A War of Attrition

A local deputy passed away in my county this week, just a few miles away from my farm. It's believed he was attempting to pull over a motorcyclist who fled an attempted traffic stop. Deciding to pursue the motorcycle, the officer lost control of his vehicle and hit a utility pole. Unfortunately, he died at the scene. The deputy was not wearing his seat belt. The motorcyclist has not been apprehended. This raises a valid conversation, though. Why pursue in such a reckless manner?

Where I live, these back country roads are narrow and very curvy. They're dangerous enough to drive under normal circumstances, much less at high speeds. It's not uncommon to encounter blind spots, wild animals crossing, or wide vehicles that make passing oncoming traffic rather treacherous. In short, these roads are neither safe nor intended for driving fast. I find myself asking why someone would choose to pursue at high speeds on such roads.

Was the motorcyclist wrong for fleeing? Absolutely. You should never run from the police. The courtroom is where you defend yourself, not the initial encounter with law enforcement. At the end of the day, most police officers are just doing their job and making an arrest is not personal. It’s just business, as the old saying goes. Cooperation goes a long way.

Should the deputy in question have chased a motorcycle with a top-heavy Ford SUV without his seatbelt engaged? Definitely not.

This question of pursuit has been debated for many years by numerous people. What does the pursuit of a suspect in a high speed scenario actually serve? By and large, pursuits at high speeds only manage to accomplish the following:

• Putting the officer at risk.
• Putting other drivers at risk.
• Placing personal property (and potentially a stolen vehicle) at risk of destruction.

Is it really worth pursuing someone, especially if they’re driving a motorcycle that’s vastly more nimble and speedy that your average car? The only conclusion that I can come to is that it’s just not worth it under most circumstances. Let the motorcycle go, call in your encounter, and place a BOL on the driver in question. They can't elude capture forever.

Fighting crime, and life in general, is a war of attrition. You’ve got to pick your battles. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose… but the important part is that you live to fight another day.

Throwing caution to the wind and placing yourself and other innocent bystanders in harm’s way, all over an attempt to pull someone over, is rather short-sighted and needlessly risky. Does this mean an officer shouldn’t do their job? Of course not, but it does mean using some simple logic to decide where and when to enforce the law for the greater good. If that means someone gets away today at the cost of preserving a life, then so be it. Eventually, that criminal will slip up and meet his match. It just won’t be today.

An officer’s life is saved. Said officer continues to perform for the greater good and catch other criminals whose number is finally up. A family isn’t burying their spouse, their child, or their parent. You live to fight another day.

I can’t help but think of two filmed scenes wherein a police officer made the right decision when they were outmatched, for whatever reason. One is the encounter between Lorne Malvo and Officer Grimly from Fargo. 

The other is from The Town, with the encounter between the fleeing bank robbers (who are heavily armed) and the random officer who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There’s a lesson to be learned here – choose your battles wisely and you’ll continue to fight in the war of attrition. Sometimes, the best thing you can do to serve the public and preserve the peace is do nothing at all.

I’m sure the deceased deputy thought he was doing the right thing, and I hope for comfort to come to his family. It’s a terrible situation all around, sadly over a traffic stop of all things. Nothing was gained from this; a valuable life was wasted over pittance.

The Story of Serial Killer Carl Panzram.

When it comes to real life scares, there's nothing more frightening than a serial killer. To think that one of our fellow human beings could become a monstrous machine of death and dismemberment, well... that's about as macabre as anything reality has in store for us. While I'm not a big fan of serial killers, I have always taken particular interest in a certain infamous murderer. Though, I'm alarmed at how relatively unknown he's become as the years have progressed. His motives were unique and not shared by other serial killers. For that, he stands out amongst a crowd of history's most horrifying butchers.

This is the story of Carl Panzram.

Born June 28, 1891, Carl Panzram began life in staunch poverty as the son of East Prussian immigrants. He was raised on a farm in Minnesota and had five siblings. Carl was big and strong for his age -- a trait that would carryover into adulthood. His penchant for criminal behavior manifested in his youth. Perhaps his father largely being absent by the age of seven had a intensely negative influence on Carl. By the time Carl was twelve years old, he'd already been caught stealing from his neighbors. Due to his poor behavior, Carl's mother sent him to the Minnesota State Training School, which was a home for juvenile delinquents. The school was notoriously brutal on the boys that stayed there, whom often referred to the facility as The Painting House. This nickname implied that every boy whom entered there would be painted with blood and bruises. The school's staff regularly beat, molested and tortured the boys whom stayed there, all in the vein of Christian fundamentalism. Carl, a three year resident, recounted later in life how he was mistreated. Guards regularly stripped him naked for probing, fondling, whippings and to be sodomized. When Carl was finally deemed reformed, he was released into society a warped and altogether shattered human being. Though, Carl got his revenge on the school; he burned a large portion of the facility down in a fire that went unsolved for decades.

