Crime | Fairly Civil

Chuck Schumer, Crime, Dianne Feinstein, Harry Reid, Jim Kessler, Nancy Pelosi, Pat Leahy, Third Way

Stop Blaming the NRA

In bad manners, Bushmaster assault rifle, Ethics in Washington, Guns, NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION, politics, Running Fire Fight, Semiautomatic assault rifles, Terrorism and counter-terrorism, The Great Stupid, Tired Old Republicans on April 19, 2013 at 9:07 pm

Napoleon at Austerlitz

Debate has raged for two centuries about whether Napoleon Bonaparte was a self-serving egomaniac, or a supremely confident leader driven by concern for the rights of the common person.

There is universal agreement, however, that–when he was on his game–he was a brilliant strategist and a tactical genius. He chose when and where to fight, picking the ground and the time with care. He had an uncanny ability to recall in minute detail aspects of the terrain. His personal courage was unquestioned.

The textbook example is the battle of Austerlitz, fought in what is now the Czech Republic on December 2, 1805. Like all brilliant commanders, Napoleon imagined the winning fight plan. Then he stuck to it with iron nerve and cold will, even when his subordinates lost some of their will. He thrashed a larger, better-trained, better-armed coalition of forces.

There will be no such debate about the claque of professional politicians and hangers-on who now run the Democratic Party. The latest gun control debacle has proven beyond argument that these hollow men are shallow, self-serving, and unfit for battle on behalf of innocent children and other living things. They are fit only to swell a crowd at a lobbyist fund-raising reception, or fill out a scene at a mawkish media event…little more.

“There Will Be Effective ‘Gun Safety’ Legislation in Our Time…Or Some Time. Maybe.” The Wisdom of the Third Way.

The only strategy they have imagined for two decades is appeasement and preemptive surrender. Like Oliver Twist, they hold up their contemptible little bowls and beg of the NRA and its right-wing allies, “Please, sir, I want some more.”

They have never, ever, not once, gotten more.

The saddest part of this ignominious disaster, this sadly inevitable thumping, is that everybody in professional political Washington wins. Only the rest of America–you, and I, and our children, and our children’s children–loses.

Harry Reid got to make a noble speech after decades–decades–of sabotaging serious gun control at the altar of the NRA and his own reelection. Pundits fawned over his “act of courage,” as if the man were only just born yesterday and had no record of perverse obstructionism.

Reid’s heir apparent, Chuck Schumer, played both ends against the middle, as is his canny wont. He avoided antagonizing the Senate’s “NRA Democrats,” yet got plenty of photo ops at weepy media events. So he’ll still get to be Senate Majority Leader.

Pat (“Brick”) Leahy got to muddle around in his peculiarly thick-witted and uninspiring public manner without doing much of anything to fulfill his public trust.

The list could and perhaps should go on.

There’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, who now professes to embrace gun control after years of cutting the throat of any Democrat–including the Attorney General of the United States–who dared raise the subject. Emanuel did as much as Wayne LaPierre to destroy the gun control movement. And Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose canonization is imminent after funding some puzzlingly bland Super Bowl commercials. Bloomberg showed up like a rich amateur in a pool hall. He had a million dollar suit and a wad of cash, and a slogan about so-called “illegal guns.” But Bloomberg never really understood the game and he still doesn’t. So he got snookered.

“Leaders” (cf., Nancy Pelosi) in the House will get a pass because the Senate’s fumbles saved them the awful embarrassment of having to actually try to do something themselves. Whew!

473px-Dianne_Feinstein,_official_Senate_photo_2

Senator Dianne Feinstein–The Only Living Profile in Courage in the United States Senate

The NRA will be roundly—and rightfully—blamed for masterminding the smoking field of shame that was the floor of the United States Senate when dusk fell on April 17, 2013. People who used to call themselves gun control advocates—but now prefer wimpier terms like “gun violence reduction advocate,” or even “gun health advocate”—are waving their rhetorical pitchforks at the senators who voted with the NRA, promising to exact vengeance. Perhaps they shall. Much remains to be seen. At the very least, they all got some nice meetings at the White House and on the Hill to put in their scrapbooks.

I say, stop blaming the NRA.

Start blaming your own leadership, the men and women who squandered, threw away, let slip out of their hands, the last, best opportunity to truly save lives that America is likely to see for a generation.

In military terms, the bumbling field marshals of “gun safety” chose to use their puniest weapon—the vanilla-lilac-scented, impenetrable bureaucratic doubletalk of “improved” background checks—and positioned themselves in a rhetorical swamp with a river to their back. Plan B did not exist.

The operatives of this army of incompetents actually set out to aggressively sabotage any talk of such dangerous things as assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in the inner councils of Washington Wisdom. Oh, no, you see, we can “respect gun rights” and find “common ground,” and that kind of talk … well, it just makes trouble in Happy Valley. Let our generals make parley with their generals in secret meetings. Like mommy and daddy, they know what to do. The polls will tell them.

Even had the NRA uncharacteristically ceded the field and allowed the pathetic Manchin-Toomey (and maybe -Schumer, who showed up at the press conference anyway) “compromise” (a weak compromise grafted onto on a weak compromise inscribed on a fig leaf) to pass, this scrivener’s curlicue on the arcane texts of the law would have had negligible effect on the blistering hurricane of gun violence that is America today. Negligible, in spite of all the hype with which “gun health groups” have hypnotized not only themselves but also many of the outraged mothers and fathers who trust the “experts” to know what to do.

It’s the guns, stupid!

The Machin-Toomey-Maybe Schumer-Pabulum would have no effect whatever on the guns. Nor would it have any effect whatsoever on the next Adam Lanza, who—mark my words—is out there right now and has, or will legally obtain, and would legally have obtained under Machin-Toomey-Maybe Schumer, his mass murder machine.

What would I have done, you may ask?

Well, I sketched out my ideas in an earlier post, here. Pick the high ground of the real world of American gun violence—the ruthless, greedy gun industry and its cynical mass-marketing of killing machines that have no place in a sane society–on which to do battle. Field a juggernaut of a bill, with the assault weapons and high-capacity magazine ban for starters, truly universal background check and waiting periods for enders, and a Draconian bed of tough regulation for the death merchants in between.

Starting with that proposal, I would have made the NRA and its minions fight their way up a long and difficult hill in the blazing sunlight, punctuated with hearing after hearing after hearing, evidential artillery pounding away at them with every step, its ammunition the bloody, sickening, graphic facts of what the industry and its products have done and are doing to our country. Fact-based images abound that are a million times more persuasive and inspiring than the brief-cases full of opinion polls favoring obscure “background check” language that the Third Way and other geniuses tote around to persuade the professional politicians they can do good without doing anything too dangerous to their careers.

Yes, I favor war on the Napoleonic model.

