The Joe Biden Shoot First, Ask Questions Later Doctrine

     Roger Alles, the former and now deceased head of the Fox New Channel reportedly said that Vice President Joe Biden, a man he knew, was as stupid as an ashtray.

     In a February 2013 interview for Field & Steam Magazine, the Vice President touted the shotgun as the best weapon for self-defense. "If you want to keep someone away from your house, just fire the shotgun through the door," he said. This is bad advice that crosses the stupidity line deep into irresponsible territory. If you don't believe me, ask Oscar Pistorius, the Blade Runner on who said he shot his girlfriend to death through his bathroom door because he thought she was an intruder.

     There are hundreds of men serving time in prison for firing blindly through closed doors. In so doing, they killed police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and other people who were not intruders. While some of these homicide defendants panicked and killed by honest mistake, they still went to prison for criminal recklessness.

     But pursuant to the Joe Biden doctrine of shooting first and asking questions later, such through-the-door killings would involve specific, homicidal intent. Know this: There is no such thing in murder law as the Joe Biden Defense. The Vice President of the United States was advising people to commit criminal homicide.

     Roger Alles' comparison was an insult to ashtrays.

The Joseph Jennings Police Shooting Case

     Eighteen-year-old Joseph Jennings resided in Ottawa, Kansas, a town of 13,000 within the Kansas City metropolitan area adjacent to the Missouri state line. Joseph had plans to attend trade school and learn underwater welding. The young man had been struggling with mental health problems that interfered with his ambitions. His depression and anxiety were exacerbated by seizures that had become more frequent. Seeing no future for himself, Joseph Jennings had decided to take his own life.

     On Thursday, August 21, 2014, Joseph posted a suicide note on Facebook that read: "Tonight is the night. Goodbye to everyone!!! It was truly a good ride. I'm sorry for who I might have hurt and people that I may have offended. But I love all my family and hope you don't hold this against me."

     Ten minutes after posting the above message, Joseph swallowed 60 prescription pills. A member of his family discovered the unconscious teen and called 911. Two officers with the Ottawa Police Department rushed him to the hospital where doctors saved his life.

     Two days after Joseph tried to kill himself, hospital personnel discharged him from the psychiatric ward of Ransom Memorial Hospital. (They probably gave him more pills and told him to visit a psychiatrist. This is what passed for mental health care in America.)

     At eight o'clock on the night of Saturday, August 23, just three hours after leaving the hospital, Jennings, having made it known that he intended to commit suicide-by-cop, walked to a hardware store in town. Someone called the police and reported that a man with a gun was standing outside the store.

     Six police officers, including the two that a couple of days earlier had rushed Joseph to the hospital, rolled up to the scene. They confronted him on the store's parking lot and ordered him to drop to the ground and keep his hands where they could see them. Instead, Joseph made gestures that suggested he possessed a weapon.

     Brandy Smith, Joseph's aunt, lived near the hardware store. She witnessed the standoff, and didn't like how it was unfolding. She and her husband approached the officers. "That's Joseph Jennings! You know him," she said. "Don't shoot him. If he has a gun it's a BB gun. He is on a suicide mission!" As Brandy tried to reason with the officers, her husband said he would approach his suicidal nephew and tackle him for the officers. One of the officers informed Mr. Smith that if he (Smith) wasn't careful and got in the way, he could be shot. They ordered him to stay put.

     Suddenly one of the officers yelled, "Bag him!" With that, another officer fired a nonlethal device that shot beanbags instead of bullets. Shortly after that, the bullets started flying--24 of them. Joseph was struck sixteen times and died that night at a nearby hospital. He did not possess a BB gun or any other kind of weapon. At no time were these officers threatened with a weapon they could see.

     On August 25, 2014, in speaking to local reporters (the national media had no interest in this case), Ottawa Police Chief Dennis Butler said, "They [the officers] reacted based upon training they've been given at the academy. We were thankful that no officer was injured from protecting themselves (sic) from risk of great bodily harm."