As Panzram grew until adulthood, he spent many stretches in and out of other reform schools and juvenile detention centers. Carl was a crafty teenage thief, whom wasn't afraid to steal anything of value to survive. In one instance, he even stole a yacht. Yet, every jail sentence Panzram served would push him just a little bit closer to the edge. The physical and sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of grown men would have broken practically any other person. To the teenage Panzram, the harm merely served to stoke his inner rage. The more abuse he suffered, the madder and more violent he became.

By age fifteen, Carl decided to enlist in the US Army to try and turn his life around. This decision was largely a mistake. Within a short manner of time, he was incarcerated at Fort Leavenworth for completely denying the authority of his superiors and larceny. Panzram spent two years at the facility. Later in life, Carl would emphasize this period as the proverbial breaking point that sent him over the edge. There's an ironic twist to the time Panzram spent at Fort Leavenworth. His incarceration order was signed by then Secretary of War and future President William H. Taft. Carl wouldn't forget this sentence levied by Taft. In 1920, Panzram broke into President's Taft home in New Haven, Connecticut. He stole a large amount of personal articles, including bonds, cash, jewelry and a Colt M1911 .45 handgun. Using the wealth he gained from burglarizing Taft's home, he purchased a large boat and hired a crew to man it.

Between his time at Fort Leavenworth and targeting Taft, Panzram spent another sentence in the Oregon State Penitentiary for burglary. He successfully broke out of the penitentiary in 1918 by sawing through his prison bars. Carl was extremely powerful; fully grown, the grey-eyed giant stood over six feet tall and was terribly intimidating.

With the riches gained from the Taft heist, Panzram purchased the ship Akiska and began preying on other men. In the waters outside of New York City, Panzram lured many drunk men back to his boat and raped them before using Taft's .45 to shoot them dead. He'd dump the bodies in the Long Island Sound. Of the hundreds of men he raped and tortured during this spell, he outright killed ten of them. Only the running aground of the Akiska outside New Jersey would end the terror spree. But... Panzram wasn't done killing just yet.

For the next few years, Carl spent time in Angola after catching a boat to Africa to evade capture. He admitted in his memoirs to killing a twelve year old boy while there, but not before raping him. Carl killed the child by smashing his head open just to watch his brains ooze out. Panzram also murdered an entire rowboat of six men, then fed their flesh to crocodiles in a river.

Returning to America, Carl raped and murdered two more young boys, as well as took the lives of many other men all along the eastern seaboard. His trail of death wouldn't end until his final incarceration at the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, just a few miles away from the similarly named Fort Leavenworth where he'd been held earlier in life. He was picked up for another burglary in Washington, D.C., but voluntarily admitted to murdering the two young boys after returning from Africa. As such, he basically worsened his own sentence. At Leavenworth, Carl would commit his final murder, that of a prison laundry foreman. He viciously bashed his brains in with an iron bar. This led to Carl's death sentence and being placed on death row in 1929.

While on death row, prison guard Henry Lesser somehow befriended Carl Panzram. He provided Panzram with writing utensils and paper to record his life story. It became readily apparent to Lesser how tortured Panzram was. In terms of philosophy, Panzram was a nihilist; he believed that life was pointless and human beings were of no consequence. Panzram's memoirs revealed a lifetime of murder, death, rape and destruction. He admitted to killing at least twenty-one people, thousands of burglaries and the rape of over a thousand men. Panzram said that he wasn't necessarily a homosexual; he merely enjoyed seeing other men suffer in the worst way possible. The two men would exchange thoughts regularly, giving Lesser a startling account of a serial killer who truly hated humanity. Carl wanted every last man, woman and child to die, including himself.

On September 5, 1930, Carl Panzram was hung. Before having the noose placed around his neck, he told Leavenworth's executioner...

"I wish the entire human race had one neck and I had my hands around it!"

Panzram's daunting last words were...

"Yes, hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could kill a dozen men while you're screwing around!"

And with that, Carl Panzram's tortured existence came to an end. While I find what Carl did to be absolutely deplorable, I can readily understand why he hurt so many people. Panzram was rage personified. He hated everyone for hurting him as a child and teenager. Being conditioned to fear other people, Carl saw the whole of humanity as a threat. This eventually turned him into a violent killing machine, with no regard for even his own life. If you were to look nihilist up in a dictionary, it would only be appropriate to find a mugshot of Carl Panzram next to it. Panzram's case is the prime example of what happens when you abuse a human being until they snap.

