The Minuteman

It may be the 21st century, but hate crime still exists.  Whether it is by
color of one’s skin or one’s gender orientation, there are still people out
there that have a problem with it and will act out.  No matter where you live it
can happen.  Be it college
campuses or large,
seemingly progressive cities, no place is immune.

“It
feels like a violation,” said Evans, “feels really shocking because you don’t
think things like this happen anymore, especially in Seattle,
Washington.”

It really sucks that this happened and I hope the party responsible gets
caught, but you are living in a dream world if you think it can’t or won’t
happen here.

Just because you think something has been relegated to the dustbin of history, you can still have some asshat trying to revive it.

A high class, quiet town nestled in the Cascade foothills in Western Washington, what could possibly happen there?  The most one ever hears about Issaquah is that it is home to Krispy Kreme Donuts in Western Washington (they showed up there first before spreading).  Who’d a thunk a deranged lunatic would would open fire there?

“We were running from guns. That’s not supposed to happen in Issaquah,” she said.

“It was so close. It was like you didn’t really think it could be gunfire right behind you,” said another woman who was there, Dawn Hill.

Issaquah is home to people who work at tech companies, much like Microsoft and it’s not exactly “low rent”.  Yet, bad things still happen.

“In my whole life I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Jack Hover.

Just because it hasn’t happen before, doesn’t mean it can’t happen at all.

Mmmm…Krispy Kreme.

H/T Ry

When asked why he had marijuana, prescription pills and drug paraphernalia in his patrol car, former Pasco deputy Marshall Todd DeBerry told investigators:

“All I can say is I’m a disorganized moron,” a report states.

Supposedly this man was not up to anything and this was just disorganization.  Yet there is something in the back of my head that says that there’s more here.

He rose to the rank of corporal until 2008, when he was reassigned to patrol deputy and suspended two days without pay for warning an informant of an impending raid, according to a report in his personnel file.

Coupled with the following:

DeBerry resigned from the Sheriff’s Office in February after he became ensnared in a criminal investigation. Authorities then would not provide any details about the allegations.

At least in this case the department in question is finally doing something about it.  Though I doubt the punishment will be anything substantial. 

State Sponsored Criminal Count: 102, Marshall Todd DeBerry

Because truthfully every cop car should just be a rolling drug dealer.  If you need your fix, just find a cop car right?

For those who have worked manufacturing explosives at Boomershoot.  You already know how miserable the elements can make that situation.  Even at the end of April, snow and sleet are not unheard of, high winds are common, and it can make manufacturing just down right miserable.

Well yesterday we took delivery of the new manufacturing facility and put it in place.

Joe oversaw the delivery of the container.  It took us a bit of figuring out of how to get it in place so we could finish leveling it properly.  After the containers was put in it’s temporary location we headed to town for lunch.  We had some other business to take care of in tow (which I’m sure Joe will explain later).  Let’s just say yesterday murphy’s law was in full force.

Ry learned that the High-Lift jack wasn’t stable enough to lift the container so we could move the tie’s.  The first time we lifted it, it shifted about a foot to the left.  At that point we hooked it up to the blade of the dozer and used the dozer to lift it.  Lastly we resorted to my floor jack for the finesse changes for height.

At this point we began the task of moving material between the Taj and Mecca.  Some people often ask me why I have a full size truck with a long bed.  This is why!

Twenty five, 50 lbs. bags of Ammonium Nitrate and the 55 gallon drum of Potassium Chlorate weren’t just going to move themselves.  Once we dropped those off I went back for the tables.  While gone Joe got some other interior work done.  When I arrived back he said, “Let there be light.”  And there was light!

That’s right the side of the container is wired with outlets and lights to aid in manufacturing.  The good news is for those who help make this stuff, no more standing in the wet and cold!

By the end of the day we were all exhausted.  It was in the high 80’s out there most of the time and all of the work was labor intensive.  But come spring it will all be worth it.  TMW is all giddy about not having to freeze and become soaking wet while making explosives.

