Now, up front, I gotta say that I know, and have known, a lot of cops who were and/or are good people, decent police officers and good examples of what a cop should be. This is not directed towards them nor those who are like them…..although, they do allow the bad ones to wear the same uniforms, so I can’t tell them apart…….And in most incidents, I have been inclined to give cops the benefit of the doubt when it comes to second guessing their actions….

But……

What would happen, if each time a cop shot an innocent……and got away with it…..I’m not meaning where there is any way to give the cop the benefit of the doubt, but like the last two incidences I posted where a cop shot a man for doing nothing….where the cops were so concerned about their safety that they couldn’t use a reasonable set of tactics to secure the person ….

What if….?

What if people of the family of the person slain by the cops were to exact revenge?….Say my brother is shot in a similar incident…… Say he was the dude on the porch in the last SWATting incident….and say the cop(s) get clean away with it in a hearing because they claim it was a “furtive movement” or  “appeared to reach for the waist” or somesuch….
And then, say, I were to resolve the issue by revenging my brother’s death (Not saying I would, and not suggesting that people should either) …from up close on the street, or from 600 or more yards away. (I have the skills for either method of revenge, and enough ways to probably prevent incarceration, should it come to that….as do many of my acquaintances).
If enough of us started doing that: taking cops who killed innocents from the gene pool entirely or at least out of circulation…………would the cops start thinking twice if they got got put in prison by the courts or if the rest of us started taking them out? (In the olden days, apparently,  one could hire such work out, if one knew the right people….) Would the cops begin spending a few moments deciding to actually do their jobs rather than shoot first so that all cops get to “go home safe” at night? (even though being a cop isn’t in the top 20 of dangerous professions, BTW….and “Going Home Safe” isn’t a part of their job description)You really should read the article at that link. Or would these folks who took the job as a cop because they thought it would be easy and would give them power over their fellow citizens find another profession?

Seriously: how do we ENcourage good behavior and DIScourage the referenced bad behavior…..
Wwhat happened to cops I knew when I was growing up that weren’t so pants pissing afraid of everyone that they just shot people instead of, you know, doing their jobs?? Why aren’t those “GOOD” cops doing something to get these deadly dangerous cops out of their departments?

If cops get to shoot people because they are afraid of them, next time a cop makes an intimidating or threatening movement near me, do I get to shoot him or her preemptively?

It were actually -14 F last night.

Which is, really, a pretty significant amount of error.

-10 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale tonight. (For you folks whose countries have never put a man on the moon or sent an interstellar probe beyond Saturn, that is -23 C)

Which is pretty much plain old “fucking cold” no matter what you measure it in. Kelvins or Rankines or Delisles or whatever.
Even Harold the outdoor cat wants to come in when it gets that cold. He’s ensconced happily in the barn right now in a warm box out of the wind.

Gotta feel sorry for the deer and the other denizens of the forest when it gets that cold. Plus real wind for even more chill tonight

Don’t wanna confuse WEATHER with CLIMATE (I’ve seen it colder here in winter, and much warmer too), but I wants me some Glowball Warming right now

That guy who the cops shot in Wichita? You know, the one who got “SWATTED”?

HERE is the video.

Notice how far away the cops were from the suspect. If (and it was, at that point, an IF) the dude had had a handgun in his waistband, he wasn’t much of threat to cops that far away and behind the cover of vehicles. I dislike second guessing cops, but here, it is obvious. I’ll call it a really bad shoot. No matter what the circumstances leading up to it, this was a bad thing.

Notice how clearly lit the scene was. (yes, that was sarcasm)

Notice the “movement”.

I can, now that I have the video, call it murder.

Remember, these folks are “professionals”…..”Trained to handle firearms”. (Yes, that was also sarcasm)….“The only ones that should be allowed to have guns” and all that.

I am beginning now to see why so many cops were against the mandatory BodyCams.

To each and every one of you who read and comment on my blog.

