This Ain't Welcome Wagon- The Sunday Collage

So this is a war story and something new here. I think it was the summer or fall of 1993.

We received a call at our police department from a neighboring county about a double homicide that had occurred in a home just N. of Gooding, Idaho- about 60 miles away. The caller was the Gooding County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy, a guy by the name of Steve S. Steve said that the two murder victims had been last seen playing pool in a bar in Gooding with two unknown men. A witness in the bar said that the two men referred to themselves as "brothers" and said that they lived in Hailey. Steve wanted to know if we knew two brothers from Hailey capable of committing what was a pretty gruesome set of murders. A frenzy killing he called it.

Off the top of my head, I said "no."

After hanging up the phone I turned to my best friend and co-worker, Jeff, and asked him about it. After coming up with a couple of possible brother combinations, Jeff said to me-"ya know, Tommy and A.J. refer to themselves as brothers, even though they are only cousins."

Tommy Peterson and Robert "AJ" Johnson were a couple of small time criminals who lived in Hailey and were well known to our police department. Recently, one of them had shoved one of our police officers on a disturbance call, an incident which I was surprised to learn did not result in a trip to jail. Mostly they got in trouble for petty things although one of them was on felony probation. While we discussed the possibility that these two were the "brothers" in question, I remembered that one of them had family ties in the Gooding area. I can't remember now which one it was.

I began to search our records for a current address. The address we had was old. I checked with probation and parole and they had the same address. (I would later discover that the State of Idaho, Probation and Parole, had completely lost track of Tommy. In fact, he had not checked in for months and no warrant had been issued.)

While searching our records, I discovered that AJ had just filed a home invasion report with our police department. That report had actually been taken by the Chief of Police. In it, AJ claimed that two or three Mexican men had forced their way into his apartment and beat him up as he sought refuge in a bath tub. Not only did he not know any of the men- but he did not offer up any motive for why anybody would burst into his apartment and beat him up at 8 a.m.! They didn't take anything either. That didn't make sense. And in the policing world...

things always tend to make sense. In the end anyway.

Why did AJ report this crime? AJ reported several injuries he had sustained and oddly, he had reported this a day and a half after the murders in Gooding had taken place.

I contacted Steve in Gooding. He told me that the female murder victim had put up "one hell of a fight." Her boyfriend had been bound and his throat slashed. She had been struck over the head with a tire iron, raped, bound, stabbed, and she was eventually drowned in a bath tub. Steve said she was known locally for brawling and would have inflicted some damage of her own as she defended herself. They had found scrapings of hair and blood underneath her fingernails.

It became clear to us that AJ was building an alibi for his whereabouts and/or injuries by reporting a home invasion. More likely, he sustained his injuries while committing the murders. So we formed a plan based on the pretense that we were investigating the home invasion. Of course that would give us an opportunity to question Tommy more thoroughly and take a closer look at his injuries. He would be forced to comply since he was the "victim" of the home invasion and we were simply investigating that alleged complaint.

I remember thinking at the time, that Tommy and AJ were just a couple of small time hoods. I had a hard time believing that they could murder anyone.

We interviewed AJ at his apartment that night. He was visibly nervous. He couldn't describe his attackers, his answers were evasive and non helpful, and his story just didn't make sense. At the end of the interview, I asked him if I could see the injuries he had sustained during the "attack." I will never forget looking at the top of his scalp that night and seeing three fingernail sized grooves or trenches dug into the top of his head from back to front. Those were the kinds of horrific injuries that a desperate victim would inflict as she fought for her life. I wondered if AJ had actually looked at his own scalp. Had he clearly seen that damage- I don't think he would have offered to show it to us.

As we walked down the sidewalk and back to the squad car that evening, I remember looking at Jeff and saying, "These guys killed those two" although I'm sure my speech was a little more colorful than that.

The following day we contacted Gooding. They told us that Tommy and AJ had voluntarily walked into the police department that morning and had given them a statement and that they were no longer considering them suspects.

I was in shock. I contacted the Chief Deputy and told him what had transpired during our interview. I told him matter of factly, "these two are guilty."

That's about the time the weird stuff started happening.

