The Rules

Last night I respond to a disturbance call.  I find one of the parties involved away from the scene.  The guy is huge so as I am talking to him I put on my carbon fiber knuckled gloves.  The poker match had started, and me by putting on my gloves it was like I threw a big ass bet down after looking at my cards.  I did not know at the time but he was an old school criminal and he knows the rules of the street.  He metaphorically looks at his cards and folds.  He knows respect gets respect and static gets static.  He politely tells me he has served five different prison sentences for nearly 20 years and knows the rules and does not want trouble.  This means he has at least once, been at the crossroads of “The easy way and the hard way” with the cops before, so he knows the pain that comes with the hard way.  He knew the cops had been called so he was smart enough to not have any weapons or contraband on him since he was expecting to get contacted by the police and being a seasoned professional in the justice system knew the situation would likely not lead to his arrest. 

Now just because we are using please and thank you’s and I am not kneeling on his head with him spitting out blood does not mean I am not aware that this is a person to keep my guard up and never turn my back too.  History has shown it could pop off at any time and just because he is being cool now, doesn’t mean that he isn’t in his head, planning to hurt or kill me.  I know that as I am talking to him I am envisioning scenarios of things he might do to attack me and what my response will be.  Our interaction is congenial and in the end he is released because the disturbance has not risen to a criminal level.   As he is starting to leave (me still watching him until I am safe to stop) he asks “So what do you think of all of these new gun laws”   Earlier in the day President Obama presented his first 23 steps to reduce gun violence.  I responded “well I like the fact that they are looking to tie the mental health to background checks and stiffer penalties for lying on the application and such, but banning high caps and assault weapons is not going to be terribly effective.  In the end I’m still gonna have mine and your still gonna have yours” and I chuckle.  Understand that this is a person who has been prohibited from firearm possession since his first felony conviction in 1990.  Him having a single bullet is a crime.  He chuckled “well…you know how it is” I quipped “so will you start obeying the new and improved laws” he laughed “You know the laws don’t make no difference to me” My response “tru dat”.  Then we went our separate ways.

So later the same night around 2300 hours and I am finally getting a chance to eat my Double Double with grilled onions.  I hear a shooting call come out.  I cram into my gullet as much as I can and run out to my car.  I respond to the scene which ultimately ends up being a murder scene.  I am tasked with certain tasks which I complete and report back to the scene supervisor so he can brief the homicide detectives when they arrive.  Not to toot my own horn but beep beep, I’m kind of an intel expert and have access to more databases than the average officers from my time as a criminal intelligence detective and the scene supervisor recognized this so I get those tasks.  The last few hours on the call I am stuck freezing my nuggets off in the uncharacteristically cold weather on the outer perimeter.  Since its 0200 in an industrial area there isn’t much traffic to move along so my duty is pretty much raise the crime scene tape when the detectives arrive and let them into the crime scene.

It’s during this mindless time that my mind wanders to try and comprehend how the new gun laws announced earlier today will impact this crime that I am standing at right now.  The gun used here was not an assault weapon and it didn’t appear to be a high capacity gun either.  It was a small caliber, pistol most likely based on the spent casings found.  The victim was a lifelong criminal with a longtime addiction to illegal drugs.  Statistics will ultimately bear out that he knew the suspect and they too were a criminal and probably a 90% chance that this was a “drug deal gone bad” and the suspect was a prohibited possessor of firearms.   So what has changed?

It got me thinking, so banning high caps from law abiding citizens that haven’t done anything wrong yet is kind of nutty.  I hear the common phrase that normal people don’t need them so they shouldn’t have them.  It seems to be a common belief that only Military and Law Enforcement should have high capacity mags and assault weapons.  Okay, so let’s dissect this.  It’s likely that there are people bad enough in the world that cops and military need to be armed up to deal with them.  But the average citizen that hasn’t done anything wrong shouldn’t.  For demonstrative purposes I will use hyperbole to illustrate this. 

When I am at work in uniform or when I was in the military I am fully capable of possessing these tools to defend others, but when I want to defend myself at home in my jeans and T shirt I should be limited to low capacity mags and no assault weapons.  So when I am willing to die to keep others safe it’s okay but not when I am off duty at home.  Well guess what I am still willing to die to protect myself and family.  And if my NFA registered SBR with a 30 round magazine is the first weapon I grab, I will use that tool off duty as well. So when I am not at work I am now not worthy or capable of buying or possessing these weapons because what?  I may go on a shooting spree in my civilian clothes?  Or I may go in a shooting spree because I have 30 round mags and I won’t if I have 10 round mags?  I can’t be trusted when I am off duty but I can when I am on duty.   So we will take away the ability of those that don’t commit the crimes to posses these tools because we don’t want criminals to commit crimes.  Right? 

