Buh-bye, and Thanks for Playing

A person I've known for more than 30 years is famous in our neck of the woods for constantly bitching about people generalizing. If one did not provide full names of each and every person in a group, one was generalizing. If one said, for instance, "by and large, Middle Easterners tend to have swarthy complections," she would bitch that one was generaling that ALL Middle Easterners were swarthy. She told me that I was generalizing when I said devout Catholics follow the teachings of the Catholic Church.

She got pissed at me a few weeks ago, and said, "that's what I should have expected from a damned German." I came back with, "Whoa, there, NOW who's generalizing?" She said, "Big difference .. all you Germans ARE Nazis. Always have been, always will be."

She's gone and blocked.

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, Pat IV

Another law enforcement officer has made it clear he is there "to protect and to serve" only white "christian" conservatards.

A cop (and I hope, soon-to-be-former cop) in Gretna, LA, one Charlie "Bubba" Rispoli, wrote on Facebook that "this vile idiot [Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,D-NY] needs a round." He went on to add, "[and] I don't mean the kind she used to serve," referring to AOC's prior bartending experience. Not that Bubba knows anything about bartending: he sounds more like a beer-anna-shot type of dude... a Lone Star (which tastes like what I would imiagine bison semen tastes like) and a shot of Jack.

Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson had this to say: "Whether you agree or disagree with the message of these elected officials and how frustrated you may or may not get, this certainly is not the type of thing that a public servant should be posting."

Just to further point out how amazing stupid -- and unsuited for a career requiring minimal knowledge -- Bubba he, he was referring to an article clearly martked as "SATIRE." I guess ole Bubba, who probably spent the four longest years of his life in third grade before dropping out to get a job, thought "Satire" was what came after "Flighty" on the calendar.

Like all the other conservatards, ole Bubba thunk Ocasio-Cortez, along with Reps Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) should "go back to where they came from." In saying that, by the way, trump and his barin-dead butt-buddies are openly and blatantly violating Federal anti-discrimination laws. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission -- AN AGENCY OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT -- SPECIFICALLY CITED "GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM" AS PROHIBITED DISCRIMINATORY SPEECH:

Ethnic slurs and other verbal or physical conduct because of nationality are illegal if they are severe or pervasive and create an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment, interfere with work performance, or negatively affect job opportunities. Examples of potentially unlawful conduct include insults, taunting, or ethnic epithets, such as making fun of a person’s foreign accent or comments like, “Go back to where you came from, “ whether made by supervisors or by co-workers. 1

So once again, the Law-and-order party of law and order shows their collective ignorance of, and disdain for, the laws of the United States of America.

Of course, if the Goopers do manage to pass some sort of draconian anti-immigration bill and manage to force out Omar (she's the only one not born in the US), we could probably use the same law to get rid of Rafael Eduardo Hijo de Puta Cruz, immigration-hating immigrant and Canadian-born anchor baby spawn of cigar-sucking Cuban émigré, Castro supporter and Desi Arnaz wannabe Rafael Bienvenido Chinga tu Madre Cruz, who was born in Canada, which is not part of the United States. In fact, Canada has a large portion of the population who speak French, the language of France, which is also not part of the United States. Canada is also a socialist paradise, in that it has universal healthcare, which is creeping socialism. Plus, of course, Hijo de Puta Cruz’s father is from Cuba, which is not part of the United States, and has a population that almost exclusively speaks Spanish, the language of Spain, which is also not part of the United States, and is the language of Mexicans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans. Cuba is a socialist paradise, ruled over by Fidel and Raul Castro (who did not make convertible beds, despite what they would have you think), both of whom are Godless Communist Commies. In addition, Hijo de Puta Cruz’s “padre” was an ardent supporter of the Castro boys, both of whom, as noted previously, are Godless Communist Commies. 

To get back to Bubba and his buddies, though, This is just one more case of what emergency services blogger Dave Statter refers to as SMACSS: Social Media Assisted Career Suicide Syndrome. I would hope that by exposing his intolerance and bigotry to one and all, ole Bubba "has done gived Chief Lawson a 'scuse to fahr his good ole boy dumb-ass se'f."

