Sovereign Citizen (and Latter-day Saint) Killed by Police

[The Nehor]

11 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

I'm not sure about that.  If, for whatever reason, laws do not apply to me, and yet there is an agency that purports to enforce those laws, of course I'm going to have "a gripe with" that agency.

They tend to have a mixed opinion on law enforcement. They tend to fawn over county law enforcement as super powerful and distrust state and federal law enforcement. Until they encounter law enforcement. Then about 99% of the time it doesn't go well. I have heard of a few incidents where a local sheriff leaned into sovcit ideas but I am not sure how much weight to give these stories.

[LoudmouthMormon]

14 hours ago, The Nehor said:

No, funding isn’t the problem.

My friend, funding is always a problem.  For any organization, police, business, school, hospital, nonprofit, anything.

Consider a medium size police force for a medium size city.  Perhaps 120 sworn officers.  At roughly $100k per cop (loaded salary/benefits/taxes), that means an extra day of training costs ~$50,000.  It also means that city will have 960 fewer hours of cops doing their jobs.  Per day.  Not counting the cost of trainers.

Sources:
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes333051.htm
https://bjs.ojp.gov/?iid=6520&ty=pbdetail

Your link mentions LA county.  Perhaps roughly 15,000 sworn officers.  Close to six million bucks to give everyone 8 hours of training, and the county either loses 120,000 man-hours of policing, or has to pay overtime.  (And that's only the county officers - it doesn't count the city or state agencies that also operate there.)   (And consider the impact of police unions, that tend to make things more expensive than simple math.)

On top of all of that, you have to factor in that none of you people are going to be happy with one single 8 hour day per year of mental health training (or de-escalation training, or non-lethal force training, or whatever else you can come up with).  

 

Quote

The Los Angeles Police Department's budget is up by 9.4% since 2019.

Yeah.  Any guesses at how much inflation there's been since 2019?  
2020    1.36% 
2021    7.04% 
2022    6.45%
2023    6.41%

How much total inflation does that make?   Do the LAPD's budget bumps even cover it?   I note the word "inflation" doesn't even make it into ABC's story.  One wonders if they are just too ignorant to understand, or if they know, but it doesn't fit the correct narrative, so it didn't make it into the story.

 

 

Edited April 7, 2023 by LoudmouthMormon

[Kenngo1969]

7 hours ago, Calm said:

If everyone can cite exceptions, if they are numerous, at what point would they no longer qualify as exceptions in your view? ...

I don't know.  Are all of the people on this thread who have had unpleasant interactions with law enforcement alive, still, those unpleasant interactions notwithstanding?  (I would think, unless they are posting from beyond the grave, in which case, do tell!, that they would have to be, wouldn't they?)  Have you watched the dashcam and body worn camera footage?  Has everyone else here who is criticizing, critiquing, analyzing, et cetera, ad infinitum, the actions of law enforcement officers in this incident watched them?

There are hundreds of millions of police-public contacts every year, compared with about 1,000 police shootings every year.  While anyone's death is a tragedy, I would think that the relatively small number of police shootings compared with the very large number of police-public contacts seems to indicate that shootings are the exception.

Having seen the video, and being at least somewhat familiar with law enforcement training, I can tell you that this officer did act in accordance with his training.  While officers, their agency, and their municipality are likely to face the prospect of civil liability (since almost anyone may sue almost anyone else for almost anything), I believe, strongly, that they will be cleared of criminal responsibility.  While I am not familiar with Farmington Police Department policy specifically, it would surprise me if the officer is found to have violated policy. 

Edited April 7, 2023 by Kenngo1969

[Kenngo1969]

On 4/5/2023 at 7:20 PM, Tacenda said:

It's no wonder we get these sovereign types, they don't trust the government and police, FBI etc. Maybe there's good reason in some cases, but if we give up, we're doomed.

-1.

