Blog 39 theknockerblog.com

A van full of hippies, a street full of reds, and all the little children bounced on their heads.

These exerts from my new book coming out next year gives some insight into my attitude regarding drug enforcement, and my philosophy of government service.

I was working the 2 Robert 9 district. I spotted one of those VW vans that were popular with hippies back in the 70s. The van was headed eastbound on NE 12th. It was full of hippy wanna-bes. I turned in behind the vehicle and began following the thing. As the van traveled eastbound on NE 12th, it was weaving all over the road. I called for backup. We had a unit coming to assist from N.E. 4th. As we proceeded east on 12th the driver must have spotted me as the vehicle accelerated and turned south. This put the van between me and the responding back up unit. The hippies were now in a fix, pretty lights behind and pretty lights coming from the front.

A popular theme of the Drug culture was that L.S.D. and Marijuana were “Mind Expanding Drugs.” It just isn’t so folks. If they were, these whack jobs would have felt an overwhelming impulse to stop back at the library on N.E. 12th and I never would have gotten involved in their little social experiment.

As the van approached N.E. 10th Pl. the realization of their impending doom and the paranoia that so often accompanies the ingestion of certain of these mind altering substances kicked in.

All these events happened at once. The van stopped, I blocked the rear escape route, the responding car blocked the van from the front, the side door on the van opened, and out on their heads rolled seven hippies, with a cloud of marijuana smoke enveloping the entire scene. As one of the participants hit the street he dropped the bag of reds he was holding. (Reds are the street name for a barbiturate popular at the time) The reds went all over the street. The stunned and panicked hippies were laying everywhere, some with their legs still in the van. At about this time several other units arrived to partake in the fun of corralling this group of drugged out friends of Dr. O’Leary.

At this time in my career, I had made a number of these types of arrests. Some of the older officers were remarking and questioning how, I, a mere rookie, was able to, “slop into all these major arrests.” The answer was that I didn’t subscribe to the notion that I should “do the minimum and get the maximum.” It was good police work. I wasn’t out stopping every blonde chick I saw driving a hot car. That is exactly what a large numbers of the lamenters were doing with their time.

A second reason was: I was raised in a poor section of the city I grew up in. I had experience with a lot of these criminal elements, and I could read them like a book.

The down side was that the more arrests of this nature you made the more the criminal public complained. If we had a good chief, this was not a problem, as long as the arrests were legal and justified. When we got a chief that was more of a politician than a real cop, he didn’t like the fact that you got a citizen’s complaint at all.

The “Do the Minimum and Get the Maximum” guys won the top administrative jobs. That eventually led to the internet puppet show years after I retired. To me it was the right on and was the funniest thing I had ever scene. See you tube cyberstalking cartoons 1 through 9 Are the people of River City getting the type of policing they deserve? Maybe! What I do know is the people in any governmental agency who subscribe to the “Do the Minimum and Get the Maximum” philosophy are thieves taking a paycheck for doing a job they have no intention of doing well.

The solution lies with the voters. Unfortunately for the nation, the voters are being dumbed down by an education system that is top-heavy with liberalism.

Until balance is restored in education, the slide into ignorance will continue. An uneducated, ignorant electorate is easy to control with accusations of prejudice.

This seems to me to be what the liberals are striving for. Why else would they fight to keep criminals from being fired for offenses involving children? Why do so-called rubber rooms exist in some school systems? Why are liberal professors inciting students to chase conservative speakers from campuses all across this nation?
Why are collage kids out in the streets fighting with police when they should be in class learning how to, learn and to think before they try to speak?

S. Henry Knocker
theknockerblog.com

Blog 38 theknockerblog.com

Have we been invaded by a super power?

There is a war going on across our southern border. An insurgent army from all over Latin America, backed by a billion dollar entity, is now fighting with the government of Mexico. This army has all the trappings of an army a command structure, uniforms in the form of tattoos, and other identifiers, sophisticated weapons, and tactics. The Mexican army is in the fight. Our country has also been invaded by this army. They have sent in their version of Special Forces into our major cities and started insurrections in our streets. They have even coopted one of our major political parties and are intimidating the other. They have formed an alliance with our top leaders, to look the other way, while the invaders consolidate their foothold in this country.

