Whether one believes that Ronnie Coogle had a change of heart when his word was used to justify the killing of a guy who smoked some pot, it’s hard to come up with any other rational explanation for why a guy who always put his self-interest first would now risk his life. There just wasn’t any benefit in it. Yet he did.

A 50-year-old felon and drug addict, Coogle was the principal Tampa Police Department informer against at least five suspects this year. He conducted nine undercover operations. In their probable-cause affidavits, his handlers called him reliable. Even Tampa’s police chief praised his “track record.”

Coogle said they were all wrong. He said he repeatedly lied about suspects, stole drugs he bought on the public’s dime and conspired to falsify drug deals.

But as long as he was playing on the cops’ team, he was as solid as they come. Solid enough to send out the SWAT team after Jason Westcott. Continue reading →

Of all places, the New York Times shows some fortitude in its editorial on the outrageous conduct of the New York Police Department over the past few days:

Mr. de Blasio isn’t going to say it, but somebody has to: With these acts of passive-aggressive contempt and self-pity, many New York police officers, led by their union, are squandering the department’s credibility, defacing its reputation, shredding its hard-earned respect.

Granted, the Times’ tongue-lashing remains tepid by normal measures, but it’s more forceful than anyone can reasonably expect of the mayor, the target of police threats, who has demonstrated little more than mewling pandering to police sensitivities, as if he might someday be loved not despised by the cops.

The New York Police Department is going through a terrible time . . . But none of those grievances can justify the snarling sense of victimhood that seems to be motivating the anti-de Blasio campaign — the belief that the department is never wrong, that it never needs redirection or reform, only reverence.

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The New York Times reports that Police Commissioner Bill Bratton finds himself in the position of negotiating a compromise between his police and the mayor of the City of New York.  The putative mission is to relieve the pressure created by the protest at the funeral of Rafael Ramos, the officer killed while sitting in his cruiser at the hand of a crazy.

The protest, officers in uniform turning their back on Mayor de Blasio during his eulogy, was not an exercise of free speech, but an act of insubordination and a manifest threat to the City. They will not tolerate the mayor’s “disloyalty.”

New York City mayors have long tussled with police unions, with off-duty officers rallying on the steps of City Hall or showing up at mayoral events with protest banners. But several city officials as well as current and former officers said the public protest by officers on Saturday at what was a highly ordered and solemn occasion appeared to have little precedent.

“You crossed the line,” said Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, a Democrat and a former police officer. “We all played by one rule: that when you have that uniform on, you don’t get involved in the political atmosphere.”

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There was nothing unusual about the defense arguing that a police officer fabricated a claim of whole cloth, a complete lie. The prosecutor’s response was invariably the same: Why would the cop lie?

And indeed, the judge would peer over his spectacles, look down his nose at the defendant and counsel, and admonish them both for their attempt to smear some fine, upstanding defender of truth, honor and law with their scurrilous claims.  Because why would the cop lie?

Meet New York State Trooper [FNU] Rosenblatt, who pulled over young John Houghtaling for the putative reason that his exhaust was too loud. For those wondering, there is a law prohibiting “loud or unusual” noise emitting from a muffler or exhaust set forth in Vehicle and Traffic Law §375(31).  In the scheme of offenses, equipment violations tend not to get anyone terribly excited.  Except, apparently Trooper Rosenblatt, though he might just be an inherently excitable fellow. Continue reading →

Rarely has a group of people exposed their true disdain for all others as clearly as the New York police officers who turned their back on Mayor Bill de Blasio at the funeral of Rafael Ramos.  They wanted to send a message, that they demand to be treated better than all others.  They sent a message, but not the one they thought.

They are given training, guns and shields, not to mention a paycheck and a pension, to do a job.  That’s not enough for them. They demand two more things to which they are not entitled: impunity for their violence and protection from harm above all others. Continue reading →

Over the past week, I flew down to West Palm Beach, Florida, which bears the official title of “God’s Waiting Room,” to clean out my parent’s home.  They’ve been unceremoniously moved north to assisted living, after it became painfully clear that their independent living ticket expired.

