Ryan Swett -- who does look like a sweaty bastard, although he's innocent until proven guilty of all charges -- is accused of intentionally  running down a young woman in a road rage incident.

Her injuries are horrific.  She was knocked all the way out of her clothing.  A bystander had to come and cover her in her jacket until the medics arrived.  I wish her the best.
A few points leap out at me about this:

• His version of the story, where he was surrounded by attackers and had to make a getaway, is wildly different than that of uninvolved bystanders.  Not surprising.
  
• The look of shock on his face when learning the extent of the woman's injuries hints at the level of delusion in play in this person's head, what a long commute it is for him to Earth 1.
  
• When you see the picture of the woman he hit, and look at him, that girl wouldn't give this toad the time of day.  Were there no men in her party?  Why didn't Mr. Tough Guy deal with one of them?  How did the hot girl become the focus of his untethered vehicular rage?
  

One thing that never ceases to be obvious to me:  almost nobody in America thinks that men constantly do hate crimes against women, which is how it looks to me.   I'm not sure if this was one or not.  But it kind of seems like it might be.

People in America largely believe that things are fine between men and women.   On the right side, they think the only problem is women need to learn our place and stay there.

The left, including the woke, mostly believe that men and women have justice parity in this country unless the women are black. Confederate women were allowed to abuse black people with the same impunity as Confederate men.  That's why that group of white women voted for Trump, so they could "Make America Great Again."  That gender-equity dynamic has incorrectly been attributed to all white people, including immigrant communities like mine, where it never existed.  
Abortion rights wouldn't still be a problem right now if women hadn't been litigating this conversation amongst ourselves all my life.  I have no idea what "feminism" means other than "Shut up, woman."  I learned long ago that "white feminist" means "Shut up, white woman."
So when men do violence against women in America, it isn't a hate crime unless the woman is black.  It's just the same as when they do violence against each other.  I think it only works that way because men make all the rules about how things will work.  Luckily my opinion doesn't count for anything so nothing has to change.

I don't know if this woman's attractiveness in particular is what drew his ire, made her the specific target as opposed to the other people that she was with. 

But I can tell you that everything about his surprise at the extent of her injuries was entirely familiar to me:  boys will be boys!  He didn't mean nothin' by it.  Meanwhile, nobody's ever heard of Kevin, only Male Karen.  Karen is the worst.

It's hard to imagine what this woman went through.  She was panhandling in January.  Someone offered her food, shelter, and drugs.

The person who had befriended her eventually began beating her with a baseball bat and stabbing her with a screwdriver.  She says he threatened to kill her and wouldn't let her leave.   Her assailant is alleged to be Walter Medina, who was arrested after a high-speed chase, and who also has a record for false imprisonment.

There aren't details about where or how exactly she was held, if she was in a vehicle the entire time.  She fled her captor when he went into a store.  She contacted authorities and Medina was apprehended later.  He is innocent of everything until proven guilty in a court of law.

This is horrifying.  And I have to ask where the father was?  How did he not know someone was taking a branding iron to his son?

Once again we see people who are willing to go to any extremes to impose their religious beliefs on minor children.  I can only imagine what else happens to kids in this community.

Myron Howard was still on probation when he got fired from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.  Like everyone else on this blog, he's innocent of all conduct discussed herein until proven guilty in a court of law.

WTHR:

According to police, Howard was called with other officers to a home on Olney Street, near East 25th Street and North Sherman Drive, on Jan. 6 for a domestic violence call. A man was taken into custody during that incident. 

Howard then allegedly returned to the scene after other officers left. According to court documents, Howard allegedly told the female victim, "you know you could've went to jail too, but I didn't say anything, so I need you to do something for me."

Howard turned his body-worn camera off during the incident, according to the court documents. Police said they verified this because the device was missing nearly 20 minutes of GPS data during the alleged incident. His patrol car GPS showed he had returned to the woman's home after the domestic violence call and was there for approximately 17 minutes.  [This is why I'm such a huge fan of GPS and bodycams.]

"I felt obliged to do what he tells me,” the alleged victim told police.

She said her boyfriend was arrested again in February for domestic violence and that Howard came to her home after other officers left. That time, she said she told him to leave her alone and didn't open the door to her home.

