Cops and Guns: Too Anxious To Shoot First

16 thoughts on “Cops and Guns: Too Anxious To Shoot First”

1. I disagree: 1. The History Channel is a British-run enterprise that often slants history. 2. Some comments deserve “heckling”; some views deserve blunt criticism. 3. Cutting out the malarkey and cutting to the quick are virtues. 4. Some opinions are not worthy of respect and deserve short shrift. 5. Personally, I prefer heckling to moralizing. 6. Americans need more straight talk, and less spin, fluff, fancy-foot work and goody-two-shoes niceties. 7. So, I say, heckle away! freely express yourself; “sticks and stone . . .” 8. Remember what Holmes/Brandeis said, “Every idea is an incitement.” You can’t go through life trying NOT to offend; almost every idea offends someone. 9. Some ideas require the necessary retort “Nuts!” 10. Give me frank talk, over “polite” talk any day. 9. Frankly, my dear, . . . 10. Tell it like it is! 11. I favor “fearless expressionism.” 12. Like it or lump it! 13. As Harry S Truman said, “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.” 14. Light oftentimes comes from heated debate. 15. Don’t pull any punches; As the Doors sang, “The time to hesitate is through . . . ” 15. Speak truth to power and let the cards fall where they may.

   1. It is important to point out that The History Channel is owned by “A&E Television Networks, LLC,” as noted here: http://www.history.com/. That entity is an American media company headquartered in New York City; here is a summary of executive biographies: http://www.aenetworks.com/about/executives. So, while some may “disagree,” The History Channel, now known simply as “History” is, in fact, American-run. There seems to be no British connection, as much as those artsy narrator voices on History programming may lead some to think otherwise.

      But the larger point is heckling. What is the point of pointed comments to Matt such as, “Matt: get away from that TV set before you become chronically depressed…” and inviting and then withdrawing purported invitations to meet purported persons. This blog is starting to read like the “Comments” section of mainstream news sites like CNN in which obviously bored commentators play “kick the can” in a manner which is ultimately much ado about nothing. This is, at its core, a serious blog post about cops killing civilians with guns.

      Yet that beginning somehow leads to postings about JFK assassinations. I think that the comments are supposed to relate to the topic at hand. I suppose that by commenting about the off-topic JFK assassination, I am an enabler.

      So, I said my prior piece with the nostalgic hope that comments would stay on topic with the topic. Dismissing an entire blog post by saying to the author — who has written passionately about a topic involving cops murdering civilians and saying “Ignore it all; you are going to be depressed” — is, in my opinion, heckling, and in my opinion, lacks respect.

      Finally to be blunt, commentators should at least fact check broad statements such as “The History Channel is a British-run enterprise…”

      1. Jay:

         You are right that at time this blog gets away from its original purpose and people start shouting and heckling rather than discussing matters. I appreciate that you pointed that out.

2. Matt: Barr McClellan emailed me to say his book about the JFK assassination will be out next month. You can watch Barr in this banned History Channel documentary THE GUILTY MEN http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F-LY1HblmE
   His son Scott McClellan was George W Bush’s Press Secretary

   1. I really do not wish to be involved in this rather deep quagmire, but it is important to point out that The History Channel did air the film, _THE GUILTY MEN_; the N.Y. Times article which follows reinforces this point and frames a greater context. As discussed therein, it was following protests from a number of corners, that The History Channel examined the historical accuracy of that film in an exhaustive review which included consultation with three reputable historians.

      Further, as Mr. William Connolly has astutely pointed out, this is a matter best entrusted for historians to study. Perhaps your point is that history repeats itself and that past conspiratorial feats — as you postulate with Kennedy’s tragic demise — recur again and again, in the present day. That is a legitimate point, and I would urge the importance of a civil and collegial tone in these discussions, rather than resorting to heckling. To heckle is to surrender your own dignity — and surely you are a better person than that.

      Just my two cents, sprung from what I have patently observed here. You should display that respectful decorum — even when in disagreement — which learned persons inherently tend to display.