__________
1.  https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/publications/upload/immigrants-facts.pdf, emphasis added

The “Plain View” List: The Saga Continues

A few days ago, I mentioned the “Plain View Project,” a group of researchers who identified and analyzed thousands of social media posts, written by hundreds of active and retired law enforcement officers around the country. The posts contained explicitly racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic content, as well as calls to commit acts of violence against certain classes of people, and calling on emergency services personnel to provide lower levels of services to those demographics.

The Plain View Project (hereinafter PVP) is named for the “Plain View Doctrine,” a legal concept that holds police officers may seize evidence of criminal activities that are in plain view, even if they do not have a search warrant. The doctrine hinges on a three-prong test, referred to as “the Horton test:”[1]

•      The officer is lawfully present at the place where the evidence can be plainly viewed;
•         The officer has a lawful right of access to the object; and
•          The incriminating character of the object is immediately apparent.[2]

The Project’s belief is that by posting messages to a public forum such as Facebook or Twitter, the officers have surrendered any “expectation of privacy” and that publishing these posts gives any reader the right of access to them. They also feel that explicit expressions of racism, white supremacy, Islamophobia, etc., that are “readily apparent” make the posts eligible for inclusion in their database.

As many of you know, I was a police officer for 14 years in Connecticut. Even in those days – the 1970s and 19802s – racism was rampant in the law enforcement community, although not to the extent that it is today. At the time, I thought I understood why. I didn’t condone it, but I understood it: police officers dealt overwhelmingly with African-American offenders (I am ignoring for the moment any underlying causation for the statement). If the vast majority of “dirtballs” we arrested were African-American, it seemed logical that, over time, officers would develop the opinion that all African-Americans were “dirtballs.” Obviously, it is not that simple. The “Have-Nots” will always be envious of the “Haves,” especially if they “have-not” because of the conscious actions of the “Haves.” The minority communities in those days (predominantly black and Hispanic) had little or nothing to begin with and would most likely never have the opportunity to get ahead, so it was understandable perhaps that they took whatever they could get their hands on.

In situations that still occur today, whites accused of certain transgressions – petty larceny, drunk driving, simple possession – were given a very different level of “justice” which usually consisted of a slap on the wrist from the officer and release, where minority subjects were arrested and formally charged. For example, Brock Turner, the Stanford University swimming star convicted of rape, was sentenced to only six months in prison, but served only three months (and complained about that).[3] There was also Ethan Couch, the Texas teen who killed four and injured nine others in a drunk-driving crash, and was given ten years probation, because he didn’t understand boundaries since his wealthy never set any.[4] I consciously tried to avoid that trap, and perhaps went too far the other way, arresting whites in cases where I gave minorities a break.

Be that as it may, however, there was wide-spread racism in those days, directed against all minority groups – blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Middle Easterners, Irish, etc. In some neighborhoods, the most bigoted segment of the population was the Italians, who referred to blacks as “mulignans” or eggplants, despite the fact that the “guineas” had themselves faced significant discrimination in the past.

Anyway….

On July 18, the City of Philadelphia fired 13 police officers for posts included in the PVP database, which the Philadelphia Inquirer called “an unprecedented wave of terminations.”[5]

I continue to be very angered and disappointed by these posts, many of which, in my view, violate the basic tenets of human decency,” [Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard] Ross said, adding that the department must “move past this ridiculous hate that just consumes this country and has done so for centuries.[6]

Among the posts identified by the PVP was one by Sgt Joseph Przepiorka – who probably would have been furious had someone referred to him as a “dumb Pollack” – showing a skeleton wearing an American flag, holding a gun, with the phrase “Death to Islam” across the top. Another, posted by Sgt Mark Palma, said “Got to make a trip to WAL-MART tonight, yes a friday [sic] night at the ghetto mart. Im sure ill c [sic] all types of creatures tonight.” One reply, from another officer, Sean Dandridge, said: You should bring some of my new invention: “HeffaRemover”. It smells of books, knowledge, and natural hair. Heffas don’t like any of the aforementioned things….” [7]

Of the 72 Philadelphia officers named by the PVP, 13 are being fired, 4 are receiving 30-day unpaid suspensions, 52 are receiving punishments ranging from reprimands to 5-day suspensions, and 3 are receiving no discipline.

The police union, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, of course, is hysterical that their members are being disciplined for being racists.

