Below is an email exchange between my anticop Heathen self and a law man I met on the Bereft Coast. I have decided to—when goofing off writing wise one weekend—to write a novelette titled The Last Good Cop: The Dao of Juan Stabone, in which I will take this man, place him in my retrochronology device, bringing him back to age 30, and place him in 2024 Baltimore as a cop transferred from Portland to Baltimore as part of some kind of “Sister City” policing initiative. Look for some of it to be serialized here later this year.
In terms of the police-on-police lynching of the cowardly cop in Florida, I think Juan makes a good case and I would simply—while warming up my blow torch and pliers—like to state my thoughts on the shooting where an MK-Ultra, Deep State Lone Wolf asset was activated by his handlers and sent into a school to murder innocents for the twin purposes of promoting civilian disarmament and punishing the apostate president for not starting enough wars:
-1. This is an attack on the voting middle class, as all of these school shootings fail to target the children of the wealthy or those of the poor. This represents elite pressure on the hated middle class to bring them in line with the idea of disarming so that they can be even more thoroughly terrorized by the criminal class than the already are.
-2. Throwing a functionary of the system under the bus is a great American municipal tradition.
-3. This is a very interesting development, the police in one county declaring that their duty is to protect and serve, when police in Baltimore and NYC have explicit instructions not to protect citizens under threat, with even deterrence being abandoned in Baltimore.
-4. This new found idea expressed in the charges against the timid cop, that the police will be held to heroic standards is consistent with civilian disarmament—which was the point of the attack in the first place, with youth anti-gun activists prepositioned with rehearsed speeches immediately after the incident.
5. The naïve idea that law enforcement personnel exist to protect, rather than oppress citizens, is one of the core lies of our social system and any legal move to punish a police officer for not protecting citizens is another step towards total, systemic tyranny.
6. In an honorable society, male relatives of the slain children would be permitted to challenge this pig to a duel and if he refused, be excused for pimp slapping him.
7. If the persecution of the cowardly pig sends the hero message to cops, than the writers of Judge Dread should be hired to draft the police procedure.
8. This new suburban push for police heroics will clash disastrously with the standing down of urban police and is a definitive step towards open civil war as urban ethics and subsidized housing more to the suburbs.
9. Below Juan actually makes a lucid case for why the cop who stood by and is now being prosecuted, was probably behaving according to tactical guidelines.
Juan Stabone
I realize nobody asked me, but...
Inbox
Fri, Jun 7, 9:48 PM (3 days ago)
This guy basically committed the cardinal sin of doing something that looks bad:
I realize I got a lotta splainin’ to do, so hold off on the pair of pliers and the blowtorch…
1.As the talking heads have mentioned, police have no legal “duty to protect” – which also “sounds bad”, but if you think about it, there are at least two logical real-world reasons for that holding: There are proportionately very few cops for any given city or county. Even if every cop worked 24/7/365 at nothing but bodyguarding duties, there would be no way that every citizen could be covered at all times. Also, in the communities where police presence is most often needed and deployed, today’s victim is often tomorrow’s criminal. It would be impossible to do personal protective details when your “principals” are shifting roles so fluidly. Whatever PR flack came up with the slogan “Serve and Protect” should be sentenced to a couple years of swingshift patrol duty.
2.Policies and Procedures: This will probably be the second prong of his legal defense. After Columbine, the model of having Patrol and Traffic set up a perimeter and wait for SWAT to solve the problem was obviously no longer valid. PDs across the country began constructing models for Active Shooter response. Although standards are set by the individual states, the basic tactical outline nationwide is similar to what was adopted by my dept. (I was actually a lead trainer for this. My rabbis were on the ascendant in the dept. at this time, and I enjoyed a period of expanded professional responsibility that evaporated like morning fog when the winds of change blew through the department, but that’s a different story.)
The basic outline is this: The first cop on the scene of an active shooter does NOT rush in like a Marvel Comics superhero, because he would simply become part of the problem. In the “tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving” environment of a mass school shooting, one lone cop would be overwhelmed by the swirling chaos of running, screaming kids, confused by echoing gunshots, and working with only the sketchiest suspect description. The generally-accepted model is for the first four cops on the scene to form a diamond formation and enter the building as a unit. (And the first four are not specialists – it’s whoever’s closest to the scene: Patrol, Traffic, off-duty…if the Chief is driving by on his way back to the office after a liquid lunch, he’s supposed to go too.) They turn off their radios and move toward the sound of gunfire. When we gave scenario training to the entire department, our informal slogan was “You’re not in CopWorld anymore, you’re in WarWorld.” The diamond doesn’t stop to render first aid, they neither receive nor transmit on the radio, and when they contact the shooter, there’s no attempt to place him under arrest…if you get my drift.
