on sale now at amazon

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"I don't like this book because it don't got know pictures" Chief Rhorerer

“It’s becoming a disturbingly familiar scene in America - mentally unstable cops”

“It’s becoming a disturbingly familiar scene in America - mentally unstable cops”
“It’s becoming a disturbingly familiar scene in America - mentally unstable cops”

Call the cops






‘Come Back When You’re Dangerous’: How Police Are Failing The Mentally Ill



Rather than providing the mentally ill with an opportunity to see a mental health professional, one expert says, “We say, ‘Come back when you’re in a crisis. Come back when you’re dangerous.’”

By Sean Nevins

WASHINGTON — Natasha McKenna was killed in February by a Special Emergency Response Team officer at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center in Virginia. She had been shot four times with a taser while her hands were cuffed behind her back, her legs shackled, and a mask secured to her face to prevent her from spitting.
The Washington Post reported that her last words were, “You promised you wouldn’t hurt me!”
The Fairfax County Police Department released the findings of an investigation into the death of the 37-year-old woman on Monday. Video of the incident has not been released to the public.
The official cause of death, as reported in April by the FCPD, is: “Excited delirium associated with physical restraint including use of conductive energy device.” Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are also listed as contributing causes.
The official “manner” of death, however, is ruled an “accident” in the autopsy report.
In other words, the SERT officer accidentally killed McKenna, who is survived by a 7-year-old daughter.
This seems typical for the way that black and brown people are treated by law enforcement in the United States – unarmed persons are killed, and the offending officers walk away with, at the most, a slap on the wrist.
Matthew Fogg, a retired chief deputy for the U.S. Marshals Service, agrees.
“As a Marshal and having handled prisoners, thousands of prisoners, in my career, this seems like it was an unnecessary use of force,” Fogg, who has no professional connection to McKenna’s case, told MintPress News. “You’re talking about a female here, only 130 pounds, and you’ve got her restrained, and you’re tasing her!”
“Why so much force?”
McKenna’s situation was compounded by her mental health issues, according to Pete Earley, a former reporter for The Washington Post and author of “Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness,” a book about his son’s experiences with mental illness and the failings of the criminal justice system.
“This is a woman who had a long history of mental illness. She got into an argument at a car rental place, the police showed up, [and] she became belligerent,” Earley told MintPress.
“They did what they thought would be a mercy arrest, took her to a hospital where apparently she did not get any decent care, and in the process she was charged with assault… and ended up with a felony [charge] just like my son,” Earley continued, explaining the sequence of events that led to McKenna’s jailing.
On Jan. 25, McKenna was arrested after calling police to report that she had been assaulted. While police were investigating her complaint, they discovered a warrant for McKenna’s arrest for assaulting an officer in neighboring Alexandria, Virginia.
The Alexandria incident is the “mercy arrest” Earley referred to, which occurred on Jan. 15. Five days later, on Jan. 20, a warrant was issued for her arrest.
While it is unclear what happened during the initial interaction with Alexandria police, it does seem like McKenna was experiencing some kind of episode associated with her mental illness because police took her to the hospital rather than jail, reported WUSA9, a CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C.
Earley believes the assault charge could have been baseless. “She was charged with assault, and that could be everything from not obeying a policeman’s orders to just walking away,” he explained.
Fogg backed up this analysis, telling MintPress that part of his training as a U.S. Marshal was that people should be charged with assault if a Marshal has to put his or her hands on them in any way.
“If you’ve got to put your hands on somebody – that’s the first thing you do: you charge them with assault so that they can’t come back and try to sue you,” Fogg explained.
 ‘That’s just outrageous’
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, “In a mental health crisis, people are more likely to encounter police than get medical help.” Indeed, the organization continues, 2 million people with mental illnesses are booked into jails each year.
Further, Human Rights Watch released a report in May, which reports that it is common for staff in jails and prisons across the country to use unnecessary, excessive, and malicious force against prisoners with severe mental health issues, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
The report, “Callous and Cruel,” states:
“Corrections officials at times needlessly and punitively deluge them with chemical sprays; shock them with electric stun devices; strap them to chairs and beds for days on end; break their jaws, noses, ribs; or leave them with lacerations, second degree burns, deep bruises, and damaged internal organs. The violence can traumatize already vulnerable men and women, aggravating their symptoms and making future mental health treatment more difficult. In some cases, including several documented in this report, the use of force has caused or contributed to prisoners’ deaths.”
The report explains that staff are often authorized to use force against inmates when an inmate’s behavior threatens the immediate security of officers and other inmates, and other efforts have been made to secure the compliance of an inmate.
However, HRW noted that many of the incidents in their investigation were non-threatening in nature, so the abuse meted out against inmates may constitute torture, cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment, according to international human rights prohibitions.
Pete Earley argues that Natasha McKenna should have never been taken to jail: “When the officers came, they should’ve had what they call a Crisis Intervention Trained (CIT) police officer, who’s somebody’s who’s undergone 40 hours of training to understand the difference between mental illness and someone just being a trouble-maker.”
If law enforcement had more humane mechanisms in place for handling people with mental illness, McKenna would have been brought to what’s called a drop-off center, where she could have been evaluated by a mental health professional and an appropriate treatment program could have been recommended.
Earley told MintPress:
“This thing could’ve been avoided. It’s very startling that if you look at the picture of Natasha McKenna that we put up where she’s booked into jail. She’s not some wild-eyed person in the midst of psychosis. She’s smiling, and that’s a contrast to someone who gets held down and repeatedly tasered when they’re in a controlled environment, when they’ve already had leg irons attached, when already been hanged up.”
He added: “I mean, that’s just outrageous.”