Meanwhile, in St Louis, another city named in the PVP report, Circuit Attorney[8] Kimberly M. Gardner named 22 police officers banned from bringing cases to her office, after the officers involved were identified by PVP. Her office will not bring charges, apply for search or arrest warrants, or allow those officers to testify, based on their involvement with racist and anti-Muslim posts.[9]

“Police integrity is at the core of the community’s confidence in the criminal justice system,” Gardner wrote. “When a police officer’s integrity is compromised in this manner, it compromises the entire criminal justice system and our overall ability to pursue justice.”[10]

Circuit Attorney Gardner is absolutely correct. When a police officer posts such explicitly offensive posts as those identified by the PVP, it does call the officer’s credibility into question. After all, can a police officer who posts anti-Muslim screeds be believed when he is dealing with a Muslim suspect? How about if the victim is Muslim… will he or she receive a fair and impartial investigation?

And, of course, the Police Officer’s Association, the St Louis police union, is shrieking that the officers’ personal and professional reputations could be permanently damaged if they are revealed as racists, white supremacists, or Islamophobes.  

Further west, in Phoenix, Police Chief Jeri Williams has pulled an unspecified number of her cops from their “enforcement assignments” and placed them on desk duty “so that they can’t engage with the public,” in response to the PVP findings. 97 Phoenix officers – 75 active and 22 retired – were identified by PVP researchers. “There were some employees that had some very egregious posts that were racist, sexually motivated, religiously motivated. Just pure hate,” she said. “And we need to look into the veracity of that potential misconduct.”[11] Phoenix Councilman Sal DiCiccio said anyone offended by the racist posts was a “liberal snowflake,” and that the posts aren’t indicative of a biased culture. His use of the term “liberal snowflake” indicates that he, as a staunch conservative, most likely agrees with the hatred posted. Phoenix PD, by the way, is 73% white, 19% Hispanic, and 4% African-American, in a city that is 42% white, 43% Hispanic, and 7% African-American.

Of course, racism in law enforcement is not restricted to the communities – Philadelphia, St Louis, Phoenix, Dallas, Dennison (TX), Twin Falls (ID), York (PA), Lake County (Florida) – included in the PVP database.

Former Detroit police officer Sean Bostwick was fired after posting “another night to Rangel [sic] up these animals.” Bostwick was already on thin ice, though, having had his probationary period extended due to low test scores and other issues.[12] Another (now-former) Detroit officer, Gary Steele, had numerous problems:

•           He and his partner Michael Garrison (now also a former officer) taunted a female motorist by saying, “Bey, Felicia,” as she walked home from a traffic stop in January of 2019. They posted a video to SnapChat, bearing frames that said, “What black girl magic looks like” and “Celebrating Black History Month.” (Garrison was also suspended for 60 days for shooting deer in a city park while on duty)
•           In 2018, Steele broke the arm of another black female, after an altercation.
•           Steele had a felony arrest record as a result of a 2008 incident in which he fired a gun at his girlfriend[13]

Mohamed Noor, a Somali-American police officer in Minneapolis was sentenced to 12-1/2 years in prison for killing a white woman, leading many to ask if the sentence would have been the same if the races of shooter and victim had been reversed (hint: no way, a white cop would not even have been charged, most likely, never mind convicted. For example, Officer Daniel Pantaleo of the NYPD, will not face charges for killing Eric Garner using a banned chokehold.)

Washington, DC, NYPD and LAPD have been in the news almost every week for one problem or another, many related to race relations in those cities.

All this is in addition, of course, to the vicious and disgusting posts on the Border Patrol Facebook group “I’m 10-15,” which I discussed several days ago.[14]

As a former police officer, things like this disgust me. The people who would post – and obviously believe in – such hatred and fear and loathing have no business being in law enforcement. They disgrace a once-noble profession.

I believe one could make a case that actions like these on the part of law enforcement are, in part, responsible for some of the recent attacks against law enforcement officers, such as when Jerad and Amanda Miller murdered  Las Vegas police officers Igor Soldo and Alyn Beck in 2014 (although both were also heavily involved in the “Patriot Movement” and other anti-government activities).

More later over most of tbhis same blog.

