THE OL’BUZZARDS INCOHERENT RAMBLINGS ON POLICE

Nan’s blog, ALL THE GOOD NAMES WERE TAKEN, recently put out a blog post about police overreach – definitely food for thought.

I spent two years as military base-police where I worked with civilian police, and one year I volunteered as a diver for body retrieval with the Clay County Sheriff's Department in Florida.   From this experience I can tell you that more than a few of the cops, who I have known, were insignificant and insecure until they put on a badge and gun, then they view themselves as alpha dogs.   These are the cops you need to be afraid of - and there are a lot of them. 

Police work, like the military, attracts people without a lot of professional options.   The job especially appeals to people who desire to be vested with the authority that a badge and a gun provide for their own self-aggrandizement.    

Cops have absolute power and absolute power corrupts.  Then add militarization of police departments and you have cops out of control - cops who feed their ego by abuse of citizens.

Just like racism, you cannot get the cowboys out of policing until a whole generation of police have been replaced.    There has to be a transition of better qualified and better educated people into the police departments, and the present contingent out. 

This is my solution to the problem:

·       Raise the pay drastically.

·       Require a minimum of an associate’s degree in law enforcement to be considered for employment.

·       Require applicants to pass a general knowledge achievement test, comparable to the high school exit, exam with a C or higher.

·       Require applicants to undergo psychological testing

·       Have a twelve-week training course for accepted applicants that focuses at least 50% of the time on community and demographic understanding.

·       Require that every office spend 10% of his or her duty time (four hours a week) in community involvement.  

·       Have a standing policy that any officer that fires a weapon resulting in the loss of life, regardless of the circumstances, will be permanently transferred to an administration police, state or civil service position of equal pay and benefits where he or she will not be armed.

·       Have all police forces placed under and regulated by the Department of Justice.    

·       Demilitarize the rank and file police force.  

·       Have a special military trained SWAT (not members of the rank and file) whose only job is deployment for hostage and terrorist situations – never used for crowd control.  

·       Have an independent civilian oversight board that aggressively investigates all accusations of police corruption and police abuse of power.  This board should have the authority to suspend from duty and to recommend indictment of any officer so charged.

·       Offer early retirement to all officers within five years of vested retirement. 

The answer to police reform is not to change the attitudes of business as usual for the existing police departments – that can never be done – the existing force must have more stringent oversight from the department of justice, and the goal should be, over time, to replace the existing force with better educated more qualified career officers. 

I have heard cops brag about the number of speeding tickets they have issued in a day, and brag about ticketing cars for five miles over the limit.   These cops are not serving and protecting; they are harassing the community.   An Ideal police officer would stop a car driving over the limit, warn the driver about the need for speed limits, and only issue a ticket if the driver was blatantly driving at excessive speed: in other words, serving the community. 

This is all bullshit of course, because it would take aggressive action of Congress to enact and enforce this type of change; and politicians will never take on a difficult, controversial issues that could piss off the police lobby and affect their own tenure.

the Ol’Buzzard  

A TRIP TO THE BARBERSHOP

A TRIP TO THE BARBER SHOP

I am not a vain hair person:  I never comb my hair – I just wear it.   I like long hair, but my wife doesn’t, so I go the barbershop when she starts to remind me, again and again that I am overdue for a haircut.

I went in this morning.  We have a small barbershop with three chairs.   There are three women barbers.  Each woman has pictures of her family on the counter in front of the mirror.   There is a coat rack inside the front door, a poster on the wall with pictures of men with different hair styles, some plants in the front window and a radio playing soft music. 

Each time I go in for a haircut I can’t help but remember the barber shop of my childhood in a small Delta town in Mississippi.

 Back then a barbershop was a man’s world.   No woman would have ever gone into the barbershop even with her children.   It was a place where old men hung out and smoked and talked of farming, women, weather and politics

I remember deer heads on the wall and mounted fish, calendars with pictures of tractors and scantily clad women.  The atmosphere was heavy with smoke from cigarettes and cigars.  One old barber constantly had a cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth and the other chewed tobacco, so there were two spittoons – one near the barber and one near the door.  More than once I smelled whiskey on the breath of one of the barbers.  

The walls in the barbershop were yellowed plaster -probably from the constant smoke, and there were no mirrors. The counter with the clippers, scissors and straight razor was also full of mysterious, colorful hair products like Lucky Tiger, Jeri’s, Clubman, Brylcreem, Vitalis and others.   The floor was always covered with hair from previous cuts

I was raised by my grandmother, but when she would send me to get a haircut I entered the world of men.  I always got a friendly ribbing when I was young, but it was an inclusion, an acceptance that I would someday become one of them.  

