Memo from the police beat.

Oddly, this one is mostly Houston based this time, though there is an APD connection that I’ll mention at the end.

Somebody put flyers on some Harris County Sheriff’s cars parked outside of one of their buildings.

The flyers promoted the organization Targeted Individuals, an organization which believes that the “Deep State” targets certain individuals.
The group believes the FBI and CIA purposefully inflict mental, physical and emotional stress on enemies of the “Deep State,” in part, by shooting microwave technology at their heads in order to cause brain damage, according to the group’s website.

I think this is their website. At least this is the one linked in the HouChron article. There’s another site called “Targeted Individuals” which seems to cover similar ground. I haven’t had time to dig deeply into either of these sites yet, though I’m generally familiar with the whole beaming microwaves/gangstalking/etc. theory.

But that’s not what makes this story weird. A deputy with HCSO went out, found one of the flyers on her car window, and removed it.

Apparently, the flyer was laced with fentanyl.

She initially did not think anything of it but soon started to feel light-headed and showed other fentanyl-related symptoms.
She was rushed to the hospital and is expected to survive as authorities investigate the flyers’ origination. She was released around 4:30 p.m., authorities said.

My first thought was: “How do they know?” Could it just have been heat-related stress or some other condition, and everyone jumped to the conclusion it was fentanyl? According to the HouChron, at least one flyer (I assume it was the one the deputy handled) “tested positive” for fentanyl, and the remaining flyers are being analyzed by the county forensic lab. No idea if the positive test was a field test, or something more sophisticated.

If someone is actually putting drug-laced flyers on cars in an effort to hurt or kill police officers, that’s a pretty serious escalation. I’m hoping it isn’t true, but in the meantime: paranoia and gloves are your friends.

A while back, I wrote about the cases of Terry Thompson and his wife. Briefly: Terry Thompson confronted a man for public urination at a Denny’s and pinned him to the ground. His wife, a HCSO officer at the time, helped him hold the man down. (The wife has since been fired.) The man passed out and died three days later. Mr. Thompson and his wife were charged with murder.

Terry Thompson’s trial was last week. It ended in a mistrial. The Harris County DA announced yesterday that they plan to retry the case. But:

Although all the jurors agreed deadly force was justified under the circumstances, [Scot] Courtney [Thompson’s attorney – DB] said, one refused to find him not guilty of the murder charge.
“One of the jurors said that he could not, he would not vote not guilty – and he hung up the jury for a day,” Courtney said. “It’s disappointing that a juror was seated and swore an oath to follow the law and then ultimately didn’t.”
On the lesser charge of manslaughter, 10 jurors voted not guilty and on the count of criminally negligent homicide eight voted not guilty, Courtney said.

And finally, noted for the record and without much comment, because I just don’t know what to make of it:

A lawsuit has named Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, the City of Austin and Travis County as defendants in a class action complaint accusing them of failing women who were sexually assaulted.

Others named in the lawsuit include Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore, former Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley, and Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez.

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