Looting breaks out in California

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carmenjonze
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

Post by carmenjonze »

ZoWie wrote: Tue Nov 23, 2021 1:32 pm There are many other such news stories, indicating a major problem, and most of the quotes that I chose to omit make it clear that demands for a new "tough on crime" wave of politically and racially based harassment have already begun. Nothing good will come of any of this.
Re Union Square and downtown and whatnot, this is what is actually happening here.

Here we go, again.

SF Police Fatally Shoot Suspect at SoMa Residential Hotel - SF Standard
San Francisco police shot and killed a man during a confrontation inside a South of Market residential hotel on Friday morning, after responding to a report of a suspect with a knife, authorities said.

The man was struck by gunfire at the Covered Wagon Hotel at 917 Folsom St. at around 8:05 a.m., according to law enforcement sources and a San Francisco Police Department spokesperson. The man succumbed to his injuries after being taken to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, police said.

His identity has not been released by the Medical Examiner’s Office.
It has, now.

Details, Video Emerge In San Francisco Police Fatal Shooting Of Ajmal Amani In SoMa Residential Hotel - MSN
AN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – Police in San Francisco released additional details, including body worn camera video, after a man was fatally shot by police in the city’s South of Market neighborhood last week.

Chief Bill Scott and other department officials held a virtual town hall Wednesday in the death of 41-year-old Ajmal Amani.

“Without suggesting a premature judgment on the appropriateness of the force used in this particular incident, I can express on behalf of all of us in our department our condolences to Mr. Amani’s family, friends and loved ones for the loss they’ve suffered,” Scott said at the town hall.

According to Commander Paul Yep, officers were called to a residential hotel on the 900 block of Folsom Street shortly after 8 a.m. Friday on reports of a man holding a knife. The caller said she could not stay on the phone because the man “has a knife to my face.”

When two officers arrived, they found the caller and another victim who said he was also threatened with a knife. Both victims were determined to be employees of the hotel.

Yep said officers then walked towards Amani’s room and found a man consistent with Amani’s appearance at the end of the hallway, yelling and pointing at the officers, before moving back out of sight.

Video shows the officers then walked back towards the victims and then established a position in the hallway, and said they wanted to talk to Amani.

Yep said at this point, one officer had drawn his department-issued handgun, while the second officer was armed with a so-called “bean bag weapon.” The first officer then called for additional resources, which included an ambulance to stage nearby, along with a tactical shield, which the commander said was consistent with SFPD training.

About a minute later, Yep said Amani then stepped back into the hallway, screaming and brandishing a knife. He then charged towards the officers with the knife.

Yep said as Amani got closer, both officers fired their weapons, striking Amani, who fell to the floor. Amani was shot four times by the officer with the handgun, and three times by the officer with the bean-bag projectiles.

Videos show the officers asking Amani to talk to them, but they continued to maintain their distance. Minutes later, additional officers with a tactical shield approached Amani and secured the knife. Officers and medical personnel then rendered aid.

Yep said Amani was taken to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, where he was pronounced deceased.

The officer who discharged his department-issued firearm was identified at the town hall as Officer John Quinlan, while the officer who discharged the bean bag weapon was identified as Officer Danny De Leon Garcia.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Amani was a former Afghan interpreter for the U.S. Special Forces and had struggled with post-traumatic stress order. In 2019, Amani was charged with assault with a deadly weapon for allegedly slashing a city park ranger with a box cutter.

The newspaper reported that Amani was ordered to undergo mental health diversion which he completed this year and was living in a city-rented room at the hotel.

The shooting remains under investigation.
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ZoWie
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

Post by ZoWie »

Yet another racist police shooting does shed light on the situation, but the fact that three flash mobs hit different places in LA last night, and someone was killed by a robber in front of a restaurant in Hollywood the night before, and the danger of follow-home robberies which are now endemic, can't all be traced to that one case. It's a process that of course does include race, since everything in the US does, but it's also about class. The immediate releasing causes are poverty, inequality, exclusion, consumer culture, opportunism, easy access to secure tactical communication, and the time of year, as worsened by the corrosive effect of covid on civilization in general. Racial/social/class justice would go a long way to solve the underlying problems, but meanwhile here in the moment we have a war on our hands and no good way to end it. It's combining with the drought and the pandemic to make some major California cities feel totally out of control.
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Libertas
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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carmenjonze wrote: Thu Nov 25, 2021 12:38 am Re Union Square and downtown and whatnot, this is what is actually happening here.

