...you hope you never have to use, but you'd damn well better be READY to use it.
In MY police career, decisiveness and speed of movement did me more good than all the time in the gym, at the range, on the training mat. All that preparation means nothing if you dither your advantages away.
This will make for an interesting manhunt. According to Fox News, the weapon is a .257 Weatherby Magnum rifle. Exterior ballistics here or here. In the right hands, and according to this, the suspect has those hands, that weapon could be devastating out to at least 600 meters.
The murder was a head shot, through a plate glass door (the kind of shot sniper school teaches you NOT to take), so this man means business.
I agree with the AssPress this time though. He will drink his last water, make whatever peace he can with himself, and use the handgun to take his own life.
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UPDATE: 071807 0036 PDT (O736 coordinated universal navigator time, aka CUNt)
I called it pretty close. He declined the final battle, but used his rifle instead of his handgun to terminate his lonely command. RIP, the both of you.
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It might get curious, with his E&E training (Escape and Evasion). If he decides to get serious about E&E, his body might never be found. It's him against the Sheriff now.
Interesting to see how it all comes out.
Update: 021702 1038 PST. I had previously linked to a video of a hidden camera dealio in Russia, but snopes says it's phony, and a reader also phoned me to say it froze his computer. I deleted it.
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Here's another stunt gone bad, the "Firehose Rodeo".
If you are a savvy street racer (Phil, heads up here), you know that a $10K investment in a not-yet-worn-out sports sedan, plus another $10K or so in improvements will give you a street comp machine which will outrun most of the Ford sedans the cops use nowadays. No challenge in it, really.
OTH, if you're a savvy street racer in Italy, you have to be very careful which police cruiser you show your disappearing tailights to.
You can't run OR hide from this unit, a Lamborghini Gallardo operated by the Italian State Police.
500 hp V-10, top end about 245mph, state of the art data-linked video surveillance.
If you want to see it in action on an unlimited-speed autoroute in Italy, open the video below.
...for stealing copper wire.
VERY graphic photos in this Powerpoint presentation.
If you don't have MS Office, you can go here and get a free Powerpoint Viewer.
H/T to Officer PJ, and y'all drive carefully through San Marcos, TX, or you might meet him.
This isn't a true submarine, in that it probably couldn't completely submerge. What it IS though, is a small, "low observable" cargo carrier. The danger isn't so much in the drugs it smuggles, but the fact that it could carry a crew of four and three tons of cargo below the surface. According to the report, it was detected only by visual observation, making this a lucky bust.
I'd be VERY interested to see this craft's navigation suite. If it had precision navigation capability, ALL our seaports are in grave danger. Think small nuke and/or dirty bomb. If the US Navy has to provide ASW assets over our entire coastlines, it will take some time to gin up the assets to do that. The good news is that these plastic "subs" aren't hard to spot. Very low-tech sonar and hydrotelephony are all that are needed, since they must operate within a few feet of the surface for their snorkeling to work. It's possible that a small patrol boat in the 80-120 foot class would be all that was necessary.
Very, very interesting.
An alert Highway Patrol trooper caught Warren Steed Jeffs in Nevada. He was riding in a brand-new, bright red, unlicensed Cadillac Escalade driven by a couple of buddies. The trooper recognized the profile of the three.
In case you don't watch America's Most Wanted, Jeffs is our equivalent of a Mad Mullah. He is a pariah to the Mormons, but claims an obscure right that some Mormons have claimed over the years since their church was founded, that of polygamy (and pedophilia).
Jeffs (and his father before him) took that polygamy a step farther, and said that girls just entering puberty could be wives, in total contravention of law, and he "married" many such couples/harems. He had a business of setting a fee depending on the means of the male for this "service", and amassed a huge amount of money doing this. He was caught with numerous unopened envelopes containing cash. He has even been reported to have exercised the "droit de seigneur" when doing so (don't know that term? look it up). He is basically a pedophile priest, but one who actively spreads his pedophilia rather than trying to hide it.
When his father died, he "married" his dad's two widows. How creepy is that?
Anyway, back to the police work involved. The new $60,000 car he was arrested in contained over $54,000 in cash, 15 cell phones, 4 walkie-talkie radios and $25,000 in various brands of gift cards. This guy was totally set up for a life on the run.
