo” (a racist reference to Chicago).[6]

We must work – in the words of New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton – to really see each other. Perhaps the reason we struggle as a nation is because we’ve come to see only what we represent, at face value, instead of who we are. We simply must see the people we serve.[7]

These extremists, however, are often ignored, and their danger swept under the rug. In part due to a lack of a standardized selection process or operational standards, “state and local police as well as sheriff’s departments present ample opportunities for white supremacists and other right-wing extremists looking to expand their power base.” [8] Some of these groups infiltrate members into law enforcement in order to warn crews of ongoing investigations or potential enforcement actions; others seek to subvert the agencies to their own ends.

As the Verge article points out, many of these far-right officers are active on the many racist and hate groups on social media. Facebook, roundly criticized for its inability – or perceived refusal – to moderate or block these groups, announced new measures to reduce the impact of hate groups, extremism, and misinformation on its platform.

But there’s no evidence to suggest that Facebook is taking a more active role in moderating these groups’ activities – in fact, the opposite appears to be true. And the notion of active duty police officers with access to firearms participating openly in bigotry and potentially violent online behavior is worrisome for how it could translate to offline actions in the future.[9]

It also appears that there is a certain amount of consideration offered to the far-right posters that is not available to others. I reported a certain post, possibly written by a law enforcement officer, based on the use of police 10-codes in his profile, to Facebook for promoting hate speech; Facebook replied that the post “does not violate our community standards.” I shared the post to my page, with the comment, “This is how they talk of us,” and was promptly banned for a month… for “hate speech.”

Law enforcement is a closed society, with outsiders considered potentially dangerous. The “Thin Blue Line” concept originated to indicate law enforcement’s stance as the line between order and chaos. These days, however, it is more of a rallying cry, and like the “Blue Lives Matter” movement, is used to shield officers from outside scrutiny, by painting those with grievances as anti-police, and hence, anti-law-and-order. The law enforcement community today enforces a “code of silence” that makes the Mafia’s “Omerta” pale by comparison, and effectively forces honest police officers to help protect corrupt officers from being held accountable for their actions.

Another major problem with combatting the extremists’ attempts is that there is no general consensus on classification of extremist actions: some states treat them as hate crimes, others as terrorist activities, and still others consider extremist activities to be gang-related, relegating it to the same (low) priority as motorcycle gangs dealing meth. The Federal government is even more confusing in its treatment of these crimes.

---

[1] James B. Comey, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Hard Truths: Law Enforcement and Race,” speech delivered at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, February 12, 2015; www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/hard-truths-law-enforcement-and-race, retrieved 07-04-2019

[2] Respectively: Miranda v. Arizona, 384 US 436, 1966; Brinegar v. United States, 338 US 160, 1949; Mapp v Ohio, 367 US 643, 1961; Escobedo v Illinois, 378 US 478, 1964; Gideon v Wainwright, 372 US 335, 1963

[3] Comey, “Hard Truths”

[4] Statt, Nick, “Hundreds of active and former police officers are part of extremist Facebook  groups,” www.theverge.com/2019/6/14/18679598/facebook-hate-groups-law-enforcement-police-officers-racism-islamaphobia, retrieved 07-04-2019

[5] Cited in Speri, Alice, “The FBI has quietly investigated white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement,” www.theintercept.com/2017/1/31/the-fbi-has-quietly-investigated-white-supremacist-infiltration-of-law-enforcement/, January 31, 2017, retrieved 07-04-2019. Expletive deletion added

[6] Kersey, Paul, “His Name Is Mitch Lundgaard: White Firefighter In 82% White City Murdered By Black Criminal After He Revives Him from Overdose,” www.unz.com/sbpd/his-name-is-mitch-lundgaard-white-firefighter-in-82-white-city-murdered-by-black-criminal-after-he-revives-him-from-overdoes, June 15, 2019, retrieved 07-04-2019

[7] Comey, “Hard Truths” Emphasis added.

[8] Speri, op cit.