When questioned, Howard claims he was doing patrols in the area after the domestic violence call and the woman waved him down and the sex was consensual. He claimed he didn't talk to her after that. The woman submitted screenshots from her home of text messages Howard allegedly sent her and a call he made.

In a separate incident in August 2023, another woman said Howard was helping her after a car crash. She said he then came back and offered her a ride home. She said he told her that she needed to buy him gas or have sex with him. She said she offered gas money, but he told her it needed to be sex. She said the two had sex and then he drove her home.

"The allegations made in the probable cause affidavit are deeply disappointing and disturbing,” IMPD Chief Chris Bailey said. “His alleged actions not only violated his sacred oath to our community, but he abused his power and took advantage of a victim when she was most vulnerable. His actions do not represent the brave women and men who serve Indianapolis with integrity every single day. My prayers are with the victim during this difficult time.""

Both of those complaints are horrifying, descriptions of practiced predation.

In the linked video, Howard is said to have told investigators that he had sex all the time on his other police jobs before being hired at Indianapolis Metro.

One problem is that I don't have any research resources at this time.  I don't have an intern, no LEXIS/NEXIS account, no ability to find out where this guy worked before and begin rocking the FOIA requests. 

Another issue is that Howard, like many others, described the sex he had as consensual.  They all do.  And like with the Bert Lopez video, and even all the progressive people thinking it was awesome, and at worst him loafing on the taxpayers' dime, there's no convincing this country that it's inherently, automatically problematic, rapey behavior when cops are having sex with citizens on the job.

Americans, even so-called progressive ones, just don't believe that cops rape people on the job all the time, in a lot of different ways.  This article just described two different Holtzclawing tactics, and neither one of those women was either a sex worker or drug user. 

Even when you can convince people maybe it did happen, like with Holtclaw or Golubski, Americans generally don't believe it does happen to anyone but black women. They just barely believe/care that it happens to black ladies. Had Holtzclaw not tried to run "the deal" on a woman with no warrants, no nothing, simply not the right one, and had she not fought back, it would probably still be "no business as usual" in OKC. 

Police rape can and does happen to anybody. America's stuck on thinking it's a "bad apples" or Black Lives Matter issue.  Americans can only think in bumper stickers.  And they almost don't believe in rape anyway, overall.  You have to be a daycare-owning church grandma to take down Daniel Holtzclaw.  That was literally what it took. 

Women in particular can scream to high heaven that they didn't consent, it wasn't their idea, they didn't like it, they didn't want it, they didn't appreciate it -- and all of that will be thrown back in their faces a million different ways because rape culture always says she wanted it.  I remember Cenk from The Young Turks -- an attorney in real life -- inferring consent from the woman in the Bert Lopez video from the angle of her foot in a still photograph.

"He said, she said." "She's lying for money."  Because just like being black is obviously the fastest way to the White House, there's no easier way to catapult yourself to the lifestyle of the rich and famous than getting raped.  Voice of experience here.

I'm glad this person came forward about Myron Howard.  I am thankful for the GPS and bodycam that exist to back her up in court.  None of that was a thing in my day, God bless.  As her attorney said, he was allegedly on a reign of terror  Her ordeal sounds absolutely harrowing, with her attacker allegedly coming back to her home because he knows her boyfriend has been a problem again, that there's been more police activity. 

If proven, wow, what an asshole.  His  police job was like being a roadie for David Lee Roth, kind of, in terms of being able to keep an eye out for different women who might be negotiable.  And he describes it as all consensual because of what I explained above.  Unfortunately he seems to have worked at other departments that shoved him off without getting him arrested.

It's not exactly clear where the other complainant came from, if the department began looking over his GPS records, or she came forward, or what. 

I'm glad that her attorney is out front on this.  But as a survivor, unraped people say things that slap me in the brain.

"You don't expect a police officer, someone in law enforcement, to do such a thing.  And that's what makes it worse."

I appreciate the work this guy is doing.  But is he talking to the mouse in his pocket?  Because I definitely halfway think they're going to try to pull some shit, and I never have warrants or anything. 

I had an experience about a year ago out in the Mojave Desert where it was me and one police officer, not a soul for miles around, in the dead of night.  At first I wasn't sure if he was a real cop or not. 