      Is that not the manner of rhetoric and discourse, to listen and then to speak; to ponder, to consider, and to reply? I convey this in all seriousness, that heckling reaches a different level by which you lost legitimacy.

      Does that end result not run counter to your apparent goal, which is to be heard? I hope that you consider that in making your posts. Repeating the same words repeatedly without replying to the substance of other statements may prompt your words to be dismissed; some may say, “Well if I am not listened to, why should I listen? What is the point?”

      For others to lend you their ears, you should first lend them yours.

      ========================================
      http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/07/arts/history-channel-apologizes.html

      History Channel Apologizes

      By BRUCE WEBER

      Published: April 07, 2004

      In an hourlong program to be broadcast tonight, the History Channel will engage in an unusual mea culpa, presenting an evaluation of one of its own programs that concludes that it and the channel were irresponsible.

      Tonight’s program (at 8; 7, Central time) was produced in response to vociferous complaints about a documentary, ”The Guilty Men,” that accused former President Lyndon B. Johnson of being complicit in the assassination of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. It was broadcast in November, during the week of the 40th anniversary of President Kennedy’s death, and a squall of protest arose shortly afterward, led by the broadcaster Bill Moyers; Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America; and others who worked for Johnson during his presidency. They were supported by Lady Bird Johnson, the president’s widow.

      The History Channel subsequently asked three prominent historians — Robert Dallek, Stanley I. Kutler and Thomas Sugrue — to make an independent evaluation of the documentary. Their findings are the subject of tonight’s program, called ”The Guilty Men: A Historical Review.” In a statement the History Channel acknowledged that the historians determined that the accusation against Johnson was insupportable and that the documentary should not have been broadcast.

3. A thousand loose threads do not add up to a shred of evidence that the FBI intended to kill anyone. Here again we see loose threads woven into a conspiracy. Negligence, misfeasance and even malfeasance by government actors do not equal a conspiracy to murder. At best we got some nitwits making bad decisions before and after the fact of Kennedy’s killing. Nitwits abound in government. Let’s zero in on the contemporary cover=ups: Benghazi, Fast and Furious, FBI/DOJ reliance on known perjurers and known serial killers; FBI/DOJ giving leniency to serial killers for patently false ever-changing testimony!!! Put the current crop of DOJ/FBI officials, including judges and prosecutors, under the microscope. Nothing can be done about Kennedy’s assassin today. Investigate the constitutional infringements, false imprisonment and wrongful conviction of John Connolly; put Wyshak, Durham, Kelly et al who used known perjurers under the microscope; put the GLOBE’s reporters under the miscroscope. Have the courage to change what can be changed, and leave ancient history to the historians.

4. Matt: get away from that TV set before you become chronically depressed. In other uplifting news
   2 stories for Matt
   1st story

   see link for documentary

   http://www.globalresearch.ca/fight-back-movement-in-california-new-documentary-on-theb-battle-against-police-brutality/5355564

   Fight-Back Movement in California: New Documentary on the Battle against Police Brutality

   Global Research, October 25, 2013

   The film is centered around the organizing efforts of more than 40 families of police brutality victims for a statewide march in Anaheim, Calif., on July 21, 2013–the one-year anniversary of the historic uprising against the Anaheim police after the killing of Manuel Diaz and a subsequent violent attack on neighbors who peacefully objected.

   It features footage from significant demonstrations leading up to July 21; the organizing efforts of participants; interviews with families, attorneys, activists and leaders in the police brutality movement; and the powerful July 21 action that shut down the Anaheim police station.

   2nd story

   see link for full story or google title
   new book suggests FBI agents assassinated President Kennedy

   http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57609489/new-book-reveals-how-much-fbi-cia-knew-about-oswald-before-kennedy-assassination/

   October 27, 2013 10:09 AM

   New book reveals how much FBI, CIA knew about Oswald before Kennedy assassination

   It has long been known that the Warren Commission, the blue ribbon panel of public officials appointed by former President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy, was flawed in ways that led to generations of conspiracy theories about what happened on Nov. 22, 1963. A forthcoming book from former New York Times reporter Philip Shenon digs into exactly what the commission got wrong, both by intentional concealment, or, in Shenon’s view, extensive attempts by both the CIA and FBI to withhold just how much they knew about Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in the weeks and months before he killed the president.

