Mathew Corrigan is an Army reservist who was battling depression and insomnia. Wanting some help with the problems, he called what he thought was the military’s emotional support help line. Instead, he mistakenly called a suicide hotline. When he told them he was a vet, they asked if he owned guns. He confided that yes, he did, ended the conversation a short time later and went to bed. A prescription pill helped him get to sleep. Until, that is, he was rudely woken by the sound of his name being shouted over a bull horn. . .

As www.courthousenews.com tells it, the hotline had alerted the DCPD. They then deployed what appeared to be most of the city’s SWAT assets who had set up floodlights and surrounded his house.

“Corrigan turned on his phone and found that Officer Fischer of the 5th District was calling him, asking him to come out, which he did at about 4:50 a.m., locking the door behind him. He was handcuffed and put in the back of a SWAT truck.

“When Officer John Doe I (upon information and belief, Officer John Doe I is Lieutenant Robert Glover) asked Corrigan for the key to his apartment, he informed the officer: ‘There is no way I am giving you consent to enter my place.’ Officer John Doe I stated: ‘I don’t have time to play this constitutional bullshit!’ and ordered that Officers John Does II-V, members of the Emergency Response Team (ERT), enter the apartment.”

As a result of the incident, Lt. Glover will probably have to make some more time for constitutional bullshit in the not too distant future. His shock troops trashed Corrigan’s apartment looking for his guns and ammo (all of which were confiscated) then scanned the place for explosives. In an unusual and refreshing turn for a SWAT squad, they refrained from automatically shooting Corrigan’s dog, instead turning the pooch over to a shelter.

Corrigan spent two days in a VA hospital. Once they determined that he really wasn’t suicidal, he was arrested and spent two weeks in jail.

“When Corrigan returned to his apartment 16 days after being seized, he found that John Does I-XV had left the front door unlocked and unsecured, had left the electric stove on, had cut open every zipped bag, had dumped every box and drawer, had broken locked boxes from under the bed and the closet, and emptied shelves into piles in each room. All his tropical fish in his 150 gallon aquarium were dead.”

Corrigan has filed suit against District of Columbia seeking $500,000 in damages for constitutional violations.

My drive through districts five and six in my grandfather’s Cadillac was a sobering reminder that the police can’t always be there to protect you. For those who don’t want to click links, district six in STL had 1016 crimes against people and 2902 crimes against property in 2011.

However, the local 5-0 want the fine citizens there to know that, thanks to police mutt Nanuk, your resistance is futile. Maybe this is the kind of thing that works in St. Louis. Then again, maybe it doesn’t, judging from the numbers. Either way, I’m glad to see that the K-9 unit is making no effort to hide their machismo. And now I wonder how long it will be before some screeching politician tells me that only the police and military should have German Shepherds . . .

“Virginia Tech and Columbine. Now, let’s look at the numbers: Any given middle school, high school, or college in America can expect to have exactly one homicide on its campus every 12,000 years. So how long before the UNC-Charlotte SWAT team feels the need to justify its existence by expanding its mission? I predict they’re serving drug warrants and raiding frat houses within a year.”  - theagitator.com on the University of North Carolina-Charlotte’s new SWAT team.

You might say we need more hot cops. And who am I to argue? But today’s question is about quantity, not quality. Are there too many cops? Make the jump for the list of federal police agencies cribbed from the hive mind at Wikipedia. You know it’s going to be as long as a kissing booth line for Marisa Miller, with some not unexpected weirdos amongst them (Library of Congress?). For those of you on the fence about the wisdom of the post-911 militarization and expansion of the U.S. law enforcement industry, ask yourself this: is America in danger of slipping into a police state simply because we have so many police with nothing much to do? Remember: the list below is restricted to federal police. Don’t forget to add in your city, state and county cops.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

United States Coast Guard (USCG)
Coast Guard Police (CGPD)
Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS)
United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
United States Border Patrol (USBP)
Federal Protective Service (FPS)
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
United States Secret Service (USSS)
Transportation Security Administration (TSA)
Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS)