So, if Broward County’s policy was anywhere similar to ours, this guy was doing exactly what he was supposed to do: Wait for three other officers to arrive (or in a pinch, two others) before going in and committing law enforcement.
3.Mindset: This will never be brought up at trial, but IMHO, it is the heart of the matter. Whether this guy was a “coward” or not, I do not know, but I DO know that police (at least in my area) are not hired based on their physical and psychological comfort with violent situations. Northwest PDs have been re-imagined as social-workers-with-badges, and while some genuinely tough guys do occasionally fall through the cracks and get hired, this is a bug in the system, not a feature. If they wanted brave, aggressive policemen, the various agencies would have recruiters lining up outside the gates at Ft. Lewis waiting for guys to muster out of the Ranger Battalion…
And after they’re hired, Northwest police are subjected to a constant barrage of official and unofficial warnings about discipline and lawsuits: “Be careful”…watch out” …”you’ll get sued”…etc. etc. Physical fitness is completely de-emphasized, since there are no – zero - zip PT tests after the first day at the Academy. And attempts to improve your capability are actively discouraged: Throughout my tenure, there was a section in our SOP manual that said “Unauthorized survival training is not permitted”. This was vague enough to encompass just about anything, and few cops wanted to probe the limits of interpretation.
Then, when the feces impacts the rotating oscillator, everyone is shocked – shocked – when these geldings fail to answer the bell. AS C.S. Lewis said: “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise”. It can’t be done, and even a sedentary Oxford don figured that one out.
So to sum up, this guy did something that embarrassed his department, and now they’re going to try to give it to him good and hard “so as to encourage the others”.
If he gets a fair trial – if – he walks.
Retired Portland Cop
James LaFond <jameslafond.com@gmail.com>
Sun, Jun 9, 9:45 AM (1 day ago)
I'll put in by 2 pence and publish as a joint article.
Great job, man.
Take care, Juan Stabone—I will write your hero cop novellette before year's end.
Sun, Jun 9, 9:11 PM (13 hours ago)
I will be thrilled to be immortalized in the LaFondiverse!
I certainly appreciate your open-mindedness when discussing police issues, particularly considering your negative experiences with BPD.
Alienation Nation: Surviving Cultural Free Fall
"The generally-accepted model is for the first four cops on the scene to form a diamond formation and enter the building as a unit."
This sounds an awful lot like forming a "stack" such as the military used for building entry prior to the Iraq war. They revised the technique to an old-fashioned cop-style two-man room clearance. I have a book demonstrating this technique. Anyways, room clearance sucks from what I've heard and I wish it on no one.
"“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise"
CS Lewis also said that we remove the organs and demand the function. James is right that the disarmament of civilians is also affecting police. Cops are going to start having to look like pro wrestlers and grapple about as well. Few can achieve this. The LA County sheriff's deputies I know fit this mold because they're all started in the county jail and have no choice.
Anyways, as Greg Ellifritz says, don't go into law enforcement. Ultimately, I think we're reverting back to the period before the Metropolitan Act of 1829: the Left is making policing and self-defense impossible. Cops can just punch a clock and collect pay. Citizens will actually have to defend themselves regardless of the law.
We need way more insights from Juan. Get him on the podcast.
We will seek Juan for the podcast.
Despite my gloom factor I think anarcho-tyranny might be a hard road back to something better. We should have to defend ourselves.
Bryce—Glad you enjoyed my rant. You bring up an interesting point about room clearance. In the Active Shooter model, there's actually no room clearing at all (until the diamond gets to the final point of contact). The diamond bypasses rooms and heads down corridors as quickly as possible, following the sounds of gunfire and swimming upstream against the fleeing victims. Rooms are visually scanned as the diamond moves past them, and if there should happen to be a second shooter hiding in ambush in one of these rooms, that's what the flankers and rear guard are for. (The rear guard walks backward the whole way, which requires good footwork and balance.)
If the shooter is located in a room, the diamond breaks down into a "stack" along the wall and then does a standard SWAT entry—criss-cross or buttonhook.
We found that the most sphincter-clenching part of the whole operation was moving up stairs in a school or public building. There are blind spots...