The one thing you don't ever want to do, particularly with another agencies' case, is to trespass on it and destroy it. We had choreographed everything we had done by first obtaining permission from Gooding County and then discussing it with Steve, the Chief Deputy. So, win or lose, we had used the best collective common sense available to all of us at the time.

One of our first tasks was finding the car they had driven that night. It was an old Cadillac and we could not find it. We asked a tenant of AJ's apartment complex who we trusted to keep an eye out for their car. A day or two later he called when he found the car in the parking lot. Tommy was driving it. By that time we had a probation violation warrant for Tommy (for a variety of things) so we simply waited for him to get in the car and drive it. That way we were able to arrest him and impound the car which we locked in a large storage unit for safekeeping until we could get a search warrant and contact state lab personnel to search the car for trace evidence.

I don't remember whether they used luminol or amido black (tests for blood) on the interior of that car. What I do remember is the lab people telling us that there was human blood all over that car, virtually everywhere. Seats, armrests, door panels, handles.

Eventually we locked up AJ before he fled.

Our local sheriff's office decided that they would interview these two and get involved in the investigation while we were holding them in our jail. Given that opportunity, AJ spun some grandiose yarn about how Mexican drug dealers were going to his girlfriend's apartment that night to kill her. Having opened Pandora's Box, the sheriff decided then that it would be prudent for several of us to keep her place under surveillance all night long to keep her from getting killed. I was so angry. We spent the entire night, geared up and crawling through weeds, based on a complete fabrication by a murder suspect because our local sheriff just had to get involved.

At that point, with those two locked up, we just sort of withdrew from things. Slowly the facts began to emerge but you never really get all of the facts. A great interviewer told me once- that the bad guys always keep a few things to themselves.That is very true.

So this, from recollection, is sort of the crime summary and epilogue. Tommy and AJ had been in Gooding playing pool at a bar with the two victims. The victims left the bar first and went home. Sometime after that, Tommy and AJ were driven to that residence by their niece. They knocked on the door or just snuck in. It is believed that they struck the female victim over the head with a tire iron. At some point, they tied up her boyfriend and cut his throat. He died in his bed. The female victim put up a quite a struggle and after being tied up, raped, beaten, and stabbed- she was drowned in her own bathtub. That was where she was found. Tommy and AJ then left the residence using old county roads where they dumped their bloody clothing while enroute back to Hailey.

It is an odd thing but I have always thought that AJ's false report of his home invasion, up to an including his taking refuge in his own bathtub, mirrored the events as they unfolded that night at the victims' home.

I never really understood what their motive was. Was it rape? Robbery or a drug rip off? What were they so angry about? The other part of that story that has always mystified me was the order in which they did the things that night at the victims' home and why they included their underage niece as a getaway driver. How, when, and why did they recruit her after leaving the bar that night?

I suppose some of these things are probably buried in the Gooding County Sheriff's Office report. I know the niece cooperated with police. For their part, Tommy and AJ traded the death penalty for life in prison. Murder trials are notoriously expensive and rural Gooding County was probably relieved not to have to waste a million bucks they did not have.

While writing this, I stumbled onto an appeal these two had concocted a couple of years ago. They weren't the sharpest guys on the block back in 1993 and I can see that 21 years in prison hasn't done much to improve that.

http://magicvalley.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/convict-claims-innocence-in-murder/article_4b676f82-7b7b-59f1-8087-f365ad652984.html

Forty One Days of Hell

I can only get so fat and then well, I get pissed off.

The worst thing about getting old is that with a complete loss of testosterone and human growth hormone- a man's body only requires about 6 calories per day. Everything else is stored as fat.
So when you eat like a pig like I do- sometimes consuming an entire bowl of oatmeal with a few blueberries sprinkled on top- you can expect to participate in at least one "Iron Man" competition or marathon that month to cancel out the effects of that one bowl of oatmeal.

There is always some nutrition nazi willing to point out the flaws in anything I consume. I usually find them at the gym. They are usually in their 20's and they believe that they have been blessed with a body that will never age, knees that will perform flawlessly forever, and a brain that tells them they are special. I wish I could see them 30 years later humping a treadmill. 