---

[1] Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128 (1990)

[2] Wikipedia.org, “Horton v. California,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horton_v._California, retrieved 07-20-2019

[3] People v. Turner, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner, retrieved 07-20-2019

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_Couch, retrieved 07-20-2019

[5] Palmer, Chris, “Philadelphia Police Department to fire 13 officers over offensive Facebook posts,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 18, 2019, retrieved 07-20-2019.

[6] Quoted in Palmer, above.

[7] Shaw, Julie, and Lash, Nathaniel, “Here are examples of alleged Facebook posts by Philadelphia police officers,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 1, 2019, retrieved 07-20-2019.

[8] Circuit Attorney is similar to District Attorney

[9] Byers, Christine, “22 more St. Louis officers added to list of cops on prosecutor’s ‘exclusion’ list,” St Louis Post-Dispatch, June 19, 2019, retrieved 07-20-2019

[10] Ibid.

[11] Garcia, Uriel J., “’Shocked’ Phoenix police chief pulls officers from duties after report of racist Facebook comments,” AZCentral.com, https://amp.azcentral.com/amp/1346135001?cid=twitter_azcentral&_twitter_impression=true, June 6, 2019, retrieved 07-20-2019

[12] Ramirez, Charles E., “Detroit police officer fired over social media post,” The Detroit News, Sept 24, 2018, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2018/09/24/detroit-police-officer-fired-0social-media-post/140740002/, retrieved 07-20-2019

[13] Jordan, Jeralyn, “White Detroit Police officer reassigned after taunting young black woman in Snaopchat video,” Detroit Metro Times, Jan 31, 2019, https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2019/01/31/white-detroit-police-officer-reassigned-after-taunting-young-black-woman-in-snapchat-video, retrieved 07-20-2019, and Siacon, Aleanna, “Ex-Detroit Police officers accused of misconduct in new lawsuits,” Detroit Free Press, Apr 26, 2019, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2019/04/26/detroit-police-racism-snapchat/3586812002/, -retrieved 07/20/2019

[14] http://618rants.blogspot.com/2019/07/far-right-extremism-and- facebook.html.

Google Business Verification

I just got call number1,523,864,273 starting with "Hello, and please don't hang up. We have been trying to verify your business with Google..." This time, instead of hanging up, I pressed one and spoke to someone named, I thjink, "Alicia," but her Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi accent was so thick, I couldn't understand a word she said. I siad I wanted to be removed from their call list. She said, "f*ck you," and hung up.

Way to build a brand, Google.

Gonna Be A Looooooooong Day

I’m stuck working with a rabid, far-right trumpette, who insists on making me listen to Faux, so I can “finally learn the truth: that Barack HUSSEIN Obama is a Kenyan Mooozlum and Clinton really did murder Vince Foster and she ran a child sex ring and eavesdropped on trump, who is the greatest American since Jesus.” When I point out that Jesus wasn’t American, she says “of curse he was, he was white, wasn’t he?” Umm, no, Jesus was a dark-skinned Jew.  “But God is white, so Jesus must have been white too.”

How can you argue with such profound proudly blind stupidity?

It’s going to be a VEREEEERRRRY LOOOOOOOOOOONG six hours.

Far-Right Extremism and Facebook

A while back, I mentioned the Facebook group “I’m 10-15,” which is the Border Patrol radio code for “alien in custody,” and the loathsome posts by current and former CBP agents. 

The online news site Revealnews.com recently reported on a number of “Confederate, anti-Islam, misogynistic or anti-government militia groups” who have public, private, or secret Facebook pages. Another investigative site, TheVerge.com, identified more than 400 law enforcement officers posting to hate groups. ProPublica.org cited a 2018 investigation into Border Patrol Agent Matthew Bowen, who referred to immigrants as “guats” (Guatemalans), “wild-ass shitbags,” “beaners” and “subhuman” (the Nazis used to refer to Jews as “sub-human,” as do their current adherents). And on Friday (July 12), Slate posted an article on the “10-15” group, including the interesting fact that Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost participated in the group, which has come under (well-deserved) fire for its hateful vitriol. The article says Provost commented on a post regarding her ascendancy to the head of the agency, but they very fact that she was able to comment shows (a) she was a member of the “secret” group, and, by extension, (b) she was familiar with the overall tone of the group.