     So, as long as the police officers avoided possible harm by gunning down an unarmed man, everything worked out fine. Officer safety, after all, was the priority. To hell with an 18-year-old suicidal teenager who may or may not have been armed with a BB gun.

     In the wake of this highly questionable and unnecessary fatal police shooting, no one in Ottawa took to the streets to protest or loot.

     In November 2016, after the Franklin County Attorney ruled the Jennings' fatal shooting "lawful and justified," Joseph Jennings' brother Chris filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Ottawa. In the suit, the plaintiff alleged that the police had used excessive force and were "reckless and careless" in the lethal shooting.

     In May 2018, the city of Ottawa settled Chris Jennings lawsuit for $125,000 plus attorney fees and court costs totaling $63,968.

The Death of FBI Agent Stephen Ivens

     At eight o'clock Monday evening, July 30, 2012, a pair of hikers walking in the foothills of the Verdugo Mountains above Burbank, California came upon a foul odor. In the brush behind St. Francis of Xavier Catholic Church, they discovered the skeletal remains of a man. The initial investigation by the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office indicates that the hikers had stumbled upon Stephen Ivens. Near his body death scene investigators recovered a handgun.

     Stephen Ivens, a 35-year-old FBI agent assigned to the Los Angeles Field Division, had been missing since he walked away from his Burbank home on the morning of May 11, 2012. Blood hounds had traced his scent to the Verdugo Mountains where a search party of FBI agents, local police, and volunteers had looked for him.

     A married father of a 2-year-old son, Ivens had been an FBI agent a little more than three years. Before going into the bureau he had been a Los Angeles police officer. The white, 6 foot, 160 pound bespectacled agent had worked on counterterrorism cases. Because his FBI-issued revolver had been taken from the house, Ivens was presumed armed when he walked off that morning.

     According to the agent's wife Thea, Special Agent Ivens had been depressed and distraught which led many to suspect he left the house that morning with the intent of killing himself. But the fact he was an FBI agent who worked on counterterrorism matters also led to speculation of international intrigue and foul play.

     A few weeks after his disappearance, the authorities stopped looking for Ivens, and the media ignored the case. This added fuel to the possibility of foul play, and a government cover-up. After Ivens' body was found behind the church one and a half miles from his home, questions regarding the reasons behind his disappearance went unanswered. The big mystery involved whether or not Ivens' death--suicide or otherwise--was related to his counterterrorism work. According to Ivens' wife, he had been depressed to the point of a breakdown. The source of his distress, while related to his FBI job, was not caused by his counterterrorism assignment. He couldn't sleep, and before leaving for work each morning, suffered anxiety attacks. The exact source of his stress was not made public.

     Ivens' wife Thea, who never gave up hope that he was alive, continued searching for him after the authorities had given up. During his 80-day disappearance, she maintained a blog and a website devoted to his return.

     Because Ivens' remains were found just three-quarters of a mile from where the cadaver dogs had picked-up his scent, conspiracy theorists interpreted this fact as evidence that he had been murdered somewhere else, then placed behind the church where he could be easily found. People invested in this scenario disregarded a Burbank police officer's comment that "Every indication is that he [Ivens] has been there from the first day."

     On August 6, 2012, Craig Harvey, the Chief Coroner Investigator with the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office announced that Stephen Ivens had shot himself in the head with a handgun. The death had been ruled a suicide. The authorities revealed that the FBI agent had been despondent, but didn't say why.

     While FBI agents don't disappear everyday and stay missing for 80 days, the national media didn't show much interest in the Stephen Ivens case. Even the media in southern California didn't give the story a lot of attention. If Ivens had been even a minor celebrity, particularly someone in the entertainment industry, the media would have been all over his disappearance. There would have been daily press conferences, a three-page feature in People Magazine, headlines in the supermarket tabloids, and candlelight vigils attended by an army of fans. (Ivens' wife did stage one candlelight vigil in McCambridge Park to raise awareness of the case.)  So-called celebrity investigative journalists would have dug into every corner of Ivens' life. 