But “wiser” heads—the defeatists and appeasers of the Third Way and its ilk—prevailed, as they almost always do in Washington these days. The Senate leadership had, and no doubt still does not have, the stomach for a real fight. Heavens, it might cost them an election! The darling of this pusillanimously passive path, Chuck Schumer, smugly–smugly–called background checks the “sweet spot” of the legislative path. As if saving the lives of children were a baseball game.

Really? The “sweet spot?” How droll. What a clever sound-bite! The media loved it!

A Man Who Knows a “Sweet Spot” When He Sees … Or Holds …One.

The strategists of defeat will slink away now and point their nubbins’ fingers at the NRA and its herd of like-minded Senators, leaders for whom it must be said at least they stand up and fight for what they believe in.

But what do the denizens of the infamous “Third Way” believe in? The latest poll results. Nothing greater, or more noble, or more inspiring. Mere politics.

Because of decades of this flawed, cowardly and self-serving, merely political, arguably immoral, and certainly not moral strategy, more Americans will inevitably die preventable gun deaths, more terrorists and more criminals will easily get military-style guns, and the fabric of our society will be further rent by random gun violence from people who could pass any background check the minds of men like Michael Bloomberg or the Third Way’s operative Jim Kessler could ever dream up.

To those who are so deeply pained by this defeat, I say this.

Call your enemies to account, yes. But hold to an even higher standard your supposed “friends.”

a-combination-of-12-handout-pictures-shows-12-of-20-young-schoolchildren-killed-at-sandy-hook-elementary-school-in-newtown-conn-on-friday-dec-14-2012

Never Forget Them

Crime, drug trafficking, drug violence, gun trafficking, LAPD, Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations, Mexican Drug War, No Boundaries, NRA, prison gangs, Stratfor, Transnational Latino gangs, U.S. Department of Justice

No Country for Old Men: Why They Are Killing Our Cops and Prosecutors

In bad manners, Bushmaster assault rifle, Corruption, Crime, Cultural assassination, Drugs, Ethics in Washington, Gangs, Guns, Mexico, NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION, Police, politics, Running Fire Fight, Semiautomatic assault rifles, The Great Stupid, Tired Old Republicans, Transnational crime on April 4, 2013 at 2:15 pm

“Call it!”

Sometime between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m., about two dozen LAPD officers faced an angry crowd at the intersection of Florence and Normandie avenues. The cops were outnumbered to begin with, the crowd was growing into a mob, and the mob was howling mad at the police. An LAPD lieutenant, Michael Maulin, made a tactical decision that would cost him his career in the orgy of retrospective finger-pointing that followed the riots. He ordered the police officers to withdraw. The hard-charging, in-your-face, proactive thin blue line faded like a gaggle of Las Vega showgirls at curtain time. “It was widely believed in South Central that the LAPD did not want to protect the city’s poor, minority neighborhoods,” journalist Lou Cannon observed. “The shocking reality was that the LAPD was unable to provide that protection.”

Tom Diaz, , p. 96.

Thus was the iron-fisted, mirrored-sun glasses, take-no-prisoners, paramilitary creation of legendary chief Darryl Gates—the proud Los Angeles Police Department—humbled by the infamous “Rodney King riots” of April 1992.

The LAPD would never be the same.

The lesson for today is quite simply this: uniforms, badges, tough-guy swagger, ballistic vests, and most of all guns do not protect law enforcement. Respect and the healthy fear of consequence do. When a society surrenders those two foundations of “law and order,” there are not enough guns in the world—not enough good guys with guns—to protect police, prosecutors, and judges from men who are willing to kill them.

Now we are seeing the truth of this implacable maxim, revealed in a prophetic spate of ruthless murders of law enforcement officers. In Colorado, the state’s prison chief is shot to death on his doorstep. In Texas, two county prosecutors are shot to death in separate incidents. In West Virginia, a sheriff is shot dead in his car.These incidents are but the latest and most recent examples of a growing trend of blatant attacks on law enforcement.

Please note that it is not the quantum, the total of law enforcement officers murdered, so much as it is the growing demonstration of willingness to confront law enforcement with armed violence. And that willingness–that willful disregard of fear and respect–is the inevitable consequence of two long-term currents in the United States.

One is the suppurating wound inflicted on America’s public discourse by the reckless gospel of insurrection that has been promoted by the National Rifle Association and the gun industry that it represents since at least the 1980s. This rotting lesion has consequences that go far beyond the kabuki theater of rhetorical exchange in Washington, a place where both sides need each other for the show, and ritual has displaced action.

Emitted Little Thoughts Compiled in . . . ummmm... WTF?

“The guys with the guns make the rules.” Wayne LaPierre, Orifice-in-Chief of the NRA.

The stinking, hateful matter emitted by the NRA has dangerously infected the minds of many of the dullest and worst of our society. Ideas have consequences, and when the idea that “government is our enemy” is combined in the minds of the unbalanced and the psychopath with easy access to increasingly deadly guns…well, to all but the ideologically intoxicated, the inevitable is clear.

The other factor is the utter collapse of not only moral will, but moral discernment itself, in Washington. This infection at the heart of our political discourse has paralyzed a body politic that might with capable discernment and strong will have cured itself of the hateful wound inflicted by the NRA and its ilk.

What we see today—elaborated at length in —is the triumph of Third Way politics, micro-politics that seeks only political success for career politicians and their waddling retinue of mere technicians—pollsters, advisers, spin-masters, lobbyists.

These are people—Democratic party leaders and their fawning servants—who describe in great detail the polling, focus with frightening precision on the tiniest “swing” group, and then define a message that will appeal to that micro-fraction of America.

These “leaders” have, in the end, defined themselves as soulless people, willing to accept only “what we can get” and “what is politically feasible” in place of real change. They are either incapable of—or unwilling to—make grand moral judgments, define causes to lead, and stand up for principle. Reelection for its own sake is enough.

Thus has the powerful chorus of national moral outrage that followed the Moloch’s slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School been pared down to a whimper, to “negotiations” about inconsequential legalisms between the likes of the artfully consummate Third Way deal-maker Sen. Charles (“Chuck”) Schumer and the implacably thick-witted Senator Tom Coburn.

Career politicians bond over a dead bird…

While these career politicians—many of whom have never done anything of substance in their lives other than curry elective favor—nitter and natter around the margins of America’s gun problem, the country is sinking to its gunwales in military-style firearms. Disrespect for law enforcement burgeons among radicals and career criminals alike, fueled by an irrational hatred of compromise and fact-based discourse.

Industry Puppet NRA Calls These Romanian Assault Rifles Just Plain Old Sporting Guns--Are They That Stupid Or Are They Just Liars?

…while the mentally ill, criminals, and extremists bond with the gun industry and its handmaiden, the NRA, over military-style guns.

If this sounds like Mexico, it is.

Conventional wisdom has always been—and still is among conventional “expert” thinkers like those of the hapless private spy agency Stratfor which, not incidentally, failed to protect its vast files from hacking some months ago—that organized gangs and transnational criminals will never attack law enforcement in the United States because the consequences would be too great.

Really?