For a more insightful look into Carl's life, I suggest you read the memoir Henry Lesser published for him in 1970, entitled Killer: A Journal Of Murder. Lesser held onto Carl's writings for many decades before finding a publisher willing to print the horrific tale. You can find a copy of the book here.

Potential Mass Shooting Averted at 2015 Pokémon World Championships.

Boston Police provided this photo of the weapons, ammunition and personal items found in possession of Norton and Stumbo, the accused attackers at the 2015 Pokémon World Championships.

A lot of nerds take their various hobbies and interests way too seriously. Dressing up in fur suits, getting My Little Pony tattoos, standing in line for hours to obtain free comic books... the list goes on an on.

But these two geeks? They take the cake.

Two morons from Iowa were arrested on Saturday at the 2015 Pokémon World Championships in Boston, Massachusetts. Before arriving at the tournament, Kevin Norton (18) and James Stumbo (27) allegedly made threatening comments to other tournament attendees via their social media accounts. They also shared photos of various guns with those remarks. These threats were then provided to security officials at the convention center where the event was being held. Within hours, the pair of Pokémaniacs were in custody. They were found to be in possession of a 12-gauge shotgun, an AR-15 rifle, several hundred rounds of ammunition and a hunting knife. Thankfully, the duo was apprehended before they could sneak the weapons into the event.

The terrifying part? Norton and Stumbo were both official attendees of the tournament. They were to take part in the Masters Division and were invited to participate in the tournament by its organizers. This was clearly not a case of two strangers raiding an event -- they had the proper credentials to be there. If not for the convention center officials being tipped off, this could have gone horribly wrong.

I've played video games in the Pokémon series for as long as it has been in existence -- since 1998 to be exact. In that near twenty-year time span, not once have I ever taken the games this serious. Sadly, this is yet another example of socially-inept geeks not understanding how to process reality, nor communicate with other humans beings. We've made it too easy for such people to exist in modern society.

Why We Need Less Police Officers, Not More.

For just a moment, let's imagine a world where civil and personal liberties are not criminalized. The use of chemical substances, whether naturally occurring or produced in a laboratory, is not restricted. Prostitution is not an illegal activity, but merely a private transaction conducted by two consenting adults. Gambling is a risk knowingly taken by informed adults.

With that sort of world in mind, answer the following question.

If all of those activities were suddenly decriminalized, what exactly would police do?

We're here to help you.

For our nation's supposed protectors of the peace, without nonviolent "crimes" like solicitation, drug possession/use and gambling, the police wouldn't be very busy, now would they? You see, this is the great ruse that's been pulled over our eyes. The criminalization of non-violent activities carried out by consenting adults harms no one. Yet, these same actions are illegal. Why? Because without these actions bearing an illegal status, the police would have a lot less policing to do. If there are less laws to enforce, then there's less need for police. Less need for police equates to less need for prisons.

Don't you see? It's all about the money. Making everyday adult activities illegal puts money in the pockets of oligarchs, politicians, police unions and the industrial prison complex. It creates jobs for police officers where there is no need. Average citizens, whom have not harmed anyone else, are incarcerated and used as cash cows for the police state wealth machine. Sure, the police are an important segment of our civil servant sector. Though, why not treat the police like fire and rescue departments? You don't see firemen roaming the streets in high-powered automobiles looking for fires to catch. Nor do you see EMT's lurking behind every street corner trying to catch a heart attack. Why not officiate the police in such a manner as their fellow civil servants? If an actual crime is taking place, like a robbery or assault, then we'll call upon them to make their presence known and enforce actual laws. In fact, we already do that to some degree -- by using 911! Thereby, we know such a method works.

Violent crime has been dropping in the United States for decades. As of 2013 (the last year on record), violent criminal acts were at their lowest point since the 1970's. Yet, since 1980 and President Reagan's War on Drugs initiative, the incarceration rate for nonviolent offenders (drug use, solicitation, gambling, etc.) has more than doubled. Over twenty five percent of all inmates nationwide are incarcerated for a non-violent act. Correctional budgets rank second nationwide for states in terms of cost; only Medicaid costs more. As a whole, America has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world.

In the most basic of explanations, we do not need as many police officers in this country. There are far too many police for too few actual crimes. Remove wrongfully criminalized acts like prostitution, drug possession and the like. What you do with your body and the choices you make, short of harming someone else, is your business.