Let­ter Re: A Secu­rity Contractor’s Con­voy Expe­ri­ence in Iraq.

Dear Jim,
A friend of mine who is a con­trac­tor sent this. It’s been posted else­where.
Foul lan­guage warn­ing. — Michael
Z. Williamson

Info from Iraq From Some­one Who is Doing the “Run and Gun”

Yes­ter­day a friend of mine who runs a small secu­rity com­pany here in Iraq emailed
me. He is stand­ing up a pro­tec­tion detail and wanted my opin­ion on tac­tics
and equip­ment run­ning the roads of Iraq; Tac­tics, SOPs, hard car or soft?
I have been giv­ing it some thought and here is where I am at.

I am will­ing to spec­u­late I’m as well trav­eled in Iraq as any­one I’ve
met. I’ve been just about every­where between Kuwait and Iran, all points
in between. And I’ve trav­eled every way pos­si­ble.
I’ve gone in mil­i­tary con­voy up armored hum­mers at 40 MPH. I’ve
run the Fal­lu­jah Bagh­dad gaunt­let in a 15 truck con­voy, thin skinned white
F350s. I’ve rolled all over in blacked out Pajeros in local dress. Diplo­matic
con­voys with armored sub­ur­bans and helo cover.
I’ve done the whole hide the guns and smile a lot all the way to show­ing
just about every­one the front sight post.
I’ve done 140 KPH up MSR Tampa
and weaved through Sadr city at a near stand­still.
I, like nearly every­one have made mis­takes and been lucky to be here writ­ing
this.
I think the most impor­tant and neglected aspect of sur­vival in the­atre is train­ing.
Every freak­ing day your crew should prac­tice “actions on” — At least
do it on a dry erase board. Actions upon any­thing and every­thing. What usu­ally
hap­pens is we start going through the “what ifs” and all the sud­den
every guy in the crew has a dif­fer­ent idea of what should hap­pen. After all
we come from many dif­fer­ent back­grounds. After about 30 min­utes of that we
all end up scratch­ing our head debat­ing which idea is best and say “let’s
get chow.” Decide on some fun­da­men­tal con­cepts. And stick to them, but
of course always remem­ber­ing that the plan is just some­thing to devi­ate from
any­way. As long as we all know the end goal and work towards it. i.e. If the
vehi­cle is stalled in the ambush, dri­ver flicks it in neu­tral so the rear car
can ram us out and we pre­pare to un-ass the vehi­cle on the oppo­site side of
the con­tact.
So rehearse and prac­tice — Which is easy to say because I am the first to admit
that a knock on my hooch at 7AM with, “Hey, man, let’s rehearse
this” makes me grum­ble.
I’m sure we can all agree that debat­ing your actions on is best done
at the hootch rather than on the side of a road in Tikrit while your car is
being remod­eled by a PKM.
PMCS your vehi­cles all the time. Being broke down in Iraq is like a scene on
a bad movie. Been there done that. Check tires, oil, fluid, etc… And don’t
over­drive your car. My friend VC man­aged to put a Pajero upside down and back­wards
on Tampa once because we pushed the cars past their con­trol­la­bil­ity.
Every IC you meet will tell you he is a great dri­ver. Just because you drive
fast and haven’t hit any­thing yet doesn’t mean you’re a good
tac­ti­cal dri­ver. Go to BSR or some other school. And if you haven’t let
the guy who has drive. Con­duct dri­ver train­ing. Get the best guy to teach every­one
else. OJT.
Prac­tice chang­ing tires. There are a cou­ple guys read­ing this email right now
who know exactly what I am talk­ing about. Real­iz­ing you’ve packed 300
pounds of gear on top the spare while on the side of a road in Ramadi is a
self loathing I’d like not repli­cate. Make sure you have a tow strap
in every vehi­cle. Loop it through the rear bumper so it’s already attached.
that way you swing in front of the busted car and they hook up. Gone in 60
sec­onds or vice versa… Get a good jack, it’s worth the money. Make sure every­one
knows where all the tow, change, repair gear is in every vehi­cle.
In the glove box keep your stay behinds. A frag, Smoke, CN. The rule is. Never
f*ck with the pin unless you have the grenade out­side of the win­dow. Hit
a bump and it drops on the road­side. Min­i­mal drama. Inside the car? Party foul.
Use
CN and Smoke. If you’re caught in traf­fic and you have a bad feel­ing about