[9] Statt, op cit.

Yeah, About That...

Haven't yet, but with all the RWNJs out there, it's just a metter of time.

 

Source: http://hahagotya.com/11168/seen-this-on-facebook-yet/

Fresh Mushrooms...

As Saint Ronnie said, "well, there you go again..."

The rethuglicans are returning to one of their previous, less-than-stellarly-successful campaigns. I saw an ad on YouTube, decrying the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran, culminating with the ominous warning that if we don't stop Obama now, we'll have a mushroom cloud next week.

Apparently, the best way to prevent a nuclear (or as they pronounce it, "nukuler") holocaust is to... nuke Iran.

How long has that meme been floating around?

Since friggin' 1980!

Initial Thoughts on Boston

First and foremost, prayers and best wishes for the runners, volunteers, police, fire, EMS, and other emergency personnel who responded to today's horrific events. I hope Obama sticks by his word (for once), and doesn't wimp out on prosecuting -- or killing -- whoever did this.

A few things that the investigators are almost certainly working on:

• April 15: Tax Day, hated by many far-right-wing anti-government extremists
• Patriot's Day: another potential "inspiration" if this were, in fact, a right-wing "Patriot" whackjob
• Boston: where the Tea Partiers got their inspiration, from the "patriots" who took part in the Boston Tea Party
• Massachusettes has fairly tough gun registration laws
• The race was dedicated to the victims of the Newtown shootings, which instigated nation-wide calls for effective gun control
• Massachusettes has a black governor
• The US has a black President

Am I saying that some right-wing McVeigh wannabe did this? Nope, I'm not saying anything of the sort. Just mentioning these points that may have played into some Patriot/Teabagging/Tax Protesting/anti-gummint/black-FEMA-helicopter racist gun nut small-penis-compensating loser deciding this was a way to strike a blow against the New World Order, Moozlums, and other scary people or whatever loser belief system this mutt or mutts might have.

I also noticed that during the second, prime-time special on NBC, anchor Bryan Williams said, "For all the wrong reasons, we've been fighting two wars for the past ten years," referring to the fact that many returning combat medics have seen these horrific injuries before.

My personal bet is some far-right-wing whacko like Eric Rudolph, Jared Loughner, McVeigh...  One of those losers.

TSA Strikes Again... With Credit Where Credit is Due?

I don't really know if this should be filed under "TSA Strikes Again" or "Credit Where Credit is Due."  Senator Rand Paul (Teabaggin Independent Lunatic Fringe) was denied boarding at Nashville, after he refused a pat-down search (he had allegedly "triggered a routine alarm").

"When an irregularity is found during the TSA screening process, it must be resolved prior to allowing a passenger to proceed to the secure area of the airport," TSA spokesman Greg Soule said in a statement. "Passengers who refuse to complete the screening process cannot be granted access to the secure area in order to ensure the safety of others traveling."

At least the TSA goons treated a teabaggin "moran" the same way they treat us.

Jeez...

Six months since my last post? My, how time flies when one is truly disgusted.

Part I - Obama, Son of bush?

First off, we have President Obama, who seems bent on becoming bush Dark. His administration -- campaign promises to the contrary notwithstanding -- has failed to do anything about Gitmo, has tried to support the bush junta's claims to "zeckative privalige" in dealing with secrecy, and has now proposed weakening -- they call it "adjusting" or "tweaking" -- the Miranda warnings, saying that alleged terrorists should be questioned without being informed of their Constitutionally-guaranteed rights. The last time this horrific idea popped up was during the regime of St Ronnie; back then, everyone -- even the police -- opposed weakening the Miranda ruling.

For those not old enough to remember 1966 (and who have never seen any of the ubiquitous cop shows on TV), the Miranda warnings are a recitation of Constitutional rights that a police officer must give a criminal suspect, under certain circumstances (not, as seen on TV, each and every time a cop arrests someone). The warnings were initially criticized by then-President Richard M Nixon (who certainly knew a bit about criminal behavior) as "handcuffing" the police. Research since then has shown, however, that the conviction rates actually increased post-Miranda, in that cops actually had to, you know, investigate and gather evidence and all that good stuff, instead of relying on a coerced confession.

