Explorations in Policing, Faith and Life (With a hint of humor, product reviews, news and whatever catches my attention)

Sunday, January 31, 2010

More Silliness

Meet Hello Kitty Superman, Hello Kitty Armored Personal Carrier, Hello Kitty Rifle, Hello Kitty 1911 and finally Hello Kitty Airliner.  After this I promise no more Hello Kitty anything...ever...ever again.  Going to need insulin just looking at these pictures.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Just Something to Lighten the Mood

Meet the Hello Kitty Darth Vader there is hope for humanity yet.







Genesis 21:6
Sarah said, "God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me."

Thursday, January 28, 2010

More Cartel Violence

Non-serial killer, sensation /gruesome homicide is used primarily as warning, punishment and to build fear. The murders is Mexico are getting more and more ghastly because a simple multiple homicide does not garnish the attention desired by the cartel in question. Thus over time they get more brutal, more torturous and more macabre in order to rise about the other piles of rotting bodies. Here is another example from a growing and troubling trend. A sign of the future for America if we ever let the cartels truly set up their power base on our soil.


Mexico man's face skinned and stitched onto a soccer ball in Sinaloa in threat to Juarez drug cartel
By Soraya Roberts

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, January 9th 2010, 5:54 PM

In a new incident of grisly drug war violence, a man's face was skinned and stitched onto a soccer ball as a threat to members of Mexico's Juarez drug cartel.

The unknown assailants cut up the body of Hugo Hernandez into seven pieces and left him on a street in the northern city of Los Mochis, a spokesman for Sinaloa prosecutors, Martin Robles, told the Associated Press.

Hernandez's torso was found in a plastic container in a separate location from another box that contained his arms, legs and skull. The macabre soccer ball was discovered a plastic bag near Los Mochis' City Hall in Sinaloa.

The gruesome discovery included a note, which read, "Happy New Year, because this will be your last."

Hernandez, 26, was kidnapped from Sonora on Jan. 2 and taken to the neigboring state of Sinaloa. The motive for his abduction remains unclear but Sonora is known for its marijuana farms, Robles said.

Sinaloa state is the hometown of the bosses from four of the six major drug cartels in Mexico.

While tortures and beheadings have become a familiar sight since President Felipe Calderon started his crackdown on drugs three years ago, Hernandez's murder was particularly grisly.
More than 15,000 people have been killed in the drug war, many of them in the border cities of Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana. At least 17 journalists have been killed since 1992 after reporting on the local drug community, which has spurred some of the country's newspapers to stop covering violence to avoid more deaths.

Members of the cartels often torture and mutilate their victims in order to intimidate the people who threaten them.

With News Wire Services.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Drug War

I am often asked if I think that law enforcement ever has any meaningful successes when dealing with the distribution and sale of illicit narcotics.  I usually say we have a limited affect, primarily due to the copious amounts of drugs coming in and the huge profits being made.


I need to reevaluate this position.  We are having a profound effect when viewed with the drug war going on in Mexico.  Mexico is in danger of becoming a failed state due to the cartel's (Los Zetas, Gulf, Sinaloa Cartel) influences in all aspects of Mexican life.  While we are not stopping drug violence nor stemming the flow of drugs into this country or the currency from the sales from flowing out, what we are doing is keeping the drug organizations from becoming the single biggest bastion of power in American society.  It’s a nice starting point.


Case in point 
At Arturo Beltrán Leyva (ABL) grave a head just showed up to make a point.  Since severed heads are becoming the norm they decided to engage in some Feng shui and balance the floral arrangement by placing one in his ear.  Don't ever forget it really is a war.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Dangerous Job


Few people know and understand the risks of high level illicit narcotics investigations that are not on the job or fresh from the job. One of the interesting/scary issues that an officer or agent run into while participating in this kind of investigation is with the criminal him/herself. Since these individuals are at the top or near the top of their organizations they tend to be self driven people of a higher intelligence than the average criminal you would meet on the street. As a result they have the ability to plan and execute operations on law enforcement similar in nature to what law enforcement operates on the criminal. As a result they present an increased threat to the personal safety to the officers, their families and associates, case in point from Chicago Breaking News Website.

Link: http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/01/2-men-accusing-of-plotting-prosecutors-death.html


2 men accused of plotting to kill prosecutor, federal agent

January 19, 2010 7:13 PM

Already accused of using the name of a professor at Northwestern University to buy chemicals to make Ecstasy, Frank Caira allegedly asked a friend to help get him out of trouble by paying someone to kill a federal prosecutor and a drug agent on his case.
Federal authorities today said the two men tried to hire a gang member with a murder conviction in his background to do the job. But when they didn't pay him the cocaine they'd promised, the gang member allegedly passed information about the plot to his defense lawyer, who in turn called the FBI.