Perhaps the most telling post on the “10–15” group is the one with the Associated Press photo of Óscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his 23-month old daughter Valeria, lying dead on the bank of the Rio Grande:

“Ok, I’m gonna go ahead and ask…… have y’all ever seen floaters this clean. [sic] I’m not trying to be an a$$, but I HAVE NEVER SEEN FLOATERS LIKE THIS, could this be another edited photo. [sic] We’ve all seen the the dems and liberal parties do some pretty sick things….”[1]

Politico reports that senior CBP officials had been told of the group’s existence as late as 2016, and that senior officials had been monitoring the group “as a source of intelligence,” but had apparently not taken any action against CBP officers posting racist or supremacist comments. The agency did not deny, however, that Provost and other senior Border patrol agents had participated in the group.

At its peak, the “10-15” group claimed about 9,500 members. The Border Patrol currently has about 20,000 active agents. Since the group includes retired agents, let’s be generous and say the pool of prospective members is 40,000 (20,000 active, 20,000 retired). 9,500 is roughly 25% of the total… a truly disgustingly large percentage, but reflective of the percentage of racists, white supremacists, xenophobes, and assorted other haters in law enforcement as a whole.

Many would say that this hateful speech is protected under the First Amendment. But retired TV newsman Dave Statter and attorney Curt Varone (and retired Deputy Assistant Fire Chief in Providence, RI) both point out that not all speech by public employees is protected. Statter refers to “SMACSS,” or “Social Media Assisted Career Suicide Syndrome,” in which public employees manage to shoot themselves in the foot with amazing regularity.

Varone cites the “Pickering Balance Test,”[2] which holds:

Public employees have protection under the 1st Amendment when they are speaking on a matter of public concern as a private citizen, and their interest “in commenting upon matters of public concern” outweighs the “interests of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.[3]

While this may appear to grant blanket protection to the speech, Varone discusses several caveats:

•          “… [If] public employee speech involves a matter of public concern and even if said as a private citizen – if the speech causes actual harm or disruption to the mission & function of the employer, there is no First Amendment protection. In this regard, speech of a racist or discriminatory nature has been found to be unprotected when it causes actual harm or disruption.” [4] [Emphasis in original]
•           Speech that threatens violence or harm or encourages others to commit violence/harm to any person or group loses First Amendment protection
•       Likewise, speech that threatens to or encourages others to withhold public safety services from any person or group is not protected.

Varone was responding to a social media post in which (now former) North Chatham (NC) firefighter Caleb Folwell stated “They should exterminate all captive [sic] right now and broadcast it over Mexican National TV to send a message if you cross illegally you die.” Caleb’s father, Jeff Folwell, was forced out as chief of the Julian Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department (where Caleb also volunteered) also as a result of the post.

Now, the question is, “what do we do about these hideous groups?” Politico said, “[…] it wasn’t clear as of Wednesday that either the Trump administration or Facebook would be able to shut the Facebook group down…”

Bull.

Facebook is a privately-owned entity, and the First Amendment, which protects against governmental infringement of speech, has no application there. Additionally, Facebook can, and has, shut down other hate groups recently. They are very quick to suspend users (including your humble host) who post disparaging comments about trump or the far-reich wing in general.

According to ProPublica, Heidi Beirich, the director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said she’d been pressing Facebook to pursue secret groups like 10-15 and hidden hate speech for years. Facebook, she said, “can use their AI or their people to identify these groups, and with the horrible language in there, they should have been finding these people.”[5] Since Facebook has been able to identify, and suspend, liberals referring to conservatives as “trailer trash,” it seems disingenuous for Facebook to claim they cannot identify hate speech in the extremist groups.

What is becoming clear, moreover, is Facebook’s apparent dedication to protecting the far-right extremists on their platform. Whether from a misguided sense of “fair play” for “the underdog,” or outright support for their hatred and loathing, Facebook is rapidly becoming the “safe space” for the far right, a place where they can post their hate and misogyny and supremacy and homophobia and xenophobia without fear of reprisal, while knowing that the “libtards” will be severely punished for hurting their feelings. And yet they have the nerve to call us “snowflakes.”