This is the argument of the smug, the proud, and, oh, yes, by the way, the grand consultants retired from law enforcement selling their “expertise.” It can’t happen here because we are so good.

Well it is happening.

It is just as reasonable, and I would argue more reasonable, to conclude that the war for control has begun. We already see one federal prosecutor withdrawn from a major gang and drug prosecution. The drug “cartels” are not stupid. The examples recited above—no matter by whom they are ultimately found to have been perpetrated—make it clear that determined, ruthless men can indeed assassinate law enforcement officers pretty much at will in America today. So much for fear. It doesn’t matter, in the overall sense, who was behind the last four murders. What matters is the brazen impudence with which they were carried out. That’s straight outta

Do not for one minute think that the chill of necrosis is not creeping into hamlets, counties, towns, cities, states, and even Washington. A member of Congress who received multiple death threats for simply suggesting that gun owners be required to insure themselves decided, for example, to skip a public ceremony, mindful of the recent near-fatal wounding of another member.

Hysteria?

Vamos a ver. We’ll see.

Evil this way comes.

Alex Sanchez, Crime, Detective Frank Flores, drug trafficking, drug violence, FBI, immigration, Joltin' Joe DiMaggio, Judge Manuel L. Real, LAPD, Latino gangs, Latino Street Gangs, Mara Salvatrucha, Mexican Mafia, Mrs. Robinson, MS-13, street gangs, Tom Hayden, Transnational Latino gangs, U.S. Department of Justice

ALEX SANCHEZ — ACCUSED SECRET SHOT-CALLER — SPEAKS TO HIS SUPPORTERS

In bad manners, Corruption, Crime, Cultural assassination, Drugs, Gangs, Informants and other sophisticated means, Latino gangs, RICO, RICO indictments, Transnational crime on March 17, 2010 at 10:50 am

Alexander (Alex) Sanchez (AKA "Rebelde") Throwing Devils Horns Gang Sign

Alex Sanchez, the “anti-gang activist” who was accused last June of being a secret MS-13 gang shot-caller, is out on bail. (For background details, start here and follow the links.)

Sanchez’s lawyer successfully beat back an Associated Press motion to make public the transcript of the star-chamber secret bail hearing conducted under the octogenarian aegis of Federal Quirky Judge For Life Manuel Real. (Go here for details.) His Honor agree to protect the spineless political hack(s) who testified on behalf of Sanchez.

Lesson: the public has no right to know anything and the First Amendment rights of a Free Press do not reach into the Realm of El Rey Real.

Meanwhile, Sanchez’s supporters cooked up this nicely done video in which The Mother Teresa of Gangsterdom turns his soulful eyes to you (woo-woo-woo) in thanks. (Go here for link to the Simon & Garfunkel song, “Mrs. Robinson,” to which the preceding parenthetical refers, kid.)

A nice touch in this video — which is making the rounds of the “immigration rights” movement — is the background music, a cover of None of Sanchez’s bobbleheads want to get up, stand up, for their right, much less the right of the public, to know what went on behind locked doors in the chambers of Doktor Herr Schiedsrichter Real.

And completely forget about the rights of ordinary people to be free from gang violence.

As Kurt Vonnegut once wrote: poo-tee-wheet, poo-tee-wheet. Joltin’ Joe — a “Real” role model — may be gone, but we still have Alex!

Look around you, all you see are sympathetic eyes

Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home …

Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you, woo woo woo …

Joltin' Joe -- Son of Immigrants ... Not a Gangster

DiMaggio was born in Martinez, California, the eighth of nine children born to immigrants from Italy, Giuseppe (1872–1949) and Rosalia (Mercurio) DiMaggio (1878–1951). He was delivered by a midwife identified on his birth certificate as Mrs. J. Pico. He was named after his father; “Paolo” was in honor of Giuseppe’s favorite saint, Saint Paul. The family moved to San Francisco, California when Joe was one year old.

Wikipedia

Barrett 50 caliber anti-armor sniper rifle, Barrio Azteca, Crime, drug trafficking, drug violence, gun trafficking, Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations, Mexican Drug War, Mexican Mafia, Mexico, Transnational Latino gangs

50 CALIBER ANTI-ARMOR SNIPER RIFLE A FAVORITE OF MEXICAN DRUG GANGS

In bad manners, Crime, Drugs, Gangs, Guns, Latino gangs, Mexico, Running Fire Fight, Washington Bureaucracy on March 16, 2010 at 6:44 pm

We Feel You ... But Not THAT Much!

The murders of several U.S. citizens connected to the American consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico has elicited the usual transparently fake concern by the usual suspects in Washington.

President Obama sent out to a flack to say that the Chief Executive was “deeply saddened and outraged.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the murders:

… underscore the imperative of our continued commitment to work closely with the Government of President Calderon to cripple the influence of trafficking organizations at work in Mexico.

"Gun Dealers? I Don't See No Stinking Gun Dealers!"

The unspoken overalls in the chowder of Secretary Clinton’s declarations about working closely with Mexico and crippling drug lords is the fact — political, historical, and inconvenient — that the Administration of President Obama has no intention whatever of taking on the U.S. civilian gun industry (and import houses) that are major suppliers of firearms smuggled to Mexico for use by the drug gangs and other criminals.

One of the most popular is the Barrett 50 caliber anti-armor sniper rifle. Although its inventor calls his gun “an adult toy,” Mexican criminals understand its real capabiliities, which are basically its ability to punch holes in armor from a thousand or two yards away.

Although there is nothing amusing about the war in Mexico, here’s a charming little video about the Barrett rifle.

Alex Sanchez, Crime, Detective Frank Flores, drug trafficking, Latino gangs, Latino prison gangs, Latino Street Gangs, Mara Salvatrucha, Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations, Mexican Mafia, MS-13, No Boundaries, Transnational Latino gangs

ALLEGED SECRET SHOT-CALLER SANCHEZ BAIL HEARING STAYS ON DARK SIDE OF THE MOON — WHO IS BEING PROTECTED AND WHY?

In bad manners, Corruption, Crime, Drugs, Gangs, Informants and other sophisticated means, Latino gangs, Police, RICO, RICO indictments, Transnational crime on March 9, 2010 at 5:47 pm

Alex Sanchez, Accused by Feds of Being a "Secret MS-13 Shot-Caller" and Now Out On Bail, With A Friend in Happier Times

Having written extensively about the Alex Sanchez case, I was looking forward to the so-called “Daubert hearing” to test the expertise of LAPD Detective and MS-13 gang expert Frank Flores.

The hearing was originally scheduled for Monday, March 8, 2010.

But — lo and behold — that hearing has been mysteriously postponed, from Monday until late April — by mutual agreement of defense and government.

This struck me as curious, because Sanchez’s mouthpiece has been aching to do a legal orchiectomy on Det. Flores for almost a year.

Why postpone the surgery, I wondered?

So, I started poking around.