a car behind you, toss the smoke. Most motorists will stop or at least give
you a lot of space. It works and it’s harm­less. Can use more spar­ingly
and never while in tight traf­fic. Watch­ing that cloud blow towards your car
faster than you can drive is not fun. The CN is rough stuff and I only would
use it on those rare sit­u­a­tions where it just has to be done. And the frag?
Well we all know when those need to be used.
Put a rub­ber band on your sling so it doesn’t get caught on stuff while
get­ting out of the car.
Always do a proper route plan. Com­mon sense here. And another note, we are
always try­ing to be sneakier and clev­erer than every­one else. Avoid­ing MSR’s
and roads fre­quented by con­voys you know the deal. Well before tak­ing a road
you see on a map that isn’t used by the Army. Go see the G2, ask them
why. It may be for good rea­son.
Think about fuel con­sump­tion. Plan your stops for fuel and food. Always carry
a gas can, just in case.
Always have spare bat­ter­ies for the GPS, Always have a map and com­pass just
like when we were E1’s. Do a map study; make sure every­one in the crew knows
the route plan.
Carry as big a gun as you can. Keep it clean. Keep it hot.
Carry lots of ammo. On April 4^th I went through 14 mags and never would have thought that a pos­si­bil­ity before then. Carry more ammo, stage
spare mags every­where.
Like the freakin Easter bunny.
I will never go with­out wear­ing a hel­met again. If there is a Kevlar hel­met,
it’s going on my head. A dude stand­ing right next to all of us on the
roof was dropped from a head shot. Spend the money get a good MICH or
the like. The more com­fort­able and low pro­file the more likely it is you’ll
wear it.
Wear a hel­met. Watch­ing Alcon get blasted in the nog­gin was
a SOP chang­ing expe­ri­ence for all of us here.
Wear your armor. Period.
If you sleep in a trailer or hootch, know where the near­est bunker is. Try­ing
to find it at 4 AM while scared sh*tless isn’t the answer. And yes every­one
runs for the bunker. The Delta dude who is always giv­ing the evil eye will
prob­a­bly be the first one there fol­lowed imme­di­ately after by a SEAL in flip-flops.
120mm mor­tars make us all very hum­ble.
Shoot a lot. Keep train­ing. If your com­pany won’t get more ammo, make
them dry fire. Prac­tice mag changes. Focus on cheek weld and front site. The
basics win every time.
The three guys shot on the roof here were all either chang­ing mags while stand­ing
or weren’t mov­ing to dif­fer­ent fir­ing posi­tions fre­quently — all were
reg­u­lar mil­i­tary and not con­trac­tors. They were doing stan­dard Army range sh*t.
And got dropped for it…
You remem­ber when Sam Elliot said “If I need one there will be plenty
lay­ing around” in the film We Were Sol­diers Once, in regards
to the rifles? He was right. If you’ve seen those pic­tures of us on the
net Chip was on a SAW and I had a M203. There were weapons strewn about the
roof by wounded
and those who elected to not play on the two way range. No sh*t. By the end
of week two here we all had our choice in weapons. No sh*t. We fired RPK, AK47,
PKM, MK19, M249, M203, M4, Dra­gunov, and M60 at bad guys between the eight
of us… That was unreal.
This brings me onto this — Train on all weapons. If you don’t have access
at least read the FM or TM on them. You never know when you’re out of
5.56 and some­one will hand you a PKM. Get famil­iar with them.
Prac­tice shoot­ing out to 800 meters. I know, nearly every fight is within 150
[meters] but we were try­ing to bang a mor­tar crew that was pound­ing us at 800
meters. And it
hap­pened more than once.
In terms of shoot­ing. Prac­tice as you did on active duty. Always scrounge ammo.
I will ALWAYS take a hard car over a soft. Its just com­mon sense at this point.
If I have a soft car I will sand­bag the floors and jam steel and spare plates
every­where I can. Bolt on armor is sh*t, but bet­ter than noth­ing. Remove the
Lexan win­dows from the gun trucks. Just like in the old days noth­ing breaks
con­tact quite like return­ing accu­rate, vio­lent fire.
The rear vehi­cle is always most likely to be hit. Put your best shoot­ers in
there, biggest guns.

