Bob Owens

The saddest truth in politics is that people get the leaders they deserve

California sheriff’s deputies beat allegedly unconscious man to death

Written By: Bob - May• 14•13

It’s pretty damn sad to be a middle-aged man drunk and passed out in public, but it shouldn’t be a death sentence as it was for a Bakersfield man named David Silva.

According to eyewitnesses, Silva was passed out in the street when Kern County Sheriff’s deputies Sgt. Douglas Sword, Deputy Ryan Greer, Deputy Tanner Miller, Deputy Jeffrey Kelly, Deputy Luis Almanza, Deputy Brian Brock, and Deputy David Stephens decided to beat him to death.

A statement from the sheriff’s department said a deputy and K9 were sent to the area after someone reported a possibly intoxicated man. The deputy called for backup and another seven officers plus two members of the California Highway Patrol showed up.

The statement said Silva resisted when the deputies tried to restrain him, forcing them to use their batons on him.

However, multiple witnesses, many of whom filmed the violent scene unfolding, claim the attack was completely unprovoked.

Sulina Quair, 34, called 911 and can be heard saying: ‘There’s a man laying on the floor, and your police officers beat the **** out of him and killed him…

‘I got it all on video camera and I’m sending it to the news. These cops have no reason to do this to this man. You’ve got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 sheriffs. The guy was laying on the floor and eight sheriffs ran up and started beating him up with sticks. The man is dead, laying here right here, right now.’

Follow the link to see some grainy video that may as well be a moving rorschach test.

The problem with the human animal is its herd mentality. Without extremely strong morals and ethics, most of us—I’d argue a supermajority—can be desensitized and programmed to do truly horrific things. This seems to be the status quo in Kern County law enforcement circles.

It is an outrage that these law enforcement officers apparently beat a man to death that wasn’t a threat to them or anyone else. It is even more of an outrage that this isn’t apparently a one-off affair;  Kerns County Sheriff Donny Youngblood’s deputies have a reputation of violence:

The Silva episode follows several high-profile brutality cases involving the Kern County Sheriff’s Office in recent years.

One led to criminal convictions of three deputies and a $6-million civil judgment in the 2005 death of a jail inmate, according to attorneys. Another resulted in a $4.5-million court award for the family of a man who died in 2010 after being struck 33 times with batons and shot 29 times with Tasers, attorneys said.

A deputy accused in the civil lawsuit over the 2010 death has the same name as one of those who confronted Silva. Youngblood would not confirm that it was the same deputy, however.

At the moment, allegations of an attempted cover-up seem to be plausible, and Sheriff Youngblood needs to understand that if he allows this sort of behavior to continue, he’s putting the lives of all of his personnel at risk. If people in Kern County come to feel that even the most routine and benign interactions with the deputies could end up in fatalities, they may instead opt for preemptive violence against law enforcement officers over the most trivial offenses.

When law enforcement becomes just another armed gang, the rest of the society will begin treating them like an armed gang, and deputies are going to start going to the morgue instead of home at the end of their shifts.

Considering the history here, Sheriff Youngblood needs to immediately suspend these deputies (incredibly, they are all still working), and make sure that the investigation is handled by an impartial 3rd party department,  in the most transparent way possible. If he cannot regain public confidence in his department then he impeaches his own credibility, and must resign.

Posted in Crime , | 14 Comments »

Some days you just can’t win

Written By: Bob - May• 13•13

My daughter’s 2-year-old pit mix that we rescued from a shelter when he was just a few months old went into a series of violent seizures last night at 10:30, 2:30, and 4:30. After the last one I took him to the best veterinary hospital in our area. I told my daughter that her baby was in the best of hands, that they were going to get his seizures under control, and that we’d likely be able to pick him up tomorrow. She then went to catch the school bus at 7:15.

At 7:30, he went into a fourth violent seizure. It had lasted for 15 minutes when the vet called. The anti-seizure drugs are having no effect, and they were going to try to sedate him to bring him through this. I have no idea what the next phone call from the vet will bring.

It’s been a brutal week.

Update: Tripp (that’s his name) is now awake from sedation, and has not yet had seizures since waking up. That’s a small blessing, and we’ll see if it holds. They’re running a IV anti-seizure cocktail into him now, and the doctor is in the process of trying to isolate what the source of the seizures might be. So we wait.

On the bright side, last week’s surgical procedure for my family member that had us worried went well, and the patient is recovering nicely, so I am incredibly thankful for that.

I’m also very thankful for you, my readers. I was overwhelmed by both the moral, job, and financial support you have offered. Even in these troubling times, it is easy to see I am truly blessed.

Update: Here’s a picture of our boy  in less stressful times.

He's a lover, not a fighter.

He’s a lover, not a fighter. Unless you’re a chew toy.

The vet called at 5:00 PM, and he seems to be doing well. They’ve discontinued the IV loading of his anti-seizure meds and have gone to oral administration, and it looks like he’ll pull through just fine, just another well-loved dog with canine epilepsy that should live a long and happy life, God willing.

We’re going to sell a bunch of stuff to pay the vet bills, but I’m just thrilled that’s an option. My wife has put up a fundraising page to defray some of the costs, and I promised her that I’d link it, so here it is. Frankly, I think you’ve done too much as it is, and I thank you for the wonderful readers you are.