See, the last two big gangsters I have tracked who suddenly entered into a series of friendly postponements with the government were working out plea bargains (Nelson Commandari and a loathsome creature who went by the nickname of “El Culiche,” or “Tapeworm.”)

Please be sure to note that there is NO evidence whatsoever that Alex Sanchez is negotiating a plea, because he — to the contrary — insists he is completely innocent of the charges and can prove it, and his counsel is fighting like a banshee to do just that.

But I do like to keep track of these sealed filings — and there are a LOT of them in this case — because weird things happen all the time. Especially in the closed, secret, under-the-radar, star chamber type proceedings that federal criminal courts are turning into.

(This business of secrecy is serious, people. Some day it may be your turn to have some imperious life-time appointed judge and an arrogant, anonymous, bureaucrat-prosecutor seal your case off. Good luck to you, then, my friend. You will be a tree falling in a forest. See, it’s their government, not yours!)

Call me nosy.

Well, what a shocker!

It turns out that Los Angeles is not Kansas, Dorothy!

And open court has a totally different meaning, dude, in LaLa Land.

Like, get out and shut up, man!

Watch the Razzies or something.

What I found was a curious set of recent filings concerning the transcript of the famous closed Sanchez bail hearing.

If you read Fairly Civil, you may recall that the U.S. government’s witness list was inadvertently made available on PACER just long enough for me to find it and publish it before it was sealed!

On the other hand, Sanchez’s cozy little list of friendly witnesses have never been publicly disclosed. People of principle, but they like to keep their principles in the closet, you understand.

Judge Manuel L. Real, Presiding Over His Closed Star Chamber, to Public: "None of Your Damned Business."

Bottom line: Federal Judge Manuel L. Real has ruled against the Associated Press and ordered that the transcript of the secret, star chamber, bail hearing be kept sealed … i.e., none of us … none of Alex Sanchez’s many alleged ditto-head supporters … and none of his putatively former gangster buddies … can find out exactly what was said, by whom, and why the judge changed his mind and sprang Sanchez!

How convenient!

See, he’s innocent.

But you don’t need to know anything, except for the wonderfully redeeming power of Faith, man. Can you feel it, brother? Heal, I say! Heal! Satan, get thee out of this skeptic!

Apparently, AP reporter Christina Hoag reported Judge Real’s denial of its paltry motion on behalf of a Free Press and the Public. But the report was not picked up extensively. Certainly not in the Los Angeles Times. Yawn. More fun to read about the latest adventures of Lindsay Lohan.

Here is the state of play, as I make it out by reading the docket:

The Associated Press files a motion asking for the last Sanchez detention hearing transcript to be unsealed.
The U.S. government replies, OK by us, we agree there are insufficient grounds to seal the record, sure, unseal it.
But SANCHEZ (aka Mother Teresa of the Gang Universe), who one would think would LOVE to have the record unsealed to show how pure he is and deserving of release, has successfully opposed the AP’s motion!

So the record remains sealed. In other words, Sanchez does not want the public to read why he was released! (Please, counsel, spare me the phony argument that the hearing record contains hearsay and evidence that would be inadmissible at trial. What a crock!)

Not only that, a flurry of sealed documents have been filed in the case. Sorry, none of your business. Even requests to seal documents are sealed.

Why?

It might to some look as if Sanchez (and/or his lawyer) are trying to protect the politician(s) who showed up on his behalf, and who are rumored to have been City Council Member Ed Reyes and/or City Council Member Tony Cardenas, and perhaps others.

But that would be crass, cynical, and not at all like Mother Teresa, to whom some have compared Sanchez. You know, the truth shall make ye free, etc., etc.,etc.

Talk about judicial administration by the dark of the moon! Hey, I know, let’s seal the whole trial and just let Judge Real read from an envelope and announce a verdict, like the Oscars!

All the legal bureaucrats implicit in this charade can show up on the red carpet.

I can hear the snarky commentary now:

“OOOH, the new U.S. Attorney is wearing an absolutely daring two vent, European cut Navy blue pinstripe suit … oh, wait, it’s just the suit! How clever! And will you check out the alligator skin Manolo Blahniks lead defense counsel is wearing!”

Where are all the “civil liberties” advocates who would be going bananas if some common

Activist Tom Hayden Curuiously Silent on Judge Real's Little Judicial Gulag

thug were held two minutes incommunicado from the professional mouthpieces who service gangsters?

Where is WitnessLA? Where is the Gangsta Tea Party and Marching Social Justice Band that shows up at every public orchestration of the government’s horrible oppression of gangsters?

Where, for the love of all the Bill of Rights and “transparent” judicial administration are Tom Hayden, Barack Obama, and Eric Holder?

Apparently, they all agree.

It’s none of our damned business!

Amazing.

Truly amazing.

Judicial administration roughly equivalent to the Soviets dragging dissidents down to the cellar of Lubyanka Prison and putting a nice round of 9mm in the back of their heads.

Or, boiling frogs one degree at a time.

How does it feel, suckahs? Freedom rocks, right?

"He did NOT say that! Shut up! Get Out!"

18th Street gang, Alex Sanchez, Avenues Gang, Cosa Nostra, Crime, Detective Frank Flores, drug trafficking, drug violence, EME, Giovanni Falcone, Google acts like Chinese censors, LAPD, Latino gangs, Latino Street Gangs, Los Angeles gang tour, Mara Salvatrucha, Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations, Mexican Mafia, MS-13, No Boundaries, Paolo Borsellino, Sicilian Mafia, street gangs, Transnational Latino gangs, You Tube censorship

Why the Los Angeles Gang Tour and the Sicilian Mafia are Bad Ideas

In bad manners, Corruption, Crime, Cultural assassination, Drugs, Ethics in Washington, Gangs, Guns, Latino gangs, Marijuana Debate, politics, Transnational crime, Turf Wars on January 31, 2010 at 3:44 pm

Survivors of Gunshot Wounds Suffer Pain, Indignity, and Often a Life of Daily Horrors

“This isn’t the Boy Scouts. It isn’t the chess club. It’s a world of violence.”

Los Angeles Police Department Detective and gang expert Frank Flores, quoted in article on MS-13 trial in Charlotte, NC, Charlotte Observer, January 14, 2010

Just when you thought Los Angeles couldn’t get any goofier or more self-defeating, an entrepreneurial former gang member turned “anti-gang activist” has started a gangland bus tour.

Alfred Lomas, 45, a former gang member and the creator of the tour ($65, lunch included), said this drive-by was about educating people on city life, while turning any profits into microloans and other initiatives aimed at providing gang members jobs.

“A Gangland Bus Tour, With Lunch and a Waiver,” The New York Times, January 16, 2010

OK.

Like the mudslides and wildfires that remind us the Los Angeles Basin was intended by its Maker for other than human habitation, this idea roared through the arid mind canyons of the Left Coast and swept thoughtful analysis into the Pacific Ocean like so much polluted runoff.