   “In many ways, this book is an account of my discovery of how much of the truth about the Kennedy assassination has still not been told, and how much of the evidence about the president’s murder was covered up or destroyed – shredded, incinerated, or erased – before it could reach the commission,” Shenon writes in the prologue to A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination, which draws its title from the first sentence of the commission’s report. “Senior officials at both the CIA and the FBI hid information from the panel, apparently in hopes of concealing just how much they had known about Lee Harvey Oswald and the threat that he posed.”

   Shenon was interviewed by Bob Schieffer on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday morning. He started the book in 2008, when one of the former staff lawyers from the commission contacted him to suggest he write a history of the Warren Commission like one he had just authored on the 9/11 Commission.

   Much of the evidence Shenon includes in his book shows the amount of information about Oswald’s time in Mexico that either never reached the Warren Commission investigators or was directly contradicted in reports by the CIA. One example is a June 1964 memo to the commission’s lead investigator from J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director at the time of Kennedy’s assassination, in which Hoover wrote about a report from “our people in Mexico” that ” [Oswald] stormed into the embassy, demanded the visa, and when it was refused to him, headed out saying, ‘I’m going to kill Kennedy for this.'” (it was unclear to Hoover whether the embassy in question was the Cuban or Soviet embassy in Mexico City). The investigators told Shenon they were certain they had never seen the memo, which disappeared before it reached them and only turned up in the classified archives of the CIA years later.

   Another previously unknown revelation in the book: Cuban dictator Fidel Castro submitted to questioning by the Warren Commission in a secret meeting with one of the commission’s investigators, William Coleman, off the coast of Cuba.

   Some of the FBI’s other attempts to cover up their connections with Oswald have previously been revealed, such as the fact that Dallas-based FBI agent James Hosty had received and later destroyed a letter from Oswald protesting the FBI’s questioning of Oswald’s Russian-born wife, Marina. Under orders from his superior, Hosty destroyed the letter by ripping it into pieces, then flushing the pieces down the toilet at the Dallas FBI office, two days after the assassination when Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby.

   Tom Johnson, a former press secretary to President Johnson who later became publisher of The Dallas Times Herald and The Los Angeles Times as well as a president of CNN, described Oswald’s letter to the FBI as “a note threatening to blow up the Dallas office of the FBI, the building, if the agents did not cease trying to interview Oswald’s wife Marina.” Johnson confirmed the existence of the latter with former FBI director Clarence Kelley during his time at the Dallas Times Herald.

   “The decision was made two days after the assassination to destroy this note. In truth, we’ll never know exactly what was in that note, and its been described in different ways,” Shenon told host Bob Schieffer. “The Warren Commission knew absolutely nothing about it.

   Despite the intentional destruction of evidence, Kelley, who succeeded Hoover as the head of the agency, came to see Hosty as a victim when he later conducted a private search of the FBI’s own files about the investigation. “He was convinced that if Hosty had been told everything that FBI headquarters knew about Oswald’s Mexico trip, he would have alerted the Secret Service to the obvious threat that Oswald posed,” Shenon writes. “The FBI, Kelley said, would have ‘undoubtedly taken all necessary steps to neutralize Oswald.’ And that was Kelley’s larger conclusion – that President Kennedy’s assassination could have been prevented, perhaps easily. ”

   Hosty’s note from Oswald was one of the earliest pieces of evidence the commission might have examined that disappeared, but it was certainly not the only example. In the first chapter of the book, Shenon tells the story of how Navy pathologist James Humes threw his blood-stained notes from Kennedy’s autopsy into the fire after he transcribed a fresh copy of the report. He said that he wanted to keep the documents from falling into the hands of “ghouls,” and gave a similar rationale for ordering that the sheets that covered Kennedy’s head wounds in Dallas be laundered during the autopsy.