The far Reich-wing fanatics seem to have found a new ally in their effort to demonize anyone darker than Edgar Winter.

Part II - The Watch List and the Second Amendment

Now this one is just too bizarre to believe, yet it is really happening. The NRA's Congressional butt-kissers are fighting a proposal to ban folks on the terrorism watch list from buying firearms. Yup, Lindsey Graham and his gun-nut lunatic friends want to ensure that even though the United States demonizes anyone darker than Edgar Winter (see above), those Allah-lovin' terrists will still be able to pack heat.

And they claim to "love America..."

Part III - Palin & Co

Good God, is this woman still around? Why hasn't she been indicted?!?

And I just LOVE the way Bristol -- who is only 19 years old -- was spotted in a bar after giving one of her patented "let's all be nice and moral now, shall we?" speeches. Even the flippin' Free Republic(!) was annoyed.

I wish the Wasilla Hillbillies would go the hell away.

Part IV - "Family Values" and MC Steele*

Lordy, Lordy, where to start? Yet another "Family Values" Rethuglican has been busted with his boytoy, in this case George Alan Rekers. Rekers, a Baptist minister and anti-gay activist, got caught with a professional rentboy who touts his " 'smooth, sweet, tight ass' and 'perfectly built 8 inch cock (uncut)' and explains he is 'sensual,' 'wild,' and 'up for anything' — as long you ask first. And as long as you pay.' as the Miami New Times put it.

And Mikey Steele asked the party of fiscal responsibility to get him a private plane, like the rest of the rich kids, before he got caught splurging (and perhaps splooging) at a lesbian B&D club.

(* I'm not sure who dubbed him thus, but I first saw it at Dependable Renegade)

Part V - Arizona Wants Me...

...but only if I'm white. The great State of Arizona, the state where Sheriff Joe Arpaio houses inmates in a "tent city" and issues pink underwear, has a new law, allowing the Arizona Schutzstaffel (or ASS) and the Redneck Gestapo to stop anyone darker than Edgar Winter to verify that such "messican bandito" is in the country legally. Now, you just know that only the brown/black/red crowd will be stopped under the provisions of this law since, as one blogger pointed out, there aren't many illegal Canadian or Polish nationals in or around Phoenix.

And what about McCain's adopted daughter Bridget? How many times is she gonna get stopped before Daddy pitches a fit?

__________

And so, in conclusion, let me say that I am disgusted at the current political climate in this country, I am disgusted at the level to which personal responsibility has sunk, and I am disgusted at what has become of our nation of laws.

I wonder if Firestarter 5 will let me crash with him for a few days...

Disgusting. Absolutely Dee-skus-ting.

Last week, an AP reporter and photographer stopped at the Oak Hill General Store in Standish, Maine (about 20 miles NW of Portland), to check a tip about an "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool," in which bettors could wager on the date that President-Elect Obama would be assassinated.

Portland Press-Herald columnist Bill Nemitz:

It all started 11 days ago when The Associated Press in Portland received an anonymous tip of a sign inside the store announcing the "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool."

AP writer Jerry Harkavy and photographer Bob Bukaty took a ride out and, sure enough, saw those very words scrawled across a whiteboard inside the store.

Before they were rebuffed by a man behind the counter who wouldn't give his name, Harkavy said, they also noted that to win the $1-per-entry pool, a contestant had to pick the date that President-elect Barack Obama would be assassinated.

"Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. And at the bottom of the board were the words: "Let's hope someone wins."

Of course, the Secret Service, the state AG's office, and the Cumberland County Sheriff are all investigating.

Note that the store is advocating the use of violence in the furtherance of a political objective. Guess what? Under Federal law, that makes the Oak Hill General Store a terrorist organization. I'd love to see the Ministry for Homeland Security swoop down on them.