Here we go, again.

SF Police Fatally Shoot Suspect at SoMa Residential Hotel - SF Standard



It has, now.

Details, Video Emerge In San Francisco Police Fatal Shooting Of Ajmal Amani In SoMa Residential Hotel - MSN
Very worrying. I dont see video of the shooting, but of city meeting.
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sam lefthand
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

Post by sam lefthand »

carmenjonze wrote: Thu Nov 25, 2021 12:38 am Re Union Square and downtown and whatnot, this is what is actually happening here.

Here we go, again.

SF Police Fatally Shoot Suspect at SoMa Residential Hotel - SF Standard



It has, now.

Details, Video Emerge In San Francisco Police Fatal Shooting Of Ajmal Amani In SoMa Residential Hotel - MSN
It sounds like a classic suicide by cop story to me. All of the usual element of that appear to be there. Threatening someone with a knife so the police get called. Then charging wildly at the police waving the knife when they arrive. Not all that different than jumping off a bridge or shooting oneself with a gun if one thinks about it.

Guns are expensive and there are waiting periods and clearance checks making acquiring a gun quite a bother. Knives are cheap and easy to buy. Most folks already have one around the house.

:|

I'm not going to blame a cop for shooting someone charging at them with a knife.

I would shoot someone if they charged at me with a knife, however i wouldn't have gun so I would probably hit them with something I would throw at them like a board, a rock, or a brick. I would throw a handful of dirt if all I could find at the time was dirt. I would also run away while I was doing that.

However that's not a very good day to day solution.

:|

I would always blame an indestructible titanium alloy cop robot for shooting someone who was charging at the indestructible titanium alloy cop robot with a knife.

Maybe that's the solution, build indestructible titanium alloy cop robots to send to those "man threatening other persons with knife" calls, and also send that same robot into those awful bomb threat calls.

Don't give those indestructible titanium alloy cop robots guns or knives. Just give them hands to grab with, and nets to snag perpetrators at a distance with. Make them so they can run faster than any human can run so they can catch people.

:|

Do like what the post office has done with their indestructible clay postal robots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MV8sdKT6bY
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carmenjonze
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

Post by carmenjonze »

sam lefthand wrote: Thu Nov 25, 2021 3:41 pm It sounds like ...
I don't care about your perceptions.
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carmenjonze
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

Post by carmenjonze »

Can't reform this.
__________

Kamau Franklin
@kamaufranklin

The police propaganda machine is in full swing. The National Police Assoc. is running a campaign called Stop Filming & Start Helping. A better campaign might be to just Stop Killing Us

https://twitter.com/kamaufranklin/statu ... 9430550547
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sam lefthand
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

Post by sam lefthand »

carmenjonze wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 8:43 pm I don't care about your perceptions.
That's moot; def 2; "having little or no practical relevance, typically because the subject is too uncertain to allow a decision."

Perceptions and or opinions are what WE do here.

:)
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carmenjonze
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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sam lefthand wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 9:03 pm
troll
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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carmenjonze wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 9:54 pmtroll
T Roll:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBa4Xgai5i4
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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Getting back on topic, LAPD just went to citywide tactical alert for multiple flash mob robberies and at least one shooting in the same stretch of Melrose. Busiest crime situation I've seen around there in a long time.
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sam lefthand
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

Post by sam lefthand »

That sound rough.

:(

So they're calling them flash mob robberies now. I suppose that's a good description as any.
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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That's what I call them. The nooz calls them smash-and-grabs. Usually multiple suspects, but in the current spate they have been much larger groups coming in coordinated fleets of cars and fleeing the same way.

Citywide tac alert means that all LAPD remain on duty after normal end-of watch, to be reassigned to a major emergency. In the past I've only seen it for major riots and earthquakes. The situation would have to be pretty extreme.
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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For those who know LA, the pd helicopter is circling over Melrose between Fairfax & La Brea. Fashionista shopping district.
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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Post by Motor City

To read Pascale’s book, to tour the lives of those she calls “the struggling class” — a hotel deskman in Appalachia, a factory worker in Tennessee, a nonprofit employee in Oakland — is to come away convinced we live in a rigged game where corporations buy politicians who subsidize those corporations with public money, but let someone suggest subsidizing the public with that same money, and there is a hue and cry about “socialism,” a word that somehow maintains its power to shock and repel, nine decades after it was used to attack a new program called Social Security...........
yah.

