I'm not a terrorist

RantWoman, 

1. The country is still basking in warm feelings after the inauguration. President Biden is busy undoing Trumpery with the stroke of a pen. The White House has barely been fully fumigated. Why ya gotta ruin the vibe talking about all that Hard Stuff before us?

2. You have a lot of damn nerve putting Seattle police officer Eric Whitehead in the same blog post as the retired Navy SEAL who first triumphantly boasted of his exploits as part of the MAGA mob assault on the US Capitol and now pleads "I'm not a terrorist."

Yeah.

And here we are.

Oops. And today in not mask wearing, before we even get to Officer Whitehead we learned that a total of 5 Seattle PD officers are now under investigation by the Office of Police Accountability for at the very least being present in Washington DC on January 6. Three of them "self-reported." Good start.  And ...

Press release on the Police Blotter

Now Back to Officer Whitehead. Officer Whitehead, for anyone who has missed either the massive Tweet storm or news accounts was on duty on Friday night at the Harborview ER. He was standing around with several other officers, all of whom apparently had masks on. Not only did Officer Whitehead not have a mask, it took THREE nurses up the chain of nursing supervision asking him before he deigned to put on a mask. Then he promised he would take the mask off when in the room interviewing a patient in connection with an assault situation. 

Besides serious sympathy for overloaded nurses trying to do their jobs in spite of inconsiderate ... RantWoman finds herself thinking, ya know, RantWoman might not feel real cooperative if a police officer conducting an interview took his mask off. Masks are a pain and RantWoman awards extra pain recognition points for anyone dealing with both masks and glasses, but RantWoman would definitely recommend the officer demonstrate care for others by wearing his mask. Does RantWoman consider failing to wear a mask and therefore potentially threatening to expose others to a deadly virus terrorism? The Seattle police department probably has plenty to answer for even without that label.

 

The tweet storm did not come with the equivalent of all the blanks filled in, as RantWoman imagines, would be required on the official complaint form. Solving that problem probably takes a couple extra questions on phone calls that would be required anyway. So PLEASE investigate and remind officers of the Seattle Police Department mask policy.

And while you are at it, RantWoman joins the chorus of voices noting the abundance of photos and videos of officers working at protests and not wearing masks. No, RantWoman is not going to use her precious eyeball energy collecting all the material to make an OPA complaint. No, RantWoman wants numbers, say by month: how many officers test positive? How many other members of their households? How many / what percentage of the people with positive tests develop symptoms? Need to be hospitalized? Are these percentages lower or higher than similar numbers for other departments?

What do we know? Ask and ye shall receive. The COVID Impacts page does not answer all of RantWoman's questions but there are plenty of numbers there to digest.

The point of all this ramble: y'all don't need to fly off to DC to be a menace to public health. PLEASE wear  masks. 

And now for a dispatch from the other Washington.

Retired Navy SEAL: I'm not a terrorist

The Chronicles of David (@dopper0189) tweeted at 2:05 PM on  Sat, Jan 16, 2021:
Terrorism defined in the Code of Federal Regulations 28 CFR “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives” 👇🏾 

RantWoman is not a lawyer. RantWoman is unsure whether this section of the Code of Federal Regulations could be used to charge anyone with a crime, but if the shoe fits...

All Rantwoman has to say for now: it's going to be VERY interesting to see how the flows of charges and regrets and accountability play out, even before people factor in the prison reformers. 

See, in many cases, RantWoman would rather pay to house the unhoused than pay to house folks with the resources to jet of to DC for protests. This does NOT mean RantWoman wants to see the MAGA mob go unpunished.

Do we empty all of our prisons of nonviolent drug offenders, aging inmates to feeble to be a threat to society so that there is room for felons from the #CapitolRiot ? Do charge them with everything that will stick, fine them heavily and sentence them to long periods of home monitoring they have to pay for.? 

We do not know yet. And RantWoman is probably not the only person thinking about all the realms of big data available as part of an electronic dragnet...

But enough for tonight. Maybe RantWoman will do a better job tomorrow of finding good cheer. Maybe