The Golden CONEX
box. It ain’t com­ing dude. If I had a nickel for every time I have been told “Oh
yeah man, we ordered ten of those and they should be here in three days” Or
my favorite “don’t worry, it will
meet you in coun­try.” If you don’t have good guns, ammo, armor,
or comms, just say no like Nancy Rea­gan used to say. Some com­pa­nies are total
pieces of sh*t and will leave you in Iraq with a busted ass stolen AK and two
mags. Some will do you bet­ter than a tier one unit. Per­son­ally, I just want
the above men­tioned items and the rest to go to my bank account. If I want
a three hun­dred dol­lar back­pack Ill buy it.
Bot­tom line. Remem­ber what gear is crit­i­cal. Demand it be the best and take
proper care of it.
Med­ical equip­ment. It’s expen­sive. It has saved lives. The com­pany I
cur­rently work for spent a gazil­lion dol­lars out­fit­ting each crew with great
mad gear. I’m sure the bill was hard to swal­low. I sh*t you not it saved three
people’s lives, all had life threat­en­ing injuries. The med kits and our
18Ds saved them. The Army had a few ban­dages and an IV.
That was it. You know who you are, thank you for spend­ing the money…
Do reme­dial med[ical] train­ing. Can’t say any­more on that issue. Do it.
Wher­ever you go carry lots of booze. It’s the most valu­able item you
can have. If I wrote a list of things I have man­aged to swin­dle with a bot­tle
of Jack [Daniels whiskey] placed in an E8’s hands you would cr*p you’re
pants.
Don’t get drunk and stu­pid. Be drunk or stu­pid but never both at once.
Never let the client con­vince you “it’s safe, I do this all the
time.” If it’s stu­pid it’s stu­pid.
On the same note. Remem­ber if we ham­per our client’s abil­ity to do their
job too much. Our com­pany can get sh*tcanned. It’s a fine line. Yeah,
your client thinks it’s cute to drive to some Hadji’s house at mid­night
for tea, some­times you just have to do it.
Learn to deal with all the clients. Some truly think that all Iraqis are great
peo­ple and that the US Army is the enemy. Some will encour­age you to shoot
bicy­clists who hog the road. I’ve seen both sides. Keep their agenda
and egos in mind. Don’t make your own life mis­er­able.
Aim­points are great. The Eotech is okay. TA31 ACOG is
the best by far. The Aim­point bat­tery lasts six months. The Eotech is a lit­tle
too bright for my
taste. Remem­ber
that the dot is like 3 MOA in
size so they aren’t any good past 300 or
400. The ACOG is the heat.
Buy short M4s. They will save you’re ass. I carry a 18″ upper on
me with glass so when we reach our des­ti­na­tion I flick it on the lower receiver
and I now have a decent long gun. It’s like hav­ing two guns to choose
from.
If you’re doing Green Zone PSD a
mag or two may do you but if you’re
in the party zone? Twelve.
Speak­ing of which, weapon, twelve mags, pis­tol, three mags, Med kit, GPS, map
and com­pass, radio, spare bat­tery, $500 [in] US dol­lars, MRE , water bot­tle, NVG,
armor. It’s a lot. It’s hot but f**k it, if its too heavy get mem­ber­ship
at the gym. This job isn’t for every­body.
In your vehi­cle. Put a US flag on the visor so nobody can see it until you
approach a check­point, then flip it down. On the pas­sen­ger side do the same
with a VS17 panel. G.I. Joe will shoot your a** just as soon as a Hadji will.
Carry MREs
and water in your car.
NEVER throw food or candy to kids. there are many rea­sons why. But at the least
it encour­ages kids to jump in front of cars, smash­ing a kid would ruin your
trip here.
If you find your­self trust­ing the locals its time to take a vaca­tion.
Walk the fine line. Don’t be too con­ser­v­a­tive and don’t get blown
up.
Lis­ten to your intu­ition. It has saved a guy who is on this mail­ing list and
not lis­ten­ing to it killed a friend a month ago.
Once you make con­tact … Fin­ish it. If you shot a guy and he is limp­ing to
cover he can still get there and return fire. Just fin­ish every­thing you start.