My second concern was simply being detained by a random man with a gun under those circumstances.  Right?  Anyone who doesn't halfway want to shit themselves in that scenario isn't thinking clearly.  I have no way of knowing whether he's called my plates in to dispatch, turned off his body cam, or what.  The person with the most guns can always do whatever the fuck they want.

So if you didn't know, now you do.

Okay, here's another example of how America's mental health crisis constantly becomes a crime problem.  This young man was randomly murdered while working, probably at his first job, in a sucker attack that he couldn't have seen coming.

Having seen a lot of bodycam videos of Walmart's back room, where they have a team of people watching a battery of cameras with casino-type security, I have to ask how in the fuck this goofball was able to wander through the store with two knives for any length of time.  Point 1.  That's fucking infuriating, that they're too busy guarding Wally's money to make sure this young man didn't get murdered that day.  It seems like there had to be some chance to intervene based on the reporting.

But this suspect's (because everybody is innocent until proven guilty on this whole blog)  statement is the same old shit for almost everybody in America.  It's the full-on tantrum mentality that gets attributed to white women, "Karen," but is actually seen in every demographic in America:

"If I don't get what I want, when I want it, I will flip out, up to and including random mass violence (if I'm a white guy)."

Fuck you, dude.  Seriously fuck yourself. 

You don't like black people?  That's great.  What do they, or anybody, need from your monkey ass?  What do you contribute to humanity in any way, shape, or form, you gigantic, murderous toddler?  If you don't get what you want, when you want it, you're ENTITLED to go remove some productive young person from society?   Who the fuck needs you, and for what?   What white person do you imagine would trade you for Jason Jenkins, the young man you murdered?

Fuck you isn't a good enough phrase for how I feel about this individual.  And I say this as someone permanently disabled by my mental health.  Fuck everything about this guy.  What bothers me so much is that he's one of an army.  Nobody in America imagines that responsibility is something they, personally, can take in their own lives.

I don't know how long I went without the mental healthcare that I need.  A lot of us do it all the time.  And you know what?  I just keep persevering and doing my best until I can get my needs met. As they mention in the reporting, you can go to the emergency room any fucking time and get an emergency referral.  Grow the fuck up like a grown man, and don't give yourself a free pass to kill a high school kid.  Asshole.

Wally is having a really bad Easter 2024.

In Rockford, Illinois, somebody stabbed an 18-year-old Walmart employee to death in a racially motivated attack.  He walked up behind this high school student employee, unprovoked, said some racial slur, and stabbed him to death before he could know what hit him.

This comes hot on the heels, within a day, of a young man smoking some weed that was laced with something, and going on a stabbing spree also in Rockford, IL.  He killed a postal carrier, ran people over, terrorized some young girls, it was a horrible trail of destruction.

Then in Fayetteville, Georgia, one of Wally's employees opened fire inside the store, killing an adult and injuring a 9-year-old.  He's now on the run.  There's no real information as to what that was all about.  But fortunately the little girl is expected to survive.

I'm taking a little time to look at America's mental state, the world our children live in.  It's time to look away from the teachers and police who are actively sexually exploiting them, and focus on the ones who appear to be doing a great job, like the teacher of the year in this video.  No, really.

I love the show Parking Wars for this exact reason.  It's a great cross-section of how insane everyone in America is, how entitled they feel to do whatever the hell they want with their cars.  "There wasn't any parking available, that's why I'm parked on the sidewalk!"  Everybody in America believes if they only need to do one quick thing, wherever they want to park is fine.

The incident in this video happens in the parking lot of a Georgia middle school.  There's a transcript provided from the local news station, WMAZ, that you can follow right along with.

Per that transcript, a lady is going the wrong way through a middle-school parking lot.  A crossing guard tells her to go around the other way.  She declines, saying she needs to pick up her nephew, and keeps going.  The crossing guard calls for an actual police officer to go and deal with her as a traffic infracion, and he does.  Mayhem ensues.

But there are things I hear in body cam videos all the time now that shock my ears every time.  I can't imagine saying this to the police, as if dealing with them was optional, or somehow a negotiation.  And people do it constantly:

• You're doing too much
• No, I'm not (in response to "you're under arrest")
• I'm not comfortable right now
• We're not doing this
  
• Don't touch me
  
• This is my house
  

Maybe it's because I grew up with the old school Chicago Police, who wore black leather motorcyle jackets like the Hell's Angels.  But none of that would ever have come out of my mouth.  I avoided the shit out of them, complied when they spoke to me, and remained silent, to good effect.  The cops never had to tell me anything twice, even when it was total bullshit. 