There is no gender identity today, and some would say that is a good thing; but back then, in the forties and fifties, manhood was an exclusive club.   When you made the cut, you knew who you were and you were comfortable with your distinct gender roll.

the Ol'Buzzard

FEEDING SQUIRRELS

Sometimes in life you just have to learn to go with it – go with the flow.    Rather than fight against the current, oft times it is better to just change your destination and proceed downstream.  

I used to have a couple of small red squirrels that would raid my bird feeders.   Then about two years ago a large grey squirrel showed up – this year there are two grey squirrels.   The two original red squirrels had a litter of babies this summer (I guess you call them a litter):  two little mouse size reds that have no fear of me.  Add to this, four chipmunks and I have a rodent menagerie living in my back yard.

I tried everything to outsmart the squirrels.  I hung the feeders by concertina wire and put up baffles above the feeders, I greased the pole of my ground feeder; but nothing seemed to work. 

 I have finally come to the conclusion that in the nature order of things, in the food chain, squirrels come before birds; so trying to feed birds and not the squirrels is against the natural order. 

My squirrels love black oil sunflower seeds; but now I have another problem.   Bird scavengers are stealing food from my squirrel feeders.

BECOME THE WATER GRASSHOPPER.

the Ol’Buzzard 

YELLOWDOG GRANNY THIS IS FOR YOU.

The last time I posted a Gangstagrass you said you would rather stab pencils in your ears then hear bluegrass rap.   

Try this on one more time; I can almost see you boot scooting boogieing  to this. 






you're welcome
the Ol'Buzzard

LEEANNA

Leeanna.  (Can we have a new witch...) I can't post a comment on you blog without joining some kind of Googl + community.   What's up?
the Ol'Buzzard

TRANS IS THE NEW BLACK

I AM THE DAUGHTERS OF MY FATHER'S HOUSE

AND ALL THE BROTHERS TOO.

Twelfth Night: Shakespeare

My favorite Sweet Transvestite from Transsexual Transylvania.

This is where the world would be without glamour.

A world of fart jokes

the Ol'Buzzard

AS CLOSE TO RELIGION AS I GET

I am a whiskey drinker.  Being a southern boy with Kentucky roots I was weaned to bourbon.  During my years in the military I drank Old Crow – usually buying it by the half gallon.   When I retired from the military and became gainfully employed I matriculated to Scotch and Irish Whiskey.  I haven’t had a mixed drink in fifty years; with the exception of Bloody Mary.  

I was converted to the sect of Bloody Mary in Vietnam.    On Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon on Sunday morning between ten and noon the NCO Club had a special: Bloody Mary for a nickel.    Whenever I was in Saigon I would gather at the club with other lay people who chose to avoid Sunday church services, tithe a dollar, and partake of the bloody Eucharist, often with loud praise and adoration. 

A couple of weeks ago on a Sunday morning my wife and I traveled up to a great little restaurant in a rural section of north-western Maine just a few miles from the Canadian border.   I decided to have the eggs benedict with smoked salmon, and what better to have for a beverage than a Bloody Mary.   It was advertised as their ‘Signature Bloody Mary’ and that alone should have given me pause.   Instead of tomato juice they used canned whole tomatoes in a blender, adding vodka, some other secret ingredients and far too much Tabasco – this was topped off with an al’dente asparagus chute.  When they brought the watery abortion to the table there were chunks of tomato and enough tomato seeds in suspension to clog a straw, and the drink was so hot it burned the lips. 

I have witnessed the desecration of Bloody Mary before, but this was near the top.   The worst was at a hotel bar in Fairbanks, Alaska.  Their Bloody Mary was served with a jalapeno pepper at the bottom of the glass and two pickled string beans protruding – the only adjective I can link to describe their drink is: Nasty. 

Making a Bloody Mary is simple: Ice in the bottom of the glass, salt on the ice, two shots of vodka and tomato juice.  That is a Bloody Mary at its most basic, and I can worship on that.    If you want more tang to complete the transubstantiation add the Trinity: a squeeze of lemon, a dollop of Worcestershire sauce and a spritz of hot sauce (I prefer Louisiana Hot Sauce to Tabasco, as it adds the flavor without the heat.)  If you feel the need for a vegetable to stir, a stalk of celery works.  Anything beyond this is an abomination.

In Leviticus, Buzzard sharia law, chapter 13 verse 2 it states that anyone mixing a Bloody Mary with any liquor other than vodka should be driven through the streets in sackcloth and crucified on a mountain of Smirnoff bottles; and verse 3 states that anyone making a Bloody Mary with commercial Bloody Mary mix should be stripped naked, given a Tabasco enema and made to dance on a bed of shattered ice cubes – the option would be stoning.

From the Church of the Blood of Mary I wish you a happy Sunday.  

the Ol’Buzzard