Department of Justice (USDOJ)

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF)
Drug Enforcement Administration (since 1973)
Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (1968–73)
Federal Bureau of Narcotics (1930–68)
Bureau of Prohibition (1927–33)
Bureau of Drug Abuse Control (1966–68)
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP)
United States Marshals Service (USMS)

United States Department of State (DOS)

Bureau of Diplomatic Security
Diplomatic Security Service (DSS)

United States Department of Commerce (DOC)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Office for Law Enforcement

United States Department of Treasury

Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations Division (IRS-CID)
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA)
United States Mint Police (USMP)
United States Treasury Police – merged into the US Secret Service Uniformed Division in 1986.

Department of Defense

Defense Criminal Investigative Service(DCIS)
Pentagon Force Protection Agency
Department of the Army
United States Army Criminal Investigation Division (Army CID)
United States Army Military Police Corps
Department of the Air Force
Air Force Office of Special Investigations (Airforce OSI)
Air Force Security Forces
Department of the Air Force Police

Department of the Navy

Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS)
Office of Naval Intelligence Police (ONI Police)
Marine Corps Provost Marshal’s Office

Department of Education

Office of the Inspector General (OIG)

Department of Health and Human Services

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Office of Criminal Investigations

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)

U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement and Investigations

Office of Inspector General

United States Department of the Interior (USDI)

Bureau of Indian Affairs Police
Bureau of Land Management Office of Law Enforcement & Security

National Park Service

National Park Rangers

United States Park Police

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement

Other Major Federal Law Enforcement Agencies

Central Intelligence Agency Security Protective Service (SPS)
Federal Reserve Police
Library of Congress Police
National Security Agency Police (NSA Police)
Smithsonian National Zoological Park Police
United States Capitol Police (USCP)
United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS)
United States Supreme Court Police
Veterans Affairs Police

Speaking of dummies in the federal government, some of them seem to think it’s OK to enforce dog-walking regulations with less lethal weaponry. At least they do around San Francisco, that bastion of peace, love, tolerance and gun control. Just ask Gary Hesterberg who was out walking a couple of teacup poodles, Malteses or some such walking scrub brushes. His mistake: he was in an area that had recently become part of the national park system. . .

sfgate.com has the sordid details of what happened when the (of course) unidentified National Park Service Ranger stopped Hesterberg for, apparently, walking his dogs off leash:

A Montara man walking two lapdogs off leash was hit with an electric-shock gun by a National Park Service ranger after allegedly giving a false name and trying to walk away, authorities said Monday.

The ranger, who wasn’t identified, asked Hesterberg to remain at the scene, Levitt said. He tried several times to leave, and finally the ranger “pursued him a little bit and she did deploy her” electric-shock weapon, Levitt said. “That did stop him.”

More specifically, she shot him in the back with her Taser as he tried to make a furious getaway at the speed of a sauntering Lhasa Apso. But don’t think of what happened as a power-crazed Rangerette wantonly using disproportionate force against a guy out for a stroll with a couple of small pups. Think of it instead as “resident eduction.”

Rancho Corral de Tierra has long been an off-leash walking spot for local dog owners. In December, the area became part of the national park system, which requires that all dogs be on a leash, Levitt said.

The ranger was trying to educate residents of the rule, (Park Service spokesman Howard) Levitt said.

Hesterberg’s ‘eduction’ included charges of failing to obey a lawful order, having dogs off-leash and knowingly providing false information. It’s a good thing the dogs didn’t take a dump in an unauthorized area or he might have been educated to death.

RF sent me a link this morning to a report compiled for the New York City Police Department that outlined the circumstances behind every bullet fired by an NYPD cop that wasn’t on the firing range and was reported to their superiors. I popped their numbers into Excel and bashed in a quick line chart and the image above was my reward. But what does it MEAN?

The top line is “Adversarial Conflicts,” which is a nice way of saying the officers were being actively threatened by someone. 63% of the time these adversaries either had a firearm or the officers had a reasonable suspicion that one was about to be aimed in their direction, 24% of the time it was a knife, and the rest were blunt objects or threats.

