Blog 42 theknockerblog.com

Reclaiming Civility

The natation it would seem, if you judge us by social media, has lost its civility. The age of the garbage mouth is upon us. Words that in the 50’s would have been viewed as a social disgrace and gotten the utterer a bloody nose, are now used with such frequency in every form of media, that the bleeps generated are argued to be the cause of the increase in tinnitus. (Ringing in the ears)

We are all to blame here I remember when as a boy some friends and I were walking on a popular lake in Seattle when we decided to see who could emit the vilest of comments the loudest. A stream of profanities streamed out across the lake and then came the echo back “Hay Garbage mouths give it a rest”. We were silenced and ashamed of what we had done. Will anyone today rebuke another for such a transgression? Oh no! We would just laugh it off. Unless it was directed right at one of us, then the offended party might shoot the offender if he felt “disrespected”. It has only been about 50 years.

Discipline and civility, the corner stones of society have been denigrated and replaced with incivility, riotousness and debauchery. These things have gone so far mainstream that even the politicians of today celebrate the fools that plunder our streets. Did I say Fools? We are the fools for putting up with this behavior and the political pimps that pander to louts and thugs.

I’m as guilty as the next man. I laughed at Gorge Carlin’s Seven dirty words. I said the “F” word, as I point out in my book; A View from the Street / River City Policing; Coming out next year. It was all fun and games until you look back and take stalk of the effect on society.

How did this happen? Looking back I have to say “The Greatest Generation” let us down. 100 years of war robbed us of the will to discipline the nation’s youth. Too many of the best and bravest wasted. The necessity of this waist is debatable in as far as WW1 and Vietnam are concerned we were not attacked at home. The rest I believe are all worthwhile endeavors. They all cost us far too much and that cost can be levied in great account to our own complacency. I am of the belief that if you take care of small problems the big ones don’t have a chance to arise, but who is to say? Only God can predict the future.

As a nation we need to reclaim the lost civility. Reclaim the lost discipline in our public schools. Oust the anarchist professors from our colleges and put the nation’s youth back on the road to solving problems instead of creating them.

We should start with these Observations someone sent me

“1. America is capitalist and greedy – yet half of the population is subsidized.
2. Half of the population is subsidized – yet they think they are victims.
3. They think they are victims – yet their representatives run the government.
4. Their representatives run the government – yet the poor keep getting poorer.
5. The poor keep getting poorer – yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.
6. They have things that people in other countries only dream about – yet they want America to be more like those other countries. “

Maybe if we concentrated on solving these problems we would not have time to go around chanting “Black lives matter, blue lives matter, and then calling for the killing innocent citizens in the name of justice. It’s time to remember that the last thing any of us wants is justice. What we all need is forgiveness.

S. Henry Knocker

theknockerblog.com

Blog 41
The knockerblog.com

Operation Kraken This is not a drill! ———— Repeat ———–This is not a drill!

There is a rumor going around that Some of the boys down at the V F W are about to go rouge and launch operation Kraken on the North Korean Dear leader They are asking for two cent donations from all the vets and their supporters. They just don’t think the administration knows how to handle retaliation for the internet cyber-attack against Sony.

Anger is mounting in the veteran community over this attack on the freedoms we in the veterans’ community fought for in all the foreign wars. We are including in this plea all the veterans in allied countries By rights veterans all over the world need to be allowed to participate. This little runt in North Korea needs to be dealt with in a manor he can’t help but understand. Operation Kraken is our response. To instigate the operation We will need Two things.

First we will need as many vets as possible to pledge at least Two Cents. Second we will need the vets to commit to taking a few minutes of their time to assist once the operation s launched.

We settled on the two cent donation because one dealing with this pip squeak is simple and we don’t want to leave any vet out for asking too much and besides it came about because one of the vets said “ for two cents I’ll Take care of him” Then he articulated a plan so simple it is mind numbing, For now the plan must remain a secret.

Anyone wishing to donate can send their donation to Quartermaster Post 5564 McCleary Wa 98557 attention Operation Kraken All donations collected over and above what is needed will go to the post emergency fund. 100 %

Of course we will be willing to stand down Operation Kraken If the Dear Leader apologizes to the Sony Corporation and the American people for this insult.

S Henry Knocker
theknockerblog.com

Blog 40 the knocker blog .com

Playing with the Kids An exert from my book: A View from the street / River City Policing

In the late 80s I was working in the detective division in property crimes. That meant I got all the burglaries, vandalism, thefts and neighborhood disputes.