   The commission’s investigators never even saw the photos and X-rays from the autopsy, which were in Robert Kennedy’s custody at the Justice Department. The Kennedy family – and Earl Warren, the Chief Justice and chairman of the commission – decided to withhold the photos for fear that they would be leaked to the public and destroy the public image of Kennedy as a handsome young president instead of a crime victim with a gruesome bullet wound to his head.

   “Repeatedly in the history of the Warren Commission you see the chief justice making decisions that were designed to protect the [Kennedy] legacy,” Shenon said. The decision to block access to the autopsy photos caused “huge turmoil” among the commission’s staff, he added.

   Shenon also points to the CIA as having taken great steps to cover up their knowledge of Oswald’s visit to Mexico City before the assassination. The book’s prologue opens with the story of diplomat Charles William Thomas, a career State Department employee who uncovered details about Oswald’s time in Mexico, including his affair with a Mexican woman who was a supporter of dictator Fidel Castro. The reports Thomas wrote to CIA Mexico City Station Chief Winston Scott with those details were ignored, as was the memo he sent to then-Secretary of State William P. Rogers when Thomas was forced out of the State Department in 1969. Thomas committed suicide in 1971.

   “There is some evidence to suggest [Oswald] had a brief relationship with a young Mexican woman ho worked at the Cuban embassy in Mexico City,” Shenon said on “Face the Nation.” “The Warren Commission actually wanted to interview that woman but Chief Justice Warren made the decision she would not be interviewed because he said ‘she was a communist and we don’t interview communists.'”

   A section of Scott’s memoirs – which included details about the extent of the CIA’s monitoring of Oswald in Mexico – was only declassified in the 1990s. The agency photographed Oswald outside of the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City, and recorded his phone calls while he was in Mexico, evidence that never reached the commission. Scott’s memoirs also reveal that he thought there might have been a foreign conspiracy to kill Kennedy involving Oswald as a Communist agent, which contradicted what he told the Warren Commission.

   “Scott told the Warren Commission that he did not believe there was a conspiracy, and apparently in his memoirs he says he exactly the opposite,” Shenon said.

5. In The Throwaways, a parent of his only child, Rachel, murdered after being sent out by police to buy drugs and a gun, says this:

   One day last spring, Irv Hoffman spoke with me about the legal concept of parens patriae, and the broad notion that the state has an obligation, when dealing with those in need of special protections—the young, the mentally ill, and perhaps even the drug-addicted—to act as a parent would.

   ————————-

   We lost our way. In Massachusetts, our children were the focus of local police who arrested them and used them to do what we pay the police to do.

   The law allowed them to turn our own children into criminals which is why Massachusetts changed the law. It had to stop. Massachusetts and other states are saying NO to the idea that marijuana’s Prohibition justified the actions of police using young people to do police work.

   This is what law enforcement has lost sight of:

   “parens patriae, and the broad notion that the state has an obligation, when dealing with those in need of special protections—the young, the mentally ill, and perhaps even the drug-addicted—to act as a parent would.”

   Instead, they scared the hell out of them and forced them into situations in which some of them have died.

   1. Firefly:

      According to an article sent to me by msfreeh which I mentioned in a post today the FBI is doing the same things with immigrants from Moslem countries knuckling them into becoming informants if they want to stay in the good old USA. Nothing can stop the FBI since it has no boss.

      Don’t fool yourself into believing the cops aren’t still squeezing the kids – they still are. I’m familiar with that tragedy where the young lady was forced to inform and then got murdered. It’s a sad tale of cops gone wild.