News Bloggers

     Blogs are online journals consisting of brief entries displayed in chronological order on a page. They are usually written in a conversational voice and usually peppered with links and references to other sites. Blogging is confronting journalism with the rise of current-events blogs that deconstruct news coverage, spew opinion and even scoop the big media from time to time. The best news bloggers are articulate, independent thinkers. In some ways, they are the antithesis of traditional journalists, unedited, unabashedly opinionated, sporadic and personal.

     A growing number of journalists are blogging on their own time. Many are freelancers and columnists who want a showcase for their collected works and an overflow bin for commentary that couldn't fit into their allotted inches or minutes. Even journalists who have no interest in running a blog can glean story tips and ideas from them. Blogs can be a rich resource, an easy publishing tool and a repository for notebook overflow. Bloggers will not usurp online newspapers, but newsrooms could borrow a few tricks from bloggers to make their own journalism better.

Barb Palser, "Journalistic Blogging," ajrarchive.org, July/August 2002 

The Kim Pham Murder Case

     Just after midnight, Saturday January 18, 2014, 23-year-old Annie Hung "Kim" Pham was waiting to get into the Crosby Bar and Nightclub in downtown Santa Ana, California. The 2013 graduate of Chapman University stood amid others roughly her age eager to enter the club. The festive atmosphere suddenly turned ugly when Pham inadvertently stepped in front of a cluster of club-goers posing for a photograph outside of the bar.

     Members of the group being photographed voiced their displeasure over the so-called "photobomb".  This led to an exchange of angry words between Pham and the others. Shortly thereafter, fists started flying and Pham ended up on the ground being kicked and stomped. Several young bystanders recorded the melee on their cellphones.

     The group Pham had angered included 25-year-old Vanesa Tapia Zavala, her boyfriend, and another couple. When Kim Pham, sprawled at the feet of her attackers, stopped moving, Zavala and her friends walked away leaving the unconscious woman where she lay.

     Doctors at a nearby hospital pronounced Kim Pham brain-dead and placed her on life-support until her organs could be harvested.

     On Monday, January 20, 2014, detectives with the Santa Ana Police Department, after reviewing several cellphone videos of the deadly brawl, arrested Vanesa Zavala on the charge of murder. Officers booked the suspect into the Orange County Jail where she was held on $1 million bond. If convicted as charged, Zavala faced a maximum prison sentence of 15 years to life.

     On Tuesday, January 21, 2014, doctors removed Kim Pham from life support. A few hours later hospital authorities pronounced her dead.

     While investigators were trying to identify the other people in Zavala's group, a coalition of Santa Ana businesses offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to their arrests.

     Following Zavala's arraignment hearing, her attorney, Kenneth Reed told reporters that Zavala herself had been knocked to the ground in the fight. Referring to his client, the lawyer said, "Your life is fine, you have a 5-year-old son, you go out one night on a Friday with your boyfriend and then your life is turned upside down and you find out someone is killed. No matter what the situation is, you're going to be devastated." [For yourself or the victim? Devastation is an emotion, one of many emotions experienced by the living. Kim Pham felt nothing.]

     Attorney Michael Molfetta, the attorney representing a member of Zalava's group who was not charged in the case, told reporters that Kim Pham threw the first punch. Okay. So the others stomped her to death in self defense?

     On January 28, 2014, an Orange County prosecutor charged 27-year-old Candice Marie Brito with murder in the Pham case. To reporters, Brito's attorney Michael Molfetta lashed out against the victim: "Ms Pham has been anointed a saint," he said. In contrast, his client has been "vilified internationally."

     Brito, from Santa Ana, was held in the Orange County Jail on $1 million bond.

