Brooklyn cops mess up pot lab operation bust, lose suspect to suicide.

OK, as I understand this one: the cops suspected that there was a marijuana grow lab in a Brooklyn maraschino cherry company, but couldn’t get proof.  So they used an EPA complaint to get into the place, and then did the Hey! Do I smell POT? maneuver.  After a few hours of this, the owner of the place politely excused himself, went into his private bathroom, and shot himself in the head.

Man, there’s something in there for everybody to get angry about, huh? The pro-pot people are going to be upset about the fact that the grow lab had to be illegal in the first place. The libertarians and small-government folks can focus on the use of a convenient piece of government paper to get the cops somewhere they can go do what they REALLY wanted to do.  And here’s a point for the people who aren’t fretting over the first two: why the heck didn’t the cops secure the area and/or the owner properly? Once it was clear that the man was going to be arrested, the police should have made sure that he didn’t have, you know, access to a firearm and an opportunity to use it. Because ‘suicide in a bathroom’ isn’t the most horrible ending to that particular story.  It’s not even close.

Not the NYPD’s finest moment, that.

Walking Blue Flu from NYPD?

One wonders.

It’s not a slowdown — it’s a virtual work stoppage.

NYPD traffic tickets and summonses for minor offenses have dropped off by a staggering 94 percent following the execution of two cops — as officers feel betrayed by the mayor and fear for their safety, The Post has learned.

The dramatic drop comes as Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio plan to hold anemergency summit on Tuesday with the heads of the five police unions to try to close the widening rift between cops and the administration.

Continue reading Walking Blue Flu from NYPD?

NYPD utilizing #OWS for indigent relief efforts?

(Via Jammie Wearing Fool) Which is a polite way of saying “New York cops allegedly loading Zuccotti Park up with real homeless.”

…while officers may be in a no-win situation, at the mercy of orders carried on shifting political winds and locked into conflict with a so-far almost entirely non-violent protest movement eager to frame the force as a symbol of the oppressive system they’re fighting, the NYPD seems to have crossed a line in recent days, as the park has taken on a darker tone with unsteady and unstable types suddenly seeming to emerge from the woodwork. Two different drunks I spoke with last week told me they’d been encouraged to “take it to Zuccotti” by officers who’d found them drinking in other parks, and members of the community affairs working group related several similar stories they’d heard while talking with intoxicated or aggressive new arrivals.

Read, as they say, the whole thing.  And after you do, we’ll discuss. Continue reading NYPD utilizing #OWS for indigent relief efforts?