Tag Archives: Police

News

Mona Charen explains how individual initiative is dying in America

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Mona Charen writing in the National Review Online. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

A plucky teller foiled a robbery attempt at Key Bank in Seattle. But the story does not end happily. When a small man in a beanie cap, dark clothing, and sunglasses pushed a backpack across the counter and announced, “This is a ransom. Fill the bag with money,” teller Jim Nicholson ignored his training and “instinct took over.” He lunged across the counter and attempted to grab the thief by the throat, or at least to pull his glasses off. The nonplussed would-be robber bolted for the door with Nicholson on his heels. A couple of blocks away, with the help of others, Nicholson tackled the guy and held him until police arrived.

Two days later, Key Bank got in touch with Nicholson. A bonus, perhaps? A commendation? Not quite. He was fired. It seems he had violated the bank’s strict policy that tellers should always comply with robber demands. A Key Bank spokesman has not returned a call asking for comment.

It gets worse, though. OK, everyone know s that I absolutely adore birds. All kinds of birds, but especially cockatiels. Birds are the most cuddly and adorable creatures in the world and I want to make friends with all of them whenever I see them. We have Canadian geese that walk around my building and I whistle to them. They stop, lift up their heads and stare at me. Sometimes, they honk back, if I honked at them first.

Look at this tragedy:

We see Canadian geese crossing roadways all the time here in Fairfax County. Usually it’s an adult goose followed by four to six fuzzy gray goslings with another adult goose bringing up the rear. One assumes it is a family unit. Jozsef Vamosi was driving to work around 9:30 a.m. when he saw such a family assembling to cross a busy thoroughfare. “They were walking like gentlemen,” Vamosi told the Washington Post. “Like the Beatles on ‘Abbey Road.’” Vamosi got out of his car, held up a hand to stop traffic and escorted the birds to the median. He then did the same thing on the other side of the road. The geese went safely on their way. “Everything came out fantastic,” the Hungarian immigrant explained. That is, until a Fairfax County police officer arrived on the scene berating Vamosi and questioning his sanity. Vamosi was issued a ticket for jaywalking. A police spokesman advised, “We can appreciate the citizen’s response and compassion for wildlife. But a more prudent response would be to pull off the road and use their cellphone. Call the police, and have them respond.”

By the time even the most responsive police could have arrived for such a call (and don’t they have more important matters to attend to?) the geese would have been pâté. Nicholson and Vamosi acted on impulse — and I for one would not like to live in a country where such instincts have been ironed out of us.

Stop taking away all of our chances to be heroic, you stupid bureaucracy!

Oh – speaking of that, I was talking on my cell phone outside the office last week when one of our female Democrats came out. It had just started to rain really hard. So I asked her for her car keys and brought the car around for her so she would not get wet. (I got soaked!) I suppose that if the feminists find out, I would be sued. This is what men are supposed to do for women.

This is also why men (and women) should be allowed to own firearms and carry them. We should not be calling the cops when a crime can be prevented just by brandishing a firearm.

News

Is Obama against police officers and victims of crime?

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Obama has really put his foot in his mouth this time by insulting police officers just for performing their duties.

Normally, I would always blog about policy issues and leave these Obama gaffes for other blogs. But in watching the story explained on Fox News below, I began to realize that there was a policy angle after all.

Watch this Fox News clip: (H/T Nice Deb)

And pay attention to the part of the transcript that Deb snipped out from NRO, where Charles Krauthammer makes the point:

I think it was important, because the Democrats have suffered for almost a half a century of a reputation of being soft on crime. The flip side of that is tough on cops, or insensitive to the duties and the sacrifices of law enforcement.

Now click through and see Verum Serum’s video of non-white police officers standing by officer Crowley. (H/T Hot Air)

The police are not happy with Obama calling them stupid. But should we be surprised that he thinks police are stupid?

Consider this article on Obama’s softness on crime from The Hill.

Excerpt:

In 1998, Obama was one of only three senators to vote against a proposal making it a criminal offense for convicts on probation or on bail to have contact with a street gang.

In 2001, Obama voted against a measure that would have expanded the penalties for some gang activity to include the death penalty. The bill was vetoed by then-Gov. George Ryan (R ) not long after he had issued a moratorium on the death penalty in the state.

Obama, at the time, said the bill would unfairly target minorities, stating, “There’s a strong overlap between gang affiliation and young men of color … I think it’s problematic for them to be singled out as more likely to receive the death penalty for carrying out certain acts than are others who do the same thing.”