Not on the Tour

First, let’s be clear about one thing. Lomas’s “tour” is going to skip the fundamental reality of gang life in Los Angeles. You know, the inconvenient bits – drug and human trafficking, extortion, robbery, theft, armed violence, and most of all the visible toll of the dead (think funerals) and the limping, less visible trail of walking or wheelchair-bound wounded (think spinal injuries and those little plastic waste bag appendages).

This You Tube video fills in that weak point of the enterprise.

NOTE: Some idiot at You Tube disabled the video I had posted here some months ago — without warning — on the grounds that the images of actual gunshot victims in the video were merely shocking.

You Tube’s Google owners have learned well from their Chinese masters. I’ll find another venue to host the video and add the link back here when I get it.

Meanwhile, I took down my You Tube site in protest of this idiotic and heavy-handed censorship. Be warned.

I assume that one of the LA gangster world’s bought-an-paid-for-politicians got to YouTube, or some other thug-hugger. In a paraphrase of Gen. Douglas MacArthur: The Video Shall Return.

Superficial Rationales Sufficient for the Chattering Class

Rationale # 1. “Hey, it’s America, right?”

“What the heck, market what you got,” said Celeste Fremon, who writes the criminal justice blog Witness L.A. and has studied the city’s gangs.

Although she disputed whether several of the sites had a solid gang association, she said, “if it makes money for a good cause, more power to them.”

Rationale # 2. “Hey, his heart’s in the right place!”

Kevin Malone, a former general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers who came to know Mr. Lomas through the center and is one of the financial backers of the project, said he might accept the criticism “if it was somebody other than” Mr. Lomas.

“But I know the guy’s heart,” he said. “He is not taking anything out. All he is doing is serving and giving. If that is exploitation, I hope somebody does that to me.”

Rationale # 3 (maybe … maybe not … demi-semi quavering). Gloria in excelsis scelestus ?”

Caregivers in Pediatric Intensive Care Units See Too Much of This from Gang Violence

“Everybody says we are the gang capital of the world, and that is certainly true, no denying that,” said the Rev. Gregory Boyle, who has spent decades trying to steer people out of gangs into legitimate work. “It’s hard to gloss over that. But there are two extremes we always need to avoid. One is demonizing the gang member, and the other extreme is romanticizing the gang.”

Snarky Rebuttals

With all due respect to Boyle, Malone, Lomas and Fremon, this is a bad idea on so many levels it makes LA’s most densely stacked freeway interchange look like a rural crossroads.

Snarky rebuttal # 1. Making money for a good cause? That’s the test?

Deep.

Let’s see, every whacked out terrorist in the universe – especially the ones who strap bombs into their underwear – thinks his or her cause is not only good, but also superior to every other cause on the planet.

Fund-raising for these “good causes” is intimately entwined in the depredations of global organized crime – included human trafficking, sex trafficking, drug trafficking, cigarette trafficking, traffic in phony products from lethal baby formula to fake designer jeans, and the bloody mayhem that accompanies all of the above. In fact, there is a school of serious thought that the war in Afghanistan is at least as much about the drug trade as the Taliban’s odd socio-religious tyranny.

Street Gangs are the Retail Outlets for Drugs in America

And by the way, the point of this spear of criminality comes right down to L.A.’s ubiquitous marijuana “clinics,” which are a wonderful system of retail outlets for the illegal production and trafficking in weed by the Mexican drug cartels and their affiliates, the Gangs of Los Angeles.

Bad idea, good cause.

Check.

Snarky rebuttal #2. “If it were anybody else …”

Say, what he say? This logic twists my mind like a pretzel.

Hmmm.

Okay, pick a hero in your life. Any hero. You know, like … um … Brangelina … Barack Obama … Mother Teresa … Alex Sanchez … Lindsay Lohan … Pat Robertson … Glenn Close … whoever you look up to in your personal universe.

Just imagine – stick with me here, this is just a “mind exercise” – that your hero decided that running 13-year old child prostitutes up from Pueblo Pobre, Qualquiera, and vending them out in slam pads was a damned good way to raise funds for … well, a good cause, no profit here.

Pick a Hero ... Any Hero

See, if it were anybody else … love the sinner, love the sin? Certainly, no one, definitely not Fairly Civil, suggests that there is anything unlawful about the gang tour. But the logic is the same.

Bad idea, good-hearted personal hero.

Check.

Snarky rebuttal # 3. The demi-semi quaver.

In fairness to Father Boyle, it is at least possible that he told The New York Times reporter that this gang tour was definitely a bad idea because it glorifies gang life. Reporters and editors sometimes cut out the sharp points in a “reader.” But the quote attributed to him came across as an “on the one hand, on the other hand” equivocation. What the modern news media call “even-handed.”

Well, be that as it may, here is a more pungent comment from another source:

Is there a danger of romanticizing or even glorifying the culture that has cost so many lives and caused so much heartache and tragedy to go along with the poverty that pervades the area? You think? There are a number of tours of past gangster lairs and stomping grounds from those occupied and traveled by Jesse James to John Dillinger to name only a couple. But those who made these locations infamous or famous are long gone and the thrill is far more benign than what one might expect where there still is ongoing horror.

“L.A. gangland tour is a bad idea,” Dan K. Thomasson, Scripps Howard News Service.

Human tragedy is human tragedy.

Check.

The Sicilian Connection

Cosa Nostra Assassinated Mafia Busting Sicilian Magistrates Giovanni Falcone (left) and Paolo Borsellino

Finally, it is instructive to look at this tour in the context of another gang-infested culture: Sicily, home of the original mafia, Cosa Nostra (not “La Cosa Nostra,” as the U.S. federal government mistakenly and irreversibly misnamed the American variant.)

It’s well worth reading the history and sociopolitical culture of this scourge. So much that is fundamentally bad about the Sicilian Mafia and its relation to civil life can be seen in the L.A. gang culture.

Self-marginalizing ethnic mythology and denial. “There is no mafia, it’s just a cultural thing we Sicilians have.” For nearly a century and a half Sicilian and other Italian chatterers – politicians, writers, academics – promoted the idea that there was no such thing as the mafia, in the sense of an organized criminal enterprise in Sicily. No, they said, “mafia” just means a prideful violence ingrained in the “character” of Sicilians. You know, like that Latino carnal and barrios stuff. We just can’t help ourselves. The gangsters, of course, loved this idea, and promoted it through the transmission belt of their “useful idiots” — even in the face of well-documented informants from as far back as the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries! The mob’s suckers included “intellectuals,” corrupted and gullible politicians, nitwit clerics, and the usual gaggle of do-gooders.
Corrupted members of church and state. To the shame of the Italian government and the Catholic Church, many politicians and priests were co-opted by Cosa Nostra. Some remain so to this day. Interestingly, a characteristic posture of the corrupted has been to publicly criticize the mafia and propose grandiose plans to attack it, while secretly undermining law enforcement efforts against the mobsters.
Attacking law enforcement and judicial authorities. One of Cosa Nostra’s classic tactics has been to attack – both physically and rhetorically – specific gangbusters in Italian law enforcement and in the Italian judiciary. In many cases, this was assassination intended to send a message that the mafia was above the law, in fact, was the law. In other cases, it was a smear campaign; a whispering, snickering current of innuendo designed and intended to undermine public confidence in law enforcement generally and in specific persons whose principled activities became a thorn in the side of the mob.
Culture of Criminality. The goal of socialization is to inculcate a “culture of lawfulness.” No matter what else one thinks of cops, there clearly are not enough of them to prevent every crime and stop every criminal enterprise. This is the job of that broader mass we call “culture” or “society.” In Sicily, the culture of lawfulness became a culture of unlawfulness. The vast mass of ordinary people came to accept the depredations of the mafia, because the very culture taught them there was nothing they could do about it. Many heroes of modern Sicily paid with their blood to reverse this perverse culture inversion.