A car door is not cover. In fact a car is not cover. Cement is.
While doing the work-up for my last deploy­ment we did live fire IADS and move­ment
from vehi­cles. It was the best train­ing I have done and the most use­ful. On
that note we did many Simu­ni­tion [prac­tice] runs with vehi­cle ambush sce­nar­ios.
We found that with­out a doubt the sin­gle most impor­tant fac­tor in sur­viv­ing
is
get­ting
out and away from the car. Get­ting behind it as though it was a con­crete bar­rier
and play­ing HEAT will get you killed.
Don’t work for a com­pany that doesn’t vet its ICs.
Check their creds, call the ref­er­ences, and put them through a ten day selec­tion
course.
Just because a guy was a SEAL in Viet­nam doesn’t mean he main­tained his
skills. On that note the best shooter in my train­ing class was Viet­nam SEAL.
Some of the best guys were 22 year old Rangers and the worst 38 year old SEALs.
My point it’s the indi­vid­ual that counts.
But we don’t have time or money to bring a reg­u­lar Army kid up to speed.
You have to have the fun­da­men­tal skill sets. We can’t intro­duce you to
live fire Aus­tralian peels. We should just review and coör­di­nate ver­bal com­mands
and sim­ple sh*t.
Just because some­body is a good dude isn’t good enough. If he can’t
shoot, think, and move — leave him home. Big boy rules.
If a guy doesn’t work out in your crew but has tal­ent and skill send
him else­where, don’t sh*tcan him. Per­son­al­i­ties clash. Espe­cially when
you’re liv­ing together 24/7 for six months. Eat­ing every meal together
all that. If I hear the same stu­pid story from a guy forty times? That’s
cool. It’s the 41^st that’s gonna be drama. You guys know what I’m
talk­ing about.
The con­trac­tor com­mu­nity is a sewing cir­cle for men. Remem­ber the Dyn­corp guy
who shot the prin­ci­pal in Bagh­dad last win­ter? The story in its most recent
telling over cheap Turk­ish beer involved a diplo­matic cover up, a mag­a­zine
change, and sev­eral deaths.
Throw­ing a flash-bang into the team leader’s hootch at 3AM while drunk
is not a good prac­ti­cal joke.
Remem­ber how much money you’re mak­ing. Nobody wants to clean the sh*tter
on a Wednes­day morn­ing but keep in mind you’re the high­est paid jan­i­tor in
the world that day.
Keep a sense of humor. Keep funny peo­ple around, they make sh*tty sit­u­a­tions
tol­er­a­ble and are like Prozac when you need it.
Have thick skin. Your friends will ask for naked pic­tures of your wife on deploy­ment
and yes they may take them to the bath­room with them. Take crit­i­cism. If you
suck at some­thing ask for train­ing.
Always remem­ber that you were once a young dumb*ss E1. You made $450
a month and weren’t allowed to fart with­out a per­mis­sion chit ran up
and down the chain of com­mand. Keep this in mind when you’re bitch­ing
because you’re only mak­ing $17,000 a month when guys at the other
com­pany are get­ting $17,500. And when the bosses back in the states email you
to have a clean shave? Do it. you never know when you’re going to be
on some stu­pid news­pa­per.
The sol­diers around us are deployed for a year some­times more. They make a
frac­tion of the pay. And are ordered to do stu­pid, dan­ger­ous sh*t every­day.
Keep that in mind when you are upset that instead of 60 days you’re extended
to 68.
And keep that in mind when deal­ing with sol­diers. Treat them well, nobody else
does.
Yes, we all work for our­selves at the end of the day. At the same end, never
f**k over your com­pany or team­mates who have to stay behind and clean up your
mess. Busi­ness OPSEC is
one thing but always share your info on intel and tac­tics. We are all Amer­i­cans
and most of us will work together one time or another.
Some of the “busi­ness secret” stuff is corny. If you hit an IED on ASR Jack­son
yes­ter­day, e-mail your col­leagues to stay away.
That’s it off the top of my head. Stay Safe, — Ben