Obama opposes the death penalty except for terrorists, serial killers and child-murderers, but his campaign added that he does not support the death penalty as it is currently administered in this country.

On a 1999 vote making adult prosecution mandatory for aggravated discharge of a firearm in or near a school, the senator voted “present.”

He explained the vote, saying, “There is really no proof or indication that automatic transfers and increased penalties and adult penalties for juvenile offenses have, in fact, proven to be more effective in reducing juvenile crime or cutting back on recidivism.”

And in 2001, Obama voted “present” on a bill that would increase penalties for trafficking in Ecstasy and other designer drugs.

The senator questioned the length of some drug penalties when compared to other crimes, noting that selling 15 tablets of Ecstasy was a Class X felony, as was raping a woman at knifepoint.

…During Obama’s campaign against Rush, the senator missed a vote on the Safe Neighborhoods Act that would have made illegal gun possession a felony, and Ryan blamed Obama and two other lawmakers for missing the vote and dooming the legislation, though it failed 31-17.

And consider this IBD article:

Excerpt:

As an Illinois state senator, for example, he acted more as a friend to criminals than to cops, legislating among other things:

• Curbs on what he called a “broken” death penalty system.

• A measure to expunge some criminal records and give job grants to ex-cons.

• Tougher handgun controls.

• A vote against making gang members eligible for the death penalty if they kill someone to help their gang.

• Opposition to a bill requiring juveniles to be prosecuted as adults for firing a gun at or near a school.

At the federal level, Obama would:

• Repeal “unfair” mandatory sentences for crack convictions.

• Provide drug counseling instead of jail time for some abusers.

• Rethink criminal penalties for pot.

• Ban profiling by federal law enforcement, even if it helps catch violent criminals including terrorists.

• Strengthen hate-crime laws and beef up civil rights enforcement against police chiefs who profile.

• Provide job training, drug rehab and counseling for ex-cons.

• “Re-enfranchise” felons denied the right to vote.

In addition, Obama, who once vowed to repeal the Patriot Act, still talks about reforming it. He also once proposed banning executions of inmates, arguing he was against capital punishment.

…”In our criminal justice system, African-Americans and whites are arrested at very different rates,” Obama recently complained. “It has to do with how we pursue racial justice.”

This Cambridge, MA story is consistent with Obama’s previous voting record against public safety and law enforcement.

Commentary

Christina Hoff Sommers explains feminist myth-making

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Christina Hoff Sommers
Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers

This story was sent to me by ECM, but I also saw posted at Dinocrat.com, Jennifer Roback Morse and Muddling Towards Maturity.

How reliable are the stories you read in women’s studies textbooks? Does violence against women really increase on Superbowl Sunday? Or is it just a ploy to create a made-up crisis to justify transferring wealth from taxpayers to feminists for research, social programs, etc.?

Excerpt:

One reason that feminist scholarship contains hard-to-kill falsehoods is that reasonable, evidence-backed criticism is regarded as a personal attack.

Lemon’s Domestic Violence Law is organized as a conventional law-school casebook — a collection of judicial opinions, statutes, and articles selected, edited, and commented upon by the author.

…in a selection by Joan Zorza, a domestic-violence expert, students read, “The March of Dimes found that women battered during pregnancy have more than twice the rate of miscarriages and give birth to more babies with more defects than women who may suffer from any immunizable illness or disease.” Not true. When I recently read Zorza’s assertion to Richard P. Leavitt, director of science information at the March of Dimes, he replied, “That is a total error on the part of the author. There was no such study.” The myth started in the early 1990s, he explained, and resurfaces every few years.

Zorza also informs readers that “between 20 and 35 percent of women seeking medical care in emergency rooms in America are there because of domestic violence.” Studies by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice, indicate that the figure is closer to 1 percent.

Sommers is a Christian equality-feminist who writes against activist “gender” feminism. I have her first two books. She is a professional philosopher who understands men and tells the truth.

You can read more about what constitutes feminist research in this article by Rod Dreher.

Further study

My previous story on domestic violence showed that female-instigated DV is rising in Australia, and that rates of DV are similar in Canada and the UK.

Previously, I blogged about a new study that shows the importance of fathers to the development of children.

I also blogged about how government intrudes into the family and about the myth of “dead-beat Dads”. And about how the feminist state’s discrimination against male teachers is negatively impacting young men. And there is my series on how Democrat policies discourage marriage: Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here and Part 3 is here.

Dr. Linda Kelly Hill
Dr. Linda Kelly Hill

Here is a related research paper by Dr. Linda Kelly, a professor of Law at Indiana University School of Law.