The war has been going on for decades whole communities have been devastated especially in the poor communities. Our government has been willfully ignorant of this invasion because business concerns have been able to take some advantage from the situation. I hope we can now see the reason that our government is so unwilling to close the southern border. This is also why they will not prosecute business men that hire these invaders in violation of our laws. They refuse to pass legislation to put an end to the invasion. A law making it a felony to hire persons in this country who have violated our immigration laws and the arrest of one CEO would put an end to the invasion. If you don’t have a Green card you will not be hired. Rewards should be offered for turning in employers who cheat

The argument that if we don’t allow enough legal immigration there won’t be enough green card holders to fill all the jobs is pathetic. Just make more cards available. They won’t do that because it would tend to make wages higher for the legal workers. By God we can’t let that happen. It might start lifting the nation’s poor out of poverty and drive up the cost of illicit drugs and that might stop some of the poor from destroying themselves.

We should be looking at tax breaks for companies that hire legal workers and penalties for those that don’t I would even tie food stamps to work by allowing companies to offer them as a perk to poor workers along with classes in economics for the poor subsidized by the government. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like government subsidies, but the poor have been victimized by a general lack of economic education in the schools and they are in dire straits because of it. Swop sex education for economic education.

Now start driving these invaders back across the border, that have come here armed, with the intent to do us harm. Take them as prisoners of war and turn them over to the Mexican army to deal with. That will keep them from coming here.

Next the poor need to be helped off drugs I don’t like putting drug users in jail. We will need a place they can go to either kick the drugs, or just let them do all they want until they decide to quit on their own, but quarantined till they make up their minds. If we give them what they want for free and treat the ones that want it, we can resolve a good deal of the crime and put families back together. We could even give amnesty for nonviolent crimes that are related to the drug use, as an incentive to get clean.

What do you think? Can we do this?

S. Henry Knocker
theknockerblog.com

Blog 37 theknockerblog.com

The killing of El Rojo Grandes

It was a sleepy summer day in a quite rural neighborhood of River City the birds were singing. We had some rain that morning and the sun was again out and warming the day. The children were playing in the back yard. Our dog Sugar was herding the chickens around when she got a little rough with my prize hen Queenie.

Queenie was a tan bantam and quit a striking little hen. The boys in the chicken yard had many a dustup over her affections. During one of these dust ups ; King the Bard rock rooster mauled El Rojo Grandes My prize road Island red rooster pretty badly. I built a small 3X6 cage for him to recuperate in and had kept the two apart for several months. He was fit again but I had neglected to return him to the flock because the two birds would fight threw the fence from time to time

When the dog messed up the hen, we took her in the house and gave her a bath in the kitchen sink. She was pretty muddy and it took some doing to get her cleaned up again. After her bath we got out the hair dryer and soon she was all fluffed up and proud of herself. We took her back out on the deck and watched her for a while as she danced about on the deck. It was still a little muddy out from the morning rain so we decided to separate her from the others for a while until things dried up

I thought that I would put her in with El Rojo Grandes, The cage was large enough and what the heck Big Red had not had any company for three months. This would prove to be a huge mistake. I should have known better. I had been around chickens all my life and I knew all about the birds and the bees. And I was fully aware of what goes on in a barn yard.

Queenie Was looking good and El Rojo Grandes was tall and handsome in his regal red plumage as he passed back and forth within that cage. I looked over and thought to myself I’m going to put these two together. At that point it didn’t occur to me that that rooster might be just a bit nervous having been separated from the hens for three months not to mention King was probably teasing him about the hens being all his and stuff like that.

Well like the father of the bride I picked up Queenie gave her a hug walked her over to the cage and gave her to the groom. Before you could get, “with this ring” out of your mouth, Big Red sprang into action. He jumped on her did his thing and came off her so happy that he charged head long into the corner of the pen and broke his neck, falling dead in a heap, in the corner of the cage. I was stunned. The widow Queenie was on the other side of the cage shaking herself: Married and widowed in less than three seconds.

El Rojo Grandes ( Big Red) was no more.

Choices have consequences

S. Henry Knocker
the knockerblog,com

Blog 36 theknockerblog.com

THE KILLING OF POLICE OFFICERS in 2014

Detective Melvin Santiago was a Jersey City police officer who was shot to death on July 13th. Santiago was white. His killer, Lawrence Campbell, was black. Officer Jeffrey Westerfield was a Gary, IN police officer who was shot to death on July 6, 2014. Officer Westerfield was white. His killer, Carl LeEllis Blount, Jr., was black. Officer Perry Renn was an Indianapolis, IN police officer who was shot to death July 5, 2014, the day before Officer Westerfield was killed. Officer Renn was white. His killer, Major Davis, was black. Vermillion Parish Deputy Sheriff Allen Bares was shot and killed by two men June 23, 2014 in Louisiana. Deputy Bares was white. His two killers, Quintlan Richard and Baylon Taylor, were black. Detective Charles Dinwiddie of the Killen, TX Police Dept. was murdered on May 11, 2014 by Marvin Lewis Guy, a black male. Officer Dinwiddie was white. Officer Kevin Jordan of Griffin, GA Police Dept. He was shot and killed on May 31, 2014. Officer Jordan was black. His killer, Michael Bowman, was white. This was a white man murdering a black police officer. Over the past Months, these examples of reported deaths of police officers by gunshot in the U.S. Of those, four were white officers who were murdered by black men. one was a black officer murdered by a white man none were a cause of a riot {Fact checked}