 Reverting back to colonial days
Echoing the National Alliance on Mental Illness report, Pete Earley told MintPress it’s more common for people with mental illnesses to encounter police than get treatment because of the backward nature of how today’s system treats people with severe mental health issues.
Indeed, the way in which the mentally ill are imprisoned and sometimes abused is similar to the situation in colonial America, when there was an official policy to imprison the mentally ill, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit organization that promotes laws, policies, and practices that give timely and effective treatment to the mentally ill.
 “As early as 1694, legislation was passed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony authorizing confinement in jail for any person ‘lunatic and so furiously mad as to render it dangerous to the peace or the safety of the good people for such lunatic person to go at large,’” according to a 2014 TAC survey of how mentally ill people are treated in jails and prisons across the U.S.
A growing movement of activists in the 1820s and 1830s influenced a new set of legislation to confine people in psychiatric wards instead of prisons because of the inhumane ways in which they were often treated.
“Thus, for approximately 100 years, the problem of mentally ill persons in prisons and jails appeared to have been solved. These individuals were treated as patients, not as criminals, and were sent to mental hospitals for treatment,” states the TAC report.
But, starting in the 1960s, de-institutionalization marked a massive shift in this policy. The severely mentally ill were transferred from state institutions, and those institutions were closed. This process has been called “one of the largest social experiments in American history” — and it’s one that has clearly failed individuals with mental illness.
The TAC report concludes:
“[I]t has been known for almost 200 years that confining mentally ill persons in prisons and jails is inhumane and fraught with problems. The fact that we have re-adopted this practice in the United States in recent years is incomprehensible. Prison and jail officials are being asked to assume responsibility for the nation’s most seriously mentally ill individuals, despite the fact that the officials did not sign up to do this job; are not trained to do it; face severe legal restrictions in their ability to provide treatment for such individuals; and yet are held responsible when things go wrong, as they inevitably do under such circumstances. This misguided public policy has no equal in the United States.”

