Terror Attacks, Misinformation and Callous Responses

Yet again the spectre of multiple deaths and casualties due to an act of terrorism dominates the headlines and social media. This time, the attack targeted young people leaving a concert venue in Manchester, England.

Latest available information lists a single suicide bomber detonating an improvised explosive device in an area where concert-goers exited the arena into a train station; military operational planners call  a spot like this a 'choke point', an area where a lot of people will be in a confined space, offering a prime target to terrorists. Investigators believe the attacker maximized casualties by using nuts, bolts and nails as shrapnel in his device in order to inflict horrific, traumatic injuries on those who somehow survived the blast itself.

There will be ongoing news coverage throughout the day, no doubt; there will also be more misinformation disseminated via social media, intentionally or otherwise, by way of rumor and/or innuendo.

Before the dust had settled in Manchester yesterday the internet was afire; I saw several social media posts indicating multiple attackers had thrown gasoline-filled balloons inside the concert hall. No mention of anything of that nature occurring in media reports this morning, however. I also read entries making remarks such as, "It serves her right.", a reference to the performer's statement in a secuirty video last year in which she said she 'hates America' right after licking donuts on a display tray in a bakery.

While that particular incident angered me personally, we cannot gloss over or look past the tragic loss of life just to hit back at this far-left, self-centered alleged 'celebrity', one who champions the cause, indirectly, of those who would commit these heinous acts of terror.

We are better than that...or we should be.

We are told by mainstream media not to 'rush to judgement' and call this a  terrorist incident, even though this act was designed to spread death and fear among the British populace, no matter the actor's cause or religious affiliation. However, when someone detonates a bomb in a confined area packed with young people in order to kill as many of them as possible, it can be called nothing else.

Politically Correct Seattle Police and Washington State's Dept. of Corrections

Damarius Butts proved to be a violent criminal. Last month, while fleeing an armed robbery of a 7-11 store in downtown Seattle, Butts shot three Seattle police officers, who returned fire and killed him. Two of the officers went home that day, one being saved by her bullet-proof vest and the other having suffered a grazing wound to his hand. The third officer was shot in the face, with the projectile deflecting down into his chest. He underwent surgery and is expected to make a full recovery.

The incident well illustrates the hazards police officers face daily; in this case the officers survived a gun battle with a suspect who was trying to kill them. As in any officer-involved shooting, extensive interviews were conducted, the scene was processed by evidence technicians and mounds of paperwork was completed, including use-of-force reports.

The rub was in the paperwork. Seatttle police couldn't call the suspect a 'suspect'; they had to refer to the decedent as a 'community member'.

No, I'm not kidding.

Seattle Police Officer's Guild President Kevin Stuckey, speaking about the change, said "I don't think there's anything wrong with calling someone who is a victim a victim, or calling a suspect a suspect. 'Community member' is too vague."

The change came about in 2011, when a U.S. Department of Justice oversight committee urged the use of the term 'citizen' rather than 'suspect' or 'subject'. It's all about political correctness, you see.

In the fall of 2016 the State of Washington Department of Corrections stopped calling inmates 'offenders', instead referring to incarcerated persons as 'student', 'individual' or 'patient'.

DOC Secretary Dick Morgan said the term 'offender' has a negative impact. "Times change and so does our language."

And, apparently, so does the meaning of 'common sense'.

Norm Gerster: The Rest of the Story

As I was walking up to Norm Gerster’s front door his two companions, Tad and Talley, were barking my arrival; I didn’t even have to knock. The two canines are brother and sister, a mix of Labrador Retriever and Boxer both with tiger-striped brindle markings. Norm, the 87-year-old subject of my next interview, greeted me at the door, his full head of white hair just as brilliant as his smile. Norman Gerster could easily play the part of an old rancher in a Western, complete with the brushy mustache.

The dogs barked until Norm told them “hush!”, and they did immediately. “C’mon over and have a seat on the couch.” I did, and listened for the next ninety minutes to Norman Gerster’s tale of life in the U.S. Army…and all the rest that’s filled out his time on this Earth.

If you’ve read the article online at the News Journal’s website you already know about the 22-year-old Gerster being chosen to play for the 3^rd Armored Division’s traveling baseball team. Norm toured most of Free Europe (Germany was divided between east and west, thanks to Soviet expansionism) and played a lot of baseball, seeing places he never would have gotten to see if he had been sent to the Korean theater of war. That issue caused he and his teammates some problems.