Look, I am more motivated than the average person to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and nut jobs but this makes no sense to me.  I am all for linking mental health to the background checks and actually prosecuting those that lie on the applications.  What is tragic is that it took a tragedy like Sandy Hook to make this happen.  I just don’t see how restricting those that don’t commit crimes will solve the problem.  In fact I am going out on a limb and going to call it now.  The ban will go into effect and there will be another tragic school shooting.  There I said it.  Does anyone besides me find it ridiculous that David Gregory committed a crime by showing a high capacity magazine on TV?  That makes sense to someone?  How about making it legal for David Gregory to show the magazine on TV (as long as he doesn’t use it to commit a crime, he is sane and not a felon) and lock Mr. 5 trips to prison up forever instead.  What is the likely hood that David Gregory is going to feloniously kill people or steal from them or assault them?  Just guessing not very high.  How about Mr. 5 trips to prison?  What are his chances to commit those crimes?  Based on his violent history, I’m going to say pretty good.  You, Mr. Gregory and everyone else including Mr. 5 trips to prison is not going to be allowed to posses high cap mags, which in the group do you think will obey this?   Who is going to follow the rules of society and who is going to follow the rules of the street?

So standing there in the cold I had to wonder how any of the proposed gun legislation would have kept my dead dude from getting dead.  

Lasting change

I truly believe we all want to make lasting change in reducing violence.  Trust me, as a cop on the street you will not find someone more motivated than me to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and mentally ill persons.  As a street cop and negotiator on the SWAT team, its a good chance I will be dealing with them at the worst of times.  However I think there are many layers to the issue but the easy path is to ban weapons used in tragedies.  Will that have an impact?  I assume it will have about as much impact as it did the last time they were banned. Yes, assault weapons and high capacity magazines were not able to be produced or sold to the public in the US from 1994-2004 and murder rate average for this 10 years was 7.3 per 100,000 people with a high of 9 and a low of 5.5 per 100,000.  From 2005-2011 with no ban and people being able to buy any assault weapon and high capacity magazine they wanted the murder rate averaged 5.5 per 100,000 people with a high 5.7 and a low of 4.7. As you might imagine when you look at just firearm related deaths it mirrors murder in general stats according to the CDC stats. So what is the impact of banning assault weapons and high capacity magazines?  It is my opinion that it has little or no effect on crime.

Does this mean more guns, assault weapons, and high cap mags means less crime?  Not necessarily.  In my opinion, the reason crime rate, especially violent crime is down is due to mandatory stiffer sentences and three strikes laws and such.  If you notice, as prison populations have increased, crime certainly violent crime has gone down.  Why, because as we all know there is a certain segment in the population that we in law enforcement refer to as the "10%" which are the 10% that commit the crimes while 90% of the population are good law abiding people.  Of that 10% 1% of those are the true criminals where nearly all they do is commit crime.  They steal or rob nearly every day if not more than once a day.  They are predators and they prey on the rest of the population.  Keeping the 10% and more importantly the 1% locked up is the key to reducing gun violence among the criminal element.

 Let’s look at bans success in general.  Alcohol, how successful was prohibition?  There are currently many counties in the southern states and Alaska that ban alcohol, where does the term moonshiner come from?  How should success be judged?  How about drugs, as most of you know illegal drugs like methamphetamine and heroin are banned here in the US, but for some reason I still keep finding them on people when I arrest them.  I think it’s safe to say bans have had a lack luster success in the US.

Think of it like this.  If I were looking to reduce speed related traffic fatalities should we ban cars?  No of course not that is ridiculous.  Should we impose speed governors that restrict the speed that vehicles can go?  No, that too would be ridiculous.  But what about steeper fines for speeders and more traffic enforcement?  Do you think that when a person gets a big fat ticket they may slow them down, at least for a while? 

The vast majority of murders of victims by an unknown suspect are committed by persons on parole or probation.  That means they have been convicted of a crime and are subject to court supervision in lieu of incarceration.  Parole being for a prison sentence (felony crimes) and probation being for a jail sentence (Misdemeanor crimes).  As much as we would like to believe otherwise there is a certain section of society that is just bad and are going to do bad things to people.  For example, of the last five law enforcement officers murdered in the state of Arizona, 4 were by subjects with a violent past and were on parole or probation at the time of the murder.  All four should have been incarcerated at the time of the murder but were out on a plea deal or overcrowding issues.  One was just plain crazy.  He talked to aliens and feared the world was ending and went on a murderous rampage.  Now this is reflective of society when it comes to murders by unknown subjects.  The vast majority have been and should be incarcerated at the time of the violent act.  Some are just seriously mentally ill.  Now obviously not all mentally ill persons are violent, we all know that. 