I wish you happiness and prosperity in the upcoming year.

Sweden Government police say “women should not go out after dark, never go out alone, or should use taxis”.

Seems that since all those Middle Eastern “children” (male) immigrants are kinda changing the society in Sweden….

And the police, of course, say Women have to change their ways rather than the immigrants. Because MultiCulturalism.

Were I living there, I’d start buying rope and looking for sturdy lampposts for some political attention…..And I’d be making a list of each government official, elected or not, who approved the invasion of my country. And, of course, investing in rope suppliers.

Can’t the Phone Companies do something about the increasing use of spoofed phone numbers? Especially in “SWAT”ting cases like the one I wrote about 2 posts below this?

I mean, it is bad enough that they allow “Suzy from Credit Card Services” to spoof their telephone number…no one gets hurt, only annoyed. But “SWAT”ting and other crimes like this should lead to jail time. Murder charges if someone killed…There should be penalties for this behavior.

But people have been injured and killed by cops that thought they were arriving on the scene of a murder, or a hostage situation (which doesn’t excuse the injuries or shootings, IMO, but does lead to some leniency due to the situation). The telephone lines used, be they land lines or cell lines, have specific connections that should not be untrackable. The Phone Companies SHOULD be able to fix this.

Why don’t they?

Perhaps the NSA needs to step in and tell us who is responsible….

(I’d bet I could put together a lynch mob for the telemarketers though….if I cared to….)

Or is the Justice Department simply hoping that we, as a country, will forget? That we aren’t watching?

Awan Brothers trial date, delayed twice, now simply GONE from calendar…..

Were I a suspicious person, and an untrusting soul, I’d have to wonder if, having had access to MANY senators sensetive emails due to their control of the Email servers….DO they have enough dirt on some of those Senators to be able to blackmail their way out of a trial????

We all know that that would never happen, right? All those DNC and RNC folks are as clean as the driven snow and all that…..right?

Is it the cop that did the murder? (The cop that shot an unarmed man answering the door to his house when the cop knocked?)

Or is it the fault of the dude who called in a false report of a hostage situation and gave the cops the cops a false address in an attempt to “SWAT” a rival?

Either way, a cop shot an unarmed (and innocent) man last Thursday. And it looks bad for the cop.

Sad, all the way around.

So the shower faucet in the master bathroom was dripping.

Not that big a deal, except that it was there when I moved in 20 years ago, and I haven’t ever had it apart…and it is a “no name” faucet. Not a name anywhere, not the faucet nor the escutcheon, nor the knob….nothing.

Now, I never had a reason to do anything with it, or the most interesting and thought provoking valving arrangement for the water supply in this area of the house….until now.

Oddly, the faucet came apart with a bit of gentle persuasion and a bit of heat and some more gentle tapping and a few other tricks that most of us who work on shit know. I actually didn’t twist the faucet off…which is what generally happens in these cases.

Which was a good thing, because the previous owner did a most interesting install of the faucet valve. To replace it was gonna require that I pull the tub surround off, as the faucet was installed from the tub side, not the backside….so just cutting a bit of drywall on the other side wouldn’t have gotten me there. (who uses carriage bolts and lag screws to install a faucet???)

Plus the tub is, apparently, non standard, at 54 inches long and 23 inches wide. Menards/Lowes/Home Depot don’t carry anything even close to that size.

But, for once, the locking ring moved and nothing twisted too badly, and lo and behold, not only was the faucet a chinese copy of a Delta faucet, Delta replacement parts fit!!!! Ball, cups, springs, o-rings are all close enough to actually work. It’s a GOOD copy of a Delta faucet. 

This saved me from having to find a replacement tub/surround from, I am told, a mobile home supplier (Where this size is apparently standard) but a whole bunch of wall work and such. (Plus the tile floor, which was put in after the tub was installed, so would have had to be pulled up and replaced).

Once in a while the Gods smile upon me.

I’m just not sure what to sacrifice to whom now.