Yes, I get that I am also white and female.  And yet I ask you to consider how using that strategy might have changed this entire situation.  In fact, had this woman complied with the original guard who told her to drive around -- which is exactly what I would have done -- none of this would have happened at all.  When you blow the first one off, they call other ones.  When they tell you to stay there and wait for them, if you walk away, you get arrested.

Similarly, on Parking Wars, people often call the police on the parking authority, as if they aren't coworkers on the payroll, fingers on the same hand.  It's the childlike nature of Americans, to stamp their feet and make demands, with no idea how their public safety actually works.

"You're doing too much" is a mind-blower to me, the concept that every citizen gets to direct their interactions with the police.  I hear that all the time on body cams, including this one.  The lady who insists that they can't physically control her en route to the car has that same issue, that she gets to pick and choose which protocols will be employed with her.  And if not, the entire conversation will be about why not.  Many people think they can direct which officers will or won't work with them.  Fascinating.  As if the city has unlimited personnel resources to devote to their every whim and preference, like waitstaff.

That is simply not how public safety works.  Police, fire, and paramedics intervene when the basic parameters of society have gone off the rails, and order needs to be restored, like when someone is driving the wrong way in a middle-school parking lot where someone could easily be run over.  The fact that she's picking up her nephew is irrelevant to everyone but her -- the only important person on Earth. 

If you want them to "don't touch me," I suggest staying off their radar by obeying traffic laws.  That's the method I use.  And when I mess that up, I comply with whatever they tell me the first time.  I've also never been tazed.  I've had my civil rights violated by the police many times.  I'm grateful they've never raped or robbed me. 

For me as someone who has run some 911 calls, this incident again shows America as a tantruming toddler who has no idea where its food and shelter come from, how that safety net gets there, nor does it care.  It just wants what it wants, NOW. 

These ladies won't hesitate, won't blink an eye, to call these same officers when they need help, if someone is breaking in, if one of their kids goes missing.  She will expect them to be Johnny-on-the-spot if she gets in a wreck.  But she can't be expected to give them the time of day if they ask her to go around, simply go around and follow the marked flow of traffic.  If they want to talk to her about her driving, they can fuck off.  She's walking away because she's picking up her nephew right now.  I feel like that would be rude to walk away from pretty much anyone who was speaking to you like that, much less an authority figure.  Second one in 90 seconds.

It's her world.  The rest of us are living in it.  This is the same pandemic the shoplifter I just wrote about from Kroger has.  Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism have metastasized into this Main Character Syndrome where you can't tell anybody anything.  We're a nation of Sovereign Citizens, where everyone is their own ultimate authority figure.  How many times do you imagine that shoplifter has been told not to come back to Kroger?  She's been caught enough times that all the employees know her.  And she's "being harassed by the cops."  Just ask her.

America is a nation of victims whose freedom is constantly being curtailed.

What's so troubling about this scenario:

• It happened at the school where this "teacher of the year" works.  Great example for the kids
• Nice grammar for an elementary teaching professional
• A person who reflexively, repeatedly replies, "No, I'm not" to "You're under arrest," may not be the best one to teach such impressionable children the emotional skills they're learning at that age.  She has to actually be convinced that she's going to jail, that it's not an illusion.  No really, how does she run her classroom?  If she's this difficult for the police to redirect in this scenario, what happens when a child doesn't follow her rules in class?
  
• Specifically the rant about her feelings being hurt, and that's why she was behaving that way, should call her teaching credentials into question.  She can't throw her teaching credential out as the reason she's allowed to stick her nose into a traffic stop and not move away when she's told to.
  
  No, seriously.  That's a failure to grasp a core, essential concept that we need her to be relaying to the children, that the world isn't here to kiss your ass.  You don't get to freak out and have the police work around you because you feel like driving the wrong way today.  Kiss Mr. Zappy on the dick now, then go look for your new job when you get out of jail.  Her coworkers standing around making excuses for her filled me with a feeling of doom.  Plenty of black people aren't idiots.  There's no reason to lower the bar for her.
  