 ‘It’s not illegal to be crazy’
Matthew Fogg, the retired U.S. Marshal, told MintPress that the present state of indifference toward black and brown people by law enforcement in the U.S. is systemic.
“When it comes to African-Americans and people of color,” Fogg said, “I’ve seen excessive force used in extraordinary ways that you just don’t see on people of non-color, white.”
The only options he sees for exposing and tackling this pervasive attitude include community action and the various movements springing up across the country. People are standing up to law enforcement and saying, “We’re no longer going to be treated this way. If you’re outside the bounds of the law, we want to expose you to be prosecuted,” he said.
This kind of public awareness is also what’s needed for the systemic issues with law enforcement’s handling of the mentally ill to be addressed. Earley told MintPress the current situation drives the families of the mentally ill to take desperate measures to secure treatment for their loved ones.
“A family knows that they have to wait until somebody becomes dangerous because that’s the threshold,” he said. “You have to be dangerous. It’s not illegal to be crazy.”
“So they’ll wait or they’ll agitate the person. The person will react by maybe pushing the father. They’ll call the police. The police will come. Then the person gets arrested, and then they’re told they can’t go home. And then they release them into jail. And so all you’ve done is made a situation worse.”
Earley’s son, Mike, has been hospitalized five times to date, and during one crisis Mike became violent. Earley called the police, and when they came, they shocked his son with a taser twice. “This is just an example of how difficult it is to get anyone decent care in this country,” he said.
To combat malicious treatment of the mentally ill, like Natasha McKenna and his own son, Early suggests improving community-based services for the mentally ill, widening access to the mental health care system, and changing the criteria that allows the mentally ill to seek help.
“What happened was we closed down all the state hospitals and promised to use that money to help people in communities, but that didn’t happen,” he said, referring to the process of deinstitutionalization, which was supposed include mechanisms to bolster community-based services but never did.
Earley says it’s extremely difficult to gain access to mental health care — and this has got to change. “I couldn’t get in it,” he said. “I couldn’t get my kid in it until he became violent.”
Finally, he explained that the criteria used to assess whether a person can be treated need to be changed.
“We also need to look at first-time breaks,” he urged. “Most people who have a mental illness are confused the first time [they realize they’re having a mental health crisis] and are willing to see a doctor, and that’s the best time to try and engage them.”

“We don’t do that. We say, ‘Come back when you’re in a crisis. Come back when you’re dangerous.’”

Just when you think the fairfax county police can't sink any lower they pull this stunt


