Crime – Page 29 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Hey Mayor Nutter

If you’re looking to balance the city’s budget on the back of the City’s police officers, why don’t you take a look at your narcotics division and start looking to make cuts there.Â I have no patience for this kind of crap.Â Nothing undermines the rule of law more than when police pretend they are not subject to it themselves.

It’s equally outrageous that the city is taking the position that small ziplock bags are drug paraphernalia.Â That the city’s narcotics unit is even wasting time on this small time crap is nuts, to say the least.Â But hey, I suppose shop owners don’t shoot at the police, unlike the real bad guys.

If the state has any sense at all it’ll change its drug paraphenelia laws to deal with this.Â Selling plastic bags should not, in any sane system of justice, be a crime.

Mexican Oil Bottle Menace

Blog o’ Stuff has an interesting analysis of a photo of a couple of Mexican Federales posing with the stash of grenades they seized from the drug cartels.Â Problem?Â Only a few of the items appearing on the table actually appear to be grenades.

Testimony on Violence in Mexico

This Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee had a hearing on “Law Enforcement Responses to Mexican Drug Cartels“Â Some of the testimony is frankly, surprising.Â I first heard these clips on Cam & Company on Tuesday, but now present them here for those of you who didn’t catch the show.Â You may have to disable your popup blocker to view some of these video clips.

Question from Durbin to ATF about drug smuggling in Mexico
Durbin claims smuggling into Mexico is in the thousands, and asks ATF for their sense of how big the problem is.Â ATF retorts “I would not say it’s in the thousands, sir.Â I would say it’s probably in the hundreds.”Â Durbin pretty clearly didn’t like that answer.
Lindsey Graham questions the panel about the need for changes in gun laws
Short of is, no one on the panel says we need more gun control.Â The Arizona AG answers that he’d like to see tighter regulation of money transfers, but that’s all anyone agrees on.
Diane Feinstein asks what new gun laws we need.
Senator Feinstein wants to know what laws she can push to make smuggling guns into Mexico even more illegal.Â The laws we have now are “pretty clearly not enough,” according to the Senator.Â The response from the panel is that we don’t even really know the scope of the problem, and have been using current laws effectively.
Senator Feingold asks about smuggling of military hardware across the border.
The gist of it is that the military hardware isn’t coming from the United States, but from other sources.
Senator Sessions says we have plenty of guns on this side of the border, and don’t have Mexico’s levels of violence.Â ATF responds with the fact that most FFLs are law abiding. Sessions says we need to build a fence.

So the people on the ground aren’t calling for changes in our country’s gun laws in order to deal with the Mexican problem, apparently much to the dismay of Senators Feinstein and Durbin.Â We also now know those on the ground don’t believe that military grade weapons are coming from the United States, and certainly not from US gun shows.Â So one wonders whether the media in the United States are going to continue to blame the US for the proliferation of miltiary weapons into Mexico.Â I suspect that the media will ignore this testimony, but let’s hope that Congress won’t.

Inky Says Gun Control Too Hard

The Philadelphia Inquirer laments how difficult it is to pass even minor gun control laws in Pennsylvania in response to another shooting of a Philadelphia Police officer (happy ending — dead bad guy, live cop).Â You know what would do a lot to protect the city’s police officers?Â Locking up bad guys.Â The man who shot Detective Ford was this guy.

Maybe one of the reasons it’s so hard to pass gun control in Pennsylvania is because we might have a point when we suggest the city is not even using the laws it already has to lock up violent and dangerous individuals.Â If you refuse to prosecute dangerous individuals who commit gun crimes, how are more laws the city won’t use going to help?Â If the City had prosecuted the gun crime Robinson committed, he would have been in state prison.Â He would not have been on the streets to shoot at police officers.

That Must Be Some Hair Weave

Apparently a hair weave managed to save a woman from potential injury by gunfire.Â It’s actually not too surprising.Â The tensile strength of human hair is not that much different than structural steel of the same thickness.Â It’s not out of the question that a tight enough weave would actually be pretty effective at stopping a small caliber bullet.Â It’s just a matter of it being tight enough that the strands can’t easily move out of the way, and this will absorb a lot of the bullet’s energy breaking strands.

Engel Letter Tied to the Mexican Issue

The Modesto Bee doing the heavy lifting:

On Tuesday, federal police fighting gunmen in the northern border city of Reynosa had to call the army for help. After the fighting, which left five gunmen dead and seven police injured, authorities seized several assault rifles and even a 60 mm mortar.

In a recent report, the federal Attorney General’s Office said Mexican authorities have seized the most weapons from the Gulf drug cartel and its gang of hit men, known as the “Zetas.” Members of the cartel have been found with rocket launchers, grenade launchers, and weapons capable of piercing armor.

Yeah, because if we don’t stop these 60mm mortar parts kits, and the RPG-7 parts kits, from coming into the United States, Mexico is doomed.Â Do any of these journalist even bother to check what the law is?

Philadelphia Loses Another Police Officer

Story here.Â The suspect is still on life support, and will hopefully help save the taxpayers some money and trouble.Â It’s going to get worse in that city, since the Mayor’s response to the budget crisis is to slash the police force.

In my continued tradition of posting the rap sheets of high profile killers in the City of Brother Love, our suspect in this case is Rasheed Scrugs.Â His rap sheet can be found here.Â As usual, this cop killer has a long history of trouble with the criminal justice system that never were properly prosecuted.

Catch and Release in DC

Women tries to rob a police officer of his gun (stupid move number one), pulls the trigger, gun goes click.Â Police end up arresting her, find drugs.Â Charged with assaulting a police officer, and carrying without a license.Â What does this person get as a sentence?Â Three years supervised release.

I should note that Fred asks why she wasn’t charged with attempted murder.Â The answer is probably the same Mens Rea thing we talked about a few days ago.Â Attempted murder requires proving intent, whereas assault on a police officer, which is a felony carrying a maximum penalty of 10 years under DC Code, is easier case to prosecute.Â Of course, it could also be that it was part of her plea deal, to avoid having to take the case to court in the first place, that she would plead guilty to assault on an officer.Â Assault on an officer in the DC Code is the same penalty as assault with a deadly weapon, or what would be aggrevated assault in other jurisdictions.

Gun Murders and Gun Laws

SayUncle pointed out North Dakota had zero gun murders in 2008, despite being 44 out of 50 in the Brady Campaign rankings.Â Bruce looks at New Hampshire, and finds a similar story.

Common Sense in Schools

Firearms and Freedom has a post that shows at least some schools aren’t taking zero tolerance thing too terribly serious.Â That said, you should know where your guns are.