Sound familiar?

You can read some of the best books about Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia, and decide for yourself. My recommendations:

John Dickie,
Alexander Stille,
Leoluca Orlando, .

Salvo Lima, One of the Sicilian Mafia's Politician Friends, Was Brutally Whacked When He Outlived His Usefulness

Alex Sanchez, Crime, Daubert Hearing, Detective Frank Flores, drug trafficking, EME, Judge Manuel L. Real, LAPD, Latino gangs, Latino Street Gangs, Mara Salvatrucha, Mexican Mafia, MS-13, RICO, street gangs, Transnational Latino gangs, U.S. Department of Justice

WAIT A MINUTE COACH! IS THAT PLAYER ELIGIBLE? MS-13 MOUTHPIECES GO AFTER KEY LAPD EXPERT WITNESS FRANK FLORES IN MARA SALVATRUCHA RICO CASE IN LOS ANGELES

In bad manners, Crime, Drugs, Gangs, Informants and other sophisticated means, Latino gangs, RICO, RICO indictments, Transnational crime on January 16, 2010 at 4:30 pm

Daubert Hearing Could Knock Expert Out of the Game

Los Angeles Police Detective and gang expert Frank Flores has been tossed on the griddle in the ongoing MS-13 racketeering (RICO) prosecution in Los Angeles.

But first, a big shout-out to Celeste Fremon and her WitnessLA blog, which was named “LA’s Best Police Blog” by LA Weekly. Although Fairly Civil and WitnessLA have different perspectives, Fremon and WitnessLA have done a great job of filling a vast vacuum — journalistic dark hole — left by the indifferent Los Angeles Times on this and other pivotal gang cases and programs.

Back to the subject at hand, the famous (or infamous) Alex Sanchez case.

According to the federal district court’s official minutes of a January 13, 2010 hearing – not (yet) sealed – Det. Flores will be grilled at a so-called “Daubert Hearing” in March:

The Court sets a Daubert Hearing on Detective Frank Flores’s expertise to testify for the government at trial as an expert witness on March 8, 2010 at 1:30 p.m., to be held in Courtroom 890 of the Roybal Courthouse.

“Criminal Minutes – General,” United States v. Jose Alfaro, United States District Court for the Central District of California, CR-09-466-R, filed January 13, 2010.

This could be huge, folks.

Just the Expert Facts, Please

Det. Flores has been in the defense lawyers’ sights from the beginning because it is his expertise that “connects the dots” among much of the cryptic gang talk on key wiretap tapes. He also can provide the “big picture” and overall perspective on MS-13 as a criminal enterprise – the core of a RICO conspiracy case.

Big gorilla of a question: Can the federal prosecution team keep Flores out from under the bus?

One may assume that the prosecution has other experts on its bench, but if Flores gets tossed, the defense will win a huge “moral” victory.

One may be assured, therefore, that this will be as rough and tumble a legal gang bang as Judge Manuel L. Real will tolerate in his courtroom. Let’s hope Judge Real keeps this one open to the public.

What the Heck is a “Daubert Hearing” and Why Care?

Fairly Civil is no expert on Daubert Hearings, but pulled together the following notes from a few websites devoted to the subject. (Links to sites are in the titles.)

What is a Daubert Hearing?

What is a Daubert hearing? It is, in effect, a mini-trial within a trial, conducted before the judge only, not the jury, over the validity and admissibility of expert opinion testimony.

…

Actually, of the trilogy of cases, Daubert, Joiner, and Kumho Tire, discussed at this symposium, Kumho Tire is perhaps even more important than Daubert because of two central points in that decision.

- It clearly states that a Daubert determination of reliability must be made in all cases where expert evidence is offered, whether we call it scientific evidence or technical knowledge or skilled profession.

- The Daubert inquiry is to be a flexible one. All of the factors identified in Daubert that guarantee the kind of reliability the Supreme Court said was needed for admissibility of opinions based upon scientific knowledge, such as replicability, established error rates, peer review, and so on, do not necessarily apply to all forms of expert testimony with the same rigor. They apply with full force only to those disciplines to which such factors can be applied. Conventional wisdom holds that these factors cannot be applied, in the manner spelled out in Daubert, to handwriting identification or to many other forensic sciences where cases deal with problems that are unique and where the accuracy of a specific finding cannot be stated with a measurable statistical degree of confidence.

Overview of the Relevant Law

Prior to the adoption of the Federal Rules of Evidence, all federal and most state courts followed the “Frye” test to determine the admissibility of scientific evidence. In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the United States Supreme Court held that the Federal Rules of Evidence, and in particular Fed. R. Evid. 702, superseded Frye’s “general acceptance” test.

Fed. R. Evid. 702 contains two requirements. First, the evidence must be reliable, or in other words, trustworthy. Trustworthiness guarantees that the information is supported by scientific methods and procedures. Second, the evidence must be relevant. The criterion of relevance has been appropriately described as one of “fit.” To satisfy this requirement, the proffered testimony or evidence must be sufficiently tied to the facts of the case that it will help the jury in resolving a factual dispute. “Rule 702’s ‘helpfulness’ standard requires a valid scientific connection to the pertinent inquiry as a precondition to admissibility.”

Faced with a proffer of expert scientific evidence, the trial court is charged with the role of “gatekeeper” and must initially determine, pursuant to Fed. R. Evid. 104(a), whether the expert is proposing to testify to scientific knowledge that will assist the trier of fact to understand or determine a fact in issue. This decision demands an evaluation of whether the reasoning or methodology underlying the testimony is scientifically valid and can be applied to the facts at issue.

In Daubert the Supreme Court provided four nondefinitive factors that trial courts should consider in making this determination. First, the court should evaluate whether the theory or technique can be and has been tested. Second, the court must determine whether the theory or technique has been subjected to peer review and publication. Third, the court should consider the known or potential rate of error. Finally, the court should evaluate the general acceptance of the theory in the scientific community. The Seventh Circuit has added an additional consideration: whether the proffered testimony is based upon the expert’s special skills.