Family slams subpoena of John Geer’s teen daughter to Fairfax grand jury

By Tom Jackman July 13

As the special grand jury investigating the Fairfax County police shooting death of an unarmed Fairfax County man in 2013 prepares to meet later this month, prosecutors have subpoenaed one of the man’s teenage daughters, prompting fears from her family that her testimony will be used to disparage John Geer in front of the jury. The teen did not witness the shooting but made comments about her father’s temper and drinking immediately afterward that her mother says were irrelevant and untrue.
The officer who killed Geer, Adam D. Torres, remains on the job and has not faced internal discipline or criminal charges since the shooting 22 months ago. Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh launched the special grand jury to determine whether Torres should be charged with a crime.
A police internal affairs investigation that began in September 2014 is not complete, and Chief Edwin C. Roessler Jr. said he could not comment on when it would be concluded.
Geer’s longtime girlfriend, Maura Harrington, with whom Geer had two daughters, said she was not surprised to receive her subpoena to the grand jury but was stunned when a detective presented one for her now 19-year-old daughter, Haylea Geer.
“Why does she have to relive this in front of the grand jury?” Harrington asked in an interview last week. “What purpose does it serve?”
Undated photo of John B. Geer with his daughters Haylea and Morgan. (Photo by Maura Harrington)
Harrington and her daughters were in a neighboring townhouse in the Springfield section of Fairfax County when Geer was shot and killed. After he was shot, Geer stumbled into his home and closed the front door. When a SWAT team found Geer dead nearly an hour later, homicide detective Robert Bond was assigned to speak to Harrington and the girls and make formal notification of Geer’s death.
The younger daughter, Morgan, was too upset, but Haylea agreed to go with Bond, Harrington said. “I thought they were just going to tell her what happened,” Harrington said. “It just did not occur to me that they were actually questioning her. She didn’t know she was being tape-recorded. I didn’t know they were doing that.” It wasn’t until more than halfway through the conversation, attorney Michael Lieberman said, that Bond told Haylea that her father was dead.
According to Bond’s report, Haylea told him that “her dad is mean to her mother” and that Geer had once put a gun to her mother’s head. Haylea also said that her father “drinks a lot,” but “she didn’t think her dad was drinking today,” Bond wrote.
Harrington said the claim about the gun to her head was false. She said that she, too, did not think Geer had been drinking that day.
“Whatever happened in their house,” Lieberman said, “how is that relevant
to why Torres pulled the trigger over an hour later? Is this going to be a fair replay of that day, or are they just going to be in there trying to destroy John?”
Morrogh said that Haylea Geer had witnessed events prior to the arrival of police. “As far as the information regarding Mr. Geer’s background goes,” Morrogh said, “under Virginia law evidence of the turbulent character of a decedent is admissible in evidence whether the defendant is aware of the decedent’s turbulent character or not. The rationale is that the prior character of the decedent is admissible to show who was the aggressor in the situation.”
Morrogh noted that in many cases he has tried, “defense attorneys spend a good part of their efforts trashing decedents on all sorts of background information which is considered exculpatory material.”
 John B. Geer. Killed by Fairfax Officer Adam D. Torres in August 2013. No charges or internal discipline have been filed against Torres but a special grand jury is about to begin investigating. (Photo by Jeff Stewart)
Last month, Morrogh said that he had subpoenaed about 20 witnesses to the special grand jury. Fairfax police declined to discuss which officers had been called to testify, and whether Torres will appear before the grand jury could not be determined. His attorney, John F. Carroll, did not return a message seeking comment.
[John B. Geer had hands up when shot by police, four officers say in documents]
Fairfax prosecutors rarely use special grand juries, which are empaneled to hear evidence on one case only, and prosecutors typically do not invite the subject of a grand jury investigation to testify.
On the afternoon of Aug. 29, 2013, Harrington came home to the family’s townhouse on Pebble Brook Court to find Geer tossing her belongings out of the house, in response to the news that Harrington was moving out.
Torres and Officer David Neil were dispatched to the domestic disturbance call. When they arrived, Geer and Harrington were speaking in front of the house with their daughters, then 17 and 13, nearby. Geer knew Harrington had called the police, and when he saw the officers he turned and walked into the house.
Harrington said she never saw Geer with a gun, as Torres has told investigators, and that she never told police Geer was considering “suicide by cop,” as an officer radioed to colleagues during the 42-minute showdown before Torres suddenly fired one fatal shot. Police photos show a holstered gun on the landing near Geer’s body.
Harrington said she was told that prosecutors wanted to review her daughter’s “taped statement” given moments after her father’s death, and they were told the purpose of the conversation was for Detective Bond to make notification of the death, not to do an investigation of Geer’s background.
Harrington said: “I want to have confidence in the commonwealth’s attorney. I want this to be done fairly.”
In April, Fairfax County agreed to pay Haylea and Morgan Geer $2.95 million to settle their civil suit.

Tom Jackman is a native of Northern Virginia and has been covering the region for The Post since 1998








Don't be fooled into thinking the Fairfax County Police well ever wear body games without a court order