“They had us eat with the officers, in the officer’s mess, wherever we went. The regular soldiers, I guess, didn’t like it because we played ball. They wouldn’t eat anywhere near us.”

After returning from the service, Gerster said he never played baseball…but did play a lot of softball. “They had leagues just about every night,” he said, “and I played when I could.”

Norm also had another passion, one he’s enjoyed as long as he can remember. “All told, I’ve probably owned at least twenty-five motorcycles. Me and my brother rode to Daytona plenty of times; three days down, three days back. I also rode to Yellowstone National Park, and out to Sturgis ( South Dakota ), too.”

“I had three Harleys and didn’t like any of them, too much trouble, but that was in the late 50s”, he remarked. “Ducatis, Moto Guzzis and BMWs, That’s mainly what I rode. I plan on riding around the track during Vintage Bike Days at Mid Ohio this year, too.”

Gerster also had the privilege of traveling to Washington, D.C. in April, aboard an ‘Honor Flight’, an air transport trip that enables America’s veterans to visit the memorials honoring their respective wars and service to this nation. Honor Flight is a non-profit organization that, in 2016, took over 18,200 veterans from across the country to Washington cost-free.

“I’ll tell you what, I’m tickled to death I went. A woman at the V.F.W. in Crestline informed my daughter about it, so my daughter got a form, I filled it out and took it back to her”, he recalled. “They didn’t have any flights left when I dropped the papers off ( last September ) but they called me around the first of April and asked if I still wanted to go. I told her I did and she said ‘OK, the fifteenth of April’. I got a hotel room at Columbus airport the night before the trip because we had to leave at 5:30 in the morning. They shuttled us to the aircraft and we got on…83 of us…and not a one that I knew.”

“We got into Baltimore, and then they put us on a bus…it took about an hour and fifteen minutes to get to Washington. We visited all the monuments; the Korean War one impressed me the most. Nineteen bronze soldiers stationed all around this big area. Each of us had a host, someone that took care of everything we needed. Hell, they wouldn’t even let me open a bottle of water! Everywhere we went, they were with us. Then, when we got back to Columbus…around 9:30 at night…there were all these people there, family and friends….to welcome us back.”

 Norman Gerster had tears in his eyes, his voice strained; it was evident that the welcoming crowd at the end of his Honor Flight provided quite an emotional experience for this very grateful, old farmer-turned-soldier-turned ballplayer-turned motorcyclist.

You can find Norman Gerster most mornings at the McDonald’s in Crestline, and I plan on going to see him there very soon.

A Severed Foot Inside a Tennis Shoe = Mystery

On Monday, May 1st, a tennis shoe, which had been sitting on a dock at the Charleston City Marina for six days, was discovered to still contain a human foot.

Workers had been cleaning debris, brought to the surface by a storm the week before, from the marina waters when the shoe was initially found floating near docks J20 and J22. One of the workers tossed the shoe onto the decking, where it remained until a boater noticed a bone sticking up out of the shoe early Monday afternoon.

The shoe, a teal Adidas Samoa men's size 9, was sent to the Charleston County Coroner's Office, where a forensic anthropologist positively identified the foot, still encased in a black sock, as human; however, the right foot and shoe had been in the water for so long that examiners were unable to determine the sex or race of its previous owner. Coroner Rae Wooten stated that the foot could have surfaced after last week's severe weather, which churned debris from the bottom. "We can't even determine how long the foot has been severed."

Investigators are checking regional missing persons reports but, so far, have come up empty. Additionally, the state's Department of Natural Resources officials are unaware of any boating accidents within the last year in which a foot was traumatically amputated.

Another 'What Were They Thinking?' The 'Due Diligence' Edition

Teachers, just like us cops, nurses, doctors and a bevy of other occupations, are held to a higher standard due to being in a position of trust.

Apparently no one told Megan Sloan.

According to several area news outlets, the 27-year-old Sapulpa, Oklahoma elementary teacher was arrested and booked into the Creek County jail on Monday on charges of possessing a controlled substance within 1,000 feet of a school, embezzlement and possession of drug paraphernalia. Here's how events unfolded:

Sloan, who taught at Holmes Park elementary school, had been using a school computer and was messaging another person on her Facebook account. For reasons unknown, she then walked away from the session, leaving her social media account open; another educator, needing to use the computer later on, found Sloan's open social media account, discovering that she had been having an online conversation with another person about buying/selling heroin and pawning two of the school's iPads to support her drug habit. The second teacher reported what she'd found to school district administrators and law enforcement responded to the scene.