In addition to these four Daubert factors, other safeguards exist to protect against the admission of unreliable or irrelevant scientific evidence. Federal Rules of Evidence 703, 706 and 403 each provide an independent check. Procedures familiar to every trial attorney, such as vigorous cross examination, the presentation of contrary evidence, and careful instruction of the jury on the burden of proof, also help guard against the acceptance of suspect scientific evidence. Finally, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure prevent cases from going to trial where the evidence is unreliable.

Potential Abuses and Misuses of Daubert Hearings

Abuses and Misuses of Daubert Hearings

In the following discussion one caveat is called for: We do not suggest that hearings on reliability and relevance are inherently inappropriate. Daubert challenges may, in fact, reflect attorneys’ confidence in their own experts’ views and justified suspicion of the experts’ opinions on the other side. Thus, in a best-case scenario, the challenge leads to achievement of a just and favorable outcome, obviating the expense and uncertainty inherent in a trial. Moreover, when an opposing expert is proffering innovative testimony, the ethics of practice, concerns about legal malpractice, and concerns about claims of ineffective assistance of counsel may require such a challenge.

In contrast to these valid concerns, when the attorney feels that a case is weak or that the client is unattractive to potential jurors, the attorney may want to see if the opposing expert can be “knocked out of the box” from the start by a Daubert challenge. While this ploy poses uncertainties of its own, the effort may be economically justifiable to the retaining attorney.

Delay

The Daubert hearing is not unique in being subject to abuse. Many other valuable safeguards of the fundamental fairness of the legal system exist, such as insuring that a defendant is competent to stand trial before facing the rigors of the adversary system. Yet, in our experience in Massachusetts courts, a motion to invoke this useful safeguard can be and has been used as a delaying tactic to permit the attorneys to prepare the case more thoroughly, to set the stage for a later insanity plea, or even to foster the hope that witnesses will become less sure about recalled testimony.

Similarly, a Daubert hearing may be requested by one side or the other—even when the relevant science is basic, established, and non-controversial—as a comparable delaying tactic designed to secure some advantage by the delay, although, as the law evolves, such challenges to established science may become less common. In our experience, challenging the use of even absolutely standard psychological testing is a common ploy in this category.

The Dry Run

By providing a picture of the expert in action under cross-examination, expert depositions commonly serve as “dry runs” for trial preparation. However, Daubert hearings have the advantage of providing a second opportunity to probe the expert, as well as to obtain an otherwise unavailable assessment of the trial judge’s attitudes toward the case. In those jurisdictions where depositions do not occur or are not allowed in civil or criminal cases, thus depriving attorneys of the opportunity to perform a dry run of the cross-examination of the opposing expert, a Daubert hearing may serve the purpose of obtaining an equally valuable advance look at the opposing experts’ opinions, bases, methodology, and courtroom demeanor. The resultant data can be put to very good use by the attorney in case preparation, mastery of the relevant literature, and the like.

Impeachment: Laying a Foundation

Just as moving for an unnecessary examination for competence to stand trial may aid the attorney in laying a foundation (if only in the public’s mind) for a later insanity plea, moving for an unnecessary Daubert hearing may lay the foundation for later efforts to impeach the expert’s reasoning on scientific grounds. Even if the expert’s opinion is ultimately not excluded, the knowledge gained in the process (the dry run suggested in the prior section) may be helpful to the attorney in designing more effective cross-examination for trial.

Rattling the Expert

The motion for a Daubert hearing may constitute no more than an attempt at simple harassment of the experts, designed to shake their confidence in their own testimony by a threshold challenge to their approach, methodology, reasoning, and professional acceptance of the experts’ theory of the case.

Fatigue Factors

In a related manner, a mid-testimony hearing may be attempted on a specious issue, to overextend the expert’s time on the witness stand, perhaps interrupting the flow of case-related testimony that the jury hears. This approach may generate sufficient distraction and breach of concentration in the jury to obscure the gist and impact of the expert’s testimony.

Economic War

Because a Daubert hearing involves costs for the time and participation of the parties and assistants (e.g., stenographers), the hearing may be requested by a large, rich firm, to drive up the costs for an opposing small, poor firm and thus to discourage or render more difficult the latter’s participation in the suit.

Similarly, because of cost restrictions from the client or insurers, a law firm unable or unwilling to hire its own reputable expert may be forced to put its efforts into attempting to disqualify the other side’s expert through Daubert challenges. Theoretically, such an approach may also serve to create a record designed to refute a later claim for legal malpractice in this situation. An attorney’s specious introduction of standards for reliability and relevance (that no expert could meet) in this setting may also constitute an attempt to excuse his or her failure to retain an appropriate expert.

Shooting the Messenger

A highly unusual twist in the Daubert question has occurred with one of us (H.B.) when an attorney hired several experts, but one of them did not present a favorable opinion after review. The attorney presented that expert’s opinion to the other side in a distorted way that invited a Daubert challenge, which was feebly and ineffectively resisted by that attorney. The attorney then used the successful challenge to rationalize not paying the expert for work already done, based on the alleged failure of the opinion to meet the standard.

Fairly Civil reports. You — or someone in authority — will decide.

Los Angeles Times Has Been No Watch Dog in Sanchez Case

Crime, Darcus Allen, Lakewood Washington police ambush, Maurice Clemmons, Mike Huckabee, National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF), officer survival, police shootings

POLICE DEATHS DOWN BUT FATAL OFFICER SHOOTINGS UP — AMBUSH SHOOTINGS AND SURVIVAL LESSONS FROM LAKEWOOD

In bad manners, Crime, Guns, Police on December 29, 2009 at 9:16 pm

Vigil for Lakewood, WA, Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39, and Officers Tina Griswold, 40, Greg Richards, 42, and Ronald Owens, 37

Law enforcement officer deaths in the line of duty have dropped to their lowest level in half a century. But the trend of fatal ambush-style officer shootings is up. This naturally has raised concern about officer survivability.

Details of the tragic ambush-execution of four officers in Lakewood (see below) underscore the unavoidable fact that there is no down time for law enforcement personnel today.

Eternal vigilance is the price of survival.

First, the trends from a National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund press release:

Law Enforcement Officer Fatalities 2009: A Tale of Two Trends

Total line-of-duty deaths drop to lowest level in 50 years; firearms-related killings rise 23 percent with five multiple-fatality shootings

WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Fewer U.S. law enforcement officers died in the line of duty in 2009 than in any year in the past half century — an encouraging trend tempered by a disturbing increase in the number of officers who were killed by gunfire, many of them in brutal, ambush-style attacks.

As of December 28, 124 law enforcement officers had died in the line of duty from all causes, a 7 percent reduction from the 133 fatalities in 2008, according to preliminary data compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF). The last time officer fatalities were this low was in 1959, when there were 108 line-of-duty deaths.

“This year’s overall reduction in law enforcement deaths was driven largely by a steep, 21 percent drop in the number of officers killed in traffic-related incidents,” reported NLEOMF Chairman and CEO Craig W. Floyd. “However, that bit of good news was overshadowed by an alarming surge in the number of officers killed by gunfire.” According to Mr. Floyd, 48 officers were shot and killed in 2009, compared to 39 in 2008, which represents a 23 percent increase.