Area Police Meet With Body Camera Vendors
By David Culver

As more police departments move ahead with plans to equip officers with body cameras, there are questions about how the video gathered is stored and secured. Northern Virginia Bureau reporter David Culver reports. (Published Tuesday, Jul 14, 2015)
Law enforcement from across the D.C. area are meeting with body camera vendors Tuesday and Wednesday to explore implementing them in local jurisdictions.
Police are examining new body camera technologies and looking into the complexities of storing and securing all the data.
There’s been a growing push for more transparency by police. Law enforcement from Fairfax County and Prince William County are now moving forward with their own body camera projects.
“This is the next big thing for law enforcement," said Capt. Robert Blakely, who is helping Fairfax County Police lead the effort while acknowledging it’s complicated. “It’s how the departments deploy the cameras and what they do with the data," he added.
Police departments across have the option of using several different types of body camera, but storing the hours and hours of video data is the challenge.
Steve Petruzzo’s GreenTec-USA is among the many companies that thinks it may have a solution. It's pitching storage capabilities that hold the original video quality that's untouched by any officer.
“Digital evidence has to be recorded in a way and handled in a way such that it’s immutable, you can’t be challenged in court that the data’s been deleted or modified or edited or altered," Petruzzo said.
Green Tec-USA says its business is booming after only two years in the body camera market.
“Need for video and need for evidence is probably going to be around for a long time," said Richard Detore, Green Tec CEO. "We’re going to need to be able to manage it and deal with it and more importantly protect it.”
Detore said cyberhacks are something they feel confident they can thwart.
Prince William County Police is among the agencies funded to move ahead. The department’s IT manager, Lt. Javid Elahi, is looking at several vendors to start testing.
Northern Virginia Police Body Camera Policies:
•           Fairfax City: Funded; initial stages of testing
•           Prince William County: Funded; meeting with vendors
•           Fairfax County: Not yet funded; meeting with vendors
•           Fredericksburg: Began using last year (2014)
•           ArlingtonCounty: Not immediately pursuing body cams
•           Alexandria: Not immediately pursuing body cams

•           Loudoun County: No response






Former Loudoun County Sheriff’s Deputy Indicted for Asset Forfeiture Embezzlement


Allegedly Embezzled More Than $200,000 from Asset Forfeiture Fund

U.S. Attorney’s Office July 09, 2015        •           Eastern District of Virginia (703) 299-3700
ALEXANDRIA, VA—Frank Michael Pearson, 44, a former Loudon County Sheriff’s Deputy from Winchester, Virginia, was indicted by a federal grand jury today on four counts of theft concerning programs receiving federal benefits in relation to his alleged embezzlement of over $200,000 from the asset forfeiture fund at the Loudon County Sheriff’s Office.
Dana J. Boente, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and David J. LeValley, Special Agent in Charge of the Criminal Division, FBI Washington Field Office, announced the charges after the grand jury returned the indictment today. An arraignment has been scheduled for July 24, 2015 at 9 a.m. before U.S. District Judge T. S. Ellis, III.
Pearson faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on each count if convicted. The maximum statutory sentence is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes, as the sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the court based on the advisory Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
According to the indictment, beginning in 2006 Pearson was designated as the deputy responsible for overseeing the asset forfeiture program for the Loudon County Sheriff’s Office. The indictment further alleges that from in or about 2010 through in or about 2013, Pearson embarked on a scheme to embezzle and steal money totaling in excess of $200,000, which had been entrusted to him in connection with the program. The indictment further alleges that Pearson concealed his embezzlement scheme by making false statements to his coworkers and others about the timing and fact of whether he had deposited seized money into an escrow account maintained by the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office at a local bank.
This case was investigated by the FBI’s Washington Field Office and the Virginia State Police. The Loudon County Sheriff’s Office cooperated with the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Matthew Burke and Mark D. Lytle are prosecuting the case.
Criminal indictments are only charges and not evidence of guilt. A defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty.
A copy of this press release may be found on the website of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia or on PACER by searching for Case No. 1:15cr193.
This content has been reproduced from its original source.

These companies sponsored the Police game in Fairfax County, thanks for nothing














The NACOLE Digest



News and events in civilian oversight and police accountability.
In this Edition...
•           Early Registration Deadline Approaching for 21st Annual Conference
•           Purchase Your Annual Scholarship Fundraising Dinner Tickets Today
•           Nomination Period Open to Run for the NACOLE Board
•           Announcing 2015 NACOLE Award and Scholarship Recipients
•           BART Police Department Adopts Transgender Policy
•           NACOLE Attends 39th Annual NOBLE Conference in Indianapolis
 