This is the line we’re most interested in, as this downward trend indicates that officers have resorted to deadly force less often almost every year, dropping nearly 50% in a decade. But what is the driving force behind that drop?

The answer that comes to mind for me first is Taser usage. There have been a number of stories where the NYPD has been criticized for its wanton use of Tasers, and the availability of Tasers means that previously deadly situations are afforded an alternate ending than hot lead and cold bodies.

But the data doesn’t really bear that “more Tasers = less death” hypothesis out. If Tasers were being used to diffuse potentially lethal situations more often than in the past then incidents where rounds started flying in the officer’s direction would logically account for a much higher percentage of the total shootings than previous years — the assumption being that Tasers would be used more often for lower threats (like knives and blunt objects and threats of imminent death without actions) than bullets but the only response to hot lead is more hot lead. Going back as far as 1997 the proportion of flying lead related shootings to other situations has remained relatively unchanged throughout the years. That indicates that situations which warranted a lethal response in the past are still getting a lethal response.

The Second hypothesis is that officers are more reluctant to pull their triggers, and this is one I can’t comment on. The psychology of a police officer is something that I can’t tease out of a bar graph, and so you’ll have to draw your own conclusions about that one.

The third hypothesis for the decrease in cops pulling triggers on the street is a decrease in crime. If less people are committing crimes then fewer police are responding, and fewer responses means fewer chances for the police to get into a lethal situation. R=T*V*C, QED fewer run-ins means fewer shootings. AKA don’t be around stupid people doing stupid things.

The lower crime hypothesis is actually fairly plausible. The crime rate in New York City has been dropping fairly regularly over the last decade and is only a fraction of what it once was in the 1990′s. The driving force behind that drop in crime rate is another story for another day, but for now we’ll just say that it’s the one I favor the most to explain the fewer officer involved shootings.

In short, the NYPD are pulling their triggers fewer times each year. Whether the cause of that drop in ammo sales is due to the crime rate being on the decline or better training is anyone’s guess, but the numbers seem to indicate that fewer crimes means fewer shootings.

My take on these numbers? RF’s advice to avoid places where stupid people are doing stupid things is pretty damned solid.

Also of note: 34,565 “well trained” police officers have about 21 negligent discharges a year. And that number has been steady for quite some time.

I did 5 deployments. I’ve shot people and never lost a minute of sleep over it because I was lucky enough to never have an ambiguous situation. I look at that video [of the shooting at Carl Jr.s'] and think that if the officers had reacted a bit more professionally or put a moment’s thought into how they approached an unhinged guy with a big blunt object then they likely wouldn’t have been put into a situation where a questionable shooting was necessary . . .

The officer who chose to shoot a taser at a guy in a thick hoody with the hood up should have retreated the moment he realized that the prongs hadn’t set. Instead he fumbles trying to reholster while at the same time approaching within swinging distance while his hands are still busy. At that point the guy raises what appears to be a pipe bender as if to swing and is shot 5 times by the K9 handler. The first officer, at least a second behind the action, manages to get his firearm out and fire five very probably unnecessary rounds.

It doesn’t matter if the guy was a dirtbag or not. If the officers had used a bit more prudence this death would have likely been prevented. If the first officer had treated the situation with the respect it deserved instead of treating his taser as an easy button I doubt the bad guy would have needed to be shot. His poor decisions under pressure led to what I perceive as a preventable death.

On top of that, according to some sources, the officers’ initial reports described the individual swinging at the officers twice before they fired—not merely raising the weapon threateningly. I’m sure the officers were very displeased when they realized their cover-my-ass fabrication was ruined by a couple of idiots in a car with a smartphone.

Honestly, the lies seem worse than the shooting to me. If officers will blatantly lie about something that took place in full view of many witnesses what are the odds that they have lied before when it was their word against a citizen?