Steve Collins, owner of the Oak Hill General Store, supports terrorism and murder. He should be arrested on terrorism charges.

The fine God-fearing folks who bought squares in the pool should also be arrested, for their obvious terrorist symapthies.

There have been other racially-tinged incidents in Maine, too:

Closer to home, a student was suspended from Gray-New Gloucester High School after standing up in class and delivering a racist, anti-Obama rant. And on Mount Desert Island, police are investigating three cases in which all-black, cardboard cut-outs of human figures were hung from trees along roadsides just after the election.

This is Maine, for God's sake. Maine, not Alabama or Mississippi or Arkansas.

Nemitz asks what can be done:

Thomas Harnett, Maine's assistant attorney general for civil rights education and enforcement, said it's too soon to determine what legal action, if any, might stem from the Oak Hill General Store sign. But he agreed with Wessler [Stephen Wessler, executive director of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence] that what law enforcement sometimes can't accomplish, community outrage can.

"The best way to counter hateful speech is to assert one's own right to free speech," Harnett said. "It's very important for people to speak out loudly and clearly and powerfully that this is not how Maine feels."

I'd say the decent people in Standish -- which voted for Obama -- should shun the Oak Hill General Store and leave it for the local KKK contingent. I doubt there are enough racists in town to keep the store alive, especially in this economy.

Maybe someone should grab the wire frame from a campaign sign and designate the store "Standish KKK Headquarters" or "We Support Terrorism and Murder."

Oh, and when the story broke on AP, Collins -- being the brave, courageous terrorist that he is -- fled to an undisclosed location in northern Maine for some hunting.

Stevie, you like posting hateful speech, so come on back and face the music.

You hateful, racist,neocon pussy.

Journalists vs. Sportscasters

In my last post, I mentioned the difference between journalists and sportscasters. Sportscasters, by and large, should never, ever claim to be serious journalists. Not that they're not professionals, they're just not journalists. They don't have the right instincts. There are a few who have the proper journalistic reactions, however. Jim McKay of ABC Sports earned a spot in my personal Journalists Hall of Fame during the 1972 Munich Olympics.

For those who weren't paying attention 36 years ago, terrorists invaded the Olympic village and seized the building housing Israeli athletes. After some tense but fruitless negotiations, German authorities stormed the building. Eleven Israelis and five of the eight terrorists were killed.

McKay was covering the Olympics for ABC Sports, but when confronted with the news story of the decade, he handled it in a manner worthy of Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite. McKay's reporting of this horrific attack went well beyond anything a sportscaster could have imagined. There were no scores to report, no useless stats, no color commentary or play-by-play, in the sense those terms are used by sportscasters. McKay, however, applied his training to a "hard news" story; in fact, his coverage of the situation was far better than some of the real journalists in Germany on other assignments (who had been rushed to Munich to report on the massacre).

A more recent example of how I view journalists and sportscasters occurred in 2005 at the studios of WDIV-TV, Channel 4 in Detroit. A local wacko, who had been haunting the area around the studios, managed to get into an outer lobby of the building. An alert receptionist locked the door to the inner lobby, trapping the gunman. Unfortunately, a former WDIV employee was also trapped, and was seriously injured.

As the situation was unfolding, Detroit police sealed the building... with the entire news staff inside, while everything was happening outside. WDIV anchor Steve Garagiola (son of baseball legend and Hall of Fame broadcaster Joe Garagiola) managed to sneak out of the building (I don't remember if he found an unguarded fire exit or climbed down a drainpipe). Just about every member of the news staff was involved in the coverage. Meanwhile, the Sports Department staff was inside... hiding under their desks.

Yeah, Steve started out in sports, as might be expected, given the family history (his brother, Joe, Jr, is the general manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks). As a sports reporter for WDIV, he was in Atlanta for the 1996 Olympics; after the Centennial Park bombing, he made a surprisingly smooth transition from sports to news.