6. Matt was informative and had some good ideas about the Whitey Bulger case and his analysis of the criminal justice system. His comments about police shootings bring him outside his range of experiences and dramatize the problems associated with trying to determine whether a shooting was “justified”.
   The age of the victim i.e-the person shot by the police, is almost irrelevant, unless of course the victim has not reached the age of reason or his physical age is close to it. Maybe a younger, armed individual with a sense of invulnerability and strength may present more of a real present threat to a police officer than an adult who may recognize the futility of engaging in combat with the cops.
   When all else is stripped away cops are paid public servants tasked with a job, which by its very nature dangerous. This places him in regular situation where his best chance for survival is to adopt certain attitudes and takes certain precautions – the public refers to this as siege mentality, the cops call it street survival.
   In the example that Matt cites regarding the shooting of the teenager with a toy gun, he presents the often repeated situation where it is impossible to determine whether something is a firearm unless you examine it, or the suspect decides to use it. No reasonable individual has yet suggested that the police shouldn’t shoot unless someone first fires at them. This is one of the circumstances that create so much confusion when we are asked to decide if the police were justified in shooting.
   Matt’s other example about the woman in the car in DC presents a situation that is occurring on a regular basis. The police confronting a mentally disturbed individual. One of the best article about this problem is the recent front page story on the Wall Street Journal for Wed Oct 23, 2013 “lives of Mentally Ill, Police Collide”. The police are asked to resolve violent escalating situations by making instant decision based on limited information – a circumstance that invites error and misinterpretation.
   It is easy to second guess the cops and satisfying to make a decision based on an analysis of the facts after a careful investigation. All the investigations and after action reports cannot eliminate the unpredictability and lack of information that are inherent to these situations as they evolve on the street. It is because of these circumstances that the cops adhere to a simply rule – better to be judged by 12 than carried by six.

   1. Bob:

      Sorry for the delay in getting back. As you know sometimes things at home demand full attention and other things like a blog must be put on the back burner for a while.

      Your comments are well put although I don’t agree with all you have to say. I’ve never diminished the danger inherent in being a police officer which is universally know because society knows their safety often lies in the weapon at their side. The intent of my post is to note that the shooting of persons who should not be shot seems to be increasing. During my time working as a prosecutor I know of very few of these incidents and none with the people I was working with who conducted hundreds of raids and were put in dangerous situations. I’ve suggested that the effect of the games the next generation grew up on where people are shooting at people on a computer may be responsible for that happening.

      I agree second guessing is easy and is wrong. I tried to look at the cases I presented as they would have appeared at the time of the incident giving the benefit of the doubt to the officer and still found the shooting wrongful. You disagree and I would not weigh my experience against yours in that area since you had the responsibility to make those decisions and I was fortunate not to have been in that position.

      I appreciate your response. As I’ve said, the purpose of the blog is to foster discussion and where I present something that one finds too one sided or plainly wrong I’m pleased to have the other side presented.

      Thanks,

7. Matt et al.,

   Murder is murder.
   The fact that our local police are murdering our citizens is beginning to sink in.

   The fact that our local, state and federal officers are working together to cover up the murders they are committing is also sinking in.

   It’s similar to the informant issue.
   Local police have terrorized our own kids to become informants rather than face the trumped up charges of small amounts of marijuana. The locals followed the same protocol of the bigger guys and have attacked our youth.

   People are pushing back:

   http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/03/120903fa_fact_stillman

   Sarah Stillman, who won a George Polk Award for her work writes:

   Police enlist young offenders as confidential informants. But the work is high risk, largely unregulated, and sometimes fatal. In the Sept. 3rd, 2012 issue of The New Yorker, I tell the stories of four young people who were killed working as informants — Rachel Hoffman, Shelly Hilliard, LeBron Gaither, and Jeremy McLean — and follow their families’ pursuit of accountability.
   ——————————————————–

   All of these murders matter.
   Even though the criminal justice system does not seem to value those who were murdered by police or police tactics, we value our friends’ and neighbors’ loved ones.

   They matter.

8. MATT , DON’T EVER FEEL BADLY ABOUT THE TODASHEV KILLING. THE PUBLIC HAS THE RIGHT TO KNOW EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED AND WHY.THE GOVERNMENT TACTIC OF WAITING LONG ENOUGH, WITH THE BELIEF THAT CITIZENS WILL FORGET, CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN.
   I AM STILL STEAMED ABOUT BENGHAZI, THE IRS, PHONE TAPPS ETC., THAT THE ADMINISTRATION REFUSES TO TRUTHFULLY ANSWER. I WISH THAT EVERY MORNING THESE ISSUES WERE THE FIRST ITEMS ON THE PRESIDENTS MENU OR THAT BILL O,REILLY OR HANNITY COULD WAKE HIM AND INCESSANTLY QUESTION HIM IN DETAIL.