During an interview, Sloan admitted to being an addict. A cursory search of her purse turned up Xanax and several uncapped syringes, two of which were loaded with heroin and cocaine, as well as nearly a half gram of methamphetamine. Sloan was then arrested and charged.

Looking at her book-in photo, how could the school's administrators NOT know one of their teachers was drug-dependent? Someone, it would seem, hadn't conducted any due diligence.

Megan Sloan

Uber and a 'US Marshal'

David Stanley Hubbard has issues.

Severe issues.

The 58-year-old Goose Creek, South Carolina man was recently in court...for a second time...on charges of impersonating a law enforcement officer. To be exact, for impersonating a United States Marshal.

The first incident occurred about a month ago when, while operating his 2007 Honda Pilot in the capacity of an Uber driver in Charleston, Hubbard told several riders that he was, in fact, a US Marshal.

"He pulled out this Marshal badge out of his center console", passenger Chris Boldt said. "He turned on the lights and sirens, did a u-turn to grab a parking spot." That wasn't all he showed them, either; Boldt said Hubbard carried handcuffs and a handgun. "He put them ( cuffs ) on my friend and we took pictures", she stated. Hubbard then withdrew a semi-automatic pistol from his car to display, complete with two extra magazines of ammo.

When Hubbard started telling the women stories of killing people and chasing murderers as he transported them to the Folly Beach area, they became suspicious and jumped out of his car while stopped at a red light. Boldt and her friends notified police, who stopped Hubbard and found his firearm and Marshal accoutrements, including a plug-in, magnetic blue strobe light. Hubbard was charged with impersonating a law enforcement officer and carrying a concealed weapon, among other charges. He was released on bond.

My thought was, wouldn't the fact that someone claiming to be a Marshal, while operating a 2007 Honda Pilot and working in the capacity of transporting people under the Uber title, be enough to trip the alarms in the first place?

The second incident occurred a week or so later, when Hubbard was stopped for making an improper lane change in Charleston. As he was being cited, Hubbard told the officer "that, as a US Marshal", he didn't take his driving lightly. As the issuing officer walked away, Hubbard stated "Thanks for citing a fellow officer!". He was charged, again, for impersonating a law enforcement officer after the issuing officer checked with the local US Marshal's office and discovered that Hubbard was not, and never has been, a member of that agency.

The crazies are out there, folks.

                                                           David Stanley Hubbard

Another 'What Were They Thinking?' - The Loyal Dog Edition

A dog can be man's best friend; it can also lead police to your hiding place.

Back in early November of last year, two parolees and a German shepherd inside a vehicle were stopped around 7:30 a.m. by a State Trooper in the state of Oregon. As the officer approached the Chevy SUV occupied by the parolees and the dog on foot, the vehicle took off.

It was a stolen car.

A short pursuit followed, halted when the fleeing SUV endangered morning commuters in Ontario, a border city about 35 miles northwest of Boise, Idaho. Law enforcement later learned that the vehicle, now abandoned, was in a ravine in the foothills of an area under control of the Bureau of Land Management. During a ground and air search, suspect Jerry Boatman was located walking a short distance away and taken into custody. Other officers, following foot and dog tracks leading away from the stolen Chevy, observed a German shepherd and attempted to catch it. The dog ran straight to a badger hole in the side of a hill and went inside. As officers were extracting the dog, they heard faint cries for help coming from deeper within the hole.

Those cries for help were from the other parolee, Greg Morrow, who had decided to scramble into the badger hole to hide from approaching officers; it seems Morrow, wanted for a parole violation and burglary charge, had crawled so deeply into the hole that his shoulders were now pinned tightly against the sides of the hole, eight feet deep, and was unable to move, complaining that he was quickly losing feeling in his arms.

Law enforcement  personnel, using shovels, freed Morrow from the hole ninety minutes later, only to lock him up in a very different kind of 'hole'...a jail cell. Had it not been for Morrow's loyal dog, officers said it would have been very unlikely that they would have found Morrow and that Morrow, in turn, would probably have died due to exposure over the coming days.

Greg Morrow should probably count himself lucky on two points: that his dog led officers to him and that the burrow was unoccupied while Morrow had been crawling inside. Badgers are very ferocious animals and the trapped Morrow's face would have been fully exposed and defenseless.

Gregory Morrow

Officers working to extract Morrow from the badger hole