Locally we have had Four Lakewood Washington officers shot while getting Coffee on Sunday, November 29, 2009, at the former Forza Coffee Co. coffee shop. By a black male suspect and a white Seattle officer was ambushed sitting in the patrol car by a black male who felt oppressed by the police. the left took his side Fact checked

I believe that all of this is being driven by the myth that the police are profiling black men. I don’t even know what that means. Profiling, what is it? I found this in the University of Ottawa’s Department of criminology Journal. Thomas Gabor Volume 46/ number 4/2004

“ profiling as defined here, is a
form of racial bias whereby citizens are stopped, questioned, searched,
or even arrested on the basis of their minority status per se, rather than
due to a demonstrated, elevated risk of law-breaking”

.” Several rigorous studies undertaken in the United States provide evidence
of such “racial profiling.” For example, John Lamberth of Temple
University (cited in Harris 1999) sent out teams of observers to the New
Jersey Turnpike and, based on observations of over 42,000 vehicles,
found that black and white drivers violated traffic laws at virtually
identical rates. However, police records indicated that 35% of those
stopped and 73% of those stopped and arrested were black, while only
13.5% of the cars on the road had a black driver or passenger. Lamberth
concluded that “it would appear that the race of the occupants and/or
drivers of the cars is a decisive factor [in the number of stops of blacks]
or a factor with great explanatory power” (Harris 1999: 198).”
Police are being killed because of this perception

How is it possible for these statistics to be twisted in this manor? Are New Jersey State police really sitting by the side of the road and stopping every minority that passes their location? I don’t think so. I would make an educated guess that most of the stops on the turn pike are generated by RADAR and are at least initiated by a speeding vehicle. Sense it is virtually imposable to determine the race of someone prior to the radar contact and there are teams of officers working the radar how does this disparity manifest its self? Are they writing the blacks and letting the whites go? I don’t see that happening. That could only happen if you had two officers working to gather with that in mind. Otherwise the radar operator would become concerned that his chase people were messing up the log with a large number of stop and release notations.

No I would guess that the rate of traffic violations is related to the overall crime rates. People that commit traffic violations commit criminal acts also and sense there is a higher crime rate in the minority community they get stopped more on the turnpike for traffic related offences. Poverty drives this just like it drives the crime rate. I question the Temple study cited in (Harris 1999)

Why do I question this on its face? In 30 years of observations of police I can tell you that 90 % of drivers stopped by a traffic officer are cited and about 10% of those stopped by a Patrol officer are cited. Sense the study was done on the turnpike I have to conclude that the vast majority of the stops were done by traffic officers These guys have a magic number in their heads if you go over that number your most likely will get a ticket. As the saying goes, “day or night black or white stop and cite”.

To study this properly the investigators needs to eliminate their own biases this can be done by picking officers at random and checking the license plates that they run. Send your teams out to check the ethnicity of the owners / operators of the vehicles. Then check the data against the makeup of the area the citations come from. A few bad officers can cause a perception of unfair targeting in a community. Most officers would welcome this kind of scrutiny. There is another variable to think about. If you believe you were unfairly cited you are less likely to Pay the fine and are more likely to have a warrant for your arrest. Arrest warrants are mandatory arrest in most cases Now we have a chicken or the egg dilemma. That’s all I’m going to give you to think about today.

What do you think? Please comment; Keep the dialog going.

S. Henry Knocker
theknockerblog.com

Blog 35 theknockerblog.com

The head and arm take down and the choke hold.

Well the liberal press did it again they let their alligator mouths overload their hummingbird asses.

Those of you in the press that keep referring to the head and arm take down in the New York death case need to get your facts right. First it was a takedown not a choke down. look at the position of the officers arms when he first grabbed him. The right arm was under the man’s right arm and the officers left arm was over the left shoulder and was not in the classic choke possession. Then the man was spun down to the ground. Again not how you choke a person out.

