Archive for January 20th, 2012

Rumor control.

Friday, January 20th, 2012

Before I left work today, my great and good friend Commvault Bryan told me about the latest “urban legend” he’d heard. He was kind enough to email a PDF discussing it; I’m not sure that posting the PDF is okay, but pretty much the same thing can be found on the TexasBowhunter.com forum.

Summarizing, the “urban legend” is that “gang members” are going around to shooting ranges, gun stores, gun shows, and other places where gun owners congregate. Once there, the gang members are marking the cars of gun owners, following their vehicles until they get someplace “safe” (for the gang members), and then breaking in and stealing their guns.

I have not previously heard of this happening, and I’m a little dubious. I could see this being a viable strategy if you were looking for long guns and watching for folks lugging cases; handguns are likely to go with the average gun owner out of the car, so that seems less likely to work.

The PDF and article mention “27 high end shotguns” being stolen from a sporting clays event. I’m not dismissing out of hand that this really happened, but:

  1. If I’m a gang member, I’m not looking for $6,000 Perrazi trap guns. Granted, 00 buck from one of those will still kill you dead, but if I had my druthers, I’d be looking for modern sporting rifles, not skeet guns. (And for those of you saying, “Well, you could sell or pawn the shotguns”, I have a feeling that the circle of people interested in those is a) limited, and 2) likely to know they’re looking at a stolen gun as soon as they pick it up and check the serial number.)
  2. Given the marking they show on the tire, I’m a little dubious that gang members would be able to pick up your vehicle and follow it. It just seems awfully small to keep track of.
  3. I suspect the traffic in the parking lot of most gun shows and ranges is high enough that someone tagging vehicles in this fashion would be noticed, and very probably stopped at gunpoint and held for police.

I’m not ruling this out completely, but it triggers my Snopes sense. Does anyone have any more information or verification on this?

In the meantime, a healthy dose of situational awareness never hurts. (I think Colonel Cooper said that once; if he didn’t, he should have.)

Posted in Clippings, Guns | 3 Comments »

Quote of the day.

Friday, January 20th, 2012

KAREN O
Ahheeeaahhhhhhhhhh-aaaahhhh!
Come to the film that’s really slow;
Where the story plods and the accents blow!

(This is much funnier if you sing it to the tune of “Immigrant Song”.)

Also:

We should be able to solve this right around when the audience members start cupping their hands around their cell phones to see what time it is.

Guilty. But that was nearly two hours in, and we still had a whole bunch of Ulfråsen Fribergsgatu to go.

(Hattip: the great and good Pat Cadigan on the Twitter.)

Posted in Movies | Comments Closed

Today’s Bell update.

Friday, January 20th, 2012

More than half of the disability retirements awarded to police officers under former Bell City Administrator Robert Rizzo — including those given to three police chiefs — should not have been granted, and workers’ compensation settlements for 13 officers were “exceedingly large,” an investigation has concluded.

Former police chief Michael Chavez gets a pension of $117,942, and got a worker’s compensation settlement of $140,000. Former police chief Andreas Probst gets $160,649 a year on top of his $250,000 worker’s compensation settlement. Former police chief Dennis Tavernelli gets $169,027 a year on top of his $395,667 worker’s compensation settlement.

The advantage of a disability retirement is that only half of the pension is taxed; workers’ compensation settlements are tax free.

And:

The Times reported that in at least two instances, the city wrapped severance and unused vacation and sick time into the workers’ comp settlements, which experts said violated tax laws.

Question: if the city and the police chiefs knowingly violated state law in that fashion, could they be charged with tax evasion?

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed