Road Trip

One of the more interesting parts to being a Detective is getting to travel around a bit. Part of my job involves working cold cases where DNA evidence has identified a suspect from a crime that occurred years ago. I guess it is a testament to our “we’ll get em sooner or later” justice system that most of the suspects from these cases are locked up for some other offense.

So as a result I get to travel around the great State of Texas to visit some of our fine correctional institutions. I’m not sure what the original plan for the prison system was but an awful lot of them ended up down in the piney woods of east Texas. Which is just fine with me, I get kind of tired of looking at post oaks and mesquite trees.

So off I went down near Huntsville to talk to a former resident of our fair city who has been spending his time “working for the State” for a good many years. His criminal history was a mile long and he only spent a few weeks outside each time he was released on parole before he committed another heinous crime and got himself tossed back in prison. I went armed with a search warrant for his DNA and a buccal swab.

Now, dear reader, if you were sitting on a jury and you heard the nice police detective testify to you that the defendant had been identified by his DNA which was found inside the victim’s body and that he wrote a confirmation warrant to collect another sample from said scumbag which was then analyzed and found that the aforementioned scumbag’s DNA did indeed match the evidence recovered from the victim. You might think to your self and say. “Self, we better hear a pretty good story about how that there DNA stuff got inside that there victim.”

Now, dear reader, if the defendant were to take the stand all slicked up in his sleazy weasel for the defense supplied suit and the sum total of his defense under oath is that he was in San Antonio at the time of the offense you will have to be understanding and a little forgiving of the nice police detective if he might have suggested a bit sarcastically (and at great volume) during the recorded interview that it is highly unlikely that the scumbag’s semen crawled down his leg, hopped on a greyhound bus and rode to our fair city where it walked around until it found the victim and crawled up inside her.

I have great faith in our system that even the most myopic, disinterested and half asleep jury would not find that story even remotely close causing them reasonable doubt.

The destruction of a good man

Imagine for a second that you are coming home from a trip. You find that you have misplaced the key to your front door and can’t get in. A friend helps you get into your own house and you start hauling in your luggage. You hear a knock at the door and a police Officer is standing on your front porch telling you that he is investigating a reported burglary and he asks you for some ID. What would you do?

I know for a fact what the vast majority of you would do because I have answered that type of call many, many times. You laugh and explain that you were locked out of your own house and show the Officer some ID with your name and address on it or a utility bill and then most of you would thank the Officer for coming by to check on the call because you were worried about your house being broke into while you were gone. The Officer goes on his way to other calls and you finish unpacking your bags. I have personally witnessed this type of reaction across racial and ethnic lines. It’s just how normal, rational, law abiding folks react.

The only exception that I have witnessed was a situation where the person was actually burglarizing the house. As you can imagine he was not so cooperative and the red flags started popping up as soon as he started being belligerent.

Now ask yourself this. What would motivate a person to ACT like they had something to hide? Maybe they hate the police? A small portion of society just does and there isn’t a thing we can do to fix that. Maybe they were looking to spark some sort of confrontation for their own political or personal gain? I’m no expert on politics so I don’t really know.

How many of you would follow the Officer out of your house as he was leaving to yell obscenities at him and make derogatory comments about his mother? I have had my share of folks scream and cuss at me but not usually after I verified that no one was breaking into their house. This type of behavior just isn’t normal.

Now I know that once folks get themselves hooked up and in jail they pull out all the stops and throw out all kinds of garbage to try to help their case. If you can throw enough dirt up in the air about the evil police and how they mistreated you then maybe no one will stop to examine your behavior that got you put in jail. It seems to have worked just fine in the case that is in the media spotlight right now.

Now this I find truly despicable. If you have enough power and pull in the right places you can take a minor issue like you having to spend a few hours down at the jail and destroy another mans life with it.

In this case we have police Sergeant James Crowley who is well liked and respected both by his fellow Officers and his community. He is a husband and father who is doing a difficult job for very little pay. He has no history of abuse or racial discrimination, in fact he teaches the racial profiling class for his department. All evidence points to the fact that he is a stand up guy and a fine Officer who did the best he could to control a bad situation that developed from a seemingly simple call, and his life is going to be a living hell for a long time.

He most likely will lose his job. His department has already shown that they are more than willing to leave him swinging in the breeze by dropping the charges. The liberal media will probably paint him as an ignorant racist grunt who should be ashamed of himself for daring to touch one of the elite. I would not be surprised at all to see a federal civil rights violation case brought against him. Good grief the President of our fair Country has publicly called him stupid. I feel for him, he didn’t do a thing to deserve this.

The esteemed professor will leverage this tiny incident for media recognition and importance in his political movement. He will use every resource at his control to make sure that Sergeant Crowley is destroyed as a symbol for his perceived injustice. How despicable it is to see a good man destroyed to further an agenda. The professor doesn’t want equal treatment under the law; he wants to be above the law. He has the power, don’t you dare try to tell him otherwise.

This case is not about racial inequality and injustice. This is about one man’s ego and his refusal to recognize that despite his massive amounts of education, social standing and prestige that he is still a citizen who is bound by law like every one else. There is nothing more evil than the powerful destroying the helpless, and there is nothing more foolish than a wise man who cannot control his tongue.

A blog worth drooling over

Tuck your bib into your shirt and go peruse the culinary delights of this blog. Hunter Angler Gardner Cook is a really great source for all your wild fish and game cooking needs. It also has lots of good stuff about growing your own food and making it taste great. I will warn you that reading this blog will make you hungry so you might grab a bit of a snack to keep nearby.

Bobbing a Belly Gun part 3

Well I went and didn't get a picture of the cold bluing process. I use Gun Scrubber to remove any residue from the hammer and then Birchwood Casey Super blue to color the bare metal. After each coat of bluing I use a bit of 0000 steel wool to lightly rub the finish. This gives you a deeper blacker color than just straight cold blue. I put about four coats of cold blue on this hammer.

We put the gun back together and swapped out the grips for a nice pair of smooth stocks. For concealed carry you can't beat smooth wood grips (my opinion). They wont rub you raw or catch on your shirt. For pocket carry, this guns intended purpose, smooth grips just make sense.

The next few shots are here simply because I couldn't stand not to include them. This is a mighty good looking gun that I really enjoyed photographing. I have to admit that I am biased toward Smith's. The classic look of a wheel gun mixed with modern technology and mechanical simplicity of a good fighting handgun appeals to me a great deal.

More gratuitous artsy gun photography.

Now this is the best part. This gun has been worked over by the fine folks in the Smith & Wesson custom shop. They give it a trigger job and a chamfer of the cylinder holes to help those giant moon clips of eight rounds of .357 goodness drop in a little easier. The trigger is long but very, very smooth. You can see the shiny metal where the chamfer cut. Surprisingly the chamfer is not concentric but is limited to the inside and outside edge of each chamber.

Hopefully we have enhanced the function of this already very good design for our intended purpose without damaging the value of the gun and making it it a monstrosity that no one else would want. I have done about four of these hammers jobs now and they all have turned out good.

Bobbing a Belly Gun part 2

Here is what it should look like. I stop my cut just shy of the base of the old hammer spur. When the metal is paper thin the spur will start to get loose. I stop cutting and use my finger to bend it back and forth until it falls off. The hammer spur wasn't really that hot I just didn't need to touch it for very long. Let me get some ice on this burn and we will continue.

Now we use the grinder to smooth out the flat spot where we cut off the hammer spur. The key to getting a smooth finish with a round grinding wheel is to keep the grinder moving and have a light touch. If you stop the wheel will remove to much metal in one place.

This is what it should look like. We've taken the flat spot out and rounded and smoothed the hammer. I have seen a video put together by the good folks at Midway that shows this whole process in less than a minute and a half. I regret to inform you that smoothing and shaping the new hammer is going to take significantly longer than that and require a good bit of careful hand work. But they make it look so simple and quick!

I cut a bunch of strips of emery paper and start smoothing out the hammer like I'm polishing a boot. That little strip of maple is used to support the sand paper for cleaning up corners and keeping edges straight.

When you get the metal to a uniform smooth transition from the flat back of the hammer to the now rounded spur it will be pretty shiny but if you look close it has tiny scratches from the fine grit paper. I use a felt bob on the dremel and some polishing compound to shine it up nice and purty. This will also tell you if your metal finish is really smooth when you hold it up to a light.

Tomorrow we will finish the hammer and put it back into the gun.

Bobbing a Belly Gun

What have we here? Why its a nifty light weight pocket pistol that holds a whole handful of .357 ammo. Now the only problem with a Smith & Wesson 327 is that it comes with a very snaggy hammer and some finger groove grips that were made for someone else's fingers. But we can fix that. Here is how.
First we take the side plate off to expose the greasy grimy guts. Be careful with that screwdriver you don't want any ugly circular scratches around those three screws. DO NOT pry off the side plate. Hold the gun in the palm of your hand and tap the grip frame with a SOFT handled screwdriver or a small lead bar. The side plate will pop right off without damaging anything.

This here is the part we are looking for. We are going to give it a trim and then smooth and polish it so it wont snag on your pocket when you need to haul it out in a hurry.

This picture is black and white for a reason. The reason is that I did a really bad job of composing the shot and focusing. That blurry thing in the foreground is the hammer locked in the vise. The point was to remind everyone to wear your safety glasses when grinding on metal. The doctor will use a tool very similar to this grinder to remove a metal splinter from your eye if you don't. As one who has had this experience I can tell you it is unpleasant.

Now this is the important part. You need a steady hand and a moderately straight eye to line up the cut so that nothing but the hammer spur gets cut off. You don't want to get into the back of the hammer and you don't want to slip and take a chunk out of the side of the hammer. When you get your nerve up and your hands steady make a nice smooth cut through the hammer spur.

I have learned through doing several of these that MIM steel is a lot softer that forged steel or stainless. That cutoff wheel cuts very quickly so be careful.

Tomorrow we will look at the next step of reshaping and polishing the new hammer.

A Fair and Speedy Trial

After reading about some of the controversy caused by some very astute comments by fellow law enforcement blogger MattG about DWI and checkpoints, I thought about this fatality accident from long ago. Lots of people enjoy their alcohol and lots of people see no big deal with driving home after they consume a great deal of alcohol. “I’m fine”, they tell themselves not knowing that their own judgment is seriously impaired. I can’t tell you how many drunks I have stopped from getting in their cars when they can barely walk and they all say the same thing. “I’m OK officer, I only had two beers”. Yes, I can tell by the way you are staggering and the lovely companion you have decided to take home that your judgment is in tip top shape. Now, don’t mind these cuffs, I just cleaned and oiled them for your protection. I will get off my soap box now and tell the story.

It was near the end of my shift and I was parked down in a super secret hidey hole under the intersection of two major freeways. A nice spring thunderstorm had blown through that day and cooled things off. The rain mixed with the accumulated grease and oil on the roads made for a busy day for accidents and I was drawing the diagrams on a few that I had worked. I had the windows rolled down and I was enjoying the cool breeze when I heard a noise like a giant fist slamming into the ground. I looked up and saw the red light of fire reflecting off the bottom of an overpass. “Here we go again”, I thought as I dropped my clipboard and grabbed the radio mike.

I let the dispatcher know where I was and started Medstar and F.D. I grabbed the puny fire extinguisher that is locked in the trunk of every patrol car and headed up a grassy hill to a flat spot where the flames were starting to rise. I found an older Ford Pickup that looked like it was half buried in the dirt of the grassy field that lay under the high overpasses. The flames were rapidly consuming the part of the truck that stuck out of the ground. I could hear the squealing hiss of the tires starting to cook off. I figured that the gas tank was already ruptured by the crash and was contributing to the steadily growing flames. Although I knew that it was hopeless I emptied the extinguisher into the blaze. I would have been better off spitting on it.

Then I noticed that a distraught man was jumping up and down beside me screaming in my ear, “We have to do something, I can hear them screaming.” “It’s just the tires”, I told him and tried to calm him down. I looked up at the overhead towering over our heads. If the truck came off of there I knew that whoever was inside was probably dead from the impact.

F.D. showed up and doused the flames in short order. They broke out the passenger window and took a look inside. A quick look confirmed that the only occupant of the truck was beyond medical help. They backed off and I called for the fatality accident investigators.

About that time cars started showing up under the bridge with distraught witnesses to the final moments of the deceased driver’s life. They all told the same story. The truck was flying down one freeway weaving drunkenly from lane to lane. The truck passed several cars on the shoulder of the highway and almost spun out of control. When the truck got to the interchange it did not slow down. One weeping lady said that she was slowing down for traffic on the overpass when the truck passed her at about 90 mph. The driver failed to slow down at all as the truck started the long sweeping curve that takes cars onto another freeway high above the ground. One man said that he watched the truck try to pass traffic on the outside edge of the bridge that was slick with rain. The truck brushed up against the concrete barrier, the tires rode up the side and the truck rolled over and disappeared over the edge.

Once the measurements were taken it was estimated that the truck traveled about 150 feet in a very steep glide. The truck landed on the driver’s side with the nose down. If you draw a line from the front right corner to the back left corner of the truck, that entire driver’s side was crushed into the other side of the truck. Once the wrecker rolled the truck back upright we found that the ground was barely even dented.

One crusty old Sergeant commented that this was the fastest DWI trial he had ever witnessed. The jury convened, heard evidence and returned a guilty verdict along with a death sentence all in about 150 feet.