[Kenngo1969]

One thing I will say with regard to training/approach, especially if officers ... from, for example, looking at a bogus sovcit license plate ... know they will, or are likely to, be dealing with sovcits, don't ask, i.e., don't say, "May I see your license, registration, and proof of insurance, please?"  Instead, tell:  Shoot down the "I-don't-answer-questions" B.S. at the outset by saying, "Give me your driver license, registration, and proof of insurance."  And if someone says, "But, Ken!  That doesn't sound like a Dale Carnegie Graduate, and will hurt the motorist's feelings," I'll give you three guesses what my response to that will be.

[Tacenda]

47 minutes ago, Kenngo1969 said:

-1.

I'm sorry if I offended you. I remember you have family (?) that is/was on the police force, or I misrembered. I love that we have police for our protection, how lucky are we to have this. I guess a few bad apples is too bad. :(

[blackstrap]

I wonder if Chase was asked for his ID at the Pearly Gates .😈

[Kenngo1969]

47 minutes ago, blackstrap said:

I wonder if Chase was asked for his ID at the Pearly Gates .😈

He probably gave Saint Peter his passport, being careful to tell Saint Peter that, no, the passport isn't the man.

Edited April 7, 2023 by Kenngo1969

[Rain]

1 hour ago, Kenngo1969 said:

I don't know.  Are all of the people on this thread who have had unpleasant interactions with law enforcement alive, still, those unpleasant interactions notwithstanding?  (I would think, unless they are posting from beyond the grave, in which case, do tell!, that they would have to be, wouldn't they?)  Have you watched the dashcam and body worn camera footage?  Has everyone else here who is criticizing, critiquing, analyzing, et cetera, ad infinitum, the actions of law enforcement officers in this incident watched them?

There are hundreds of millions of police-public contacts every year, compared with about 1,000 police shootings every year.  While anyone's death is a tragedy, I would think that the relatively small number of police shootings compared with the very large number of police-public contacts seems to indicate that shootings are the exception.

Having seen the video, and being at least somewhat familiar with law enforcement training, I can tell you that this officer did act in accordance with his training. 

I'll take your word on it for this reply, because I have no desire to watch the video.  I'm sure many do act in accordance with their training.  I'm not talking about them.  I'm  also not talking about the exceptions.  I'm saying that maybe the problem is the training. Maybe it's time to change up the method.  Or at least look at it with an open mind. I'll try to look up what I was reading about when I'm on the computer if I have time tomorrow.  I remember that somewhere this training was tested there was a lot of doubt, but they tried anyway and it worked much better than they thought.  

1 hour ago, Kenngo1969 said:

While officers, their agency, and their municipality are likely to face the prospect of civil liability (since almost anyone may sue almost anyone else for almost anything), I believe, strongly, that they will be cleared of criminal responsibility.  While I am not familiar with Farmington Police Department policy specifically, it would surprise me if the officer is found to have violated policy. 

 

1 hour ago, Kenngo1969 said:

One thing I will say with regard to training/approach, especially if officers ... from, for example, looking at a bogus sovcit license plate ... know they will, or are likely to, be dealing with sovcits, don't ask, i.e., don't say, "May I see your license, registration, and proof of insurance, please?"  Instead, tell:  Shoot down the "I-don't-answer-questions" B.S. at the outset by saying, "Give me your driver license, registration, and proof of insurance."  And if someone says, "But, Ken!  That doesn't sound like a Dale Carnegie Graduate, and will hurt the motorist's feelings," I'll give you three guesses what my response to that will be.

I doubt a single one of is worried about hurting the motorist's feelings here.  It just doesn't go with what many of us are talking about though I personally think there is a lot to be gained for having empathy in pretty much every situation. Note: empathy does not equal agreement.

The whole thing is that when people are being shot and killed and having to shoot and kill then something is broke.  Or definitely a whole lot of something is broke.  So we can sit here and say there is too much to fix, or we can decide that it isn't really broken or we can take things a little at a time and and see if we can, as President Hinckley said, do "a little better". 

 

Edited April 7, 2023 by Rain

[Kenngo1969]

On 4/5/2023 at 7:20 PM, Tacenda said:

It's no wonder we get these sovereign types, they don't trust the government and police, FBI etc. Maybe there's good reason in some cases, but if we give up, we're doomed.

 

1 hour ago, Kenngo1969 said:

-1.

