Special Hell

In Hell, there are all the sinners basting in a lake of fire or some such thing.

Basically that ^
It's a freaky place. Murderers and Suicides get to hang out together. Adulterers, cheaters, swindlers, liars, and traitors all hang out in the respective places and generally things suck for everyone. For an example of this suckitude, please refer to the above painting by Heironymus Bosch.

However, even within Hell there is (or ought to be) a special place for people who suck especially hard. For people who do things like try to steal from Wal-Mart, but are too chickenshit to do it themselves, so they instead coerce their 8 year old son and 14 year old daughter to do it instead. Because, holy shit, you're shooting for the Mother of the Year trophy this time. 

Supernatural Occurrences

I'm not a believer in ghosts, the boogie man, or psychics. Really, anything supernatural. That being said, I have encountered two "psychic" episodes while out on the street.

In the first, a man calls 911 and begs for officers to come to his apartment, that he's being robbed at home and they're kicking in the door. We run out, lights and sirens, and find his door intact, no robbers anywhere, and no crime having been committed. We talk to the caller, who says that men are coming to rob him, but that he's hid his property inside his shoe and that nobody will ever find it. About an hour later we get another call, same thing, so we run back out and lo and behold, someone's kicked in the door, and stolen this man's shoe. Of course, he denies having told anyone about it, so the only other explanation as to why gunmen would only take his shoe is that he's part of a secret psychic cabal and owes them money or something.

In the second, we get a call about people fighting out in the parking lot of a gas station. So we roll out and find our people. In true moron fashion, everyone agrees "ain't nothin happen" and that they were merely having a spirited discussion. No doubt about foreign policy and domestic economic theory. We find out where these people live (of course, nobody says they live in that area) and tell them to go home, it's a bad part of town. Every single time an officer utters those words, at least one suspect (who has to absolutely have the last word) will say "Oh, I'm from (Louisiana, Mississippi, California, Arizona, etc etc), so I didn't know."

I'm going to segue for a moment. It's actually quite easy to discern if you're in a good or bad neighborhood if you apply this secret Tibetan monk technique of "looking around". Look around, if you see more than one grown adult male walking around with no shirt and no pool in sight, it's probably a bad neighborhood. If people just hang out in front of the gas station looking back and forth at 3 AM, it's a bad neighborhood. If the gas station has bulletproof partitions, it's a bad neighborhood. If you see lots of police seemingly driving in circles in the area, it's a bad neighborhood. Basically, if you encounter behavior that tells you that most of these people don't have to worry about being up in the morning to go to work, it's probably a bad neighborhood.

Back to the original topic. So this guy feeds us the lie that he's from out of town and didn't know better. Another officer tells him that if he's gonna keep acting up like this he's gonna get shot in this part of town, and he should go home, or even better, go back to (insert fake home state here). 24 hours later (not even joking) we find the dude stabbed 17 times and shot once, hiding under a car in that same intersection we found him.

So the moral of this story, just ask people for winning lotto numbers. You never know who might accidentally predict the future.

Self Defense Made Easy

So, my friend is asking about self defense and about Krav Maga and Muay Thai. I explained my own perspective on violence (which is what self defense is really about) and made this handy flowchart.

Guest Infographic

So, a "guest" infographic. More below the graphic.

Gun Facts You Need To Know | Infographics

I didn't anticipate going into anything political on this blog, so I'm not going to approach the 2nd Amendment argument from a rights standpoint (though, as a political science graduate I think I could). However, I will point out that there is an odd disconnect between administrative level and street level police with regard to civilian ownership of guns. For the most part, administrators will tout the need for fewer guns on the street. As I'm not an administrator I can only guess as to their intents or reasons for this. Perhaps they need to, as any rank above LT (or Captain for those of you who still have that rank) are basically political appointees, ingratiate themselves with the Mayor's office, City Council and/or City Manager's office. Maybe they see it as a liability risk. Maybe they just like power and prefer to have private citizens helpless and awaiting police intervention (an attitude that will likely get you killed btw). At the street level, though, we recognize that there aren't nearly enough police on shift on any given night to intervene in time to actually resolve a deadly situation before it's over. We've been relegated, through cuts in personnel and through policy/procedure changes, to report takers. Thus, in a deadly confrontation, the first responder is the citizen and his life is in his own hands. While some citizens may have a physical advantage over an assailant, or maybe the assailant is a complete coward who flees at the first sign of resistance, this may not always hold true. For a smaller person, a female, or elderly, or otherwise disabled citizen, a firearm is the most effective means of protection available provided they train themselves and practice accordingly. And besides, since patrol officers are relegated to report taking anyway, it's better we take a report on the dead rapist hanging out of your window rather than trying to piece together who raped you after they got away.