________________________________________
Early Registration Deadline Approaching for 21st Annual Conference
 The early registration deadline for the 2015 Annual NACOLE Conference is JULY 31, 2015. All paid registrations received on or before this date will qualify for the reduced rate. To guarantee your discount, register today!
 REGISTER NOW
 This year’s conference will feature a conference schedule with more topics, more speakers, and more opportunities to contribute to the growing national dialogue around civilian oversight.
 For a copy of the complete 2015 conference schedule, go to the website
  ________________________________________
Purchase Your Annual Scholarship Fundraising Dinner Tickets Today
Join us for our annual scholarship fundraising dinner at Heroes Restaurant and Brewery, located in downtown Riverside. In addition to good food and good conversation, you will be supporting NACOLE’s efforts to offer financial support to those wishing to attend the Annual Conference, to increase the reach of civilian oversight, and to promote participation by individuals from a broad spectrum of social, economic, racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
Seats to this event are limited and WILL NOT be available for purchase at the conference. Make sure to purchase your tickets today!
  ________________________________________
Nomination Period Open to Run for the NACOLE Board
The nomination period to run for the NACOLE Board of Directors is open until September 6, 2015. File your declaration today! Serving on the Board is an exciting way to help shape the direction of the association, to work closely with your oversight colleagues, and to support communities across the country looking to establish or improve oversight of the police.
 To be eligible, candidates shall have been association members in good standing for one year; they must have attended at least one of the two previous annual conferences; and their membership dues must be current. This year, the membership will elect the President, the Vice-President, and two Board members at the Annual Meeting on October 7, 2015.
 How to file: Send your signed declaration form (and bio and photo) to the Election and Bylaws Committee by no later than September 6, 2015. Please mail or email your declaration to: Ainsley Cromwell, Chair, NACOLE Election Committee, 1063 Trevor Place, Detroit, MI 48207, or cromwellac@yahoo.com.
 All election-related material and information can be found HERE on the NACOLE website.
  ________________________________________
Announcing 2015 NACOLE Award and Scholarship Recipients
NACOLE is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2015 Flame Award and Achievement in Oversight Awards. They are:
 Charles D. Reynolds, recipient of the 2015 Flame Award, is a court-appointed consent decree monitor, a former chief of police in five communities, a past-president of an international police executive organization, a recognized expert on police organizational and management issues, and a past NACOLE board member.
 St. Louis City Aldermen Terry Kennedy and Antonio French serve their community with distinction as elected representatives of their wards on the Board of Aldermen and are together recipients of one of this year’s Achievement in Oversight awards.
 Samara Marion, a policy analyst and staff lawyer with the San Francisco Office of Citizen Complaints, is a recipient of the second Achievement in Oversight award.

NACOLE is also pleased to announce the recipients of the 2015 Scholarship Awards in the following categories:
 Founders’ Community Scholarship Award: Deborah Jacobs, Melissa Smith, Olga Orraca, Torin Jacobs
 Presidents’ Scholarship Award: Lynn Erickson, Marielle Moore
 Membership Scholarship Award: Richard Olquin, Aisha Miles
 ________________________________________
BART Police Department Adopts Transgender Policy
As a result of a recommendation made by its Civilian Review Board, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Police Department adopted a policy on interactions with individuals identifying as transgender.
 The policy aims to increase awareness among officers and to support the need for all members of the community to be treated fairly and with respect.
 ________________________________________
NACOLE Attends 39th Annual NOBLE Conference in Indianapolis
 NACOLE President Brian Buchner and Cameron McEllhiney, NACOLE’s Director of Training & Education, attended the 39th Annual Conference of the National Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) in Indianapolis, Indiana. NOBLE invited Mr. Buchner to participate in the Opening Plenary Session where the Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice Loretta Lynch delivered the Keynote address. As an invited guest, NACOLE was also given free booth space in the Exhibition Hall, which turned out to be a great opportunity to meet and speak with law enforcement officials and NOBLE members about NACOLE and civilian oversight. It was a good opportunity to build a relationship with NOBLE and its members, as there is alignment between what NOBLE and NACOLE have been working toward for many years. NOBLE’s 40th anniversary conference will be held in 2016 in Washington, DC. More information about NOBLE is available on its website, www.noblenational.org.