I am in absolute awe. When I was a young man- I could eat an entire semi trailer full of twinkies without gaining a single ounce. Now that I am roughly the age of Methuzaleh, all I can safely eat is celery washed down with purified water.

Growing old sucks. I've never found the alternative visually appealing either.

So when I stepped on the scales May 1, I weighed 282 pounds. That's when I got pissed.

Sometime in the 90's I was introduced to a miracle called the Atkin's diet. I call it the meat and cheese diet. You can eat eggs, meat, cheese and some meat, cheese, and eggs. Maybe a black olive here or there. And baby- it works.

I do it every 18 months or so, generally when my belt buckle starts carving a big notch in my flesh.

I love it when people say, "isn't that diet unhealthy?" I say to them- matter of factly now- "yes it probably is, however carrying around an extra 40 pounds of blubber isn't exactly healthy either."

I am not one of those guys who can diet for 18 months hoping to lose 15 pounds. I don't have that kind of glacial patience. When I diet, I bring the fucking pain. Now. 

Farm animals die. Roosters hump. It has always been this way. And only now and then- do I allow myself a pineapple slice on a pile of cottage cheese washed down with that horrible tasting almond milk. I throw in two miles of running every day. And when the smoke clears...

I expect to lose 31 pounds in 31 days. So when I stepped on the scale this morning at 254- I was three pounds short of my goal for May. This of course has now triggered an additional 10 days of hell wherein I will finally stop when I arrive at 242 pounds with absolutely no hint or trace of a man boob having ever existed on my manscape. I will probably add another mile of running every day.

Then ever so slowly, through summer, fall, and the holiday season and all of 2105- a combination of apple pancakes, cinnamon rolls, bridge mix, pizza, pasties, pork chop sammichs, hash browns, french fries, and ice cream- will all begin to work their evil charms and restore me back to the full sized man that I used to be. Some 18.5 months from now, this whole nasty cycle will repeat itself.

Fat and angry is no way to live your life. I have to figure out some reasonable way to eat within my means. The thought of another 41 days of this shit seems a little unbearable to me right now.

Brian

Let's Make Health Insurance Illegal!- The Sunday Collage

I have three blog ideas that I have been working on. I wanted to write a little bit on how people in political positions hire third parties, spokespeople, and create committees to do their dirty work. This seemed prescient with regard to Jay Carney hitting the bricks this week. Not only did Carney lie and obstruct the truth daily- but he really sucked at it. Perhaps working for Obama does that to you. So I am gonna tab that for the future.

The other blog I am working on is a double homicide we solved years ago. It is a pretty interesting story and I think it is worth retelling. So I think I will do that next. This week, I landed on health care after an experience I had on Wednesday. I also think I can expand this particular piece a bit and use it as an explanation for why I think it's time to abandon the whole government theme and move on. So without further adieu...

I am one of the victims of the health care fiasco. Today I am going to offer an interesting premise.

Why don't we make health insurance illegal? Or why is it that we punish millions of patients (virtually all Americans) while ensuring the survivability of just a few predatory insurance companies and their stockholders? How did we survive before insurance companies?

(and don't say because they have a congressional lobby and we don't- that is way too obvious)

On Wednesday, I had a much anticipated doctors appointment. I had waited 5 weeks for it. I found the office, filled out a ream of paperwork, and waited the obligatory 45 minutes that all people are forced to wait. Approx. 50 minutes later, I met the doctor. We did not hit it off.

First of all I should tell you that I do not like to wait five weeks for an appointment and when that moment arrives- wait another hour more or less. I also do not like doctors who really don't care for their patients- potential or otherwise. This doctor came in and informed me, quite clearly, of how she did business and that I, a coumadin user, would be required to attend a coumadin monitoring clinic that her hospital affiliation profited from. That clinic costs 100 bucks a month and does nothing other than a monthly blood draw. When I countered that a small private lab that I use only charges me 20.00 a mo. for the same service, she became indignant. She likened our situation to "dating" and said we might not be a good fit. After a good deal of back and forth, we parted company. The appt. was free. I did not pay for it and that item is key- because it was her suggestion and not mine.

