Free In Idaho!

Complain about them when they screw up, but praise them when they’re right.  And praise God for giving us men like these cops (and all you EMTs, firefighters, docs and nurses too).

David Codrea over at The War on Guns has a guest editorial about Jeanne Assam, the hero of the Colorado church shooting, which sums it all up nicely.

Jeanne Assam was a volunteer. It wasn’t her job, in the strictest sense of that word, to confront the gunman, it was her responsibility. It was a responsibility freely accepted and faithfully executed. It is the responsibility that all of us who are citizens and not serfs embrace along with the liberty that such a burden secures. Jeanne Assam and the other volunteers at the church were acting as a citizen’s militia, in the classic American definition of that term. They were volunteer sheepdogs, watching over the flock. And they did their duty.

Prepared, trained, ready, willing, and able. The responsibilities of carrying are huge, but when you really think about it, they are no less than the responsibilities that come with being a citizen.

I find two stories this week, about two different cities in two different states, and their different approaches to various aspects of the gang problem.

The first is from Tacoma, Washington.  As you would expect, their way is kinder, gentler, more “enlightened“.

..Transit workers are installing speakers this week to pump classical music from Seattle’s KING-FM into the Tacoma Mall Transit Center. The tactic is designed to disperse young criminals who make drug deals at the bus stop or use public transportation to circulate between the mall and other trouble-prone places.

The attack by Bach, Brahms and Beethoven follows the theory that prompted the city to stage pinochle games on dangerous street corners: Jolting the routine in such spots throws criminals off balance.

“It’s based on routine activity theory and situational crime prevention. You mix different types of activities in locations that are crime-ridden to change the composition of the environment,” said psychologist Jacqueline Helfgott, who chairs the Criminal Justice Department at Seattle University.

You pompous moron!  What kind of psycho-babble is THAT?

Driving the gangs into another part of the city by playing classical music at the bus stops… sheer brilliance.  I much prefer the approach taken by REAL law enforcement in the Idaho cities of Caldwell and Nampa.

.. Local, state and federal law enforcement agencies teamed up for four days in July to combat gang crime in Canyon County. Nampa Police said the effort was a success and have released numbers that show over 100 arrests were made during “Operation Streetsweeper.”

Now THAT’s more like it!  Good job law enforcement, thank you all so much!  You can check the video news report /here/.

This story from NWCN could have had a whole different outcome

TACOMA, Wash. - A Tacoma police officer was hospitalized Saturday after three men and one woman assaulted him during a routine vandalism call on the east side of Tacoma.

Around 6 a.m. Saturday, the Tacoma police officer was responding to reports of people spray painting graffiti on a neighborhood wall. About a block away, he saw some young men with spray paint cans. The officer was in the process of arresting them when they attacked.

“They assaulted him. The first two were joined by others. One actually left and returned and they continued kicking and beating the officer until help arrived,” said Mark Fulghum, of the Tacoma Police Department.

But a neighbor and his wife saw the commotion, and while she dialed 911, this sheepdog went to help.

Help arrived first from Don Heinkle, who lives in the neighborhood. He was getting ready to walk his dog when he heard the commotion. He ran over from his house and jumped in to protect the officer.

“These four people - one was sitting on him and the others were hitting and kicking him,” Heinkle said.

They were also trying to get the officer’s gun unholstered. Wonder what they had in mind for that? After the 911 call, a number of other officers arrived quickly.

Heinkle - an ex-marine - says the four suspects did a lot of damage to the officer.

“I mean he had a welt on his head, on his chin,” Heinkle said. “His nose was bleeding, his mouth was bleeding, then I realized this was not just kids — they were trying to hurt him.”

The four suspects — a 19-year-old man, his 16-year-old brother, a 17-year-old cousin and a 21-year-old woman — were all arrested.

The young men who were arrested live in the neighborhood.

Say what you will about Tacoma and gangs, but this could happen just about anywhere, including here in Idaho.  The wolves are out there, and there can never be enough sheepdogs.  Thank you Don Heinkle!

I’ve added another milblog to the roll (hat tip Michelle Malkin)… Fightin’ 6th Marines! is a blog written by Marines in Iraq.   Good stuff too, including photos, videos, and posts about what they see every day.  They’re looking for a little contact with us back here at home, so if you haven’t already, take a minute and tell them how much you appreciate what they do for us.

