Thursday, July 29, 2010


And by "Unbelievable", I mean a tale so far-fetched that you would be pilloried ruthlessly by every critic in the land if you tried to sell it as fiction:

Apparently, out in Moscow on the Potomac, a guy flipped out and started stabbing his girlfriend and her two children. One of the kids made a screaming 911 call, and the cops showed up...

...and waited on the doorstep for 45 minutes for a responsible adult to show up and tell them it was okay to bust down the door.
"In general, officers should seek the approval of an official prior to making any forcible entry," police spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump told The Washington Examiner.
By the time the entire Keystone Cops farce outside had resolved itself, the bad guy had already finished playing Cuisinart with the occupants and turned his knife on himself. Unfortunately, he did a piss-poor job of suicide and put us through all the annoyance and expense of a trial. And now the po-po are being sued, which we'll also get to pay for.

Lessons learned:
  1. You're on your own.
  2. The DC Police Department trusts its officers with less discretion than McDonald's trusts its fry cooks.
  3. No, really: You're on your own.
  4. Door locks are great when the bad guy is on the other side of the door. Otherwise, not so much.
  5. Boy, howdy, aren't you glad you don't live in D.C.?

(H/T to Breda.)


Joseph said...

On the bright side, he didn't kill them with a gun, ergo gun control worked... wait.. what?

jimbob86 said...

Things have not changed a bit since Warren v. D.C. (reinforced in Castle Rock v. Gonzales) ......the po-po have no duty to protect an individual, just the "Public" .....

If this is so, then why are they so dead set against us protecting our own, individual, selves?!?!?1111?!

And if the title of "Officer", what with the Badge, and Sworn Oath, and Uniform and guns and everything up to and including armored vehichles don't make one an "Official", what in the Sam Hell DOES!?!?!?!111111!!!!1ONLYONES!!!!!!

Ed Rasimus said...

Government will soon be making your healthcare decisions. And, "protecting" your finances. And, providing you with wonderful electric cars to take you the first 40 miles on your journey. And, of course confiscating your wealth.

Watch the next time you see TV coverage of a SWAT response. The shooing goes on as they suit up, finish their Starbuck's and hut-hut to lurk outside the door.

Washington DC is the future of all of us.

Anonymous said...

I saw that and thought, SOB they'll break down a (wrong) door based on the flimsiest drug "evidence" imaginable, but with a blood curdling 911 call for which they have VERY high probability that multiple murder is being commited they'll wait 45min to check?


staghounds said...

Maybe in the USA.

This sort of thing is old news in the U. K. and other places with generally gunless constabularies.

Firehand said...

You'll notice it was an effing SERGEANT who sat around waiting for a CAPTAIN to wipe his ass and say "Do something"...

These people really are rejects from the Fife School of Law Enforcement.

Anonymous said...

"When seconds count, the po-leece are only minutes away."

B Woodman

Anonymous said...

Frankly, the victims were most likely already fatally wounded before the cops even got to the door.

Yup, each one of us is truly on our own, and it would be wise to recognize and adapt to that fact.

Taking personal responsibility would go a long way towards fixing the many ills of our nation, including many of the assaults and murders.

Anonymous said...

Now, if there had been a marijuana baggie or if they had gotten a report about an unregistered gun (gasp!) on the premises, they would have busted down the door lickety split -- and they would have shot any dog in the general vicinity, to boot.

BobG said...

Like I said on another blog concerning this, if there had been a hint of someone inside in possession of marijuana, they would have kicked the door down without a second thought.

ravenshrike said...

Hmmm, perhaps it would be a wise idea to make the 911 call and report the attack and say he has cocaine spilled down the front of his shirt. Maybe that would get the cops to come in quicker.

Stuart the Viking said...

This is what I don't understand. I don't know how long this woman dated this guy, but chances are this woman saw (or should have seen) signs that this guy was a dangerous nut-bag. People don't go from being perfectly sane wonderful people to complete asshole instantly. We see it time and time again. Why do so many women just stay with a guy that they KNOW is dangerous? Especially when she has little ones. I don't get it. If I am dating a woman and note that she is off-her-rocker in a dangerous way she is gone. Plain and simple GONE! I know it isn't quite as easy for a woman because the guy is usually bigger and stronger, and maybe I haven't been on the receiving end of that, but I have gotten rid of some really insane bitches (my friends say I attract them) and it is possible.