More than 30 percent of this year’s fatal shootings — 15 in all — occurred in just five incidents in which more than one officer was gunned down by a single assailant. These multiple-fatality shootings took place in Lakewood, WA (four officers), Oakland, CA (four officers), Pittsburgh, PA (three officers), and Okaloosa County, FL, and Seminole County, OK (two officers each). The 15 officers killed in these multiple-death shootings were the most of any year since 1981, according to Mr. Floyd.

****

The following is an analysis of the Lakewood (Washington) shootings. (It is not part of the NLEOMF release.) Fairly Civil received similar versions of this account from several sources and believes the following synthesis from multiple sources to be accurate.

These events are a tragic object lesson for law enforcement. They should be an eye-opener for society at large about the risks of law enforcement and the lawlessness of some elements, including in this case not only the murderer, but the group of people who aided him before and after the shooting:

Analysis of Lakewood Ambush

Lakewood PD Officers Killed in Ambush

Location. The Forza Coffee shop in which the ambush took place was in a strip mall and owned by a retired Tacoma Police Department officer. It was considered to be a safe place for officers on break or waiting to go on duty.

Department History and Officers. The Lakewood Police Department was recently formed. Almost all of the deputies were hired from the Pierce County (Washington) Sheriff’s Office. Most were sworn deputies, but had primarily worked the jail.

The Scene. All four officers had parked their marked patrol cars in front and were inside, in uniform, drinking coffee and preparing for their shift. They were sitting at a table with their laptop computers open, completing job related paperwork. The table at which they were working was about 15 feet from the check out register at the counter. The officers were working with their heads down.

Felon Maurice Clemmons Had Long Record of Violence

The Shooter. The assassin in this case was Maurice Clemmons. According to Wikipedia:

Prior to his alleged involvement in the shooting, Clemmons had at least five felony convictions in Arkansas and at least eight felony charges in Washington. His first incarceration began in 1989, at age 17. Facing sentences totaling 108 years in prison, the burglary sentences were reduced in 2000 by Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee to 47 years, which made him immediately eligible for parole. Clemmons was released in 2000.

Clemmons’s Parole. Huckabee’s explanation was reported in an Arkansas newspaper earlier this month:

Speaking at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock to promote his seventh book, A Simple Christmas, Huckabee said Clemmons would have received “a probated sentence, a $1,000 fine and 20 hours of community service” had he been an “upper-middle-class white kid” rather than a poor black teenager arrested for his first felony when he was 16 in 1989. After a months-long string of robberies and burglaries, as well as carrying a .25-caliber handgun on the Hall High School campus, Clemmons began serving his multiple sentences the next year.

A decade later, Huckabee, governor from 1998 to 2007, shortened Clemmons’ term in prison to 47 years, making possible his immediate parole. The Arkansas Parole Board agreed to release Clemmons not long afterward.

Making two of Clemmons longer sentences run consecutively instead of concurrently was an injustice, Huckabee said, one perpetrated systematically in Arkansas on the basis of a person’s skin color.

Deciding to shorten Clemmons’ prison term, he said, “was not so much based on forgiveness as justice.” “I made my decision on the information that I had,” Huckabee told an audience of 200, “not on the information that was to come.” On Nov. 29, Clemmons, 38, walked into a coffeehouse outside Seattle and killed four uniformed Lakewood, Wash., police officers as they prepared for their shift. One of them wounded Clemmons, whom Seattle police shot and killed two days later.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, December 15, 2009.

The Ambush. Clemmons entered the coffee shop, smiled, and acknowledged the two officers who were facing the entrance. The officers returned Clemmons’s greeting. Clemmons then went to the counter as if he were going to order food.

After stepping up to counter, Clemmons pulled a pistol from under his coat and took a couple of steps toward the table where the officers were seated.

At this point, Clemmons was about 12 feet from the officers.

He shot the first officer, facing him across the table, in the head, killing the officer instantly.

He then shot the officer closest to him (facing away), in the back of the head, also killing the victim instantly.

Clemmons then shot across table at the third officer and missed. He fired a fourth shot, which struck the officer in the face, with instant fatal effect.

The fourth officer was the sergeant. He stood, drew his weapon, and charged Clemmons. The table was knocked over as the sergeant stood up. He grabbed Clemmons by the coat and shot him twice. The first round struck Clemmons in his mid-section and went “through and through.” The second round struck keys in Clemmons’s front pocket, but nevertheless penetrated about 1.5 inches into his thigh.

Clemmons then raised his gun and shot the sergeant in the face. The sergeant fell to the ground. Clemmons knelt over his victim and fired two contact shots, one in each eye. He then took the sergeant’s credit cards and duty weapon.

Clemmons did not rob the coffee shop, nor did he shoot at, hurt, or threaten anyone other than the four officers.

The entire incident lasted only 8 to 10 seconds — approximately 3-5 seconds for the first three shots and another 5-7 seconds of struggle between Clemmons and the sergeant.

Darcus Allen Was Alleged Getaway Driver and Accomplice

The immediate accomplice. An accomplice — alleged to be Darcus D. Allen — was waiting outside. The Seattle Times reported on Allen’s background, which included time in the same prison as Clemmons:

Allen was sentenced to 25 years in prison for a 1990 double murder at a Little Rock liquor store. He was paroled in 2004.

Arkansas prison spokeswoman Dina Tyler says Allen and Clemmons never shared a cell, but lived in the same barracks – along with 50-100 other inmates – at various times during their imprisonment.

Clemmons got into the vehicle and the two left the area.

Tracking Clemmons and Other Accomplices. Federal agents tracked Clemmons by a specific “sophisticated technique” of investigation. At least five more accomplices helped Clemmons before he was shot dead by a Seattle police officer.

Lessons learned. According to one account, the following are “lessons learned” from the Clemmons ambush:

Some lessons to learn from our fallen brothers.

1. Just because you are “off duty” or in a “safe” restaurant, keep your head up and your eyes and ears open.

2. Do not sit close to the register or other focal point (entrance doors, bathrooms, hallways, etc). Try to sit where you can scan the area.

3. Leave devices that distract you, like laptops, etc. in the car.

4. Do your reports and other things that take your mind off your safety, at post or far away from the public.

5. Even at lunch or break, don’t let your guard down. You should always be in condition “yellow.”

6. Keep your distance. Take those lateral steps or diagonal steps and move. It is a lot harder for the bad guy to shoot a moving target, let alone a lot of distance.

7. Each time you train, train as if your life depends on it. When the time comes, you will not arise to the occasion and be a hero, you will fall to the level of your training effort and perform at that level. While I do not think they could have done anything different after the contact, do your best at whatever training you attend. Lose the mentality of “It will never happen to me” and train as you wish to fight, fight like you train.

Maurice Clemmons Was Shot Dead By a Seattle Police Officer

Tom Diaz

Fairly Civil

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