---

[1] I have seen “floaters this clean.” If a drowning victim is found within a day or two, there has not been an opportunity for decomposition to set in. Floaters achieve their gruesome appearance over a period of weeks or months, during which a process called “saponification” allows anaerobic bacterial hydrolysis of fat tissue, resulting in the formation of “adipocere,” a soapy or waxy substance (see, e.g., Kahana, T., et al., “Marine Taphonomy: Adipocere Formation in a Series of Bodies Recovered from a Single Shipwreck,’ Journal of Forensic Sciences, Vol. 44, No. 5, 1999, pp. 897-901) . Óscar and Valeria were found the morning after they vanished.

[2] Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563 (1968)

[3] http://www.firelawblog.com/2019/07/04/nc-facebook-post-results-in-two-cybercasualties/, 07-04-2019, retrieved 07-13-2019

[4] Ibid.

[5] https://www.propublica.org/article/investigation-of-secret-border-patrol-group-launched-as-new-degrading-facebook-posts-surface, 07-01-2019, retrieved 07-13-2019

Reviewing the 14-Year-Old Blogroll

(My God, my blogroll is older than the girls trump and Epstein like!!)

It's been a while, so I figured I would see which blogs I blogrolled were still active.

I also have two new ones to add, when I get energetic enough to update the blogroll, FireLawBlog (firelawblog.com, duh...). Attorney and retired chief officer Curt Varone's fascinating and informative analyses of legal problems affecting the fire service. The second is Statter911 (statter911.com, of course), by retired newsman Dave Statter... a great way to keep track of news of importance to the fire service. Pay special attention to his SMACSS pieces -- Social Media-Assisted Career Suicide Syndrome (similar to Chief Varone's YCMTSU category).

Political
BadTux, but he's at a new address: https://snarkypenguin.wordpress.com/
Skippy, The Bush Kangaroo, https://xnerg.blogspot.com/
Mustang Bobby, https://barkbarkwoofwoof.com/
Blue Gal, http://bgalrstate.blogspot.com/
Jurassic Pork, http://welcomebacktopottersville.blogspot.com/
Mock, Paper, Scissors, https://mockpaperscissors.com/


Medical
Ambulance Driver, http://www.ambulancedriverfiles.com/
Rescuing Providence, http://rescuingprovidence.com/ (Providence lost a great firefighter/medic when Michael retired)
The Happy Medic, http://happymedic.com/



Apparently Defunct
Ambulance Ranger
Firegeezer
Life Under the Lights
My Two Cents
White Noise Insanity

I was going through some on-line FEMA training, and ran across this little gem on disaster response:

Where State, tribal, or local governments are unable to establish or maintain an effective incident command structure due to catastrophic conditions, the Federal Government, at the direction of the Secretary of Homeland Security, may establish a unified command structure, led by the Unified Coordination Group (UCG), to save lives, protect property, maintain operation of critical infrastructure/key resources (CIKR), contain the event, and protect national security. The Federal Government shall transition to its role of coordinating and supporting the State, tribal, or local government when they are capable of reestablishing their incident command.1

This would be the same Department of Homeland Security that is currently running American concentration camps, demanding papers from citizens with dark skins, and arresting Americans for leaving water in the desert for people seeking a new life in the "land of the free [hah] and the home of the draft dod-- err, brave." The same DHS that has ALL the Federal law enforcement except the FBI. The same DHS whose CBP goons were sharing viciously racist posts on at least one FB group, and whose management investigated those posts... and did nothing.

Maybe I'm overly-paranoid when it comes to der trumpenfuhrer, but I can see him and his playmates declaring a "national emergency" that would "require" suspension of the Constitution.



1. IS-830, Introduction to NRF Incident Annexes, https://training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=IS-830, retrieved 07-07-19

Interesting...

I wonder how I managed to garner 114 page views at 4:00 AM today?

And all the views came from France.

Oh, My...

This is priceless. Just absolutely priceless.

Especially since it happened on Faux.

Bar patrons chanting "Fuck trump" after the women's team won their fourth World Cup.

Reporter didn't hear what the patrons were chanting at first. But WE did.

Srsly?!?

People are having tantrums because in the new Little Mermaid movie, Ariel is a mermaid of color.

Can you imagine what would happen if Tom and Jerry or Mickey and Minnie or Bugs Bunny or Captain America suddenly turned into characters of color?

The righties would freaking self-destruct!

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.