Community Empowerment

So, in theory anyway, police are supposed to work with their communities in reducing crime. The official name for this is something silly like Operation Triangle, or 10-70-20, or some other useless moniker because when all is said and done no police officer will state, on record, that a citizen can intervene in a crime with force, if only because that officer will be shitcanned faster than Taco Bell in the digestive tract for the sake of our favorite pagan god: Liability.

If you think Liability (yes, you always capitalize) is not a pagan god, what else do we collectively sacrifice so much blood, time, and money for if not a god?

So while police are supposed to reach out to these communities we're supposed to refrain from pointing out that it's generally legal to blow away some asshole who you observe breaking into your car at night, or from organizing your neighborhood watch into an armed pseudo-militia to run out the drug peddlers, since even the most cracked out pusher will head inside when the cops come calling. Or maybe pointing out that it's legal to keep a live alligator in your backyard as a protective measure.

However, every now and again there's a community that's either too heavily invested in illegal activity to cooperate, or even speak to police about these ventures, or maybe they're just comprised too heavily of a "target" population like illegal immigrants afraid that going to the police will result in deportation. For these illegal immigrant populations I've found that allowing them to reduce their own crime figures works pretty well, at least until other police come by and ruin the "illusion" for them. Which is kind of a dick thing to do, since it's not only legal, but expected under the Peelian structure of policing (the one that all modern police agencies are based on, supposedly ).

For the other, the apartment complex where drug peddling is the source of income for 75% of the residents, you can't expect much cooperation, unless the crime is something that suits their interest. For instance, there is a dumbass punk having sex with some dude 26 years her senior. So, legally, he's a rapist as statutory rape is a thing. We can go asking around about him, but everyone says the same thing "I dunno nothin". So, you look for that one door, or one guy that nobody bumps into, even  when the hallways are jam packed with people trying to cool breeze away from the cops and you knock on that door. It's a dangerous game, but when the tatted up head asshole opens up you ask if he knows the dude in the photo. He's gonna say no. If he's feeling generous, or like acting a bit for you, he might even look at the photo. Then you ask him:
"Hey man, you got kids?"
"Yeah, a 7 year old girl"
"Well, lemme tell you, this cat's out here raping little girls man. Just did a 12 year old over there, so we're lookin for him."
Let that sink in for a minute.
"Lemme see that picture again."
"You recognize him?"
"Naw man, I just wanna memorize his photo..."

That's community policing.

Conspicuous vs. Inconspicuous

Sometimes a man, or woman, just has to turn to criminal activity to makes ends meet, or because they have absolutely no skills, or because they're plain crazy. It's not for me to judge. And some of these activities require a certain amount of guile, or stealth, or just being unnoticed, while others may require a certain amount of.... advertising if you will, while still not eliciting police attention. 

While I understand that, like the majestic peacock, you need a certain eye catching draw as a  prostitute, you should not go full crazy housewife wearing a purple showercap and a highlighter pink jacket and then claim that you were mistaken for someone else. Nobody wears that crap.

So, to summarize:

Inconspicuous:
Bland T Shirt.

Anything eliciting the descriptor "nondescript"

Jeans.

A jacket in basic shades or colors. 

Even camo attire is becoming more and more common these days. 

Conspicuous:
Colors that warn bears of venom

Colors that tend not to appear in Nature

Clothes that are worn inside behind drawn shades.

A lack of shoes. 

Shirts with "loud" things emblazoned upon them (ie COPS CAN SUCK DICKS)

Facial Tribal Tattoos

There's a car on my tree

Is it too much to ask that maybe, just maybe, people don't crash their cars into your tree? There aren't many good excuses for placing your car against my tree.

Good excuse:

Your tree fell on my car.
Your tree fell into the roadway.
In a miracle of botany and state crash records you planted this tree in the roadway and it survived until it was big enough to stop my truck.

That's pretty much it.

Bad excuse:

I'm really drunk and I forgot where the road was.
I thought that stop sign marked the right lane.
I can't remember how my truck got here.
I parked my truck at the bottom of that hill and must have left it in neutral (implying that it rolled uphill, over a stop sign, and into the tree)
I suffer from every mental illness at the same time, though I don't know what any of them are.
The voices told me to put it there.


On an unrelated note: It's funny as hell to try and discuss game theory with prisoners who have been separated for interrogation. Specifically, the "prisoner's dilemma". I could barely contain myself when one of them offered to get me a prostitute. I have no idea what he thought I was saying to get that reaction.