 

44 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

I'm sorry if I offended you. I remember you have family (?) that is/was on the police force, or I misrembered. I love that we have police for our protection, how lucky are we to have this. I guess a few bad apples is too bad.

Not to worry.  I'm not offended, I simply think you're wrong.   While, to a certain extent, since you are a mother, I get why you would have a strong sense of empathy for a mother who has lost her son, and while I think a certain amount of distrust of the government is not necessarily a bad thing, sovcits carry distrust of the government to unhealthy, illogical, and (as we saw here) often dangerous extremes.  And as much as I want to feel bad for Chase Allan's mother, if she hadn't filled his head with so much extreme anti-government garbage, I think the odds are extremely high that he would be alive today.

[Kenngo1969]

21 minutes ago, Rain said:

I'll take your word on it for this reply, because I have no desire to watch the video.  I'm sure many do act in accordance with their training.  I'm not talking about them.  I'm  also not talking about the exceptions.  I'm saying that maybe the problem is the training. Maybe it's time to change up the method.  Or at least look at it with an open mind. I'll try to look up what I was reading about when I'm on the computer if I have time tomorrow.  I remember that somewhere this training was tested there was a lot of doubt, but they tried anyway and it worked much better than they thought.

I'll look forward to reading it.  That said, if someone is argumentative, is uncooperative, is armed and fails to disclose to police that he is armed, issues a veiled threat to police that "we are going to have a problem" if they attempt to remove him from the car (which, given the facts that he was argumentative and uncooperative, they had no choice but to do), and then reaches for his firearm when they do attempt to remove him from the car, 

21 minutes ago, Rain said:

I doubt a single one of is worried about hurting the motorist's feelings here.  It just doesn't go with what many of us are talking about though I personally think there is a lot to be gained for having empathy in pretty much every situation. Note: empathy does not equal agreement.

I was harking back to what, I believe, is my initial post on this thread, in which I talked about officers not necessarily being Dale Carnegie graduates.  And I did say "someone," as in, "not necessarily anyone in particular."  And deescalation works well when someone is willing to surrender any weapons he has, to abandon any assaultive or murderous impulses he might have, and, calmly and rationally, to discuss the situation.  From what I saw (and have seen several times now), it does not appear to me that Mr. Allan was willing to do any of those things.

21 minutes ago, Rain said:

The whole thing is that when people are being shot and killed and having to shoot and kill then something is broke.  Or definitely a whole lot of something is broke.  So we can sit here and say there is too much to fix, or we can decide that it isn't really broken or we can take things a little at a time and and see if we can as President Hinckley said do "a little better". 

Mr. Allan certainly should have known to "do a little better," what with the fact that, as a Latter-day Saint, presumably, he believes in the Twelfth Article of Faith.

Edited April 7, 2023 by Kenngo1969

[Kenngo1969]

Good Lord!  I just did a search for "SovCit Plates"!  Even though I was aware that such a thing exists, I had no idea how prevalent it is.

SovCit Plates

[Tacenda]

9 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

 

 

Not to worry.  I'm not offended, I simply think you're wrong.   While, to a certain extent, since you are a mother, I get why you would have a strong sense of empathy for a mother who has lost her son, and while I think a certain amount of distrust of the government is not necessarily a bad thing, sovcits carry distrust of the government to unhealthy, illogical, and (as we saw here) often dangerous extremes.  And as much as I want to feel bad for Chase Allan's mother, if she hadn't filled his head with so much extreme anti-government garbage, I think the odds are extremely high that he would be alive today.

Oh, you read me wrong, I do blame the mother and father, the father might have even started the belief. Did you see the video of him being pulled over?

And I think this group of sovcits (thanks for the idea for an abbreviation!) is scary as all get out. I just criticized the Farmington police for not standing back, much as they do with a person that's holed up in their home and won't come out (forgot the term). They don't automatically charge into the home like they charged into Chase's vehicle, and did Chase even have the gun in his hand to shoot? But I understand that a policeman will worry for their own demise. That's why I thought they could have taken cover and used a bullhorn to talk him into getting out of the vehicle with his hands up.

