I think the plan to have heavily-armed police randomly patrolling subways is a fundamentally stupid, fear-mongering, ineffective and money-wasting load of shit.

In the first counterterrorism strategy of its kind in the nation, roving teams of New York City police officers armed with automatic rifles and accompanied by bomb-sniffing dogs will patrol the city’s subway system daily, beginning next month, officials said on Friday.

Under a tactical plan called Operation Torch, the officers will board trains and patrol platforms, focusing on sites like Pennsylvania Station, Herald Square, Columbus Circle, Rockefeller Center and Times Square in Manhattan, and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

Officials said the operation would begin in March.

Financing for the program will be funneled to the Police Department and will come from a pool of up to $30 million taken from $153.2 million in new federal transit grants to the state.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Each team in the operation will comprise a bomb-sniffing dog and six officers: a dog handler and a sergeant and four officers from the Emergency Service Unit who will be outfitted in heavy, bullet-resistant vests and Kevlar helmets and will carry automatic weapons, either an M-4 rifle or an MP5 submachine gun.

This does nothing except intimidate people, waste money and promote fear. Pathetic. Atlantic Avenue is a daily stop for me. I’m not looking forward to commuting a route patrolled by some underpaid douchebag with an automatic weapon. Is the city going to equip the commuters with kevlar?

This cop is total fucking scum:

[Link to video]

Looks like the fucktard is in trouble now.

This is absolutely disgusting:

[Link to video]

The guy in the video gets tasered for asking some reasonable questions and refusing to sign a speeding ticket. While he’s being arrested, his pregnant wife is screaming bloody murder. The cop ignores the guy’s repeated requests to have his Miranda rights read to him and for the officer to tell him what speed he was going. Then, when you think it’s all over, the cop searches his car without permission. Fucking ridiculous. More from an article.

This is disgusting.

UCPD officers shot a student several times with a Taser inside the Powell Library CLICC computer lab late Tuesday night before taking him into custody. At around 11:30 p.m., CSOs asked a male student using a computer in the back of the room to leave when he was unable to produce a BruinCard during a random check. The student did not exit the building immediately.

Video shot from a student’s camera phone captured the student yelling, “Here’s your Patriot Act, here’s your f&*$ing abuse of power,” while he struggled with the officers.

“It was the most disgusting and vile act I had ever seen in my life,” said David Remesnitsky, a 2006 UCLA alumnus who witnessed the incident.

Bruins Nation article

I was reading this article about this guy who made the seemingly innocent mistake of driving through Nebraska with a large amount of money in his rented car.

This guy—Gonzales had teamed up with a partner and combined their life savings to buy a refrigerated truck and start a produce business. In total, they had $124,700 in cash. Gonzales found a truck for sale in Chicago and flew out there on a one-way ticket with the cash to buy it. However, when he got there, the truck had already been sold. So, with all this cash and no truck, he decided to rent a car to drive back. Since he didn’t have a credit card, he had someone else rent the car for him. Nervous about traveling with so much money, he hid the money in a cooler and stuck it in the trunk of the rental. Off he goes back home, until he gets pulled over for speeding.

A Nebraska state trooper stopped him on the interstate and in the process of giving him a ticket, noticed the guy’s name wasn’t on the rental contract. He started questioning Gonzales, who had a limited ability with English and ended up searching the car. He found the cooler with the cash and called in a K9 unit, thinking this guy must be either going to buy drugs or has just sold some and is slinking home with the profit.

The police dog shows up and sniffs out the car. When the dog gets to the cash, he starts barking. The cop tells Gonzales that he suspects him of trafficking drugs and confiscates the fucking cash! All of it!

Here’s the problem, up to 80% of US currency has trace amounts of cocaine on it. You take enough cash, especially the “I’ve been saving all my life in jars buried in the backyard” variety of cash, put it all together, yeah, it’s not so surprising a drug dog’s going to smell smell something.

Gonzales and his patner contested the seizure, won a ruling, but an appeal by the police had a circuit judge ruling against them and making the judgement that “Possession of a large sum of cash is ’strong evidence’ of a connection to drug activity.

Read the article. there’s no point in me rehashing the whole thing. The point is, I think it’s fucking ridiculous. I’d also argue that what the circuit judge realy wanted to say was “Possession of a large sum of cash and driving while Latino is ’strong evidence’ of a connection to drug activity.” It’s fucking disgusting.

When I was around preschool age, I was obsessed with the television show, CHiPs, much like all the other kids I knew. As far as I was concerned, the coolest motherfucker in the world was California Highway Patrol officer Frank Poncharello aka “Ponch“. With a cool uniform, a motorcycle and proficient in a wide variety of skills such as skate boarding, street and roller hockey, handball, racquetball, basketball, flying, singing, jet-skiing, hang-gliding, sky-diving, wind-surfing, demolition derby driving, square dancing, drag racing, volleyball, chess, and Karate—Ponch was cool. Ponch got bitches a-plenty. I wanted to be exactly like him. His partner, Jon Baker was a fucking hick tool.

One day, I watched an episode where Ponch, having returned to his apartment from exercising, pours a glass of milk, cracks two raw eggs into it and drinks the mix. Supposedly, this is Ponch’s secret recipe for starting the day off right. I became fixated on this raw concoction. It was the magic potion of coolness. If I were to drink this elixir of milk and egg, I would instantly become cool like Ponch. If I managed to drink it every day, I’d surely get a motorcycle and roller-skating bitches would just flock to me like a pint-sized porn magnet. I was a big kid now. I didn’t need diapers anymore and I sort of knew what a vagina was. I needed this.

(more…)