Hello to all the readers from Michelle Malkin, Blackfive, and the myriad other blogs that have picked up on the e-mail meme. Just by way of an update, we’ve reached our halfway mark of 3000 e-mails. This is after despairing yesterday when the deluge had slowed to a trickle by yesterday evening. Then we got 900 e-mails over night. All in all in the past 24 hours we’ve gotten 1300 e-mails. I’m not counting the various spam e-mails, either, though “Queen Amallah,” I hope you eventually find your money.

The e-mail address for the campaign is rct-6lettersfromh AT gcemnf-wiraq DOT usmc DOT mil

I mentioned sheepdogs the other day in this post, and said “remind me to tell you about them”.  I first heard the idea at a class given by the Ada County Sheriff’s department for folks desiring an Idaho Concealed Pistol License.  The officer who gave the class suggested that perhaps the people in the room might be sheepdogs.  Not professional sheepdogs, like our soldiers, or the LE officers in the room, but sheepdogs all the same.  It immediately struck a cord with me, and I knew it was a great way of describing things.  Simply stated, there are three kinds of people in the world.  Most are sheep.  Preying on the sheep are the wolves.  Wolves come in a variety of flavors.  And then there are sheepdogs.  They watch out for the sheep and protect them from the wolves.

Then I bumped into the idea again in a 2005 essay by Bill Whittle, fantastic essayist over at Eject!Eject!Eject!  This is his essay Tribes.  Go there and read it… if you aren’t familiar with Bill Whittle’s writing yet, you’re in for a treat.  And if you only follow one of my links from this blog, make it this one.

Then this morning I found another sheepdog article over at Townhall.   It’s good to be reminded once in awhile.

Remind me someday to tell you about the “sheepdogs”… for tonight, let me just relay this little article from the BOSTON GLOBE about a couple of graying sheepdogs protecting the sheep.

Shortly before landing, Bob Hayden and a flight attendant had agreed on a signal: When she waved the plastic handcuffs, he would discreetly leave his seat and restrain an unruly passenger who had frightened some of the 150 people on board a Minneapolis-to-Boston flight Saturday night with erratic behavior.

Hayden, a 65-year-old former police commander, had enlisted a gray-haired gentleman sitting next to him to assist. The man turned out to be a former US Marine.

“I had looked around the plane for help, and all the younger guys had averted their eyes. When I asked the guy next to me if he was up to it, all he said was, ‘Retired captain. USMC.’ I said, ‘You’ll do,’ ” Hayden recalled. “So, basically, a couple of grandfathers took care of the situation.”

Shame on those younger guys!

Hayden said the unruly man’s behavior upset some passengers. One told Hayden the man had said, “Your lives are going to change today forever,” as he shouted and refused to take his seat before takeoff and at various times during the nearly three-hour flight. He said that at one point the man lay on his back and was screaming, moaning, and thrashing on the floor.

“Some people were crying,” Hayden said. “I thought it might be a diversion. I kept scanning the back of the plane to see if anyone was going to rush forward. The flight attendants did a great job, literally surrounding the two guys who were making all the noise. I told one of the flight attendants I was a retired police officer and would be willing to assist, so we agreed on a signal.”

“Are you up to it?”, he asked. What a question!

When the captain announced preparations for landing, the man jumped up shouting, the flight attendant held up the handcuffs, and Hayden and the Marine came bounding down the aisle. Hayden said he and the retired Marine, whose name he never got, received an ovation from fellow passengers, and “some free air miles.”

Free air miles. And how did his wife take all of this excitement?

Hayden’s wife of 42 years, Katie, who was also on the flight, was less impressed. Even as her husband struggled with the agitated passenger, she barely looked up from “The Richest Man in Babylon,” the book she was reading.

“The woman sitting in front of us was very upset and asked me how I could just sit there reading,” Katie Hayden said. “Bob’s been shot at. He’s been stabbed. He’s taken knives away. He knows how to handle those situations. I figured he would go up there and step on somebody’s neck, and that would be the end of it. I knew how that situation would end. I didn’t know how the book would end.” 

I love stories with a happy ending.