We're the Only Ones With a Beef Enough

An undercover police officer had been shot, and police were hunting for the suspect's vehicle. They soon found it - with another officer behind the wheel, police said...

The driver leaned across the body of a male passenger, shouted "You got a beef?" and fired a shot at Suarez, who was driving the unmarked police car

Reminds me of DeNiro's line in "Taxi Driver": "You talkin' to me?"

Bloomberg's finest. Meanwhile, he's out there inventing ways to blame gun dealers.

[More from "The Only Ones" files...]

[Via Declan]

Kathryn Johnston Update

A plan by the district attorney to seek murder charges against three narcotics officers involved in the shooting death of an elderly woman during a bungled drug raid may jeopardize a broad, federal investigation into civil rights violations by the Atlanta Police Department, a spokesman for the victim’s family said Thursday...

“These officers did not commit felony murder,” he said. “They committed a violation of civil rights that led to her death.”

Mr. Hutchins said both he and Ms. Dozier believed strongly that the civil rights division of the federal Department of Justice should be the prosecuting agency. That way, the legal consequences might apply to the entire Atlanta Police Department, not simply to the three officers.

I'm sorry, but I don't get it.

Of course there should be a murder prosecution, and the people directly responsible should be the ones on the hook for it.

If the family wants to pursue civil, that is, monetary penalties against the department for bad policies and training, that's also an option open to them.

And there's nothing that I can see in this that precludes federal civil rights actions on top of that, as a different set of laws would be applied.

I thought maybe the concern was that the murder charges were for show, to mollify "the community" when the "authorities" know they won't stick--but it seems to me that an acquittal would produce renewed outrage and a whole 'nother set of problems.

Tell me if I'm missing something, because right now, I'm questioning whether the "survivors" of the childless victim are after justice based on personal accountability or deep pockets.

[Via Tom, who credits The Agitator]

New WarOnGuns Poll: What Would YOU Do?

See the left margin for the new poll. This is a follow-up to the previous poll, again proposed by WoG regular Straightarrow:

Here are the results of last week's poll:

We're the Only Ones Honked Off Enough

Jones was in her car behind the police vehicle when she honked her horn and pulled into her driveway.

Police, spooked by the horn, parked and questioned Jones, leading to a scuffle after they threatened to write her a ticket. The stun gun of one of the officers discharged, according to testimony.

All by its own self, no doubt.

How dare she expect "The Only Ones" to observe the rules the rest of us must obey!

All for Nine Tuscaloosa

Gun buyback nets 9 weapons...

Five of them came from one cause-and-effect challenged supporter who thinks turning in his guns will get rid of illegal ones.

Nine guns. But the "buyback" wasn't a failure.

"This whole disarmament thing wasn’t to really buy guns back," Muhammad said. “It was about having young men come together to settle their differences instead of shooting at each other from their car windows."

They never meant to do what they said they were trying to do. They actually wanted to do something else, and that's how their success should be measured. OK, then. So did you get young men to settle their differences without shooting at each other from their car windows? How many? Nine?

All for One Tuscaloosa offered $25 for each gun that was turned in.

OK, I'm doing the math here. Times nine, that's $225. So what the...?

[Police Chief Ken] Swindle said he appreciates such efforts to solve problems that the police department deals with daily. To demonstrate support for Saturday’s event, the department contributed $1,000 from its Safe Neighborhoods campaign to help All for One Tuscaloosa pay for the guns they collected.

Hey, way to make effective use of resources, Chief Swindler...uh...Swindle. But then again, it's not your money, is it?

Still, this wasn't a total failure. Based on results, the "authorized journalists" considered the event newsworthy.

UPDATE:

I have some resources I use to verify nonprofit status of organizations, and curiously, "All for One Tuscaloosa" yields no results on any of them. So I have to wonder just who the Chief gave the thousand bucks to.

If it was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or the Nation of Islam study group, wouldn't that be a violation of the prohibition against "respecting an establishment of religion" that the ACLU is soiling their red diapers over any time some village wants to put a donated manger in front of City Hall at Christmas? And if it came from the "Safe Neighborhoods" fund, does that mean federal plunder was involved?

This Day in History: February 11

On this day in 1776, Georgia’s royal governor, Sir James Wright, escapes from his residence in Savannah to the safety of a waiting British warship, the HMS Scarborough, anchored at the mouth of the Savannah River, and returns to London. Governor Wright had been taken into custody and placed under house arrest nearly a month earlier on January 18, 1776, by Patriots under the command of Major Joseph Habersham of the Provincial Congress.