Looking back on it, she very obviously would know I am un-insured because I stated that on a part of the ream of paperwork I filled out and I also mentioned that fact during our "date." That might have been strike one. Strike two occurred when I, the patient, suggested that I need not go in for monitoring every month since I have been taking coumadin for 25 years and not once has the dosage ever changed. Undoubtedly, her fragile ego equated this suggestion with an attitude of non compliance and insubordination to her omnipotence. Yet, I had the feeling that she was sabotaging our appointment very subtlety and that it started before she entered the room. In fact, the reason I was looking for a new doctor was the same reason that I believe I lost my last doctor.

I am uninsured. I spend my very own money on healthcare. And when you remove the real customer (health insurance) then you remove the ability for doctors, their staffs and armies of support personnel, to pry money from you. They cannot supplement their incomes and ancillary services without a faceless, deep pocketed third party that doesn't ask questions and doesn't price shop like I have to. When faced with someone who questions the legitimacy of monthly testing and the charges- today's charlatans are simply going to move onto insured people that will not ask questions. This is not rocket science. This is simple and discriminatory economics. I commend this doctor for her initiative in initially confusing me. She was weeding me out. But it is a rather brutish and superficial tactic to tell someone you are not interested in them- because they don't have deep enough pockets for you or even gasp!- that you have the audacity to speak up for yourself or offer alternatives.

I don't hold the doctor responsible. That she is another greedy cog in our capitalistic way of life is hardly noteworthy or unique.

I attribute most of this damage to insurance companies. For years, they blindly paid whatever charges doctors and hospitals sent in. As higher and higher costs compressed their profit margins- they simply passed those outrageous costs onto patients without so much as a passing vigilant glance so long as their margins remained intact. The real bust occurred in 2008 when millions of healthy Americans lost employer based coverage and never came back. Nothing will destroy health insurance profit margins quicker than losing your entire, healthy, paying customer base and leaving you with the unhealthy- or claim filing customer base.

I saw all of this coming in 2008 and I wrote about it here.

Lo and behold- it was government to the rescue! But they are not here to rescue you- they are here to rescue an insurance industry and lobby on the brink of bankruptcy. Oh sure, they tell you they are here to take care of you- the citizens. How do you know that was patent bullshit? Because they did not install one single reform. Not one iota of cost regulation. They simply doubled premiums, made not having health insurance illegal, and claimed they were doing all of that-for you. If you believe that the government gives two shits about you or your healthcare, I've got some oceanfront property in Idaho to sell you.

All they have ever cared about is separating you from your money.

To this day- I love the statists who buy into the government benevolence theme. This is the same government which drops bombs from drones onto people- ya know- for their own good. Or spies on every country and all of it's own citizens again ya know- for their own good.

How much cheaper would health care be if we were to outlaw health insurers? I'll tell you what. It would set the status quo right on their fucking ear, that's what would happen. You would instantly wipe out one third of the gross cost of health care- which would include a vast ocean of administrative costs, book keepers, billing agents, lawyers, accountants- which many insiders believe costs hospitals and thus insurers and ultimately insured patients- up to 40% of all hospital costs.

But most importantly, outlawing third party middlemen, would return patients to their doctors. It would return medical bills back to the people responsible for paying them.The people who are paying attention.

I wanted to snap a photo this week of St. Luke's Hospital and their administrative offices here in Boise. It is ginormous. St. Lukes is quickly becoming an Idaho monopoly as it uses it's tax exempt status to swallow every healthcare venue in the state. St. Lukes is erecting giant structures everywhere and taking over hospitals and clinics. Certainly they are not suffering too much as a result of our shared "healthcare" crisis-

So how radical an idea is it- to outlaw health insurers? Let me ask you this...in 2008 did any of you think it was even remotely possible that government could force us to buy government mandated health insurance or suffer 1300 dollar fines by 2016? (based on 45k income)

Did you think that was radical? Or unconstitutional? I did. And the coup de gras occurred when that cowardly bunch of statists that masquerade as jurists- declared Obamacare a tax and made it legal.