They weren’t happy about being ripped from their home of the past couple decades. The argument was that they wanted, no, needed, more time to decide how they should live the balance of their lives.  What they failed to realize was they had that opportunity, which we refer to as the last five years, but refused to acknowledge it.

Contrary to assumptions, the downhill slide happens slowly, but happens nonetheless. No alarm bell rings when the time is up, as it comes in tiny, ever-increasing bits, until you realize that you should have dealt with it years earlier, but failed to see the now-obvious signs.  Be thankful that they didn’t run down a school bus filled with children while insisting that they are still fully capable of driving.  Continue reading →

Like kale chips before it, California is leading the way to the new world order of consent. Oh sure, the “Yes means Yes” in college signed into law, but what are the chances that it will fundamentally alter life at the rocket propulsion lab at Cal Tech, right? Sheldon?  Well, anyway.

While attention is devoted elsewhere, the California experience is proving to be difficult. It seems that many, women included, are finding affirmative consent unnatural. While rational people would recognize this failing to be the direct result of human nature and rational thinking, activists see it as both a failure to teach males affirmative consent early enough in life, and extend it beyond the confines of mere sexual relations.

In other words, they want affirmative consent to be a way of life.

Students “get to universities and we expect them to behave like they’re supposed to without any prior understanding of what consent looks like,” Meghan Warner, director of the Associated Students of the University of California Sexual Assault Commission and a UC Berkeley student who endorsed the demands, told The Huffington Post. Continue reading →

The execution of New York police officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, came at a politically expeditious time. This will bring no comfort to their families, even if it gives PBA boss Pat Lynch an excuse to blame Mayor Bill de Blasio, protesters, for the war about to come.

But another story, a tale of an internal rift between black police officers and their lighter skinned brothers, suggests that having a shield isn’t enough to protect them.  So if there’s a war, which side are they on?

Reuters interviewed 25 African American male officers on the NYPD, 15 of whom are retired and 10 of whom are still serving. All but one said that, when off duty and out of uniform, they had been victims of racial profiling, which refers to using race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed a crime.

The officers said this included being pulled over for no reason, having their heads slammed against their cars, getting guns brandished in their faces, being thrown into prison vans and experiencing stop and frisks while shopping. The majority of the officers said they had been pulled over multiple times while driving. Five had had guns pulled on them.

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When William Desmond contended that he and his fellow Harvard law students deserved to have their final exams delayed so they would “no longer be spectators to injustice,” was he suggesting they would be hitting the road to Ferguson to chant “hands up, don’t shoot”?

We recognize that this is a moment for change. If not us, then who?

Nowhere in his inelegant apologia does he mention how “us” plans to achieve this role in history. In the 1960s, Freedom Riders took the road, and some paid with their life for their efforts. Desmond sought to don the mantle, but what was he going to do with it? Create a Facebook page? Maybe a Twitter account? Perhaps he would feel strongly about the propriety of defacing a door?  Action, as long as it wasn’t too far from home and didn’t take much effort, if any.

At the New York Times Room for Debate, the question is posed: Continue reading →

Over the past two days, I’ve had much to say about the relationship of the tragic murder of two cops in New York City, the insane and inflammatory rhetoric and blame by PBA President Patrick Lynch, the similarly insane threats made by other crazies against police, and the ratcheting up of antagonism all around.

But I haven’t been able to do so because of computer problems. I’ve been on the road this week, and for reasons that have no good explanation, my laptop picked two days ago to decide that its operating system didn’t like its programs, and so they failed to function.

The failures were pervasive, and even now as I type it’s via a few workarounds that I’ve found, using highly limited functionality. It’s not good.  I blame Microsoft and Dell, the manufacturer of this ultrabook, not that blaming anyone does any good.  After hours of talking to a pretty good tech guy at Dell, it appears that the answer is that Windows 8.1 has killed this computer. It’s far too limited, and too difficult, to serve its intended purpose, and they have no cure. Continue reading →