After the autopsy it was found that the driver had enough alcohol in his blood to be right on the edge of unconsciousness. Instead he was driving like a maniac. It was only luck on the part of everyone else on the road that he didn’t kill one of them too.

The bad parts of the job

My readers will have to forgive me this post. It is not entertaining or funny. It is therapy.

It may very well be naïve of me to not expect this working in a sex crimes unit but the thought never really crossed my mind. When you have a sex crime there is always the possibility of a pregnancy. These pregnancies are usually unwanted on the part of the victim and are terminated. I have no problem with that.

Now the part that I didn’t ever consider is that the sex crime detective would be responsible for going with the victim to the clinic that performs these operations and collecting the genetic material, then transporting it back to the crime lab for use as evidence in a criminal prosecution. It is necessary to maintain a chain of custody for the genetic material that is collected.

Now, I consider myself “non-political” and have no interest in political parties, elections or social movements. I do what I can to lead a quiet and peaceable life and generally consider that my government is just fine as long as they do not interfere overly much with my life. For the most part I genuinely do not care what other people choose to do with their lives and bodies as long as it doesn’t negatively impact innocent people around them.

It was surprising then to feel the deep levels of apprehension and aversion to performing this task that is a part of my job. I simply did not want to do it. In a perfect world all of the victims that I work with would truly be innocent victims of crime and the vast majority of the cases I work are. But we do not live in a perfect world and sometimes the victims are motivated by something other than a quest for justice. This was one of those cases.

I was violating the cardinal rule of police work which is that you cannot personalize the plights of the people that you work for. It will drive you crazy if you picture yourself or your loved ones in the same situations that you find in the citizens that you work for. We simply see too much of the evil and viciousness that humans are capable of to really have that genuine empathy with them. I was projecting my own experience of years of working to have children and the value that I place on the lives of the two small boys that I am entrusted with. I value their lives more highly than my own. But this is not me and this is not my child.

So I gave myself a good mental slapping around and told myself that I am a professional with a job to do. It doesn’t matter if I like it or not, someone has to do it and that someone is me. I shoved any feelings of empathy and emotion into a far away place and forgot where I left them. I went and collected the remains of an innocent who had no say in this matter. I looked with cold detachment at the tiny spinal column and the minuscule hand with five little fingers floating in the specimen jar. I did my job.

I am a man of simple faith in a loving God. I comfort myself with the sure knowledge that this child will never know the hardship and pain of life. This child will never know neglect or hardship. This child will never do anything wrong.

So when I am sitting at the dinner table with a group of close friends and someone ask me “Is anything interesting happening at work?” I smile and I lie. I say “No, not really” because they really don’t want to know and I really don’t want to tell them.

I'll never be a traffic cop

There is a process that all new patrol officers go through. When you first get out on the streets most officers are pretty motivated to get out there and put the hammer down on some criminal type folks. They arrest anything that moves and write citations like it’s going out of style. You do stupid stuff because you don’t know any better and dangerous stuff because it’s just too much fun. You chase bad guys and you fight them. You get complained on for excessive force and you wreck patrol cars. You draw a few days off without pay and realize that someday you are going to have to ease off the gas and make this a career instead of something so exciting and fun that you would do it for free.

After about a year or so most everyone gets that out of their system and settles down to what they like to do the most and that determines their career path. I went through this process and figured out that I liked talking to folks and digging into the details of the calls I answered. I would rather put one person in jail and have them stay there rather than locking up ten that were back on the street the next day. Consequently, I never got much enjoyment out of writing traffic tickets.

So, my stats tended to reflect that I was never going to work in the traffic unit. I answered a lot of calls and put some bad folks in jail but my ticket production was quite low. This was all fine and good until we got a newly promoted supervisor who had a passion for charting stats and dots on a map. He somehow believed that if we had a burglary problem it could be addressed by writing traffic tickets to the people who lived in that area. I never could quite get a hold on that concept of policing and continued to answer calls and put bad folks in jail.

One lovely day he called me into his office and advised me that if my ticket production did not increase he would be changing my days off. I had been around long enough to know better than to fight over something so petty so I smiled and nodded and went out to write some quick tickets to get him off my back.

I rolled down the street in an area that is NOT plagued by violent crime but happens to be where a lot of property crime occurs at night. I scoured the streets for someone, anyone to pull over and stroke a few tickets too. This was mid afternoon so there were no burglars to be found.

I finally settled on a car with an expired inspection sticker that rolled through a stop sign. Good for two, I thought and lit them up. I called out on the radio and then hopped out of the car. I kept my eyes on the driver while I reached back and shut the patrol car door with my right hand.