     In July 2016, a jury sitting in a Santa Ana court room found Zavala and Brito guilty of voluntary manslaughter. Orange County Judge Thomas Goethals sentenced both defendants to six years in prison. These sentences, by any standard, were outrageously light.

The Barbara Olson Murder Case

     In the summer of 2012, Antonio D. Barbeau, a 13-year-old escapee from a juvenile detention center, was living in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin with the family of his 13-year-old friend, Nathan P. Paape. On September 17, 2012, Paape's mother drove the eighth graders to the Sheboygan Falls home of Barbeau's great-grandmother. Paape's mother didn't realize that Barbeau carried a concealed hatchet, and that her son possessed a hammer. She didn't know that the boys intended to murder and rob the 78-year-old woman, Barbara Olson.

     The boys entered Olson's house through an unlocked door to her attached garage. The target of the murder/robbery, when she realized why the boys had come to her home, threatened to call Barbeau's mother. At that point Barbeau knocked his great-grandmother off her feet by hitting her in the back of the head with the blunt end of his hatchet. As she lay on the floor trying to protect her head with her hands, Barbeau hit her again, and again. Nathan Paape joined in with his hammer. To finish off the dying woman, Barbeau struck her twice in the back of the head with the blade part of the bloodied hatchet.

     The young murderers rummaged through the dead woman's house looking for cash and valuables. They gathered up the victim's purse, some loose change, and a few pieces of her jewelry. Barbeau slipped the blood-soaked watch off his great-grandmother's wrist.

     The boys had planned to load the victim's body into her car and drive it to a spot where they'd abandoned the vehicle and the corpse. When they couldn't stuff the body into the car, they left it in the garage beneath a blanket.

     The cold-blooded killers tossed the bloody murder instruments into the trunk, and drove off in the murdered woman's car. They parked the Olson vehicle in a a Sheboygan Falls bowling alley parking lot. Leaving the keys in the ignition with the stolen jewelry placed on the front seat in plain view, they walked away hoping that someone would steal the car and eventually take the fall for murdering the woman lying dead in her garage.

     A few blocks from the abandoned vehicle, Barbeau and Paape sat down for a meal at a pizza parlor. After eating their pizzas, the boys walked to Paape's house. Along the way, they tossed Barbara Olson's handbag into a storm drain. At Paape's home, they changed into fresh clothes and hid their bloody garments and the gold watch Barbeau had taken off the corpse.

     Later on the day of this senseless murder, Mrs. Olson's daughter discovered her body. Police officers quickly figured out who had murdered the victim. Investigators recovered her purse from the street drain, the murder weapons from the stolen car, and the killers' bloody clothing and the victim's gold watch from Nathan Paape's house.

     In a matter of days, Antonio Barbeau confessed, and in so doing, implicated his friend. On September 21, 2012, four days after the murder, a Sheboygan County prosecutor changed each suspect with first-degree intentional homicide. The magistrate set each of the defendants' bail at $1 million.

     Nathan Paape went on trial for first-degree intentional homicide in June 2013. Under Wisconsin law, Paape, because of his age, couldn't be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. But if convicted as charged, the judge could sentence him to a maximum of forty years in prison before he was eligible for release.

     One of the first prosecution witnesses, Dr. Doug Kelley with the Fond du Lac County Medical Examiner's Office, testified that Barbara Olson had been struck in the head with the blunt instruments at least twenty-five times. The star prosecution witness, Antonio Barbeau, testified that he and the defendant had hatched the murder/robbery scheme together. Barbeau told the jurors that he and Paape took turns whacking his great-grandmother as she lay helpless in her own home.

     Defense attorneys put their client on the stand to testify on his own behalf. According to the defendant, the crime had been Barbeau's idea. After they entered the victim's house, Paape said he hit the old woman twice with his hammer. He only did it because he was afraid that if he didn't, Barbeau would attack him. The defendant claimed that when his mother drove them to Olson's dwelling, he didn't think that Barbeau would actually carry out the plan to kill the woman.