Our mailing address is:
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Police Reports

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Police Reports

The following are copies of written statements submitted to the police on report forms The drivers were instructed to give a brief statement on the particulars of the accident in their own words.

Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don't know.

 I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my Mother-in-law and headed over the embankment.

 The gentleman behind me struck me on the backside. He then went to rest in the bush with just his rear end showing.

 In an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.

 I had been driving my car for forty years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident.

MD: An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my vehicle and vanished.

The pedestrian had no idea which direction to go, so I ran over him.

I saw the slow moving, sad faced old gentleman as he bounced off the hood of my car.

The guy was all over the road, I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.

To avoid hitting the bumper of the car in front, I struck the pedestrian.

 I was sure the old fellow would never make it to the other side of the roadway when I struck him.

My girlfriend kissed me. I lost control and woke up in the hospital.

When I saw I could not avoid a collision I stepped on the gas and crashed into the other
car.

As I approached the intersection, a stop sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.

The indirect cause of this accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth.

I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way.

I told the police that I was not injured, but on removing my hat, I found that I had fractured my skull.





This is an actual ad





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Before

“Before, we had crimes that oppressed us; Now, we have laws that oppress us.” Tacitus (56 B.C.)



Distrust

“Distrust all men in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.”                                                                                                       Friedrich Nietzsche 






...then put body cameras on your goddamn cops



“Cost is not an issue for a human life.” 

                                                        Fairfax County Police Chief Ed Roessler 



Mass killings, school shootings are contagious



Mass killings and school shootings in the U.S. appear to be contagious, according to a team of scientists from Arizona State University and Northeastern Illinois University.
Study author Sherry Towers, research professor in the ASU Simon A. Levin Mathematical, Computational and Modeling Sciences Center, explained, "The hallmark of contagion is observing patterns of many events that are bunched in time, rather than occurring randomly in time."
Her team examined databases on past high-profile mass killings and school shootings in the U.S. and fit a contagion model to the data to determine if these tragedies inspired similar events in the near future.
They determined that mass killings -- events with four or more deaths -- and school shootings create a period of contagion that lasts an average of 13 days. Roughly 20 to 30 percent of such tragedies appear to arise from contagion.
Their paper, "Contagion in Mass Killings and School Shootings," appears in the July 2 edition of PLOS ONE.
The analysis was inspired by actual events in Towers' life.
"In January of 2014 I was due to have a meeting with a group of researchers at Purdue University," she said. "That morning there was a tragic campus shooting and stabbing incident that left one student dead. I realized that there had been three other school shootings in the news in the week prior, and I wondered if it was just a statistical fluke, or if somehow through news media those events were sometimes planting unconscious ideation in vulnerable people for a short time after each event."
The researchers noted that previous studies have shown that suicide in youths can be contagious, where one suicide in a school appears to spark the idea in other vulnerable youths to do the same.
"It occurred to us that mass killings and school shootings that attract attention in the national news media can potentially do the same thing, but at a larger scale," Towers said. "While we can never determine which particular shootings were inspired by unconscious ideation, this analysis helps us understand aspects of the complex dynamics that can underlie these events."
On average, mass killings involving firearms occur approximately every two weeks in the U.S., and school shootings occur on average monthly. The team found that the incidence of these tragedies is significantly higher in states with a high prevalence of firearm ownership.
________________________________________
Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Arizona State University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
________________________________________
Journal Reference:
1.         Sherry Towers, Andres Gomez-Lievano, Maryam Khan, Anuj Mubayi, Carlos Castillo-Chavez. Contagion in Mass Killings and School Shootings. PLOS ONE, 2015; 10 (7): e0117259 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0117259
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Arizona State University. "Mass killings, school shootings are contagious." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 2 July 2015. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150702151520.htm>.