social democracies are doing far better than this one capitalist contry with its huge population expected to keep the
RWG in fun money.
Who are these..flag-sucking halfwits fleeced fooled by stupid little rich kids They speak for all that is cruel stupid They are racists hate mongers I piss down the throats of these Nazis Im too old to worry whether they like it. Fuck them.
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ZoWie
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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LA is more about out of control street gangs. It's a problem that is similar to, though not the same as, the one New York had and dealt with in the 1970s-1980s. These aren't the territorial/racial/immigrant gangs like in West Side Story, though they do it too. They're more like the time a gang armed with military weapons took over a fancy restaurant in Central Park and cleaned everyone out. Now with cell phones, anyone can achieve military level coordination of tactics with a little practice. Consider the robberies to be tactical ops, because they are organized the same way.

It's really a logical consequence of poor social functioning and a good indicator of when a city has stopped benefiting the majority of its population. Mass incarceration doesn't work, and eliminating bail for grand theft offenses doesn't work. It's not a problem with criminal law. It's a problem with the way this country has organized everyday life.

As long as there is corruption and massive inequality, the situation festers and gets worse. It's racial in the sense that everything in this country is racial, but otherwise it's caused when people learn that strong arm tactics can work better for them than actually getting jobs and making a pittance for long and irregular work hours, while some huge investor they don't even see gets most of the benefit from their labor.
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

Post by sam lefthand »

ZoWie wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 12:00 pm LA is more about out of control street gangs. It's a problem that is similar to, though not the same as, the one New York had and dealt with in the 1970s-1980s. These aren't the territorial/racial/immigrant gangs like in West Side Story, though they do it too. They're more like the time a gang armed with military weapons took over a fancy restaurant in Central Park and cleaned everyone out. Now with cell phones, anyone can achieve military level coordination of tactics with a little practice. Consider the robberies to be tactical ops, because they are organized the same way.

It's really a logical consequence of poor social functioning and a good indicator of when a city has stopped benefiting the majority of its population. Mass incarceration doesn't work, and eliminating bail for grand theft offenses doesn't work. It's not a problem with criminal law. It's a problem with the way this country has organized everyday life.

As long as there is corruption and massive inequality, the situation festers and gets worse. It's racial in the sense that everything in this country is racial, but otherwise it's caused when people learn that strong arm tactics can work better for them than actually getting jobs and making a pittance for long and irregular work hours, while some huge investor they don't even see gets most of the benefit from their labor.
I would think they will soon learn that the strong arm flash mob robbery tactic is not going to work for them soon enough. In doing their crime that way they are leaving behind a sea of evidence and way too many fellow perpetrators willing and ready to turn on the others to receive a lessor sentence.

The government has awoken to the threat they poses and are pouring the manpower to bring this style of crime to an end. I think they will soon be hauling in the gangs who are doing this for arraignment, which will then be followed by a second wave of arrests as they shake down the first arrested to turn on their others.

I noticed this article a few days ago:

Gov. Gavin Newsom On Looting, Smash-And-Grab Robberies: ‘We Want People Prosecuted’

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/ ... osecution/
“We want real accountability,” he said. “We want people prosecuted and we want people to feel safe this holiday season. Why are we here? We’re talking about safety, people’s health. We want to protect people and we want to respect people’s rights, including small business owners and I say this knowing that my business has been broken into three times this year.”

Newsom was asked to address the crime wave and what he planned to do about it during a visit to promote COVID-19 booster shots in the Bay Area,

The dramatic rise in retail crime has been a characteristic of the pandemic. On July 21, surrounded by mayors and law enforcement officers, Newsom announced the re-establishment of the state’s retail theft task force.
If you'll notice that last, they've already got the legislating and bill signing part of this initiative completed. Here's the article link for that July report about that:

Newsom Signs Bill Aimed at Cracking Down on Organized Retail Theft

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/ ... ail-theft/
The new legislation Newsom signed — AB 331, introduced by Southern California Assemblymember Jones Sawyer — is aimed at combating crime and reducing retail theft across California, in part by reinstating a task force focused on investigating organized theft rings as well as expanding the CHP’s retail crime force.

The new law guarantees more law enforcement to go after fencing operations that hire low-level “boosters” who steal bags of merchandise at a time.

----

“We’ve all seen images of people running in [to store to commit grab-and-dash thefts]…You are seeing them all across the state of California, those organized efforts — and they are organized…We want to go after those rings,” Newsom said.
Newsom said that last about the grab and dash thefts on July 21st. These task forces are up and running now and I would expect to see some of their investigative work product showing up sometime real soon.
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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In today's story, the LA Times has taken to calling them "flash mobs."