“Brock Estep, 31, of Knoxville, alleged that two men in a Toyota Avalon attempted to cut him off in traffic as they pulled out of the Waffle House parking lot at the corner of Weisgarber Road and Papermill Drive on Dec. 15. They flipped him off with their middle fingers, Estep returned the gesture, and soon enough all three men had exited their vehicles, according to Estep. The Toyota’s passenger drew a handgun on him and, when Estep threatened to call the police, the two men said they were the police, Estep alleged.”

What’s wrong with this picture? OK, when you heard they were cops, you figured they’d have been coming out of a donut shop instead of a Waffle House, right? But this incident differs from your typical road rage incident in another important way: as knoxnews.com reports, the Oak Ridge, Tennessee flatfoots who drew on Estep won’t face any charges for drawing on Estep.

After reviewing the findings of KPD’s criminal probe, no charges will be filed against the pair, John Gill, special counsel to Knox County District Attorney Randy Nichols, said this week.

“We determined they acted reasonably,” Gill said.

Oak Ridge Police Chief James T. Akagi said this week that he’s awaiting written confirmation of the DA’s decision before Oak Ridge police investigators conduct their own internal investigation.

Granted, we don’t know what Estep actually did. Getting out of his car to face two angry guys jumping out of theirs probably wasn’t the smartest move he ever made. Maybe he made a move at the cops causing them to draw. The question is, why were the cops so stupid as to get out of their car just because they’d been flipped off?

But it seems that, in too many jurisdictions, the police are just like you and me, only better. Yes, they have a tough, dangerous job and we’re glad they’re out there doing it. But when they abuse their power – like drawing a gun, possibly in anger to intimidate another driver, in an off-duty incident – they need to be held to the same standards as the citizens who pay their salaries with their hard-earned tax dollars.

Getting a pass only erodes their public image and diminishes any respect they get from those they serve and protect.

I watched the YouTube video from the fast food restaurant shooting story presented by Robert Farago and tried to digest what I witnessed – both in the video and the subsequent comments by posters following the story. My biggest issue was the amped-up macho posing displayed by the witnesses in the video and afterwards by some of the posters . . .

I can almost understand the YouTube boys’ reaction. After all, they’ve grown up with easy access to video games, where cartoon guys fall in a hail of bullets. In this case, the reality of the situation eventually dawned on them. They’d just witnessed a real life incident where the “bullet meets the bone,” to borrow from an old Golden Earring song. The guy was bleeding out for real.

Nervous giggles began to replace the flippant remarks that punctuated the early part of the festivities, as they began to understand what was unfolding right in front of them: this guy was shot many times. No reset resurrection would follow.

The difference between the videographers and the posters at the TTAG story: the macho posing displayed by the video guys was a knee-jerk reaction to something that was a surreal. TTAG’s posters, however, had time to think about their responses. Several were openly critical of other posters who had any degree of compassion for the dead guy.

The circumstances dictated that a lethal police response was both justifiable and necessary. But the event was still incredibly tragic to watch, even through a badly filmed You Tube video. Any criticism directed at the posters who came to the same conclusion is highly unwarranted and does nothing to further the pro-gun cause.

The TTAG posters who were uncomfortable with the death are not weak-kneed geldings who don’t have a big enough set of cojones. They’re responsible gun owners who have enough humanity and common sense to understand that somebody died in that parking lot.

We can debate the worth of the dead guy or we can take a lesson from his death. A discharged firearm is a serious matter and the posters who recognized that fact are hardly wimps. They are gun owners with the right attitude about guns.

TTAG commentator Joe sent us a link to this YouTube video of an Officer Involved Shooting outside Carl Jr.’s restaurant in Monterey Park, California [as reported by nydailynews.com]: “The man did not swing the pipe at the officer. When are these people going to understand that if the man had successfully swung the pipe at the officer we would have a dead man and a dead officer? A pipe bender to the skull is deadly, this is not Nerf.” A few minutes later, our correspondent sent a second electronic missive. “What in the world is wrong with the passengers in the car that filmed this? They laugh when the man is shot. Not that he didn’t present a deadly threat the the officer, but it should be sad to anyone when a human being is killed, even when the death is justified.” Amen.