At that time there was a juvenile male; he was 14 or 15—years-old. He was a particularly nasty young man who seemed to take great delight in harassing his neighbors. His main weapon of antagonism was to throw dog feces on the roofs and doorsteps of his neighbors. Occasionally he would damage cars by keying the paint or throwing dog feces on them.

The patrol officers would take reports and send them to the detective division for follow-up. On several occasions I made contact with the young man’s parents in an attempt to get them to more closely supervise the young man. Since both parents worked and he was too old for day care, the parents were disinterested in my efforts to curtail their son’s extracurricular activities.

Living on the same block with this young man was an insurance investigator who had become one of his regular targets. The insurance investigator had personally witnessed some of the incidents perpetrated by this protagonist. To solve this problem I enlisted the aid of this insurance investigator.

I instructed him in the manner of writing statements acceptable to the courts. It wasn’t long before I started receiving regular statements, signed by this insurance investigator under oath.

This gave me the weapon I needed to get the young man’s attention. Every statement that I got from this investigator allowed me to issue a criminal citation for the alleged offense. I forwarded the same to the juvenile court for prosecution.

The juvenile court system is set up so that points are issued for each individual offense committed. Burglaries three points, malicious mischief one point, homicide 15 points; whatever they did, they received a point. It was sort of like military demerits at West Point. As points were accumulated they added up. If I were to send one citation alleging several violations such as vandalism, the citation would generate one point. If I sent multiple citations over a period of time for the same number of offenses, he would get a point for each offense.

When the insurance investigator started sending the complaint statements, I wrote a citation for each offense. I sent them in immediately. This gave him multiple offenses over several weeks. The juvenile court would process one offense, and then several weeks later they would issue a summons. The young man would have to appear in court. Because of the time between charges and the sheer number of charges, the court had to deal with each offense separately. Because each charge was dealt separately, the points added up and he started being locked up on the weekends

Of course this generated a complaint that this young man was being picked on by me. When a complaint of this nature is generated, there is, quite naturally, a meeting set up between my superiors, myself, and those alleging the complaint. At this meeting, I explained to all those present that I did not have time to sit and babysit this young man. The neighbors on the street where they live were extremely upset with our suspect. The actions being taken were a direct result of the criminal acts of this young man.

I gave them this analogy. I was an artillery battery. He was the enemy. I had forward observers sending me his movements. I had him bracketed, and every time he made a move, I could lob an artillery shell to the juvenile courts and he would be pulled in along with his parents. The parents would have to take off work. This could get costly. When the realization trickled through their minds, the light went on. The young man’s fascination with disrupting the peace and tranquility of his neighborhood ended.

This wasn’t the first time that I had to enlist a community to help in the restoration of law and order. The juvenile courts are afflicted with a malady I will term dysfunctional do-gooder syndrome, or DDS.

DDS causes those afflicted to be incapable of understanding the seriousness of a juvenile’s behavior patterns. The victims of their criminal acts are treated as part of the problem. The prevailing wisdom of those affected by DDS is that they are the reason the child acts up. Hence we get programs such as victim perpetrator reconciliation. This is ridiculous.

I had a young man whose father was a minister. This young man was committing burglaries in a neighborhood adjacent to the church where the father was a pastor. The neighborhood being victimized was predominantly older retired individuals in one of our wealthier neighborhoods. I had been to numerous crime scenes in the neighborhood. I had taken fingerprints and had identified the perpetrator. I had submitted numerous cases to juvenile court.

Every time the young man appeared in court he would be released to his father. His father apparently had the courts convinced that he had the ability to straighten the young man out. He was repeatedly released and repeatedly returned to his father and he would repeatedly reoffend. There seemed no end to the cycle. A meeting was called with the homeowners.

At this meeting, I explained the situation to approximately 15 elderly women. I organized a round robin telephone complaint hotline directly to the office of the prosecuting attorney. Within three days I was called into the Chief’s office and asked, “What the hell is going on? The prosecuting attorney wants every single case that this young man has been involved in. He wants every case that is likely to be filed, or can be filed in the next two weeks.”

After gathering all this information and submitting it to the prosecuting attorney, the young man disappeared from the face of the earth. I never heard from him again. I never knew what happened to him. He simply disappeared. Peace and tranquility returned to Mortgage Hill.

The DDS folks can’t stand political heat from the old ladies. It is a good idea for all police detectives to keep this fact in mind and to recruit a hoard of pissed off old ladies when you have one of those “problems you would like to have disappeared.”

S Henry Knocker
thelnockerblog.com