So how can we make lasting change?  First of all we need to stop treating mental illness like an STD.  We NEED to treat mental illness like medical illness so by removing the stigma so that parents feel comfortable getting their kids that need treatment the treatment they need without fear of the social stigma that is currently attached to mental illness.  It’s no different for adults either.  The vast majority of people who find out someone has mental illness seek to stay away.  I once took some training with the state mental health provider and one exercise we had to wear a headband with a diagnosis on it and see how people treated us.  It was astonishing to see even when people in the class that knew it was an exercise saw your diagnosis still responded with a facial expression.  People until this changes, we might as well buy guns and bullets for the mentally ill persons with violent tendencies.  What needs to happen is a link to firearms background checks that those that have been petitioned against their will or institutionalized for mental health have a flag pop up on a background check just like a criminal or domestic violence history does.  Now In addition I think that the address mentally ill persons live at needs to be flagged as well so no guns are sold to the rest of the household unless it has been petitioned and approved by the court.  And down the road the person who has been institutionalized as well can apply to get his rights restored if he chooses to, and if approved by a court order can again purchase guns.  Until we do this, there will be no lasting change.

As far as the most violent among us.  I firmly believe that there are two parts wrong with the judicial system.  First, County/District Attorneys are elected and not appointed.  This makes a scenario where in order to get re-elected, they push for a high “conviction rate” by offering sweetheart plea deals to get a “win”.  When they go looking for votes they can tout their high conviction rate.  Now the second part I think would cure that problem as well as the rest of what I consider the problem.  If Judges, Prosecutors, Department of corrections and parole boards were able to be held civilly liable for going outside of the sentencing guidelines, they may second guess putting violent people back on the street. 

I think back to a public sexual indecency case I had where a subject would expose his genitals to women and children.  In this case the child was five years old.  When it went to trial I testified as well as other witnesses but the case was heard by a judge not a jury.  And in the end the judge said, “I’m pretty sure you did what you are accused of, but you are a young man and I don’t want to ruin your life so I am going to find you not guilty and hopefully this is a learning experience for you”.  WHAT??? How would you feel if when he progresses his sexual perversion molests your child? I also had an armed robbery suspect that was caught on video robbing a pizza store; the video was so good that I recognized him by name.  A photo lineup was shown to the victims and they all picked out the suspect.  He was caught the next day with the gun, the money and the pizza box.  Now understand that the state legislature and passed law in sentencing guidelines that the presumptive minimum for this type of offence is 3.5 years in prison for a first offense and 7.5 years with previous felony history.  This suspect had multiple felony burglary and drug charges in his recent past.  He pleads guilty to armed robbery a class 2 felony.  His sentence??? 3 years probation.  He gets to live out in the free world check in with his PO once a month and promise not to commit any crime or do drugs.  Well, even after 4 drug arrests later do you think he stayed incarcerated?  Nope.  If you were the three victims he robbed after this, wouldn’t you have some words for the court personnel who let him back out? 

If we remove the immunity from the judges and prosecutors whenever they go outside the statutory minimums set forth by the legislature, the streets would be safer.  That’s not saying they don’t have discretion, they can still go outside for persons they feel deserve the discretionary relief.  But they can just be liable just like the rest of us are when we do stupid stuff.  Now I fully understand that not all persons that commit crimes are evil people and don’t deserve a chance.  I think in those situations the judge can offer a reduced sentence.  It’s just if that guy goes out and rapes or kills someone, the family is allowed to seek civil remedy.  That’s what happens when I go outside of the laws and policies of my agency.  It’s not like I’m asking for anything that we as police officers don’t live with every day. 

I truly believe that this would have a significant impact on keeping the most violent among us, behind bars longer and keeping less of us from becoming victims.  I think this would have a lasting impact.  Let’s face it, when I pull a car full of gangsters over, can I assume that they A) are abiding by the law that they are prohibited from possessing firearms and B) are not going to have a high capacity magazine or assault weapon?  No, because my experience and history has shown the only people affected by bans on weapons are those that obey the law.  Criminals for some reason don’t seem to share the same concern for obedience to firearms laws or any laws for that matter.  But in prison it’s next to impossible to get a firearm and certainly harder to store in your “prison wallet” than a shank.  But prisoners still violently assault each other on a daily basis.  Why would you expect them to not do this on the outside?

So keep those that seek to do evil locked away longer.  In a pre Donaldson v. O’Conner world that is what we did with our mentally ill.  Surprisingly mass acts of violence are on the rise after we stopped doing this and cut funding for the mentally ill among us.  If we take better care of our mentally ill and lock those away that have proven themselves unworthy to live among us.  Now understand, there are good people who make bad choices and end up in prison.  Those are the ones that deserve the exception on sentencing, not the violent career criminal.