Both of these women behaved like complete asses.  Their feelings are irrelevant.  The question is, ma'am, will you please follow the marked flow of traffic with your vehicle.  If not, you will have to deal with a traffic stop by the police.  That's something a lot of adults can't do in America without losing their shit.  She has an obligation to behave like an adult on school grounds even if her sister can't.

I watch a lot of bodycam videos where the person ends up getting tazed and/or arrested, where nothing would have happened to me.  Know how I know?  Because again, when the crossing guard redirected me to go around, I would have apologized and gone the fuck around.  And when a cop yelled, "Ma'am, I need you to wait right there," I would've waited right the fuck there.  D'OH

HERE is a story from KSDK about a high-school student, Kaylee Gain, who was beaten into a coma by a classmate about half a mile from the school.

Note that the story "Kaylee Gain identified as student suspended for fight inside school hallway the day before she was severely injured" is under the "Politics" tab.  This is why America is screwed.

Because once again, the violence against this person is irrelevant other than the larger, toxic narratives swirling around it.  She and the girl who attacked her are merely pawns in a game that has always been designed to grind human life into money.

This is the same issue I have always faced, and why I cut money out of my pension to maintain a blog that nobody reads.  Because the people in high places, who have booming voices, constantly use them to maintain low-quality conversations that drown out anything I might find important to discuss.

Why is this article under "politics" instead of "crime" or "schools"?  Politics should have nothing to do with it.  The question should be how we can de-escalate our kids."

"After the alarming video gained national media attention, Attorney General Andrew Bailey attempted to inject divisive racial politics into the story. He announced he was launching an "investigation" into the school district in an attempt to somehow link the altercation to the administration's DEI 'Statement of Solidarity' from four years ago. [emphasis added]"

Because that's what this Republican Attorney General wants that school district spending its time/money on, defending themselves legally against his investigation.  Not books, not conflict de-escalation programs for the kids, his bullshit.  Duly noted.

"In Bailey's initial letter, he inaccurately assumed school hallways were no longer being patrolled by guards, and he attempted to pin the absence of School Resource Officers on the district's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs. Local police and the school district later refuted both claims.

Bailey used the tragedy to score quick a TV hit on Fox News where he accused school district administrators of "promoting this culture of violence."

"They attend a school that has a history of promoting DEI programs that promote racial divisiveness at the expense of having uniformed police in their schools," Bailey incorrectly told cable show host Laura Ingraham.

She amplified the racially charged rhetoric by telling her audience the video showing a Black girl attack a white girl was an example of "rage spilling out across America, especially in inner cities."

Sen. Josh Hawley quickly heralded Bailey's maneuver and shared a link to the Fox News story, which promoted it as an "exclusive." However, the entire premise was based on false information. 

Cindy Ormsby, an attorney representing the Hazelwood School District, dissected Bailey's false claims one-by-one in a strongly worded letter. She scolded Bailey's "incomplete" investigation, saying it's "dangerous and will likely be an embarrassment to you and your office when and if the facts become known to you and the general public."

But it won't be an embarrassment.  Because he and his contingent DGAF about anything but the little games they play.  The violence among the kids was never a problem for them.  There's no way to have the original conversation that I'm interested in, about conflict de-escalation in the first place.  Because their whole agenda was about ratcheting up the conflict in the specific way they want it escalated.  They're deliberately turning away from the original conversation.

Continuing from the above-linked article:

"Attorneys who file false accusations or submit phony evidence can face a variety of consequences from the courts or the Bar Association, including a motion for sanctions or financial penalties. 

"The district is looking at all with all of its options here. It's not backing down," Ormsby said. "We're looking at whether or not we'll file an ethics complaint.""

We may never get down to what actually happened between the two girls.  Because it happened off of school grounds, which is why there was no school resource officer to break it up.  It had nothing to do with any DEI policy.  That was just red meat for Laura Ingraham and her scumbags.

***

Now, if I may discuss the actual crime at hand, if the politicians are quite done.

Eight teens have been referred to family court and are facing assault charges in this incident.  So it was ugly. 