The problem for the group of officers is that once on the ground no one took charge and directed the hook up. That should have been the job of the ranking officer. I heard there was a sergeant on the scene and maybe a captain? I have done hundreds of these takedowns it should have gone down like this. #1 exhaust all reasonable attempts to get voluntary compliance. #2 Then explain to the man that the hard way is dangerous and they are ready to use overwhelming force to make him comply. #3 get in good position for the takedown. In this case if it were me in charge I would have had the biggest man doing the head arm part of the takedown and the smaller guys on the arms. But that is just me; less chance for a break away. Once he was on the ground; then comes the hookup. He was a big guy; preplanning should have recognized two sets of cuffs were needed. After the cuff up comes the sit up. It should have been a bang-bang deal. I would have had him sit up with his back against the wall and someone sitting on his knees if necessary. Leaving a big man face down on the ground was the problem in my considered opinion.

This was not the fault of one officer; it was a failure of leadership. I will offer this observation; from what I saw there may also be an issue with some of the officers being out of shape. Exhausted police officers don’t think well sometimes. The fact that they didn’t respond with first aid when they heard his complaints of not being able to breath says to me that someone or all of them were not thinking properly in this situation.

How then do we assess blame here? We certainly can’t lay it all on one guy. It is a matter of how far up the chain of command this goes. People should not die because police are not well trained and the street cop is not in charge of that.

The demonstrators are right to be upset but let’s get upset at the right problems. I feel for the man’s family but one officer did not cause his death it was a group effort and the group involves some politicians. Politicians don’t take blame well they are always looking for the scape goat to absolve them of their sins. When police officers are involved it is usually them.

S. Henry Knocker

theknockerblog.com

Blog 34 theknockerblog.com

Where do the media find these talking heads that can’t understand probable cause?

Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. – See more at: http://billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/bill-of-rights/#sthash.WPB3rhZK.dpuf

Amendment V No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

So what do they want? Is it to give Officer Wilson let’s say $10,000,000 for the gross violation of his civil rights to a “judgment of probable cause” Do they really want to send him to a trial absent this standard? I think it would be a slam dunk and not take the Supreme Court more than five minutes to give the officer the bucks, and then disbar every lawyer involved.

I know what I’m talking about. I have had my probable cause statements used in constitutional law classes taught by a well-respected judge. He thought I had an “excellent grasp of the concept”.

Liberals are never stupid unless, it is a willfully political stunt, to in slave the willfully ignorant. This mess could wind up costing the state a ton of money once Officer Wilson wakes up and realizes that the governor and several other politicians have already violated his rights, not to mention the federal department of justice.

If I was a big bucks civil rights attorney, I think I would jump up and take this one.

I raise my glass to you go get them Mr. Wilson

S Henry Knocker
theknockerblog.com

Blog 33 theknockerblog.com

The slow strangling of the middle class

Those of us that are seen as middle class are slowly being strangled by the insidious attacks of these liberal governments. Dailey I am made aware of some new tax or regulatory change that cost me a few pennies more. It has gotten to the point that we are talking about real money here.

The biggest of these is the massive increase in health care. In my case a $168.00 increase in my wife’s health care insurance premium an additional $2016.00 a year plus the increased in the deductible of $2000.00 then there was a $150.00 extra each year I had to shell out because of a rule the state insurance commissioner decided to implement. School levies are now yearly expenses that never go away. They used to be only necessary when a new building was needed. Add to that all the school supplies we now have to buy. Most of that stuff was supplied when I was in school.

What happened? Well it went like this, teachers and public employees wanted raises and they needed and deserved them. The politicians wanted a legacy. For those of you who don’t know what that is, a legacy is getting your reward on earth and not in heaven. This legacy thing gets all balled up with providing roads and bridges and stuff like that. It always cost us the taxpayer more than we would like. A bronze plaque for this, a bronze plaque for that, and now you’re talking real money that could have been used for school supplies. Maybe you think this is a proper use of public monies maybe you don’t. I wish they would just leave it there, but they don’t

Some Counties are now passing laws that take away plastic bags in the stores we shop in. They won’t let us go back to paper bags because the spotted owl cause might have to be re-lied about. What could be wrong with that? We are saving mother earth!

Well let’s see they put a .05 cent charge on the paper bag, if you need to have one, or you can buy a cloth or plastic bag for from .88 cents to 15.00 dollars depending on how fancy you want your reusable grocery bag to be. Now we have to carry those dang bags with us everywhere because we never know when we might want to stop at the store and pick up a few things. Now those bags get dirty and some of you wash them and some of you carry your pet ferret around in them and then plop the dirty things on the counter in front of me at the grocery store. Now I just know that I will be using my health care deductible even more.

