"Our officers need more firepower."

"The bad guys are outgunning us."

So now we need to take pictures of everybody's license plates, even when they're not doing anything wrong. If you like red light cameras, you'll love this.


More here. YouTube has everything.




Veriplate website

A little light refreshment.

Or not. I have to admit, it sounds like there might be more to this story than we're told here. Still . . .

The all-new and improved DWI -- Driving Without Intoxication.


from Objective - Justice

This one hurts me.

I'm all for freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom from police harassment, freedom from religion. As one who has lived most of forty-something years trying to avoid being saved by the bible-thumpers, I value this last one highly.

It looks like it may be another case of school officials not knowing what to do about a mostly harmless situation [i know! let's call the police!] but I think I might be on their side this time. Ouch.


from Objective - Justice

I double-dog dare you!

Back when I was a 10-year-old child, of average-to-middling mischieviosity, in the Texas school system, the worst thing they did to you was make you stay in at recess and write sentences on the board. Ask me how I know this.

Nowadays, you get arrested and sent to court.


I have questions.

• Why are we arresting children?


• Do we really need teachers who can't control 10-year-olds?


• Why aren't we training police officers to refuse to arrest children?


• Why are we prosecuting children for momentary fits of mischief?


• A school official actually set off the alarm. Why are all the adults in this case getting away with blaming a child?

from Objective - Justice

Defining a just society

Speak softly and carry a big stick

The world is a dangerous place, with dangerous people in it. Self-defense is a necessity. Internally, this means police, courts, judges, juries, jails, prisons, and mental hospitals. Externally, this means a standing military and all its accoutrements.

A society has all kinds of people in it, and a just society would make room for all of them, including those most inclined to be of the warrior mentality. We need protection, they need a job --- voila! --- police, jailers, military.

Where we need to be very careful is in deciding exactly when to call on the services of our professional warriors, and just how often. It's a resource that most definitely needs to be under-utilized. Diplomacy, negotiation, gentle guidance, often just carefully watching and analyzing a situation; all these need to be tried first.

One would have thought that the Constitution had established some checks on our powers to wage war, but between those of us who want to be kept safe and secure from every imaginable danger all the time and those of us who want to be warriors by proxy [not to mention those who expect to profit from conflict], we've instead over-utilized this resource, and stretched it to the breaking point.

Not to mention all the people we've killed and all the havoc we've now wreaked on a few other societies, none of which were an imminent threat to us.

Then there's the war on drugs, but you get the picture.

I'll lay down.

...under power. I like that one.


If you surf through the pages and pages of taser videos in YouTube, you can find a recurring theme:

cop [tasers suspect]
suspect [falls down]
cop "Get up, or I'll taser you again!"
suspect [fails to comply]
cop [tasers suspect]

WTF?! Don't cops all have to get tasered themselves before they're allowed to use tasers on actual people? Don't they understand that of course the suspect is not going to comply with any commands to get up, or roll over, or what have you, while under power?


Probably there are situations where a taser is the best weapon. Most likely, there are a lot of good cops, none of whom abuse suspects in this fashion.

But...

There sure were an awful lot of big burly cops in that UCLA library. Surely they could have just picked up one measly student and carried him out.

Stand up!

Papieren, bitte.