Shots Fired!

I'm in my gun-tinkering room. I've reshaped the lips of the Colt Huntsman magazine. I check my work by unloading five fast ones into a big billet of oak. Three minutes and 55 seconds later I'm cuffed up and a cop is reading me my rights.*

I've been ratted out by a geek in Mountain View.

It's the latest  Telescreen precursor, called "ShotSpotter, an aural triangulation system  made mighty by the magic of communications satellites, the GPS,  and warp-speed computing.  If it isn't universal yet, it 's not for lack of desire by cops, prosecutors, and the company that owns the system,

Trusted members of the Outer Party visit your neighborhood and nail sensors to utility poles, buildings, and so forth. The gizmos hear a shot and instantly inform the watchers who, again with speed-of-light communications, tell the local cops. The company propaganda boasts location accuracy of within a few yards. It's a real crime-stopper.

So was the Tell-All Tube in the shabby room over the antique shop where Winston boffed Julia.


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The Times superficially reports the usual privacy vs. security debate, which is revealing in itself because, wonder of wonders, the same system can also record conversations.


Sam Sutter, the district attorney in Bristol County, Mass., called ShotSpotter “an extremely valuable tool” that had helped his office bring charges in four nonfatal shootings.


“In my view legally,” he said, “what is said and picked up by the ShotSpotter recording does not have the expectation of privacy because it’s said out in public, and so I think that will turn out to be admissible evidence.”


The company jumps on that PR problem:

James G. Beldock, a vice president at ShotSpotter, said that the system was not intended to record anything except gunshots and that cases like New Bedford’s were extremely rare. “There are people who perceive that these sensors are triggered by conversations, but that is just patently not true,” he said. “They don’t turn on unless they hear a gunshot.”


Very reassuring, James. We are relieved that your bug is so limited that there is no way on earth to tune it to pick up conversation without an announcing gun shot.  I hope someone alerts me when your technology advances to that point so I can be careful  to say nothing seditious in the public space which I usually refer to as my front yard.

About a year ago the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that your response to a crooked cop barging into your home should be to roll over and play dead. 

This idea that police can go where they want, when they want, for good reason or ill -- or none at all -- could be tested in Iowa.

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In Des Moines, Cynthia King and Tavius King cohabited. No other relationship is noted. Cynthia and Tavius fell out, and she booted him from the apartment. Tavius called the cops, proved he once lived there,  and wanted them to help him get his clothes.  Cynthia came out, announced that this no-good ex-cohabiter was not coming back into her home, and slammed the door, giving one of the police officers an owie.

 The door hit Officer Greg Trimble’s hand and foot as he tried to keep it open and avoid it from hitting him, police said.


A little later she unlocked the door and was cuffed up, charged with interfering with official acts and assaulting a cop.


Sounds to me like the wrong person went to jail, but maybe that's just my notorious Fourth Amendment crankery. Sounds to me like Officer Greg got excited, assaulted the door and, by extension, Cynthia who was in intimate contact with it. Sounds to me like...


--The cops had no warrant to invade Cynthia's home.


--No "hot pursuit" exception to the Fourth Amendment existed because no crime had been committed, or even alleged.


--Some cop public relations REMF has a lot of trouble with kinetic concepts. Most of us will have trouble with the idea that Greg was trying to hold the door open without making contact with it.


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It's a ham-and-egg case, and perhaps Cynthia will pay the two dollars. If so, too bad. It would be nice to see this one hashed out in an atmosphere of Constitutional concern

G'mornin' Mama

Mid-morning on a holiday weekend isn't the best time to cross the road in these parts, Woman. Trying to nest your eggs in the gravel adjacent to the tarmac is worse, a sure ticket to the unpleasant end of the Darwin-results spectrum.

That's why you got the ride on the grain scoop, and I'm sorry to have offended your  snappish sense of dignity. I really think you'll find greater happiness in a more obscure region of the canal network.

A slice of wildlife

In one of my AP gigs I was given a half-day a week  of "enterprise" time to produce a Midwest outdoor column. Of the hundred or so that hit the wire, I remember only a few in detail. One of them is a longish piece on how to find and kill a wild turkey.  It was well-received, though I suspect it discouraged many would-be hunters with its  long exposition of the expensive gear and Leatherstocking wilderness skills necessary to take a gobbler.

I'm glad I wrote that in pre-internet days. I would be embarrassed if it were commonly available today.

That point occurred to me a few minutes ago when my peripheral vision caught a movement just outside the big south window. A grand-daddy strolled by, glanced at me, strutted around the house to the mulch pile, and, careless of all concern, rooted around in the decaying leaves for whatever turkey goodies might be squiggling there.  It's getting so common that I didn't even reach for the camera. More tellingly, New Dog Libby didn't bother to bark.

A similar column today would be short; "Get a sling shot. Sit quietly on your deck. Pretty soon one will walk by. Shoot it."