[SurvivalBlog.com]

Just because they’re bad peo­ple doesn’t make them stu­pid or incom­pe­tent. These mer­ce­nar­ies could be dri­ving around the streets of your city treat­ing it like occu­pied ter­ri­tory some­day. If you live in New Orleans, they already have.

We’re the Only Ones Sorry Enough.

“I’m not going to deal with a guy that has a loaded gun until I secure a weapon.”

You for­get your place, ser­vant. Who the hell do you think you are? And how about if we deal with you on those terms?

I wouldn’t accept an apol­ogy from the Chief. Unless it comes sin­cerely from the offender him­self, it is mean­ing­less, and this “Only One” is still jus­ti­fy­ing and mak­ing excuses for his elit­ism and his ignorance.

And how nice of the depart­ment to exon­er­ate Greene of exces­sive force lia­bil­ity. Where I come from, if some­one grabs my arm, restrains me, puts me up against a wall, forcibly searches me and threat­ens me, all with the under­stand­ing that deadly force will be used if I don’t obey, it’s called “assault and bat­tery” at a min­i­mum. I’d think if the guy wasn’t wear­ing a uni­form, one could prob­a­bly jus­tify using deadly force as an appro­pri­ate self-defense response.

How won­der­ful these guys will now get some train­ing into what the laws they are paid to enforce actu­ally say. But I can’t help won­der, if they catch one of us break­ing the law and we say it’s because we didn’t know, will they accept our apol­ogy and give us a pass?

If it were me, I’d be look­ing at fil­ing crim­i­nal and civil com­plaints. [The War on Guns]

I read a num­ber of gun-related weblogs, forums, and mail­ing lists. It’s a very com­mon occur­rence for some­one to post a ques­tion about what some­one who is legally car­ry­ing a pis­tol should do when con­fronted by a cop. Invari­ably such ques­tions attract mul­ti­ple cops and cop appol­o­gists who say exactly the same thing this one did.

Red’s Trad­ing Post Videos. They’ve posted two new video ads defend­ing them­selves against BATFU harassment.

Ryan Horsley’s got guts and he’s artic­u­late. He’s defend­ing a way of life and a fix­ture in his com­mu­nity from destruc­tive invad­ing par­a­sites, and he shouldn’t have to stand alone.

We gun own­ers are quick to pass judg­ment on deal­ers who don’t stand up to intim­i­da­tion, like those who caved in to Bloomberg’s law­suits. We need to be equally as quick to sup­port those who refuse to roll over. This guy goes one step fur­ther and swings back defi­antly.

WarOnGuns will def­i­nitely keep an eye on fur­ther developments.

[Via charel­ton­hest] [The War on Guns]

Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Dis­cov­ers Con­sti­tu­tion. Friday’s big news, which broke a bit late for H&R:

A fed­eral appeals court over­turned the Dis­trict of Columbia’s long-standing hand­gun ban Fri­day, reject­ing the city’s argu­ment that the Sec­ond Amend­ment right to bear arms applied only to militias.

In a 2–1 deci­sion, the judges held that the activ­i­ties pro­tected by the Sec­ond Amend­ment “are not lim­ited to mili­tia ser­vice, nor is an individual’s enjoy­ment of the right con­tin­gent” on enroll­ment in a militia.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Cir­cuit ruled that the city can­not pre­vent peo­ple from keep­ing hand­guns in their homes. The rul­ing also struck down a require­ment that own­ers of reg­is­tered firearms keep them unloaded and dis­as­sem­bled. The court did not address pro­vi­sions that pro­hibit peo­ple from car­ry­ing unreg­is­tered guns out­side the home.