So what would we do in lieu of insurance? Massive reform. Everything would be on the table. Predatory pricing on medical equipment and ridiculous drug protections. Cap outrageous punitive awards and use some form of arbitration instead. Catastrophic, chronic, and end of life care might have to be addressed in some pooling of assets. But mostly, people would pay for their own healthcare, just like I pay to get my teeth fixed. With cash. Our healthcare system is so broken- from top to bottom- that it is simply irretrievable. In about a year or so- we are all going to find out just how bad Obamacare is when insurance premiums skyrocket once more and instead of 500 bucks a month- insurers start asking for 800 a month. This shit is going to get completely insane because there is not one incentive anywhere which stops insurers, hospitals, or equipment suppliers from stealing us blind or slows down the demand from the millions of previously uninsured Obamacare patients who pay little or nothing into the system.

That 1300 dollar penalty is going to look like chump change by 2016. I'd bet my house on it.

So how is it that a rather small industry of corporate pirates are able to impose their will on Congress over the will of millions?

It is the same reason that Congress, over the cries of millions of us, bailed out bankers while robbing our treasury.

Congress does not act on behalf of "We the people." It acts on behalf of corporate America because it is corporate America who writes the campaign checks. It is that simple. That will never change until we pass campaign reform and term limits. Who passes those laws? Oh yea, Congress- the very people who do not want campaign reform or term limits.

Congress doesn't care about citizens. Virtually every day, I read some sucker's comments about how we have to vote these assholes out of office and guess what- people keep voting these assholes in. In this year's primaries- every incumbent won. How does that happen when this Congress has had a 10% approval rate for years?

People are uniformed and stupid. This does not stop them from voting.

And that people in a nutshell- is why I am sick of writing about government. Nobody has the balls to outlaw health insurers. There will never be any health industry reform until millions of people have died needlessly (think VA) and the premiums are so outrageous- that nobody can pay them. There will never be any campaign reform because the people who we are trying to subject to term limits- are the same people who will have to pass the term limit law. There will never be tax reform because those same bastards and their elite, pirate cronies are the very same people who benefit from the existing tax code. They are never going to change that.

You'd have to be a complete idiot or a pathological optimist at this point to think there is any chance that any of those things might happen.

So I think you have to get away from the idea that the Constitution means anything to the statists. It doesn't. The statists are working very diligently on rendering the Constitution useless and you are not going to stop that. I would argue with you right now- that at least half of the Constitution has already been rendered useless. They are rendering free speech useless right now. It's only a matter of time before they get it all.

I know the solution is acceptance. There is no stopping any of this. It doesn't take Nostradamus to tell me how all of this ends. The only pivotal question is when. My transformation to a political nihilist occurred right here in front of all of you. I reached this absolute and inescapable conclusion. It is simply a story of government incremental ism. Small steps, which ultimately will ruin the Republic. There will be another upheaval, perhaps a second revolution, and the whole thing will reset.

JFK, the last great President, ( with an honorable mention for Reagan) said it only takes one person to make a difference. God, I hope he was right.

So going forward I am going to focus on human interest stories, stories about pivotal, courageous people in my life, war stories from the old days, and insight. I might even try some fictional stuff with a message. I'm also probably going to change the name of this blog to reflect the new content change.

I want to thank everyone for their kind words of encouragement. Writing gives me a sense of community. I can guarantee you that I know more about some of the readers here than I know about my own neighbors- some of which I have not spoken to since moving into my house over three years ago. It's rather bizarre that I feel more of a sense of community on a website- than I do in my own neighborhood. Perhaps that is something else I must get used to.

So please stay tuned. I'll try and write some interesting stuff. Next week will be good. I am going to tell the story of how a couple of small town thugs murdered a couple of people and I am going to include some of the zany shit that happened during that investigation. I think you'll like it. Have a good week!


   

Jumping the Shark, FG Style

I love the phrase "jumping the shark" and I wish I could give credit where credit is due. Forgive me if I bounce around a bit today. I have a gaping hole where a busted molar used to be- and the vicodin is certainly working it's charms on me.

In the last days of the hit television series 'Happy Days" the writers were clearly running out of ideas. The characters were growing too old for their high school roles and Nielsen ratings were declining. In a two part series, the writers of Happy Days had the show's hero, the Fonz, water skiing over a ramp and jumping a shark enclosure which they tried to make as dramatic as possible. It was a ridiculous premise of course- a last gasp effort wherein the writers tried to lure back viewers. It didn't work obviously and the series was cancelled.

