Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Homeland Security Returns

APD briefly assisted with 2 cruisers, but then left


Six cars, a pick up truck and a heck of a lot of officers -- local, state and federal --  are currently on site at #632 South Pleasant Street, presumably looking for bad guys.

Since we ruled out terrorism a couple days ago I would assume that somewhat narrows it down to drugs.

UPDATE:

 




Gotta love Twitter

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

That house has gone downhill during the past year...sorta not surprised.

Anonymous said...

What does Homeland Security have to do with drug enforcement?

Anonymous said...

When I drove by, I saw one officer outside with a rifle. Wonder what's happening...

Larry Kelley said...

Closely involved with DEA as drugs are used to finance terrorism.

Tony said...

Moonlight Quabbin strolls?

Walter Graff said...

They state they have five missions.

1. Prevent Terrorism and Enhance Security
Prevent the unauthorized acquisition, importation, movement, or use of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear materials

2. Enforce and Administer our Immigration Laws

3. Secure and Manage Our Borders

4. Safeguard and Secure Cyberspace
Circuit Board The Department works to:
A. analyze and reduces cyber threats and vulnerabilities;
B. distribute threat warnings; and
C. coordinate the response to cyber incidents to ensure that our computers, networks, and cyber systems remain safe.

Building a Resilient Nation
FEMA works closely with local and state officials to support their response and recovery efforts.

5. Provides the coordinated, comprehensive federal response in the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency while working with federal, state, local, and private sector partners to ensure a swift and effective recovery effort.

I think they are useless and should be abolished. It's a “security theater” that costs us a lot and leaves us no safer. It's the TSA on wheels.

Larry Kelley said...

Well, they're still here if you want to come tell them that.

Walter Graff said...

I wouldn't waste my time. It's a sham. I got stopped by one of their illegal "border" check points outside of Las Vegas (not near a border). I never opened the window and never answered their questions. They had no choice but to let me go. What a waste.

Here, there and everywhere said...

Everybody wants to be on team Roach Patrol.


Everybody...

Anonymous said...

Rather than assume it's drugs why don't you just watch Channel 22 news, as they were there and find out.

Larry Kelley said...

And who do you think tweeted them the address?

Although they did not seem to find out much.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, and as professional journalists they didn't just start making up possible reasons. They just said they didn't know.

Larry Kelley said...

At least I managed to confirm it was not terrorism related.

Not bad for an amateur, eh CAN?

Dr. Ed said...

Larry, how the h*** do you know that it isn't terrorism related?

I would not be at all surprised that Monday's incident was an inter-jurisdictional planning/briefing meeting for what they did on Wednesday, which very well may have been terrorism related.

All you know is that -- relative to the incident on Monday, in the DPW yard, APD Chief Livingstone said: "We were assisting only the Dept of Homeland Security on a non emergency issue..."

A lot of cops (particularly the good ones) are dyslexic. His intent was to tell you that they weren't disarming a bomb, that they "were only" doing something routine -- that your family didn't need to flee your home.

I'm wondering if he accidentally switched "assisting" and "only" -- and intended to say (and thought he said) "we were only assisting Homeland Security..."

And if there have been some mysterious explosions in the woods recently, I have a pretty good idea of what they were preventing. And what the likely consequences would have been if they hadn't...

UMass was watching the wrong people. Fortunately, someone else wasn't....

Enku, I TOLD YOU SO!!!!

Anonymous said...

Who was UMass watching, Ed? You?

While Homeland Security is in town, why don't you ask them to remove that tiny wireless transmitter from your filling, too?

Dr. Ed said...

Well, even if it was "drug-related", the number of people involved, and the inherent logistics involved in assembling them speaks volumes as to what someone thought they might be walking into.

Two marked cruisers would be the quickest & easiest way to close the street, briefing an ambulance crew and possibly having it standing by somewhere -- that's pointing to a realistic expectation of something else...

Police officers tend not to walk around with rifles unless they think they might need them -- or had thought that they might need them and were now putting them away -- while a police sharpshooter would avoid being seen while there was a realistic threat, once the situation was secure, he would nonchalantly walk back and not worry about either he or his rifle being seen.

Again, this may well have been drug-related, but it tends to point toward folks thinking this more of a "vertical coffin" situation than a nonchalant college drug bust. These all speaks to a realistic expectation you will encounter a fuselage of gunfire.

That you are dealing with people whom you consider to be very dangerous and very violent -- people who well may be violating the drug laws, but who also may be violating other laws as well.

Regardless, even if this was only drug related, it looks like the LEOs thought they were dealing with quite dangerous people. People dangerous not because they might sue you but because they might shoot you -- and folk who might shoot police officers are the same folk who might shoot professors and everyone else, who might become the feared "active campus shooter."

Notwithstanding all the "social justice" stuff that the folk at UMass love to preach but not practice, I say again: Enku, you and your Star Chamber are watching the wrong people!!!!

Forget the question of "who's guarding the guardians", forget all the (quite real) harm that "Racial Profiling" does to innocent Black men, likewise forget all the issues involved when the government reads the emails and listens to the telephone calls of people "who aren't doing anything wrong", UMass is making the same mistake the French did with the Magenot Line, which was ever-so-effective in stopping Hitler, was't it?

If we are going to put paranoia over principle and violate the civil rights of innocent and decent people because we are paranoid, principles of simple statistics indicate that we should be violating the rights of those born in Islamic countries.

And we shouldn't be doing that either.

Tom McBride said...

Drugs in Amherst? Somebody must be confused.

Larry Kelley said...

One way to work your way through college I suppose.