The deci­sion marks the first time a fed­eral appeals court has struck down a por­tion of a gun law on Sec­ond Amend­ment grounds.

That’s huge. And one angle you prob­a­bly won’t hear: This is the direc­tion DC pub­lic opin­ion has been mov­ing toward for some time. Only one month ago Mar­ion Barry, DC’s statesman/punchline who now holds a city coun­cil seat, pro­posed a halt to the gun ban.

[Hit and Run]

I’m actu­ally sur­prised that the gov­ern­ment ruled against itself this way–that’s a very rare thing. I’m not sur­prised that the peo­ple who actu­ally live there have been mov­ing away from the gun ban, though. After all, they’re the ones who have had to live with its consequences.

Also unsur­pris­ing is the NRA’s oppo­si­tion to the suit. Despite its media-created rep­u­ta­tion as “pro-gun extrem­ists,” the NRA is actu­ally the largest and most influ­en­tial gun con­trol orga­ni­za­tion in the coun­try. They don’t want the Sec­ond Amend­ment to be upheld, because if gun con­trol laws go away they’ll no longer have an issue with which to con mil­lions of suck­ers into send­ing them money.

When I read about that shoot­ing in the mall in Utah, I thought it was odd that there was no men­tion of any mall patrons shoot­ing back, but at the time I fig­ured some had and the main­stream media had ignored it (as has hap­pened in other cases). Later, when it became clear that there really wasn’t any­one shoot­ing back except two cops, I thought it was really weird that there could be a mall full of peo­ple in Utah and none of them was armed (I have a Utah con­cealed weapon per­mit myself).

Today I came across this photo of a sign at the entrance to the mall in ques­tion (no idea where the photo comes from)–note in par­tic­u­lar the restric­tion that I’ve cir­cled in red. Well, that explains it. I cer­tainly hope that the rel­a­tives of the peo­ple who were killed sue the mall’s own­ers for every­thing they’ve got.

Obscure Free­dom Fight­ers: Danie Theron. FROM TIME TO TIME in my read­ing, I come across sto­ries of impres­sive but little-known peo­ple who fought for free­dom in little-known places in his­tory. Peo­ple whose courage and deter­mi­na­tion should not be for­got­ten. William Wal­lace of 13^th cen­tury Scot­land is one exam­ple of such a per­son, largely unknown until a screen­writer also named Wal­lace noticed his mon­u­ment in Stir­ling and inquired who the man was. Another exam­ple is Boer sol­dier and scout Danie Theron. [Wolfes­blog]

I’ve read some gen­eral his­to­ries of the Boer War, but this is the first time I’ve heard of Danie Theron. It sounds like his story would indeed make a good movie.

There was a time when Amer­i­cans hon­ored rebels who fought guerilla cam­paigns against the British in our own war for independence–men such as Ethan Allen and Fran­cis Mar­ion. But today, those men are all but for­got­ten as Amer­ica has become the enemy that they fought against. I won­der if in another hun­dred years there will be stat­ues in Bagh­dad to some brave Iraqi rebel who fought to drive out the Amer­i­can Empire.

‘License to Kill’ or Per­mis­sion to Defend?. Today’s New York Times has a pre­dictably neg­a­tive take on new laws in Florida and 14 other states that expand the right to self-defense, elim­i­nat­ing the require­ment to “retreat” before using lethal force in pub­lic and giv­ing the ben­e­fit of the doubt to peo­ple who shoot home invaders. It seems Florida pros­e­cu­tors don’t like the new law, and Sarah Brady avers that “it’s a license to kill”—“in a way.” [Hit and Run]

Cal­i­for­nia has had laws like that all along (as have many other states), and pre­dictably there has been no dis­as­ter as a result.

We’re the Only Ones. Not You. Us..