I probably sub taught Chase because he went to the elementary school that I sub'd at a lot. I kind of remember a student with his look in the 5th or 6th grade and my son who is about the same age went to high school with him, but not close friends. So knowing this may have led me to be more sympathetic to his young life to be taken. I guess now he will be an example of what not to do, and hopefully change these dingbats to change their lives or ways when it comes to law and order. 

[LoudmouthMormon]

10 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Good Lord!  I just did a search for "SovCit Plates"!  Even though I was aware that such a thing exists, I had no idea how prevalent it is.

SovCit Plates

Yep.  Then I think about what must go through a patrol officer's head, when they see a plate like this, and consider pulling the person over.  With an understanding of what that plate means to the person driving it, and the odds that the stop will result in the driver escalating things more and more, resisting more and more, until they even possibly go for a gun and a traffic stop turns into a deadly encounter.  And then thinking about how it's literally their job as a traffic cop, to enforce things like valid plates and registration.

And then thinking that if it goes bad, so many otherwise smart people will flood to the internet to cluelessly accuse the cop of doing wrong.

[Calm]

So I am reading the amazon questions of these plates and one guy is on the ball saying these are novelty plates and not legal, but another answers with a discourse that includes this after the claim the SC has ruled a plate isn’t needed for a private vehicle:

Quote

If you know the law, have facts to back it up, and stand firm on your convictions in almost all cases you will prevail. 

Has there actually ever been a case where someone using these plates “prevailed”?

Edited April 7, 2023 by Calm

[smac97]

29 minutes ago, Calm said:

So I am reading the amazon questions of these plates and one guy is on the ball saying these are novelty plates and not legal, but another answers with a discourse that includes this after the claim the SC has ruled a plate isn’t needed for a private vehicle:

Quote

If you know the law,

For most of the SovCit arguments I have seen (a fair amount, as I have litigated against several), these folks don't "know the law."  They erroneously conflate strongly-held beliefs/opinions regarding how the law ought to be with how the law actually operates.  And they conflate these things to their own detriment and peril.

29 minutes ago, Calm said:

Quote

have facts to back it up,

The SovCit folks aren't really arguing "facts."  Their talking points are almost entirely about their idiosyncratic interpretation and application of "the law." 

29 minutes ago, Calm said:

Quote

and stand firm on your convictions

The ones who get attention (typically via bombastic rhetoric - and occasional physical altercations - during traffic stops or court hearings, and memorialized on videos posted to YouTube) are seemingly "firm on {their} convictions."  However, I think a lot of folks give this stuff a whirl (again, during a traffic stop or court hearing) and quickly realize that it's hokum.

29 minutes ago, Calm said:

Quote

in almost all cases you will prevail. 

This is a nearly pristine example of "wishful thinking" on this guy's part.

29 minutes ago, Calm said:

Has there actually ever been a case where someone using these plates “prevailed”?

Not to my knowledge.  And if one slips through the cracks, it will be on a legal technicality, not on the substantive law.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Rain]

1 hour ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

Yep.  Then I think about what must go through a patrol officer's head, when they see a plate like this, and consider pulling the person over.  With an understanding of what that plate means to the person driving it, and the odds that the stop will result in the driver escalating things more and more, resisting more and more, until they even possibly go for a gun and a traffic stop turns into a deadly encounter.  And then thinking about how it's literally their job as a traffic cop, to enforce things like valid plates and registration.

And then thinking that if it goes bad, so many otherwise smart people will flood to the internet to cluelessly accuse the cop of doing wrong.

I hope you are not talking about me, because if you are then you are reading me wrong.

[Rain]

11 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

I'll look forward to reading it.  That said, if someone is argumentative, is uncooperative, is armed and fails to disclose to police that he is armed, issues a veiled threat to police that "we are going to have a problem" if they attempt to remove him from the car (which, given the facts that he was argumentative and uncooperative, they had no choice but to do), and then reaches for his firearm when they do attempt to remove him from the car, 

I was harking back to what, I believe, is my initial post on this thread, in which I talked about officers not necessarily being Dale Carnegie graduates.  And I did say "someone," as in, "not necessarily anyone in particular."  And deescalation works well when someone is willing to surrender any weapons he has, to abandon any assaultive or murderous impulses he might have, and, calmly and rationally, to discuss the situation.  From what I saw (and have seen several times now), it does not appear to me that Mr. Allan was willing to do any of those things.