My right middle finger suddenly felt like it was being attacked by a starving alligator. I calmly looked back and assessed the situation which WAS MY FINGER SLAMMED IN THE STINKIN DOOR!

I jerked the smashed digit out of the gap between the frame and the door and hopped around in a little circle why quietly howling in pain. I tucked the injured hand between my legs and hop waddled up to the driver’s window while trying to hide my discomfort with a nice friendly bug eyed grimace. The driver looked out from inside the car with an expression of horror. He had been pulled over by a crazed maniac in uniform who had his hand between his legs and was now attempting to communicate in squeaking grunts and wheezes while hopping on one foot.

I finally managed to get out a rusty “Have a nice day” and hopped back to my patrol unit to go find some ice to soothe my throbbing finger. I swore that it was a sign that I was not destined to lead my shift in ticket production. I went back to what I did best and soon found out that the new supervisor was all bark and very little bite when it came to following up on his threats. Luckily his motivational leadership skills were needed in a different area not long after that. I think I can speak for my entire shift when I say that we were not sad to see him go.

Hmmmmmmm

Either the Mexican Federal Police have no clue what they have captured or the news media is rolling out the same tired old hype against .50 caliber weapons. I found this picture below that supposedly was identified by a General Rudolfo Cruz as a "50 caliber anti aircraft machine gun".

Cruz said the confiscated .50-caliber, anti-aircraft machine gun can fire 800 rounds per minute and is capable of penetrating armor from more than 5,000 feet (1,500 meters). Police on a routine patrol Monday found the gun fitted atop an SUV at a house in northern Sonora state. Someone please correct me if I am wrong but that looks suspiciously like a Browning M1919. I'm no expert on military arms but I'm pretty sure that this gun is a .30 caliber. Granted, I would not like to be on the receiving end of either gun but I seem to be seeing a trend in the reports coming out of Mexico. They tend to misidentify the arms that they have confiscated or overstate the actual type and number that have been found. The US media seems to take great glee in blaming our own federally licensed firearm dealers and manufacturers for arming the drug cartels.

I would be willing to bet you that this gun did not come from this country. I would also bet that the grenades and launchers didn't come from the good ol USA either.

Two Blogs worth reading

By way of The Firearm Blog which I read every day I found a new (to me) blog that I would like to recommend to my readers. The first is The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles which had a very good article on disassembly and cleaning a Ruger 10-22 magazine. (I've always wondered how to do that) I ended up reading through the rest of his blog and found a lot of interesting stuff there. Give it a look if you have time.

While I was there I spotted another Texas hunting blog that I just had to check out. Its Wild Ed's Texas Outdoors and the first picture that popped up is our state flower the blue bonnet. At risk of sounding a little light in the loafers I will admit to a real soft spot for blue bonnets, being a native Texan and all. The article that accompanied the picture was a good one too. It cuts right to the heart of the whole hunter vs. 2nd amendment conflict that some folks seem to have. It's a good read with a lot of insight into how divisive we can be when acting on our own likes and dislikes.

Things I like about Spring

Its starting to become spring here in north central Texas. We are having a drought this year but stuff is still starting to green up and turn purty. The Wisteria has bloomed and the sweet smell and lovely blossoms liven up the brown dry grasses and bare trees. I can think of no greater peace than to sit quietly in the cool evening with a warm breeze bringing the fresh new scent of springtime. I found myself asleep in a chair under a tree in an afternoon like this recently and was glad that no bees felt it necessary to fly into my mouth. The snoring must have scared them off.

It was amazing to watch the assortment of bees buzzing happily among the flowers. From tiny little "sweat bees" to the gigantic bumble bees like this one that really shouldn't be able to fly. I wish I was smart enough to tell you all the technical photo jargon of f-numbers and aperture and shutter speed settings but I can't. Instead I just twisted the little nob on top of my Nikon D40 to the flower icon and snapped the picture above.

Another thing I really like about spring is new calves. This little heifer calf was named "cookie" by my three year old son. A heifer calf is cause for much rejoicing in a growing herd. The bull calves have to be sold off or banded and named "sirloin" or "t-bone". I really enjoy eating good quality grass fed beef that I know where it came from and what it ate. There is no comparison between store bought, feed lot beef and beef from cattle that walked around and grazed on nice green grass when it comes to flavor.

UPDATE: Its now cold and windy and feeling like winter again. Must be that sneaky global warming making it colder than usual. I think we used to blame this stuff on El Nino. I guess that went out of style.