Prediction: there will now be a major effort to bail him out. Naturally, the Feds will ask for a no-bail hold until trial (on pedophilia charges), but Jeffs' network will try to get a bail, even a very high one, established. If a bail is established, look for it to be paid, even if it is well into the millions. Jeffs will then jump bail and go back to hiding amongst the True Believers, of which he is Grand Mufti.
Any difference between him and the Shiite cleric Al-Sadr?
They speak different languages, and Al-Sadr's preferred tool of intimidation is the bomb-belt, while Jeffs' are the penis and the whip. Other than that, same tactics and strategy.
Conclusion? Good on the cops for getting him without a firefight. If he had been cornered in one of the sect's compounds, the results would have looked a lot like Waco.
I was correct here last week when I said that the charges against John Karr for the murder of JonBenet Ramsey would be tossed.
I was correct for the reasons that I stated.
Now, to save themselves from possible wrongful imprisonment torts or criminal charges, the disgraced Boulder DA and police will ship Karr back to Kalifornica to face some sort of porno charges. I had predicted this end, also.
(waits for applause to die down)
Thank you.
Now, let's hear just how the clever DA got hornswoggled by all of this.
And, let's just keep alive my last prediction of last week: the ghost writers will cozy up to Karr so they can rush out a book, and maybe, just maybe, we will get the name of whoever steered Karr into this mess, probably to take the heat off the real killer.
Madam District Attorney, have you subpoenaed Mr. Ramsey's phone records yet? Did he make any calls to Thailand? Oh, I forgot, the fix is already in, has been for 10 years, Ramsey is off-limits, you can't investigate him. Sorry I mentioned it. Forget about it.
In gunfighting, sometimes the heavier weapon wins just because it is a heavier weapon.
In police vehicle chases, especially those where ramming tactics are used, the heavier vehicle almost always wins.
After the patrol Sergeant monitoring this chase lost two vehicles in failed ramming tactics (or by being rammed by the heavier van, the article isn't clear on the point), why the Hell did that Sergeant continue to send in cars to be destroyed, one after another, until the Grand Forks, ND PD had lost enough of it's cars, six in all, to cripple patrol operations?
Good question, huh?
I'll bet that the Chief is asking that exact question of said Patrol Sergeant as I write and laugh about it. I'll bet that furthermore, said ex-patrol Sergeant will soon be showing off his his new slick sleeves to the citizens on his new foot beat, most of which denizens are probably cattle at the stockyards or crap-toads at the sewer plant.
BTW, the probable cause here was misdemeanor DUI, not exactly something that the Procedures Manual says is appropriate for sacrificing the bulk of the patrol fleet to arrest someone for.
...who killed JonBenet Ramsey.
I wasn't going to say anything about this colossal waste of TV time that is being foisted off on us, but now I will, because I'm steamed.
To the max.
That all the press, from right to left, is ignoring the central facts about Karr, the man who has confessed to the crime.
So, let's summarize: the Boulder County DA severely dropped the ball on their first attempt to prosecute the most likely suspects, the girl's parents. One of them has since died (Mrs. Ramsey), but the wealthy father is still alive, and desperately wants to get free of the case.
I'm guessing that the DA will find this "confessed suspect's" case to not be credible enough to put in front of a jury, since that DA would HAVE to put Karr on the stand, and he is as unreliable a witness as ever walked through a courtroom door.
So, let's leap into the short future: the DA tosses Karr out with no charges, or prosecutes him on some lesser, but face-saving porno charge, and Garrison and other lurid-book authors cozy up to Karr to get the straight scoop on why he wanted to "confess", so as to write yet another book about the case and milk yet more millions from the addicted public.
In the interviews, either leading up to more TV gab about Karr, or interviews for book material, Karr lets slip a name. That name will be the name of a person who was paid to manipulate him into "confessing".
Who do YOU suppose paid for that manipulator?
The prosecution rests, your honor.
BTW, if you must follow the case, follow Geraldo Rivera's commentary. He makes more sense than anyone, and is on the verge of predicting that Karr's "confession" won't get him prosecuted.
Sorry Geraldo, with a lot less to lose than you if I'm wrong, I'm first with this prediction.