However odd and bizarre that ending was, it did serve a useful purpose. Jumping the shark has become synonymous with prolonging something that has already outlived it's usefulness. When I read the phrase "jumping the shark" I immediately know what any given writer is trying to convey.

Earlier this week, I asked readers to offer up some ideas on content and perhaps even a name change for this blog. The ideas I received were outstanding and helpful. They were authentic. Authentic people are wholesome, truthful, and helpful. We need authentic people.

I love to write and I love people. I really do. And at my very worst, when I am outraged and angry at people- I still find them fascinating. My mother, who lands here from time to time, will tell you that as a child she used to leave me or find me at the top of Hennessey's (the always in vogue department store where she shopped) escalator in Butte where I gladly passed the time as a child, watching all the different people who came in and out of that store. The attire, just the hats that people used to wear, were formal, kind of bizarre, and always interesting to me.

People don't wear hats anymore. They wear misaligned ball caps.

I have about 90 blogs on my blogroll. I read about one half of them on a regular basis. I credit many of them with my adult education along with a few of my readers including "Compleat Patriot"- a very knowledgeable prepper and friend from my past life- who I will be relying on if some sort of apocalypse takes place. 

So I've been schooled. It is a humbling thing to find out just how little you know. And once you get schooled- you discover you were certainly not alone. To this day, I am in awe of how little people really know or understand things like the Federal Reserve Bank or where money comes from. Or how the price of gold and silver have been manipulated lower for years- by bankers using a paper proxy.

But more importantly, people don't care because they don't understand how all of this works. They don't know how any of this actually effects them. That's too bad because what you don't know- really does hurt you. 

So I've been on here beating the war drums for 6 or 7 years. I've jumped the shark.

Moving forward, I am going to do what I do best. I am going to transition to more of a human interest blog. I am going to write about people, my observations, and my insight- and I am going to write about some of my favorite cop stories. And maybe, I will change the name of this thing.

I want to thank everyone who helped by offering advice and suggestions this week. They were authentic and I very much appreciate the time you took to write them. I am going to incorporate those ideas moving forward.

This Sunday, I am putting together a piece on some very intelligent people (generally speaking) who have found a way to game the system- manipulating people and evading responsibility. It is something I have witnessed my entire life but never really had given any thought to it- until about 10 or 15 years ago when it bit me in the ass. It's pretty sneaky. I think you'll like it.

Brian







 

Seeking New Name and Changing Content, Please Comment

For six years, I've been writing about government schtick, economic manipulations, and the worst presidential administration of my lifetime. Even Nixon, at least, was good with foreign policy.

So here's the deal. I am sick of writing about all of that shit. It's not like any of that is going to change any time soon. I'm not making people "aware" here because most of you know what's going on in the world. You are the people who pay attention.

Frankly, I like to write. But I want to write about things that matter. Observations perhaps about real people down here on the ground. I like to write funny stuff- but quality funny stuff is very time consuming. That's been my experience anyway.

So I am asking you folks for suggestions. I've never begged a dime from anyone here- instead I'd like a moment of your time to hear about what interests you. I'd like your input.  If you have any brilliant ideas about a new title, I'd like to hear that too.

Just don't suggest Asylum Watch- my friend Jim already nabbed it.

And if you draw a blank, that's ok too. I appreciate all the support you've given this blog over the years.

Brian

The Freedom Index

Today is Memorial day. The day we honor those who committed some part or all of their lives so that we could be free or remain free.

So who takes your freedom away?

Can you imagine being hired for a position or a job where there is no job description or policy manual? How would you perform your job in the absence of a direct supervisor without a job description or policy guidelines?

Sooner or later, you are going to fail in an environment like that. In fact, many of the people who I see getting terminated in Idaho are employees who lack training and policy. 

That is the sort of thing that makes human resource people cringe while at the same time making civil litigation attorneys smile...they make lots of money over wrongful termination.

So if you are a legislator, what exactly is your job description? Who gives it to you and who is working in human resources on your behalf? What exactly are you supposed to be doing?