I would imagine that, on the list of consequences of the democratization of communications technology, they'd be classified as a less benign version of the annual day in New York when people dress up in Santa suits, descend on secretly designated local pubs all at once, and piss all over the street. People dread this day, but other people still do it yearly.

While bad behavior is timeless, there seems to be a seasonal side to this particular kind of urban breakdown.
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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I don't have a Santa suit.

:|
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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Listening to the news this morning, one law enforcement "expert" was saying the problem with those doing the smash-n-grabs is the government can download which cell phones were in the area, who owns them, and then then they can be investigated. But that doesn't do anything to prevent the smash-n-grabs. I suspect undercover police will be assigned to the high end stores and malls not to discourage the activity but to catch some of the thieves and have them rat on others.
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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With the smash-and-grabs, expect the republicans to start their "law-and-order" campaign blaming Biden, Harris and other Democrats for not doing anything about it even though it's a local problem. Running on "law-and-order" is an old tactic they've used since the crook named Nixon was in office.
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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Number6 wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 2:28 pm Listening to the news this morning, one law enforcement "expert" was saying the problem with those doing the smash-n-grabs is the government can download which cell phones were in the area, who owns them, and then then they can be investigated. But that doesn't do anything to prevent the smash-n-grabs. I suspect undercover police will be assigned to the high end stores and malls not to discourage the activity but to catch some of the thieves and have them rat on others.
That's a device called a Stingray, which disguises itself as a microcell and records the information and coordinates sent by cell phones which handshake it. They are small and highly concealable. They even appear from time to time on the black market, and of course they're sold in the open to licensed law enforcement agencies.

I know of no agency that does this from the air, where they could map the positions of suspect phones and relay them to ground units, but the potential is so high that I'd be amazed if no one does it.

I also know that some of these robberies have used burner phones, because they've been recovered from suspects. You'd be crazy to use your regular personal cell phone in a crime.
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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ZoWie wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 12:44 pm In today's story, the LA Times has taken to calling them "flash mobs."

I would imagine that, on the list of consequences of the democratization of communications technology, they'd be classified as a less benign version of the annual day in New York when people dress up in Santa suits, descend on secretly designated local pubs all at once, and piss all over the street. People dread this day, but other people still do it yearly.

While bad behavior is timeless, there seems to be a seasonal side to this particular kind of urban breakdown.
So basicly they have some new technology to violate the public with and the whole flashmob thing is a ruse to overcome resistance to it.
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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Our area is having issues with side shows I think they are called.

Parking lots, fast cars, donuts, etc. Last night it was at midnight about 1 to 2 miles from our house and was like it was next door.
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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That's been endemic in LA since the virus started, and it seemed to start when there was nothing else to do, and then it became part of the ongoing decline of Western civilization.

It's happened in all the big cities. I think the operative expression is something along the lines of, "Boys will be boys." It's loud and dangerous, and fortunately our version seems to have moved to a different part of LA than this one. They seem to prefer big intersections they can take over, with proximity to freeways for a quick getaway. Presumably it's organized in the flash mob model, by texting or the dark web or whatever, using cell phones.

Last night was the craziest yet in Beverly Hills. One guy in a large white van with no plates was pursued by cops, and hemmed in by a SWAT wagon and a black-and-white right in the middle of Wilshire Blvd where it intersects the Rodeo Drive of song and story. Yes, that very block. The standoff went on well into the night, until they finally rushed the van and found the perp shot to death. We don't know who shot him, presumably a suicide, but that's not established yet. The contents of the van are similarly unknown at this time, but there seems to be a link to the ongoing smash-and-grabs, which continue unabated.
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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Motorists accused of scooping up money on freeway
Authorities Friday were working to identify drivers suspected of pocketing money that went flying from the back of an armored car and onto Interstate 5 in Carlsbad.

Calls began coming in about 9:15 a.m. Friday to California Highway Patrol dispatchers about “a large sum of money in the roadway” on I-5 near Cannon Road, as well as about drivers getting out to collect the bills. A man and a woman were arrested on suspicion of taking cash after they got stuck on the freeway with their keys locked in the car, blocking traffic, according to CHP.

The incident generated significant buzz in the community with videos of people scooping up cash being widely circulated on social media and among local news outlets.......
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