Unfortunately, 2011 has started off on an unhappy note. I had a message the other day that in a 24-hour period, 11 officers had been shot. As of February 3, 2011, sixteen officers have been killed in the line of duty. Ten of them were killed by gunfire.
Fox News had a special report on the other night about this. In the online publication, PoliceOne.com, an article says the Feds will be looking into the issue by appointing a commission to study why these officers have lost their lives. There is a comments section after the news articles and it looks like the people who commented are much smarter than the Feds.
When I saw the headline, my first thought was “How many of the suspects were out on bond or had recently been released from jail? What kind of criminal histories did each of these suspects have?” The same question was posed by many of the people in the comments section.
Officers constantly train in officer safety. We need to be constantly on alert in all situations. Last weekend, a man walked into a police department and immediately opened fire, wounding 4 officers before being killed. This goes to show that officers are not even safe where they should be safest at.
I wonder what the Feds will suggest? New laws? Better officer training? One comment in the article even suggested the killings were the fault of the officers involved. Four of the officers killed were in two separate incidents in which a wanted criminal was being sought. Maybe their deaths WERE their fault - they could have been avoided if the officers had not tried to arrest these dangerous felons!
How many of the suspects were out on bond or recently released from prison? Had they been previously charged with killing somebody? Why are these people out running around? The parole boards that parole these people or the judges who release them on bond should have them as their neighbors.
Once again, the weather became a deep freeze and I was not able to even think about starting a fire in the garage so I could work on the race car. Maybe this weekend - the forecast is looking a little better. I was able to get the right side door and fender hung before having to stop. I’m still pointing toward having the car on the track at McCool Junction on March 5th, but that seems to be a pretty lofty goal at this point. March 19th at Beatrice will be a bit more realistic, IF the weather starts to cooperate a bit more.
With snow covering the U.S. from Texas to New York and beyond, we haven’t heard much from the global warming people lately. I saw some video from Chicago that at first glance I thought was a large car dealership. I then heard the commentator say that it was Lakeshore Drive with abandoned cars sitting bumper to bumper!
The cold days that keep me out of the garage even make it hard to think about planning motorcycle trips. We’ll be pulling our trailer behind the Gold Wing on our trip to the Blue Knights convention, and will need to pack the wheel bearings on the trailer before we go. Another rider in our chapter said he wants to pack wheel bearings, so we will probably do both trailers at the same time. I just dread the thought of the price of gas this summer - I noticed today it went up another nickel since 3 AM today. With the price of fuel going up, more people seem to “forget” to pay after filling up. The simplest solution to this problem would be to make the customer pre-pay. However, many of the businesses in our area won’t do this because they don’t want to “inconvenience” the customer.
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