The point I am trying to make is this. Civil servants are supposed to serve us. That's we the people. We don't send them to Washington to enrich themselves or sling their authority around like it's nobody's business. It's as though they have no job description what so ever. Therefore, this is the best way to measure their performance or NON performance as legislators-

By the way and once again- every miserable member of the worst Congress in history (with a 10% approval rate) won their May primaries.

The Freedom Index. http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-freedom-index-find-out-where-your.html

The Cop Obsession- The Sunday Collage

The other night I was eating at a restaurant when I struck up a conversation with the waiter. After managing a few restaurants, working 60 and 70 hour weeks, my waiter informed me that he had had enough of the restaurant business. He was going into law enforcement.

I don't think I was every really prepared for law enforcement. I started in 1983 and I landed in one of the richest, if not the richest, valleys in the west. Sun Valley is filled with old money, blue bloods, billionaires, liberals like John Kerry, and more Ivy league graduates than I care to remember. The place was suffocatingly liberal and when I say that- I need to be specific. These people don't think they are better than you- they know they are. They have more success than you, more money than you, a better education than you, bigger houses and jets, and they aren't afraid to make that known under the right circumstances.

They are better than you. That was a consistent message.Think Leona Helmsley.

I wasn't prepared at all for any of that, in fact I was incredibly naive and stupid. I have to tell you that the contempt those people have for law enforcement is well concealed. Outwardly, you wouldn't see it. They understand propriety better than any class of people I have ever met. Image is everything to the wealthy. Publicly, they wouldn't say shit with a mouth full. Privately, it was a different story entirely. After many years, you might say- the truth just started leaking out.

So the upper crust wasn't much different than the lower crust when it came to hating cops. They just used different tactics.

I'd be a liar if I said I didn't feel a twinge of hate anytime someone flipped me off, called me a pig, or yelled "sooeyy." If blacks don't like being called "niggers" then how could anyone imagine cops who enjoy being called "pigs." The difference is- nobody cares about cops. There will never be any marches, any litigation over hate speech because generally speaking- our society says it's ok to call policemen "pigs." It is tolerated. And it is tolerated by the masters of free speech- the liberals- the deciders of what is appropriate speech and what is not. Or it wouldn't be.

I get all that. I got it privately and I got it from folks like Bill Maher. And I got it for 25 years up until such point that I didn't have to get it anymore.

There was only one guy- in all my years- who very nearly got his ass kicked. There was the kid on one of our league's softball teams that loved to call me pig. I gave his father CPR on a gym floor before he was pronounced dead. I gave his mother money and a television before she died of lupus 15 years later, nearly penniless, but I never made a point of telling him. It didn't matter. He had a shitty life- I never expected much out of him anyway.

And so I jettisoned out. I would not have to hear the cop hating rhetoric anymore. Or so I thought.

Please don't misunderstand me. I hate victim speak. I picked that line of work and I enjoyed it. And even when I was at my worst- I'd like to think there was a lot of good in me. So mostly the good outweighed the bad. That's why I stayed for 25 years and the first one was free. I wasn't stealing from anyone, charging predatory interest rates, or gouging little old ladies in car repair shops because I could get away with it. I was trying to be the best human being that I could be and sometimes I was. I wasn't ashamed of what I did and I'm still not. But I don't make much of a habit of mentioning the old life because out here nothing has changed.

I guess I still don't get it. Everyday it seems, I stumble onto blogs and rants all over the internet about crooked cops or ne'er do wells with some attached vitriolic narrative. It's a never ending stream of shit and I have to quit thinking it's going to stop any time soon. I gotta quit confronting these people. Hatred, any kind, is just a form of mental illness. Besides, I am 30 years down the road and I doubt the liberal word police are gonna show up anytime soon. All I can do is remove those venues from my daily radar.

Law enforcement is a noble profession. Done well- cops work small miracles every day. That's a gratifying gig.

Those were the things I said to the waiter. I liked him. He was a big, happy guy with a daughter that he said he wanted to spend more time with. I remember thinking I would have hired him back in the day.

In the meantime, if any of you cop haters stumble in here and think you are gonna leave some nasty piece of vitriol in the comments, know this- it won't last long. And if Kenny stumbles in- I just wanna say thanks. He'll know what I am talking about.