Recently the FBI updated their UCS data to reflect the information including 2010.  For those who are new to the blog, earlier this year I ripped apart the scorecard against the 2009 UCS, as well as the 2006 census data.*

I spent this morning updating my spreadsheets to the 2010 UCS data.  Here’s the overall result:

While R² has increased, it is still inconsequential and shows absolutely zero correlation over the entire data set.  It is worth nothing though the overall score vs. crime trend has gone from being slightly negative to positive.  By looking at the plot, you can see that different scores are scattered across the entire field of crime rates.  So let’s look at just states who scored above 50.

Correlation decreased for all scores above 50, however it still shows a positive trend towards an increase in violent crime.  This trend though, like the overall chart is extremely weak due to the low R² value. 

Again a low correlation, however again it’s a positive trend for a higher score.  Still only three states, 15%, with a score above 20 had a crime rate below 300.  Those still were sitting toward the higher crime rates.  Again I normalized the data and examined the distribution confidence.

For this graph I took everything around the peak normalized value for 25% of each side.  In other words everything between the 25th percentile and 75th percentile is included.  Notice how it looks like a shot gun blast, though what is interesting is the cluster of points with low Brady scores.  That region includes 24 data points, of which only 8 have scores above 20.  The highest scores amazingly appear with that confidence range, along with every other score.

So as previously noted the Brady score means absolutely nothing.  Linoge has examined the 2010 UCR as the pertain to firearms.  He has also detailed other firearm related data from the CDC.

Seeing Linoge’s graphs, as well as mine has given me an idea for a couple more graphs that I want to create to help view trends in context with other data.  There’s another project for me to work on.

*You are free to repost these graphs, however I must request that you provide a direct link back to these posts. Some individuals seem to think that providing credit to those who put forth the effort to create these doesn’t really matter.  Please, don’t be that dick.  It takes a lot of time to organize the data and graph it. If you don’t feel it takes that much time, do it yourself. So if you want to use these graphs, feel free, please just provide proper credit.

So all the cool kids whipped out their knives earlier this week to show off what they normally carry.  I was busy, blah, blah, blah, but here’s my normal carry knives.

That is my primary knife, it’s a SOG Trident Tanto.  That thing gets put through it’s paces between opening stuff and work and general light use in the shop.  I don’t use it for heavy work in the shop because that’s what quick change utility knifes are for.  The above is kept sharp and I’ll use for food at restaurants that don’t give me decent cutlery.  I’ll use it for light skinning, though I have a couple other knives I prefer to use for hunting as the blades are easier to work with.

That is a SOG PowerLock EOD.  It is by far the best multi-tool I’ve ever used.  Some multi-tools have a weird feeling in your hand as you try to use the pliers, not these.  They are rock solid no matter the angle of the handles.  Those get used all the time at work for crimping, cutting, and other various wire work that I need to do.

I’m a bit partial to SOG since they’re made here in Washington.  I have a Buck that’s worn well, but nothing has taken the abuse like my SOGs.

Reason.com alerts us to an LA Times article covering a recent trial in which a private citizen’s cellphone video proved officers lied about an arrest, resulting in the acquittal of a young man accused of carrying a concealed firearm.

If it hadn’t been for that video that kid would be going to jail. If anyone had lied as blatantly as those officers they very likely could be nailed for perjury.  Those officers though have their testimony treated like gold, worth more than any other individuals.

State Sponsored Criminal Count: 101, Deputy Levi Belville

Because the real reason cops hate video cameras is it proves and shows when they’re lying.

*I’m working on returning to our regularly scheduled program.  The past 3 days have been rough at work with long meetings.  I’ve got other stuff going on through Saturday.  Hopefully I’ll be able to play catch up on Sunday.  My brain wants to say more on this topic, but it’s just too tired.

**via Ry