It is an economic fact that there is nothing the government dose that cost me and you nothing. They tax us directly or they do it indirectly they prefer to do it indirectly because it is harder for us to detect but it all trickles down to us. Frankly I would rather have Jobs trickling down than some new mandate, fee, or tax. How about you?

S Henry Knocker
theknockerblog.com

Blog 32 theknockerblog.com

The lynching of a blue person

You would think that a community that endured unspeakable atrocities in the first part of the 1960, and witnessed the birth of freedom generated by DR. King, would be just a little bit more concerned when elements in their community start lynching the very people dedicated to the preservation of the rights they so bitterly won.

The police, whether you believe it or not, are a minority too. It does not matter what color you are when one joins the police. What matters is what color you are when you are deployed to the streets. Police officers are not white, black, yellow or red they are blue. They stand in the breach for law and order.

There is a transition that occurs as the officer matures. The officer in effect becomes blue. If this transition is not evident at the end of an officers probation they are terminated. Can one or two slip, through the screening? Yes that can and will happen from time to time.

It happened in Mississippi when a racist sheriff was elected and he hired, what were openly KKK members, as deputies and Mississippi burned, remember that? The KKK was Happy to see that the result of their criminality was the destruction of a community. They are happy to see this community is at odds with the very people that brought the KKK to justice, and continue to suppress their agenda.

Stop looking at the police as the enemy. Some politicians are the enemy. Look at who or what group is abdicating disorder. That person or group is KKK and they are at it again. It don’t matter what color they are.

Officer Wilson did not shoot a school boy. He shot a suicidal thug that ended his own life by attacking a police officer. The KKK among you are sticking their hands in the air and repeating a lie designed to destroy what should be a close relationship between a community and It’s police officers.

Please read my blog ;( a P S A for Ferguson Missouri) they are YOUR police. You need to be a part of the police, not at war with them.

S. Henry Knocker
theknockerblog.com

Blog 31 theknockerblog.com

Into the Streets you Blue People

Is the grand jury meeting now to consider whether to indict the witness that lied to them?
Lying to incite a riot? That is the question that bothers me. Can a person be held to account for the lies they tell that incite others to commit criminal acts? We have thugs, politicians, and newspapers all spreading lies and people all over the world are in the streets because of the basic lie that police are racist.

I am here and now calling on police all over the world to protest this myth. Go into the streets with your faces painted Blue as a statement that there are no “white Cops”. There are no “black Cops” there are no cops of any color but “Blue” There are more racist in the clergy than there are racist Police officers

Shame on you people that believe this tripe, shame on you liberals that believe those lies. Shame on the press for printing the lies and showing that thugs picture in a cap and gown as though he was anything other than the thug he was.

You COWARDS ! How dare you impugn these brave men and women.

We have had about enough of it

Into the streets my brothers and sisters into the streets, paint your faces get those that support you to hold up signs that say shame on you that believe the lie.

S. Henry Knocker
theknockerblog.com

Blog 30
thehknockerblog.com

The Reason I have said; “You have to give thugs a reason not to do it”
If ever there was a time to get back to sending a message it is now. Riotous thugs need to be shot on sight! What happened to us? We have been wossfied by the left leaning press. The only reason to deploy the National Guard to a riot zone is to send the message that riot will not be tolerated. Letting a bunch of thugs burn stores under cover of legitimate protest is the height of folly.

This all started with the Kent State National Guard confrontation May 4th 1970. The fault was the inappropriate use of the guard to police a war protest on a collage campus. The guard should only be used when there is a clear and present danger of riot. It should never be used to score political points.

The Governor of Missouri needs to resign, and the folks hurt by his inept administration need to be compensated. There was never a more clear case of politicizing crisis in the history of this nation since the Army was used to put down the veterans bonus army incident in Washington D C in 1932

Governor Nixon being warned, that thuggish elements within the mix of protesters, were planning a repeat of the earlier mayhem that occurred in Ferguson; rightly activated the National Guard.

Unfortunately for the people of Ferguson, that’s as far as he was willing to go. He should have announced that if there was any repeat of the looting, the looters would be shot on sight. He then should have placed a military leader out front. If he had there never would have been a second riot.

But he was a yellow bellied liberal coward and look what transpired? Millions in damage and people killed anyway.

Believe me you just have to give thugs a REASON not to do it.

S. Henry Knocker
theknockerblog.com