Caira, 39, of Downers Grove, was charged with solicitation of murder, along with Jack Mann, 41, of Naperville. Both remained in custody today.

Court records show Caira was charged in the drug case in December 2008, while working as a research technologist at Northwestern. He allegedly used the name of a professor to order chemicals and equipment used in Ecstasy production and was facing 14 years in prison.

It was Mann who allegedly reached out to the gang member on Caira's behalf, promising four kilograms of cocaine. The gang member later told authorities he wasn't planning on doing the hit anyway, and was only going to steal two kilograms he hoped to get as a down payment.

But that would have been news to Mann, who allegedly passed the names of the intended victims to the "hitman." By Dec. 27, the gang member had agreed to cooperate with authorities, and allegedly taped a conversation he had with Mann, who was complaining that Caira hadn't agreed to put up anything before the job was done.

"Now he's gonna play me for a (expletive,)" Mann allegedly was recorded saying, later adding, "No, (expletive), my time's worth money. If you want Jack Mann, you're gonna (expletive) pay."

Mann's attorney, Michael Petro, said his client would likely challenge his detention at a later time. Petro said Mann is a "respected member of the community."

Attorneys for Caira could not immediately be reached for comment. Assistant U.S. attorneys from the Northern District of Indiana were handling the case Tuesday after prosecutors from the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago recused themselves to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.

Angie Leventis Lourgos contributed.
--Jeff Coen

Psalm 141:10  Let the wicked fall into their own nets, while I pass by in safety.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

There are still thinkers and game changers out there!

Jailhouse Fire Hot Sauce I was reading my wife's Food Network Magazine (No really its her's) and found a brief blurb about Jailhouse Fire Hot Sauce.  The ingredients are grown by prisoners at the Hillsborough County Jail in Tampa as part of the jails horticultural program.  There are three varieties: Original, Smoke and Super-Hot No Escape.

I have heard from many people fresh from incarceration that their jail time was a waste of time because they had nothing to do, so when they got out they just jumped back into the life and crime they understood.  This jail at least offers both the opportunity to learn a new skill, demonstrate the entrepreneurial spirit and give them something to do as the time clicks by.

A excellent program that is doing good for those in the jail, for us on the outside and for them that will be returning back to us.

Link: http://www.jailhousefire.org/

Friday, January 15, 2010

What little we really know


I ran into an article the other day that spoke about a newly discovered species of Strawberry crab off the coast of Taiwan.  They had located two that were forced to the surface because of a tanker spill.  It just reminded me about how little we really know about the earth we live on.  There is still much to explore and things to learn before the human race can make any reasonable conclusions about this living ball hurtling through space.  We should be much more humble than we are.  Here is a list of some of the newly discovered living organisms in 2009.

 The world's smallest snake, known as Leptotyphlops carlae or the Barbados threadsnake.







The Tahina palm, or Tahina spectabilis, is a gigantic new species of palm represented by fewer than 100 specimens











Borneo's Phoebaeticus chani is considered the world's longest insect, with a body length of 14 inches


Satomi's pygmy seahorse, also
known as Hippocampus satomiae, is the smallest known seahorse with a standard length of 0.54 inches








The ghost slug, or Selenochlamys ysbryda, was found in Cardiff, Wales









Charrier coffee, also known as Coffea charrieriana, is the first known naturally caffeine-free coffee species found in
Central Africa








Discovered a new species of giant rat in a remote rainforest in Papua New Guinea.












Botanists believe they have discovered one of the world's largest carnivorous plants in 
Southeast Asia.














Genesis 1:5
God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.











Thursday, January 7, 2010

Real Serious Ramifications for Law Enforcement


This ruling was just brought to my attention.  If this is carried through to other rulings or is supported by the US Supreme court-an officers job just got much more dangerous and extremely complicated.

