Quote du jour

There comes a time in every cop’s career when he receives instructions he knows will waste his time and may even be antithetical to his mission to reduce the fear of crime in his community. Often these instructions are relayed by a sergeant who himself is equally dubious about them, but who is obeying orders to disseminate them. When this happens, it is the wise officer who can say, “Yes, sir,” and then go out and do the right thing, modifying the instructions or ignoring them altogether with the sergeant’s tacit blessing. Every good cop, and every good sergeant, is familiar and comfortable with this arrangement.

- Jack Dunphy

Quote du jour

...if only 1 percent of those 1.6 billion Muslims harbor an inclination toward violent jihad, that puts Western civilization up against a force of 16 million people. Given the havoc caused by only three of them in Paris last week, or by two of them in Boston in 2013, or by ten of them in Mumbai in 2008, or by 19 of them on September 11, 2001, to cite only four on a very long list of examples, how many headlines are you willing to see written about Muslim atrocities before you concede there is a problem festering within Islam itself?

-Jack Dunphy

Quote du jour

Yes, the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown are unfortunate and worthy of discussion, but will Chuck Todd and the rest of the chattering classes spare a moment to address the deaths of Scott Patrick, Joseph Dunn, Michael Pimentel, Geniel Amaro-Fantauzzi, Daryl Pierson, Nickolaus Schultz, Jason Harwood, Joseph Matuskovic, Bryon Dickson, Michael Norris, Joe Naylor, Danny Oliver, Michael Davis, Eugene Kostiuchenko, Jesse Valdez, Shaun Diamond, David Payne, Robert White, Matthew Chism, Justin Winebrenner, Christopher Smith, and Edwin Roman-Acevedo?

Who are these men, you ask, and what happened to them? They are the 22 American police officers murdered just since the day Eric Garner died. There were 33 others killed earlier in the year. Don’t look for any of their widows to appear on Meet the Press.

-Jack Dunphy

Quote du jour

It’s also important to note that, as most any police officer will tell you, everyone who has been manhandled to the ground as Garner was complains that he can’t breathe. It’s when someone stops saying it that officers need to guard against the risk of positional asphyxia by moving him into a position that allows for unimpaired breathing. If this was not done, or was not done quickly enough, it would be a lapse exposing the NYPD to a claim of civil liability, but it would not mean that the force used to subdue Garner was excessive or unwarranted.

-Jack Dunphy

Quote du jour

For all the bloodshed, the spree lasted but ten minutes, and it ended only when, as is so often the case in mass shootings, he was pursued by armed people determined to stop him. It has become hackneyed to say it, but yes, the bad guy with guns was stopped only when he came up against the good guys with guns.

And still there are those who entertain the childish fantasy that some act of legislation, some magical addition to California’s already voluminous gun laws, might have been the one that impeded Rodger from carrying out what he was determined to do.

-Jack Dunphy, on Elliot Rodger