I'm not watching the video for the same reason I didn't watch the video of George Floyd being murdered.  As a survivor, I don't believe in re-violating people by watching videos of their assaults unnecessarily.  If I were on a jury, if there were some need-to-know, I would watch.  But I don't watch bodycams where someone gets seriously injured for the same reason.  I'm not a gawker.  I'm always looking for something teachable or what we can do better.

Yesterday I wrote about a terrible apology by a parent of an alleged perpetrator.  Here's another one.  The other lady was unprepared for her media debut.  But these folks already had a lawyer and the NAACP on board and should have had a better statement ready for God's sake.  They should already have had a clue about what not to say.

KSDK:

"Officials had not publicly identified DeClue before now, but her family issued an open letter on Thursday night "to address the misconceptions surrounding Maurnice's character," highlighting her honor roll status, proficiency in four languages, and that she played volleyball and violin in school orchestra."

Um... all that and then she almost beat another kid to death by smashing her head repeatedly on the sidewalk.  Even if the other brat provoked her the day before, nobody wants to hear your little maniac play the violin now. 

Or maybe that's just the state of America's racial divide, that people reflexively side with one child or the other based on race alone and the violence is truly irrelevant now.  This country may be at that level of failed humanity, entirely possible.  Maybe there are no people, it's all just a huge game of skins.

"In a Friday phone call, they tell 5 On Your Side their daughter was "dismayed to hear" Gain was in a coma for so long, and relieved to hear about her recent improvements because, "she wants to apologize.""

In this case "wants to apologize" is a euphemism for "doesn't want to be charged with murder." 

""I just feel for my daughter," DeClue's mother said. "She's not a troublemaker, she's not a bully.""

This is the exact sort of thing you should leave out of an apology in my personal opinion.  I've never met any of these people, and this made me want to lunge at this woman.  Ma'am, we know you support your horrible daughter.  That's a given.  That's probably why we're all in this situation now, your parenting.

""Maurnice was not the aggressor," she said. "

I believe there is a video that will contradict this position in court.  Seriously fuck off with that entire statement.  Why did their lawyer allow them to put this out? 

""This had manifested over a three-month period. My daughter was focused on her education, and I don't know... maybe they thought she was a nerd.""

Perhaps.  I got bullied in the home, which led to me getting bullied in school.  I got hit by other kids, called names, sent to school hungry and without adequate clothing.  I got teased about my body which developed faster than everybody else, and called a whore every day in 7th and 8th grade -- and I was a trafficking survivor, which my mother attacked me about daily.  My friend Wendy and I had to flee high school altogether in order to avoid being killed by a gang because of a simple misunderstanding.  All of that lasted much more than three months.  And yet we never beat anybody up, go figure.  Fuck this woman and her daughter too.

"According to DeClue, police investigators have compiled copies of Instagram messages that included menacing threats to Maurnice. 

"My daughter said she blacked out during the fight. I didn't know she was being bullied," Consuella DeClue said. "I would have pulled her out of school.""

Woulda, shoulda, coulda.  Your daughter beat another child into a coma, and you're on the news talking about what a talented little angel she is.  It's the parenting pandemic that will kill us all.

The fact that she claims to have blacked out is an aggravating, not mitigating, factor.  Someone who "blacks out" and attempts to murder someone is a very serious threat to society.

In my world, where I make the rules, we squeeze every disaster for all of the possible benefits  It's my variation of "they go low, and I go high."  I make as much lemonade as possible, basically.

In this situation, here's how it looks:

• We might use this situation to come up with more creative approaches to conflict de-escalation.  For example, some team approach where other kids might work as a group to talk things out, involving maybe the school counselor, when they see things boiling over between the two girls, before it ever comes to a fight.  Because if eight other kids are charged after things go off the rails, those same eight kids could have been enlisted to help them work things out earlier.  Right?
• We can learn how to do better apologies, how not to apologize, and what to say or not say in volatile situations.  We can learn how not to be manipulated by watching the way these things play out.
• We can see who the bad actors are, and by dissecting their narratives, understand their motives and predict their behaviors.
  
• Now that the Attorney General has initiated some nonsense, this may be a good time to revisit the DoJ's findings about Ferguson, or push forward on some of the other issues in Missouri as Attorney Ormsby is quoted about pursuing him with the Bar Association.  Let him FAFO.  He stepped in it.  Wedge that open now.
  