 Three things to note about this.  First every case that shocks the very foundations of law enforcement started with some ridiculous incident but then is applied to all situations that are not crazy or stupid.  The elements of the case while important should not be the focus what the new standard for the affirmative defense given to the charges  of Resisting an Officer/Obstructing an Officer etc.  Second the biggest concern for law enforcement is the statement of  a right to self defense if unlawful imminent use of force is about to be brought to bare.  So the officer comes to a burglary to residence in progress and confronts the burglar.  It is standard practice to have your weapon drawn till you can determine if the burglar is armed or not.  So as I am reaching for my firearm, the burglar sees this, pulls his firearm and shoots me, because he knew as a reasonable person it would not take deadly force to affect his arrest.  So now he has a new defense that was never available to anyone before.  Third, the most training I have ever received and will be continuing to receive is on Use of Force.  It is a extremely complicated concept that has to be applied in seconds in a dynamic situation.  What is reasonable use of force for the average man or woman without any training?  You can attack me because I did not give you the verbal order a forth time?  I need to order you to put down your weapon before I can draw mine?  Read the summary below and if you want a deeper treatment follow the link.  This is a very troubling development.  We ask enough from our officers but it seems that mind reading will now be taught in the police academy.

State v.Oliphant and the affect on Oregon law enforcement.

The Multnomah County Sheriff's Office (Portland Metro) recently sent out a memo regarding a resisting case (State v. Oliphant) and the affect on Oregon law enforcement. In essence the ruling says:


"An arrestee may defend himself against a police officer's use or imminent use of force if the arrestee believes, as much as a reasonable person in his position would believe, that the officer's use or imminent use of force
exceeds the force reasonably necessary to make the arrest.  Oregon effectively is now the only state that gives a suspect charged with Resisting Arrest (ORS 162.315) an affirmative defense that they were
defending themselves against what they reasonably believed was an actual or imminent unlawful use of force by a Police Officer.  Accompanying charges including Assault on a Public Safety Officer will likely be
dismissed if the argument stands."


The full case can be viewed at the below link: 
 

http://www.publications.ojd.state.or.us/S056404.htm
 

Saturday, January 2, 2010

There's drunk and then there's record setting drunk

I took it fairly easy this New Years Eve in the drinking department  Which I would like to say is the norm but sadly is not.  However that said I did have some success this year.  I digress,  while drinking an assortment of beers form the Chicago based Two Brothers Brewing Company, it got me thinking about what is the worlds record for being drunk and here it is:


Bulgarian's blood-alcohol level astounds doctors
Last Updated: Tuesday, January 4, 2005 | 3:07 PM ET
CBC News

Bulgarian doctors tested a man's blood-alcohol level five times before accepting it was 0.914 – nearly twice the amount considered to be life-threatening.

The 67-year-old man landed in hospital on Dec. 20 after a car knocked him off his feet in the southern Bulgarian city of Plovdiv, police and doctors said Tuesday.

A breath test indicated blood-alcohol levels so high that police thought their equipment was broken, because the man remained conscious and talked with them.

The head of Plovdiv police, Col. Angel Rangelov, said five separate lab tests taken the same day confirmed the man's blood-alcohol level of 0.914.

A blood-alcohol level of 0.55 is considered potentially fatal.

In comparison, the Bulgarian man's level was more than 11 times higher than the legal blood-alcohol limit for drivers in Canada, which is 0.08.

The man, who has not been identified, was reported to be in stable condition after being treated for head injuries.  
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Ok the average person successfully processes .015 b.a.c out of their system per hour so this fine gentleman had the equivalent of 60 beers in his system at one time! (article link: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2005/01/04/drunk-bulgarian-050104.html)


The picture is of my new favorite beer it is from the Surly Brewing Company out of Minnesota-called Furious-a fantastic beer which I promise I will never have more than six of at any one time but it is so good I probably will need help with that, well not really.  Enjoy.


Proverbs 31:6
Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish;

Friday, January 1, 2010

Happy New Year-Blue Moon

Happy New Year


Last Night had a Blue Moon.  The lunar calendar basically is a 28 day calendar.  So every 2 and 1/2 years there is 13 full moons in a year rather than the typical 12 full moons.  So last night's Blue Moon has nothing to do with color but rather we had an extra full moon.  The last one that happened on New Years Eve was Dec 31, 1990.



For 2010 here is a list of full moons, their names and dates.

2009 December 16 - January 14 = Early Winter moon

January 15 - February 13 = Mid Winter moon

February 14 - March 14 = Late Winter moon

March 15 - April 13 = Early Spring moon

April 14 - May 13 = Mid Spring moon

May 14 - June 11 = Late Spring moon

June 12 - July 10 = Early Summer moon

July 11 - August 9 = Mid Summer moon

August 10 - September 7 = Late Summer moon

September 8 - October 6 = Early Fall moon

October 7 - November 5 = Mid Fall moon

November 6 - December 4 = Blue moon

December 5 - 2011 January 3 = Late Fall moon


I thought that was cool.


Revelation 21:23

The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.