Whipped Cream Difficulties

I’ve been clicking through some articles on Jimbo’s site about the Seattle P.D. stomping incident, and ran across some things that made me go “Hmmmm.”

From the linked article:

Police records show that about 1:15 a.m. that night, four Hispanic men walked up to a man in the China Harbor parking lot and told him to give up his money. One pulled a 3-inch machete.

A three inch machete? I ran that past Lawrence, and his response was, “Did the bad guy also pull out the action figure that came with it?”

The same article links to the Seattle P.D. report on the incident. From that document:

<redacted> said that Suspect 1 pulled out a 3′ machete.

Three feet is a bit more convincing. But let’s think about this. Three feet is 36 inches, or the size of a yardstick. Wikipedia defines a typical machete as being 12.8 to 24 inches long. Three feet is getting more into broadsword territory. How do you conceal something like that? Stuffed down a pant leg? What does the draw stroke look like?

Lawrence pointed out that Jason’s machete in the Friday the 13th movies is three feet long; all the reproductions of that I can find online are not sharpened, though I suppose that can be fixed easily with a grindstone and some time.

I spent a great deal of time trying to find the Spinal Tap Stonehenge video on YouTube, but the only version I found does not appear to be embeddable. So I’ll leave you with this:

Not a 3" machete.

The story gets more interesting.

The Statesman states they’ve managed to get a copy of the independent report on the shooting incident involving Officer Quintana.

The 162-page report by KeyPoint Government Solutions, which was hired by the City of Austin to independently investigate the fatal shooting of Nathaniel Sanders II, reached conclusions that stand in contrast to the findings of police Chief Art Acevedo, who found that Quintana had not used excessive force or poor tactics. The consultant’s report was completed last fall, but its key findings were kept secret.

…

The report also said Quintana’s tactics in the moments before the May 11, 2009, shooting were far worse than careless or negligent and instead bluntly declared them “reckless.” Investigators wrote in the report that they were “mindful of the legal import of the term.”

Note that Chief Acevedo rejects the findings of this report, and has stated that the shooting was “objectively reasonable and within Austin Police Department policy.” Note that Office Quintana was no-billed by a grand jury.

It is also worth pointing out that the Statesman is reporting based on what they claim is the full version of the report. That version has not been released to the public; only heavily edited parts has been released, and the city is fighting against releasing the full version.

So how did the Statesman get it?

This week, American-Statesman reporter Tony Plohetski received a call from a person who did not identify himself and said he had a complete copy of the document. The man declined to say how he had possession of the report but agreed to meet Plohetski so he could review it. When they met, Plohetski did not recognize the man, who again did not identify himself. He allowed Plohetski to review it for nearly three hours.

Curious. Curious, indeed.

How should we treat police officers who make a mistake in their personal lives?

Clearly, it depends on the severity of the mistake. For the moment, though, let’s talk about something that’s a misdemeanor. Something like driving while intoxicated.

Should that officer lose his job? Does it make a difference if this was a first offense, or if there was a repeated pattern of DWI offenses? (For our purposes, we’re assuming that there were no injuries or property damage involved.)

Do the circumstances matter? Does it make a difference if the officer was out all night drinking at a “gentlemen’s club”? Does it make a difference if he turned down an offer to sleep it off at someone else’s house, and decided to drive home with a women he picked up?

Does it matter that he was carrying a weapon at the time he was arrested? Does it matter that he initially refused blood and breath tests; and when he was tested an unspecified number of hours later, he still tested over the limit?

Does it matter that he capped a guy last year, and was suspended for 15 days because he didn’t turn on the camera in his squad car?

I’m hesitant to take away someone’s rice bowl because of one mistake in their personal life. On the other hand, he’s a cop. We give him the power to carry a gun, to forcibly detain people, and even to shoot them. Don’t we have a right to expect “the highest levels of ethical conduct” from those people? Doesn’t DWI, even a first offense with no injuries, violate that expectation?

Or is the chief of police taking advantage of one mistake to get rid of an already controversial officer?