Please don't think I am blaming the victum, dude needs to be taken out back and shot in the head as far as I am concerned, but wouldn't it have been nice if he was on the outside of the steel door pounding it screaming "Let me in bitch!" when the cops arrived instead of inside doin the stabby stabby?


Montie said...

This is the kind of stuff that makes my blood boil. You can bet your ass that had I been the sergeant on that call, the door would have been forced in seconds. There is no excuse for this, and it smacks of pure cowardice on the part of the responding officers. Entry should have been made due to the exigent circumstances. We train for this in the form of "active shooter scenarios" or in this case "active slasher", same concept.

This is what passes for police response on the east coast, yet for a completely opposite yet equally egregious example of police incompetence, check out the video over at Billy Beck's "Two - Four" blog, of some deputies in California, making up an excuse out of thin air to totally violate the rights of one of their citizens by declaring exigent circumstances where none existed. Not only was an illegal search made of the victim's residence, but they illegally opened his gunsafe without permission or warrant, and removed some very expensive firearms for "safe keeping" which he has yet to get back. All of the responding officers in that case need to be fired and imprisoned for violation of the victim's constitutional rights and THEFT. Think the ACLU will take the case? Nope, it involves a gun owner.

The Ferret said...

LOL and this is news from the DC cops?
Nothing to see here move along before we bust you for jaywalking.

Crustyrusty said...

No probability of property confiscation.

No money involved.

There ya go.

trackerk said...

You are your own first responder. Or as Joe said a few weeks ago, "You are the help."

Montie said...

As Anonymous said above: "When seconds count, the police are minutes away." I frequently have people, but most usually women ask me about getting a gun for self defense. That is the quote I usually use to answer them, before I go into my shpeel about the responsibilty of gun ownership and having the will to use it if needed.

Now I don't know any officers on my current department or any other department I have ever worked for who would not be busting their butts to get to that call and get through the door to the badguy. Yet even if they had been able to force entry immediately upon arival, it is unlikely that they could have saved the first couple of victims.

The truth of the matter is that the police will not be with you in the occurrance of a deadly event, and you WILL have to have the means and the will to defend yourself. No matter how much we would like to be there to intervene, we usually only get there after the fact.

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

That's my hometown, baby! Yay.

theirritablearchitect said...

Busting down doors when they get a tip that your light bill is perhaps too high, but when you call and actually ask them to come knock the door down, they wait outside like a bunch of Nancy-boys because it might be dangerous inside?


Tam said...


"Yet even if they had been able to force entry immediately upon arival, it is unlikely..."

Yup. In this incident, there's culpability and to spare.

Even if the 911 call had been placed sooner...

Even if the 911 operator hadn't dropped the ball by saying it might be a prank...

Even if the cops had busted the door on arrival...

There's a lesson to be learned here by any reader.

Anonymous said...

Ok kiddies. Here's how my training officer explained it. According to the Supreme Court of the United States, a police officer & police department has two responsibilities. To arrest law-breakers and gather evidence to aid in their prosecution.

The same Supreme Court has also found that officers & departments cannot be sued or prosecuted for failing to perform either duty nor can they be sued or prosecuted for failing to prevent a crime or for stopping a crime in process.

They can be sued or prosecuted for illegal arrest, violation of civil rights, etc.

In other words, the deck is stacked to give the police officer every encouragement to do nothing. If you want safety, you best figure on providing it yourself. It's not our job.

Joseph said...

According to the article, I would call what they have a security service, not a police department. When you have that layered a bureaucracy you have lost the ability to react. All you can do is take pictures and write reports of the crime scene.

Ed Foster said...

I don't know if things have improved lately, but back in the late '80's a D.C. policeman had 1 chance in 4 of eventually serving hard time for felonies committed while in uniform. That's why the Feds have so many junior G-men (Parks Service cops, etc.) all over the city, at any place they can find an excuse.

At that time, more than 40% of all arrests were thrown out because the paperwork on the case was unintelligible. It seems that D.C. could only hire residents, and any residents with brains already had a civil service job.

So, straight from welfare, replete with gang tats and attitude, the punkins went to the academy (after as many as 3 felonies were forgiven and expunged) where they presumably learned that pistols hit better if held upright with someone looking across the sights.

What, you thought New Orleans had all the losers?

jimbob86 said...

"any residents with brains already had a civil service job."

....and here I was operating under the misunderstanding that The Police were civil servants.....

Standard Mischief said...


Oh it has improved all right. You remember that off-duty cop that brandished a gun at a snowball fight? Think he got even a week suspended without pay? Think again.

