Guns, Cars, and Tech

Category: OFFICER SAFETY!

  • Random thought of the day.

    I have the solution to all those cops leaving their guns in bathrooms or accidentally firing them while preparing to use/leaving the facilities.

    Replace the pants portion of the police uniform with kilts.

    No need to remove the kilt when going to the bathroom, therefor there’s absolutely no need to remove the firearm (if there truly was in the first place).  As we’ve talked about before, there are many companies that already make kilts with many pockets!

    …

    This is probably why they don’t put me in charge.

  • URGENT REMINDER for those of you coming to Nashville for the NRA Convention

    Nashville’s mayor is really, really anti-gun.

    Nashville’s police chief thinks people who didn’t like Mike Brown protestors shutting down I-40 are racists.

    Nashville’s newly-elected District Attorney has been on the job less than 6 months and has already had 3 major ethics scandals.

    Knowing that, you need to remember the following things

  • It is illegal to have any alcohol whatsoever in your system and still have access to a firearm

    • You can go to the bar, but you can’t drink anything. You can’t even leave the gun in your car if you plan to go back to the car later.

  • Anti-gun signage is generally legally enforceable

    • There are some quirks and caveats and whatnot, but for those visiting, if you see a “no guns allowed” sign in any form, just don’t go there. We got the ability to carry in places that serve alcohol back in 2009, and the bars and restaurants around the convention center lost their everloving minds, going so far as to search everyone entering for guns, something they didn’t think was necessary when only criminals might come into the lounge armed.

    Make no mistake: the business owners downtown are generally hostile to gun owners, but they still want your money. They fought tooth and nail against making it legal to carry in their establishments unless they posted a simple sign. The vast majority did not post signs initially, but announced they would. I will be surprised if we make it through the weekend without at least one arrest for violating a sign or the alcohol provision. The restaurant staff is likely to be on “high alert” looking for anyone who might be violating the law and quick to pull the trigger on calling the cops. Which brings me to my final point:

  • There are places that will not obviously be off limits to you, so please don’t open carry

    • I talked about this in Episode 29 of the GunBlogVarietyCast, but the gist is that you can’t carry in a city park or property owned or used by a school. First Avenue in downtown Nashville…if you walk on sidewalk furthest from the river, you’re fine. If you walk on the other side of the street, you’ve committed a crime because that’s Riverfront Park. Music City Walk of Fame Park is right next to the Arena* where several events are being held, and it’s the same thing. Walk on one side of the street and you’re fine. Walk on the other and you’ve got a problem.

    As far as schools, you’d think it would be obvious but it’s not. There is a vast section of commercial development just west of town that’s actually owned by Vanderbilt University, and the way the law is written it’s likely a felony to carry there. Do yourself a favor before you get to Nashville: hit up Google Maps and look at the Green and Yellow portions of the map. Those are no-go zones if you’re armed.

    Have fun, don’t drink, and watch for signage!

    *By the way, the Convention Center is legal for carry, but the Arena isn’t.

  • Rule 5

    Apparently after Kid #2, you’re bandwidth-limited to one post per month.

    Don’t try to catch a falling gun.

    Gunshot interrupts Smyrna town hall meeting:

    SMYRNA, TN (WSMV) –
    A gunshot rang out in a Smyrna town meeting on Thursday night, causing a brief moment of panic.

    It was business as usual as Police Chief Kevin Arnold gave a briefing to members of the town council.

    “And so we have some volunteers who will be manning the records division,” Arnold said before he was cut short by the sound of a gunshot.

    Arnold sprung into action to investigate what happened in the lobby.

    Well, that sounds exciting!

    Lt. Earl Barnes was providing security and his gun accidentally went off when it hit the floor.

    Less exciting than I was expecting, but exciting nonetheless. Strange that they issue guns that aren’t drop-safe, don’t you think?

    “His handgun caught on the chair, and as he stood up, he realized that his gun was falling out,” Arnold said. “And he went to grab it before it hit the floor. And when he did, he accidentally discharged a round off into the floor.”

    Oh, so, what you’re saying is that it didn’t go off when it hit the floor, it went off when he pulled the trigger. Well, I’m glad that no one got hurt. We just need to get that officer some more training.

    Barnes is the head of the SWAT team with 25 years on the force.

    Wait, what? So how did this happen?

    Arnold said Barnes had responded to an armed robbery earlier in the day. When he holstered his weapon, it didn’t lock into his holster.

    Uh huh.

    He will face disciplinary action.

    Well at least there’s that.

  • Update your scorecards: How to get fired from the LAPD

    Shooting up a blue Toyota Tacoma containing two Asian women after mistaking it for a grey Nissan Titan containing a lone black man: Get more training

    Release audio tape proving you didn’t say the racist things you’ve been accused of saying: Get investigated by internal affairs, suspended, and expect to be fired

  • Scary thought for the day

    What if the BLM officers involved in the Bundy Ranch thing had reacted the same way Ferguson officers did?

  • I’m having a hard time not being outraged by this

    Under what circumstances would this be considered okay by anyone?

    When I first heard “journalists hit with tear gas” my assumption was that it was, for lack of a better description, an embedded journalist in the middle of a crowd during the riot. I’ve seen that kind of thing before, particularly journalists of the local-alt-weekly variety. In one local case, the only way to know the guy was a journalist was to have known who he was beforehand–he carried no credentials and had only his iPhone as a recording device.