Dr. Ed said...

While Homeland Security is in town, why don't you ask them to remove that tiny wireless transmitter from your filling, too?

Imagine both that such things could exist and that they could be defective.

Imagine encountering all kinds of problems because -- you are told -- of something the wireless transmitter in your mouth documented you saying.

Imagine that Homeland Security won't tell you what it is that you allegedly said, only that you are really dangerous because you said it.

Imagine that DHS tells all your friends and associates to avoid you because you are "dangerous" and tells them what it is that you supposedly said, but won't let them tell you either.

And while DHS tells you that a wireless transmitter in your tooth is the source of this "something" that you allegedly said, they concurrently deny the existence of a transmitter.

And when you ask how a transmitter that doesn't exist could produce the transmissions that they are using against you, they attack your character and mental health.

And you are having real problems with the cops because this transmitter that doesn't exist is also setting off every car and burglar alarm you are within 10 feet of -- as radio transmitters sometimes do.

Eventually, in a "document dump" you find a document written by the very high-level DHS administrator in which she discusses how the transmitter in your tooth is known to be defective and is picking up -- say -- terrorist telephone calls and transmitting them instead of your voice.

You have official DHS documents, written by the very administrator who is denying the existence of the transmitter, that not only does she know that is there but that she knows that it is defective.

You send copies of your copies of her official documents -- which she knows you have because the document dump went through DHS counsel who had told her about it -- and ask her to reconsider her denial that the transmitter exists.

At this point, wouldn't you expect her to stop lying?

Explaining why she thinks a transmitter in your mouth is an appropriate use of limited government resources would be nice, as would offering to replace it with one that was working properly and didn't set of every alarm in sight -- and it goes without saying that you'd expect her to "fix" the problems with the police that her transmitter has caused you.

A decent person would also give you an opportunity to clear your name. A responsible administrator would not only apologize her bureaucracy screwed up, but attempt to abate the harm caused and to "make you whole" again.

An intelligent administrator would realize that if her organization keeps "twisting the knife" and persists in a charade, eventually you will have nothing left to loose and will go public at which point an awful lot of questions are going to get asked and you really don't have answers for any of them.

And when there is overwhelming evidence that you are lying, in such circumstances, it isn't overly bright to continue lying. It's like Richard Nixon -- look at what happened when he persisted in lying....

Anonymous said...

My apologies, Ed. I mistakenly wrote "transmitter" when I meant "receiver" -- as in the source of the voices in your head.

Dr. Ed said...

My apologies, Ed. I mistakenly wrote "transmitter" when I meant "receiver" -- as in the source of the voices in your head.

I don't have "voices in my head" but the fact that your delusions include the mistaken belief that I do tends to say quite a bit about your mental health, does it not?

In all honesty, if I actually had voices in my head that were telling me to do things that I didn't want to do, I'd tell them to go fire truck themselves -- with five fewer letters -- and I'd do what I thought was right regardless of how many voices were screaming at me.

Maybe others are weak, and while I still can't quite understand the concept of hearing nonexistent voices, what I truly never understood was why one is compelled to obey them.

My response would be "make me."

This actually is a serious question: what compels the mentally ill person to obey the voices?

Anonymous said...

Dr. Ed, you assume way too much. If you knew anyone from that house you would realize that no one was a violent person in any way shape or form. They used a ton of excessive force and an unworthy amount of tax dollars just to seek out a loose lead. They obviously did not invest a lot of research into the situation. I wonder how much money was wasted for a scenario which would only really require local police.

Anonymous said...

I'm not afraid to admit that I do have problems, but thankfully they're under control, thanks to the miracles of modern pharmacology.

You, Ed, suffer from the common misconception that you can distinguish between your rational and irrational inner voices. The untreated mentally ill rarely realize they are ill, and you will almost certainly never perceive that you are "obeying" an irrational command, any more than I now "obey" a rational impulse to eat lunch or go to the movies.

Medication to quiet the irrational voices is the only safe solution.

Anonymous said...

I thought Ed was the irrational voices to begin with???

Dr. Ed said...

"All sheep and no shepherd.
Everyone is the same
Everyone wants to be the same.
Anyone who is different goes voluntarily to the madhouse."

I don't care what fascists think of me.

But something I do care about -- and everyone else ought to -- is the implications of the belief that "[t]he untreated mentally ill rarely realize they are ill" -- that there ought not be a presumption that the person isn't ill in the first place.

It used to be that the person making the allegation had burden of proof, much as there is a presumption of innocence there also is a presumption of sanity. We'd learned something from the witch trials, and one of the requirements for a diagnosis of mental illness was that the person had a gross inability to function normally.

The scary aspect of a fiat-style definition of insanity, and the presumption that one is insane unless proven otherwise, is that it gives incredible power to those doing the determinations.

And just because the mental health professions lean hard to the left right now doesn't mean that they either always will, nor will even be the lawfully designated persons making these determinations. The legislature can license whomever it wants to for whatever it wishes to license them for, under whatever standards it chooses to do so.

There is no legal requirement that any state recognize the APA, the DSM-V or anything else. The SCOTUS sodomy and abortion decisions were relative to criminal laws, not mental health ones -- and SCOTUS has gone the other way on those. There is nothing to prevent a state from defining sodomy as "harm to self", abortion as "harm to another" and both as evidence of mental illness. There is nothing prohibiting a state from only licensing mental health folk who agree with this viewpoint.

Do not forget what the Soviets did...

This is what happens when fascism and mental health get mixed together. If the presumption of sanity were to be eliminated, there are states which well might do something like this -- and I'm suggesting that is a bit scary.