Frankly, the cops here knew that no matter how badly they screwed up responding to this call, they would always be protected by the thin blue line of 'covering shit up for your fellow officers'. And yet they stood outside and pretended they were helpless.

John said...

The perp was sure lucky he wasn't an elderly citizen who'd just defended the family with a gun.

Now THERE's a crime worthy of a SWAT team door-crashin' in DC, Chicago,NYC and anywhere else that citizens are regarded as dependent subjects.

Every legal courtesy for the predators, but a mighty heave-ho for dangerous, self-protecting citizens. Nothing new there, but the bleakness of state-enforced victimhood.

Solzhenitsyn reported it, as an integral part of the dreary oppression practiced by the State. As we are tumbling along towards that Liberal Neverland Nirvana such news becomes ordinary to the entertainment-sodden and obsessed masses.

As ol' Alfred E Neumann observed, "What me worry?"

staghounds said...

If I were in deadly peril, I would shout FIRE.

Big men with axes just looking for a door to beak down.

Awful to say, given what I do, but I've never seen a police station full of officers waiting to dash to an emergency. I know how few officers are available, and that they are every one of them likely to be busy at any given moment.

Anonymous said...

Hartford CT. Armpit of southern New England, at the center of the New Haven CT/Springfield MA contiguous urban ares. Three million plus people, in an area 12 miles wide and 60 miles long, controlling every highway and rail line between New York City and Boston.

It is also as far inland as seagoing tankers and barges can travel (East Hartford tank farms), and the capitol of the per capita richest state in the country. Also the highest welfare payments in the country. Consider what that attracts.

Hartford County, population a bit over one million, is one of the wealthiest places on the planet.

The city of Hartford is the center of America's insurance industry, and a major player in banking. More than half a million well to do yuppies commute from some of America's most tony suburbs to work in and near Hartford, then abandon the place entirely between 4:30 and 6:00 p.m.

The city itself is a withered shell of what it was, with less than 120,000 overnight residents, most of them in really nasty inner city neighborhoods.

Facing the permanent residents, plus the displaced badguys forced out into the near suburbs like East Hartford and Manchester, are less than 500 extremely good cops, one of the truly elite police forces around. Call it 300 to 1 potential odds against the cops.

Divide that by 4 to allow for 3 shifts, vacation time, and sickdays. Now it's 1,200 to one.

After subtracting 40% for people doing paperwork, and another 40% for administrative types and cops waiting in court, you have an actual street ratio of one cop to well over 2,000 people, in an environment that ranks among the most dangerous in the country.

Try to find a working cop in that city who thinks disarming the citizenry is a good idea. I haven't been able to, and I have family on the force. Good cops have had their lives saved by armed citizens who backed them up when there wasn't anybody else to do the job.

That little Puerto Rican grocer with the big 12 gauge who has saved his own bacon several times, and left notice to the bangers that anybody who tries him or his will get the same, is regarded as a hero and role model by every street cop I know.

When the system works, it's a partneship between the police and the people they live and work among. Without the information and support the H.P.D. gets from people who are often risking their lives to do so, the cops would be staggering around blindly.

There are heroes on both sides of the thin blue line. Hartford is a sewer, but it would be so much worse without a really fine police force and the exceptional people who rise above the squalor and cowardice to say "This is mine, and you can't have it without a damned good fight".

I've had three cousins retire from the N.Y.P.D., two as Captains.

My mother's uncle died from wounds recieved while stopping a bank robbery. With the right side of his chest gone from several BAR hits, he calmly reloaded his revolver and put fire on the robbers until relieved, hitting two of them. My kid is as good a cop as any of them.

When I see bullying thugs dressed up as cops, dirtying the name and honor of real policemen, I get so God-Damned angry I want to put my boot up their asses so far they're spitting shoelaces.

My son is a very decorated detective. Several years ago, he had a $40,000 hit put out on him by the Los Solidos drug gang. They haven't been able to collect it yet.

I could be standing at his funeral three days from now, listening to the bagpipes play Amazing Grace. Comparing the morons of the D.C.Police or that asshole Murphy in California to a real street cop is like pissing on the Mona Lisa.

I would like to think there is a special place in hell for charlatans like them.

Steve Skubinna said...

I'm down in San Diego these days, and have noticed stickers in many business windows downtown, stating that the owner grants permission to the SDPD to enter the premises in performance of their duties.

Which makes me wonder, if the sticker isn't there, do the cops have to obtain permission?

Bear in mind this is San Diego, which is a fairly red area of the asinine blue state of CA.