     Following the one-week trial, the jury, after a quick deliberation, found Nathan Paape guilty as charged. A few days after the verdict, Antonio Barbeau withdrew his not guilty by mental disease plea. He agreed to plead no contest to first-degree intentional homicide.

     On August 12, 2013, Barbeau appeared before Circuit Court Judge Timothy Van Akkeren who presided at his sentence hearing. His attorney presented a psychiatrist who testified that Barbeau had "cognitive issues" stemming from being hit by a car when he was 10-years-old. Judge Van Akkeren, obviously unimpressed with the psychiatrist's testimony, sentenced Barbeau to life. The 14-year-old would not be eligible for parole until November 24, 2048 when he turned fifty.

     The next day Judge Van Akkeren, before sentencing Nathan Paape, said, "Mr. Paape is a follower in this case. I do find there is less culpability." The judge sentenced Paape to life in prison with eligibility for parole on December 2, 2043, Paape's 45th birthday.

Living Without Police

In the middle of the night someone is breaking into your house. You call 911 and the dispatcher assures you that an anger management counselor and a victim's advocate are on their way. Your store is being robbed. You call 911 and the dispatcher reminds you that it's just property and you should call your insurance agent. You need to go to the store for groceries, but because all of the murderers, rapists, arsonists, muggers, and burglars have been released from prison, you can't safely leave the house. But it really doesn't matter because looters have already emptied the grocer's shelves. And you can't buy a firearm for protection because the gun shops have also been looted out of existence. Maybe it's time to get into your car--if it hasn't been stolen--and get the hell out of that city. As you leave town, you can wave good-bye to the criminal-loving politicians who ruined your city and your life. In time, however, they too will flee the community because walls and security guards are no match for vicious, criminal mobs. 

Being Labeled A Racist Can Be a Career-Ending Charge

     At one-thirty in the morning of September 24, 2009, a Muskegon (Michigan) Police Department patrol officer on a routine traffic stop, pulled over a car driven by a 23-year-old black man named Julius Allen-Ray Johnson. The driver was on parole after having served two years in prison for drug dealing and resisting arrest.

     The officer who pulled over the car called for backup when Mr. Johnson refused to obey his commands. Muskegon officer Charles Anderson, a 38-year-old who had been on the force since 1997, responded to the call.

     At the arrival of the second officer, Julius Johnson ran from the scene with officer Anderson in pursuit. Shortly thereafter, the officer who had initiated the arrest, heard a single gunshot. When he tried to communicate with officer Anderson by car radio and received no response, he searched for the patrolman and found him and Julius Johnson lying on the ground. Mr. Johnson had been shot to death, and patrolman Anderson had a serious, blunt object head injury. The dead man was not in possession of a firearm.

     Because a white police officer had killed an unarmed black man, members of the black community and others protested the shooting as an act of police racism.

     Following an investigation of the police-involved shooting, investigators determined that officer Charles Anderson had been justified in using deadly force on grounds of self defense. In resisting arrest, Julius Johnson had seriously injured the officer, causing him to have a metal plate implanted in his head.

     Almost ten years after Julius Johnson's death, on August 7, 2009, Robert Mathis and his wife were taking a tour inside a house up for sale in Holton Township, a community twenty miles northeast of Muskegon. The house belonged to officer Charles Anderson and his wife Rachael.

     In one of the bedrooms, Robert Mathis and his wife, a black couple, saw a Confederate flag and a framed Ku Klux Klan document dating back to the 1920s. The displayed memorabilia of America's racist past in the home of a police officer caused Mr. Mathis and his wife to feel "anger, sadness and shame."

     Robert Mathis photographed the flag and the KKK document, and the next day, posted the pictures on his Facebook page. The postings created outrage and demands that this racist cop be removed from law enforcement.