    But that’s clearly not the case here. This is a professional camera crew not in the vicinity of anyone else. This is obvious, and cannot be explained away by any sort of benefit of the doubt.

    This is stuff I’d expect out of Iran, not St. Louis.

  • I think there’s a new policy in the Nashville Police Department

    I’ve been noticing a lot of stories over the last couple of years about MNPD officers being decommissioned for misbehavior. As I understand it, “suspended with/without pay” leaves the officer with the ability to carry a gun everywhere and other perks of being a police officer, but decommissioning removes all the superpowers.

    I don’t recall any decommissionings during the last chief’s employment, but it happens A LOT now. Arrested for DUI? Decommissioned. Hit your wife? Decommissioned. Having mid-shift, er, meetings with a woman in a park? Decommissioned.

    So last Friday when Officer Nathan Silvers showed up 15 minutes late to his shift drunk, it came as no surprise that he was decommissioned. His Sergeant and his Captain made the decision to decommission him, drive him home, and have him report to HQ first thing Monday morning.

    What did come as a surprise was the Chief’s reaction when he woke up Saturday morning and found out about it.

    He decommissioned and immediately suspended the Sergeant and the Captain because they didn’t arrest the officer for DUI and illegal possession of a firearm*!

    I’m pretty sure Chief Anderson is sending this message: “No, seriously you guys, I’m not going to tolerate this crap. If you see a brother officer committing a crime and turn a blind eye, there will be repercussions.”

    The Captain took early retirement and the Sergeant has received a 15 day suspension.

    Good for the Chief.

    *TN State law says you can’t be in possession of a firearm if you have any alcohol in your system. There are no exceptions for police.

  • About that mystery helicopter in the Bundy Cattle Confiscation…

    David Codrea had an article in The Examiner over the weekend about the FAA issuing what’s called a TFR for the Gold Butte area. A TFR (Temporary Flight Restriction) is basically a domestic no fly zone, and are usually limited to things like disaster zones, Presidential/Vice Presidential visits, and rocketry. I don’t know of another law enforcement action that needed a TFR but I could be wrong.

    In his article, he mentions this picture from the Las Vegas Review Journal (no link because copyright trolls), and how that tail number is not in the FAA Registry.

    He’s right. You can look it up yourself if you’d like. There is no aircraft registered as N806IJ.

    Now, there’s this other thing that the FAA allows you to do. You can download the entire FAA Registration Database as a zip file of CSVs. It takes a little bit of translation, but what if you open that guy up you can see that there are about 1500 Robinson R44s registered.

    My coblogger oddball said “That 8 is obviously a painted 2” so I narrowed down to R44s that started with a 2, and guess what I found?

    N206TJ, registered to Rugged Country Helicopters, LLC, based in Cedar City, UT.

    Cedar City, UT, is about 150 miles from the Bundy Ranch. The range of an R44 is 350 miles without refueling.

    So, there’s that.

    They don’t have a web presence that I can find, but I’m sure someone with more time could call them and ask them if that’s their bird.

  • Like you and me, only better

    So Franklin Police roll up on a Brent Rose, passed out behind the wheel of his car parked in the turn lane of a major thoroughfare with the engine running. When he gets out, he falls into the bushes. He blows twice the legal limit on a breathalyzer, and the officers opt not to give him a field sobriety test because they’re scared he’ll fall down and hurt himself.

    When questioned, Rose tells them that he went and got drunk at one bar then drove to another, where he doesn’t remember much after that. Officers also find a 32 ounce cup full of alcohol in one of his cup holders.

    Instead of arresting him, the officers called a friend and let him go.

    You see, Brent Rose’s day job was up until that point being a DUI Enforcement Officer with the Franklin Police Department. That makes all this just a stupid mistake instead of the serious crime with life-altering consequences if it were one of us.

  • In case you missed it: Officer Roid Rage gets $40,000 from the City of Canton

    I missed this when it happened, but here it is:

    A police officer fired and later reinstated after threatening to shoot a motorist will never patrol the city’s streets again.

    Daniel Harless, a 15-year veteran, will receive $40,000 from the city, a neutral employment recommendation and a retired-officer ID in exchange for his resignation as part of a legal settlement.

    So in addition to the $40,000 he get’s 50 state lifetime concealed carry and the city can’t let future employers know he’s a ticking time bomb.

    And this is rich:

    As part of the settlement reached this week, the city has dropped its appeal of an arbitrator’s ruling that cleared the way for Harless to return to work pending medical clearance. Harless, too, will drop all claims, including a lawsuit that the city retaliated against him for applying for workers’ compensation and a grievance involving vacation and sick leave.

    For those of you who don’t remember, here’s a rough time-line of how things happened:

    • Officer Harless threatens to kill a citizen during a traffic stop
    • Ohioans for Concealed Carry post video of the traffic stop
    • Internal Affairs finds other cases of Harless behaving badly
    • Harless files a workers comp claim that he’s suffering PTSD from an incident in….2003
    • Canton fires Harless

    Clearly those first three points had absolutely nothing to do with Canton wanting him off the force.

    But, hey, at least now they’re rid of him and he can safely apply for a job at a different police department.

    I certainly feel safer.