A knife-wielding gro­cery store employee attacked eight co-workers Fri­day, seri­ously injur­ing five before a wit­ness pulled a gun and stopped him, police said.

Let’s see…knife-wielding maniac, every­body being vic­tim­ized, no cops around, what will stop this guy…?

Not resist­ing? Nope.

Giv­ing him what he wants? Uh, I think he’s show­ing us what he wants.

A hoplo­phobe? Sorry.

An armed cit­i­zen? Bingo!

Les­son here for all to see? A moral per­son with a gun can not only defend them­selves, but also those around them.

“Sour grapes” reac­tion from “The Only Ones”?

Hig­gins said police were pulling into the park­ing lot as Cope was con­fronting the attacker.

“We com­mend him,” Hig­gins said. “But we don’t encour­age peo­ple to take that kind of risk. He could have been hurt.”

What kind of risk does Hig­gins rec­om­mend peo­ple take? Wait­ing around for them to respond doesn’t have risks?

And note the armed cit­i­zen resolved this with­out fir­ing a shot–that is, rather than a gun in pri­vate hands being used to kill, here’s a real world exam­ple of a cit­i­zen using a hand­gun to restore the peace and save lives–both of the vic­tim and the attacker.

[Thanks to Four­teen Alpha] [The War on Guns]

It’s for­tu­nate this hap­pened in Ten­nessee. Here in Los Ange­les, the psycho’s vic­tims would have been expected to die qui­etly and not rock the boat by defend­ing themselves.

Takeover Rob­bers Tar­get Restau­rants. In fact, Barone’s was just the lat­est Los Ange­les restau­rant to be robbed. While crime con­tin­ues to fall across the city, police are strug­gling to con­tain a sharp jump in armed rob­beries. Author­i­ties are par­tic­u­larly con­cerned about a series of takeover rob­beries tar­get­ing restau­rants. In the San Fer­nando Val­ley alone, upward of 200 have been hit in the last two years. Offi­cials in other parts of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia also report an increase in the crime.

Detec­tives say the holdups are the work of sev­eral groups of ban­dits tar­get­ing smaller, sit-down eater­ies, usu­ally as own­ers are count­ing cash at clos­ing time.

[…]

“What we are see­ing in some respects is dis­place­ment,” said LAPD Deputy Chief Earl Paysinger. “It’s more oppor­tunis­tic hit­ting restau­rants. They see a mom-and-pop restau­rant, and that doesn’t come close to being as for­ti­fied as a bank. And they take that oppor­tu­nity, using the same type of aggres­sive behav­ior.” [Los Ange­les Times]

And how do our lords and mas­ters want to respond? Like this:

The prob­lem has become so severe that Los Ange­les Police Chief William J. Brat­ton and other city offi­cials are sup­port­ing state leg­is­la­tion that would give up to two years of extra prison time to rob­bers who use masks.

Yeah, that will show them. And con­sider this:

“These rob­bers are more likely to be vicious to their vic­tims because their iden­ti­ties are masked,” said Coun­cil­woman Wendy Greuel, who rep­re­sents the Ven­tura Boule­vard shop­ping cor­ri­dor where many restau­rants have been hit.

She may be onto some­thing there. Per­haps she should ask chief Brat­ton if any of his troops ever mask their identities.

Pre­dictably, noth­ing in the arti­cle even hints at the real solu­tion to this prob­lem. Under Cal­i­for­nia state law, employ­ees may be armed at their work­place with their employer’s per­mis­sion. Since these restau­rants are “mom-and-pop” oper­a­tions, they don’t have to worry about any dis­tant cor­po­rate over­seers order­ing them to remain helpless.

We’re the Only Ones In the Mood for Love Enough.

A 17-year vet­eran cop was arrested and charged Fri­day in a num­ber of rapes that he helped inves­ti­gate as the sergeant in charge.

I won­der how “The Only Ones” would have taken it had one of the vic­tims shot her assailant? [The War on Guns]

Iron­i­cally, another post from the same site reveals what the samu­rai class thinks of peas­ant women shoot­ing assailants.