Mr. Allan certainly should have known to "do a little better," what with the fact that, as a Latter-day Saint, presumably, he believes in the Twelfth Article of Faith.

Yes, he should have.  Not arguing that here, but I'm not really sure how I can help with that. It is something I've never looked into.

And again, I am NOT criticizing this officer.  I'm not saying I know better than the police.  I'm saying that I think this is worth looking into when so much is on the line.

Unfortunately, I can't find the ASU article I was talking about, but I did find this one.  And before anyone says anything I recognize this is focusing on crowds and riots and not individual traffic stops, but I think that maybe something could be learned from it or at least give us a jumping-off point to see if this kind of thing could work.  When Clifford Stott came up with the idea of how to handle crowds it was very much doubted as well, but he saw it worked and it changed the way policing crowds was handled in many places.      

[LoudmouthMormon]

1 hour ago, Rain said:

I hope you are not talking about me, because if you are then you are reading me wrong.

Sorry - I should have clearly mentioned I wasn't thinking of any particular person.  I've heard a constant buzz of anti-cop sentiment from anti-cop people online for decades now.  This place is quite tame compared to, oh, say, twitter comment section.

[Rain]

18 minutes ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

Sorry - I should have clearly mentioned I wasn't thinking of any particular person.  I've heard a constant buzz of anti-cop sentiment from anti-cop people online for decades now.  This place is quite tame compared to, oh, say, twitter comment section.

Thanks. Tame compared to Reddit as well. There are so many good officers out there and you don't hear about them because things went like they should have.

[The Nehor]

16 hours ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

My friend, funding is always a problem.  For any organization, police, business, school, hospital, nonprofit, anything.

Consider a medium size police force for a medium size city.  Perhaps 120 sworn officers.  At roughly $100k per cop (loaded salary/benefits/taxes), that means an extra day of training costs ~$50,000.  It also means that city will have 960 fewer hours of cops doing their jobs.  Per day.  Not counting the cost of trainers.

Sources:
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes333051.htm
https://bjs.ojp.gov/?iid=6520&ty=pbdetail

Your link mentions LA county.  Perhaps roughly 15,000 sworn officers.  Close to six million bucks to give everyone 8 hours of training, and the county either loses 120,000 man-hours of policing, or has to pay overtime.  (And that's only the county officers - it doesn't count the city or state agencies that also operate there.)   (And consider the impact of police unions, that tend to make things more expensive than simple math.)

On top of all of that, you have to factor in that none of you people are going to be happy with one single 8 hour day per year of mental health training (or de-escalation training, or non-lethal force training, or whatever else you can come up with).  

 

Yeah.  Any guesses at how much inflation there's been since 2019?  
2020    1.36% 
2021    7.04% 
2022    6.45%
2023    6.41%

How much total inflation does that make?   Do the LAPD's budget bumps even cover it?   I note the word "inflation" doesn't even make it into ABC's story.  One wonders if they are just too ignorant to understand, or if they know, but it doesn't fit the correct narrative, so it didn't make it into the story.

 

 

Have some fun with numbers:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-02-18/lapd-spending-los-angeles-budget

[Hamilton Porter]

If the church is a cult suppressing individuality, why do we produce these "sovereign citizens" who think they can do anything.

[The Nehor]

12 hours ago, Hamilton Porter said:

If the church is a cult suppressing individuality, why do we produce these "sovereign citizens" who think they can do anything.

Sovereign Citizens have a lot of aspects of a cult. I wouldn’t use their existence as a refutation of church members being “cultish”.

[Hamilton Porter]

7 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Sovereign Citizens have a lot of aspects of a cult. I wouldn’t use their existence as a refutation of church members being “cultish”.

I'm just talking narrowly about the individualism aspect.

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Hamilton Porter said:

I'm just talking narrowly about the individualism aspect.

I wouldn’t see sovereign citizens as individualistic. They all buy into a kind of standardized legal theory. It is not as if anyone comes to it through reason or it making sense.