     On September 12, 2019, following a police disciplinary hearing, the panel recommended terminating the employment of the 48-year-old police officer. The next day Charles Anderson was fired.

     The county prosecutor, in light of Charles Anderson's racist memorabilia, announced that his office was considering re-opening the Julius Johnson police-involved shooting case.

     Robert Mathis, on his Facebook page, wrote: "I feel sick to my stomach knowing that I walk into the home of one of the most racist people in Muskegon hiding behind his uniform and possibly harassing people of color and different nationalities."

Questioning Police Authority Versus Resisting Arrest

You have been speeding and an officer pulls you over. You refuse to respond to the traffic cop's questions, or perhaps the officer sees something in the vehicle that raises his or her suspicion of criminal possession. You protest when the officer tries to search your car. The officer threatens to arrest you if you do not calm down. You continue to assert what you believe are your rights and refuse to be handcuffed. Under these conditions you are resisting arrest. It seems that more and more citizens don't understand resisting arrest law or choose to ignore it. Citizens need to be reminded that in the vast majority of physical police-citizen confrontations, the police win. If the police officer violates your constitutional rights, your remedy is in a court of law, not at the point of arrest. 

Looting Has Been a Fact of Urban Retailing for Years

     In the summers of 2011 and 2012, gangs of teenage black kids invaded, for the purpose of retail theft, stores in downtown Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Norfolk, Virginia. Groups of 20 or more males and females overwhelmed store security in order to steal expensive merchandise--usually clothing--for resale. These mobs were assembled, mobilized, and coordinated through social media networking.

     These gangs of retail thieves committed a brand of unlawful taking that fell between team shoplifting and robbery (taking by force). It was looting, and reflected a group entitlement mentality as well as total disrespect for the rule of law. This form of urban anarchy should not have been taken so lightly. Civil disorder of this nature drove retailers and other businesses out of downtown America.

     In Chicago, Luke Cho, the owner of a Wicker Park clothing store, became alarmed at 6:40 PM on Saturday, August 14, 2012. Twenty or more black teenagers entered his place of business as a coordinated group. Mr. Cho knew what this meant, he was about to be looted by a so-called "flash mob."

     The gang moved purposefully toward the section of the story that housed the display of Nudie brand jeans. At $200 a pair, these jeans had been in demand since some rap singer was seen wearing them on TV. Mr. Cho, to keep a second wave of looters out of his store, locked the front door, and asked an employee to call 911.

     As the thieves scooped up armloads of jeans in front of alarmed store employees and customers, members of the second wave of looters, who were locked out of the store, banged angrily on the glass. Once the inside thieves had gathered up all the jeans they could carry, then moved toward the front of the establishment, stopping along the way to put other stolen items into their backpacks. After fumbling with the door, one of the looters figured how to unlock it. The door opened, the pack rushed onto the street, and dispersed with more than $3,000 worth of Mr. Cho's merchandise. By the time the first police officer arrived at the scene, it was all over.

     Mr. Cho, when he reviewed the store's surveillance tape, recognized several of the looters as previous shoplifters. He posted the video online, and asked the public to help identify as many thieves as possible. (Victims of flash mobs, aware that the police are indifferent to crimes like this, essentially had to conduct their own investigations.)

     Scott Paulson, a CBS news commentator, wrote an article on the network's website about these retail marauders. Paulson criticized the media, police administrators, and politicians for not calling these mob heists what they really are--race riots. According to Mr. Paulson, "The media, the politicians, and the bulk of the commentators on social issues need to quit being afraid of people like Rev. Al Sharpton." Pointing out that these mobs are comprised of black kids, and that their victims are white, Paulson writes: "If a story is about race, it must be reported as a racial story for the good of the people who could easily be subjected to the next flash mob attack....Protecting a community's image or a segment of society's image should not override the public's need to know and be protected."

     Anyone with half a brain could have foreseen what's happening in our cities today.