I’m going to try to come up for air tomorrow and crank out a good post at least every other day. You’ve stood by me, and it’s the least I can do.

Stay tuned.

Posted in Being me | 21 Comments »

Unintended Consequences

Written By: Bob - May• 12•13

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Back in January, a reader sent me a copy of Unintended Consequences by novelist and expert shooter John Ross. When I say “expert shooter,” I feel compelled to note Ross shoots at least 20,000 rounds a year in calibers starting with 4s and 5s in both rifles and pistols. He’s enough of an expert that Smith & Wesson’s Performance Center even released a special John Ross Edition of their 5-shot .500 S&W Magnum.

The book itself a novel about people pushed too far by an overbearing and corrupt government. The protagonist ends up striking back, triggering a low-grade and highly focused civil war (there’s a Wikipedia plot summary that is accurate enough, if you want to read it). Though the book has been out since 1996, I’d not heard of it until I’d written What you’ll see in the rebellion and Shock the system and readers saw parallels to what I was seeing, and made the suggestion to read the book.

17 years after its first printing, Unintended Consequences seems terrifyingly prescient at times. You’d swear certain political figures in the book were the most thinly-veiled references to real politicians you’ve ever read. For example, a Senator that I thought Ross had pegged in his novel, wasn’t elected until two years afters the book was published.

I’d highly suggest you find a way to buy, beg, or borrow a copy of this very difficult to acquire book.

As the Ross notes in his Author’s Note, “Stripping motivated people of their dignity and rubbing their noses in it is a very bad idea.”

That is a mistake that Washington and it’s allies seem doomed to repeat.

Posted in Culture, Writing | 28 Comments »

Limited posting until further notice

Written By: Bob - May• 07•13

I’ve tried to keep this blog compartmentalized. Apart from the occasional anecdote or relevant items from my volunteering at Appleseed or the garden I’m trying to grow, I don’t talk much about about my life, and that’s by design.

I’m making an exception today to explain why my posting here will necessarily stop or at least be greatly curtailed until I get my life back on track.

For the past 14 years I’ve been a front-end web developer for large corporate sites, using HTML and CSS to do the necessary work of content updates, primarily putting up new content and taking down old content. It wasn’t the glamorous artistic stuff, and it wasn’t the tech-heavy Flash and scripting work that makes web development “cool,” but it paid the bills and provided insurance and other benefits up until November of 2012. At that time, my now-former company and I parted ways, as they increasingly needed someone who was more of a programmer than my skillset and aptitude allowed. My background is in English, not Computer Science.

Since then, I’ve been trying shift careers to content strategy, technical writing, or other communications jobs. As that has proven to be lean pickings in a down market, I’ve expanded my search to look at community college teaching, business analyst positions, and technical recruiter jobs. So far nothing is panning out, and I’ve burned through my resources.

My wife’s truck required a new transmission a few weeks back, and I want to offer a very sincere “thank you” for those of you who used the PayPal link on the right to help defray some of that cost. My car still needs a transmission control module, and we’ve had a potentially dangerous medical emergency pop up in the past few days that we’re going to have to address immediately. The crappy insurance we have has a $10,000 deductible, so the doctor wants $2,500 up front, despite the fact that the procedure in question is necessary. “When it rains, it pours” indeed. As you may imagine, I’m tapped out financially and emotionally at the moment.

I’ve got to focus every waking moment on finding a way to support my family. A blog that pulls in 300K hits/month, while awesome as the hobby it has always been for me, isn’t a viable business, and I don’t see an Ace of Spades-type fundraiser as a viable long-term option.

As much as I love to share my thoughts with you, bob-owens.com is going to be only sporadically updated until I find a stable job again here in the Raleigh area or via telecommuting.

Thank you for understanding as we adapt to whatever this is God has planned for us. It’s tough now, but I’m confident we’ll emerge on the other side of this trying time a little more humble and hopefully a little more smarter than we were before.

Posted in Being me, Blogging | 63 Comments »

Obama Admin told Special Forces team in Libya to stand down, and not rescue Benghazi consulate survivors

Written By: Bob - May• 06•13

The lies told by the Obama Administration about Benghazi for the last six months have started to unravel in recent days, and every revelation is more disturbing than the last.

The deputy of slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens has told congressional investigators that a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command Africa.The account from Gregory Hicks is in stark contrast to assertions from the Obama administration, which insisted that nobody was ever told to stand down and that all available resources were utilized. Hicks gave private testimony to congressional investigators last month in advance of his upcoming appearance at a congressional hearing Wednesday.

According to excerpts released Monday, Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound “when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they missed the flight … They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”

No assistance arrived from the U.S. military outside of Libya during the hours that Americans were under attack or trapped inside compounds by hostile forces armed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and AK-47 rifles.

This is even worse than what we previously believed.

Barack Obama didn’t just deny cross border authority to various special operations-capable units in Europe. Obama already had forces in country, heading towards the plane, and ordered them to stand down.

Obama lied. SEALs died.

Posted in Terrorism & War , , | 8 Comments »
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