   CHECK OUT THIS E-MAIL I RECEIVED FROM ANOTHER MARINE VETERAN http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/24/obama-wants-marines-to-wear-girly-hats/

9. Matt,

   It is my understanding that there are laws on the books in several states, to include NH, that allow an armed citizen to ‘stand and defend’. This is one of the reasons that I feared for my life, after the State of NH Ordered, based upon false testimony to the Court, that I was ‘not competent’ and potentially a danger to myself and others. That Order essentially put a bulls eye on my back. And, given that my life had already been threatened by someone who has now proven himself to be a killer, who could conceivably use the ‘stand and defend’ defense to get away with murder; The same, I would assume, could apply to the local police who were already on the books for illegally arresting me 4 times for criminal trespass on my own property. If the goal was to shut me up so that I could not testify to the facts that I had where members of the NH Bar had committed multiple frauds upon the court in my family’s complaints, then shooting me would solve that problem for good and all.

   1. Dear Jean,

      Your comments and the details they contain about your long journey to find a safe haven in Panama continue to intrigue me. Thank you for opening up about what has clearly been a very trying experience in your life. You’ve spoken a lot about different parties involved in pursuing and persecuting you; I cannot help to learn who you believe intended to shoot you? I recall you have made connections in the past to Whitey Bulger so am not sure if your mention of “…someone who has now proven himself to be a killer” is a reference to him, or to another party? Whom do you believe was sent to kill you, and do you believe that your life would still be in danger if you ever returned to the United States — a wish you have expressed intermittently. Thank you again Jean; your sordid tale continues to fascinate me — it reads like something right out of the Jason Bourne movies.

      With care and concern,
      Jay

      1. Jay,

         On July 14, 2013, the NH Attorney General Homicide Division reported that it found the brutally stabbed body of Mrs. Reginald Danboise in an upstairs bedroom of the family home in Nashua, NH. The homicide detective Sterlzing, also reported that the body of Dr. Danboise had been found hanging in a shed on the property. Soon thereafter, NHAG closed the case stating that Dr. Danboise killed his wife, and then killed himself.

         In 1997 Dr. Danboise threatened my life and the safety of my family. I reported all the threats, and acts upon those threats, to include physical attacks on my person, and the sabotage and theft of my family’s property, in Boston, Ma, and in NH. The records for the probable cause hearing in Suffolk County Court were expunged, according to an agent of the Mass dept of Revenue. None of the complaints that I made in NH were investigated. Dr. Danboise was somehow being protected. Dr. Danboise was a partner of Richard cabral who was in turn a partner of John Iuele, whom we believe to a Whitey Bulger alias. I also reported that I saw a red van with a Melotone magnetic sign on the door at the High Birches Springs located in North Woodstck, NH, shortly after another sabotage had occurred against the water supply and distribution system owed by one of our family companies that had been a target for destruction of the cartel that dr. Danboise was affiliated with. At one time the Winter Hill gang had targeted Melotone. Perhaps they kept one or two magnetic tags a souvenirs ?

         In the end NH determined to poof me instead of allowing me to testify. On October 13, 2009 I was Ordered to appear for a competency hearing. In May 2010, the Laconia District Court Judge ordered that I was not competent based upon an evaluation from the state. In January 2011 the ordered was affirmed. The court ruled that I am a delusional paranoid non restorable personality type. I have recently requested a re-evaluation. It is my understanding that beginning in June of 2009 the statutes have tolled. And, if I am restored to competency by the court the trial of criminal trespass in the kitchen of my famil’s home can be rescheduled. Perhaps then the NH Bar members who committed fraud upon the courts in order to shut me up will be investigated. And, then perhaps we all will learn why a stone cold killer like Dr. Danboise was being protected for all these years. (A detailed explanation of my situation has been posted on nhjustice.net ( No Witness =No Case) and on my Face Book status page.)

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