• We can better understand and identify what options and resources we do have available to us, that can't be taken away from us, like our creativity, integrity, and willingness to cooperate with people of good faith.
• Sometimes we learn by bad example, like the parents who refuse to see anything bad in their child no matter what.  Remember that responsibility is response-ability, the ability to respond.  It's the biggest blessing we have while alive.

This story isn't important.  But I'm struck by a few things.

• How much time the police spend in major chain retailers
• What a loose grasp on reality so many Americans have
• The significant overlap between crime and mental health in America, in ways that are potentially easily resolved

By that I mean there's nothing wrong with a lot of people's mental health that couldn't be significantly improved with early intervention.  The way we do things now, where we protect property first and stay in cleanup mode, taking care of people as an afterthought, sucks.

But this lady didn't need to shoplift any bananas, she's already bonkers. 

First of all three different Kroger employees recognized her on sight.  As soon as the police walked in -- and they arrived before she had time to put a single thing in her cart, or ostensibly in her underwear -- they all could describe her.  She has real history there.  And look how quick you can get a cop if you're Kroger.

But when the cops tell her she needs to come to the customer service desk (so they can make sure she's the right one) she's perfectly calm.  Not curious at all about why.  She knows the drill.  Not her first rodeo.

The cop tells her he's been asked to put her on trespass notice.  Her response tells you all you need to know about this woman.

1. Okay.  No questions.
2. You guys are harassing me.  I'm going to get an attorney.  The police department is harassing me.
3. I just walked in and went to the pharmacy to get my prescription.
4. Something something "bunch of fucking child abusers"

So I thought that was hilarious and satisfying.  She obviously knows she's a known thief at that store, they all know her in there.  So she's apparently been caught at least once. That's why she's not surprised when the cops approach her in the grocery store and ask her to come to the service desk.  Because I would be like, WHAT?  WHY!?  lol

And then she flips straight into DARVO, because that's what such people do when confronted:  Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.  She's being harassed, so she'll sue the department.  Yeah, that's the ticket.  Turn the tables. 

When that doesn't work, when the cops "gray rock" her by sticking to the facts without getting emotionally engaged:  "You're not welcome back in the store.  Don't come back here," she goes to a more neutral, victim-based approach,. As if Step 1 never happened, where she knew she was guilty when they first approached her, which was obvious.

Cluster B personality disorders give people a sort of goldfish brain, where they just wipe out whatever happened 20 minutes or even 20 seconds ago, especially if it doesn't work for what's happening with them right now.  Borderline Personality Disorder in particular predisposes people to rewriting shared history in front of your face.  It's always a new moment where they get to start over fresh.

This lady in the video and I both have mental health issues.  The difference is, well, there are many.  For one thing, I don't steal.  I went hungry all the time as a homeless person and never stole anything.  And this lady obviously has money and allegedly just takes things.

But also Cluster B personality disorders, like this woman appears to possibly have, are "opt-in" issues that people develop over a lifetime of bad choices that get enabled.  The more those unhealthy personality traits are allowed to fossilize, the deeper they embed themselves into the person's mindset, the more intractable they become, until you have the kind of entitlement that we see with this lady in the video.  I'm willing to bet she's already been told not to come back there.

I wasn't born mentally ill.  My mental illness was inflicted upon me in childhood by people with Cluster B personality disorders making bad choices and getting away with it.  They broke it, I bought it.  That's their entire game, all day, every day.

There's an old joke:  People with Cluster B personality disorders don't suffer from mental illness, they're carriers.  (Because medically, a carrier is someone who doesn't show signs of an illness themselves, but transmits it to others who do get sick.)  They're people who seek conflict with anyone and everyone in order to avoid facing themselves in any meaningful way.  It can manifest in many different forms.  But the pattern remains the same.

So this lady is definitely a carrier.  Because she makes it harder to work/shop at Kroger and everywhere else she goes.  And other than being pissed off at not getting to do exactly what/when/how she wants, she DGAF.  Bet she'll be back, too.  Bet they'll have to come back again and explain what "trespassed" means.

She's why we can't have nice things.

I did not even know how to write the headline on this, how to express the courage of this girl.  How terrified she must have been with this unhinged person pursuing her.  Check the Manson lamps on this guy.

I don't understand why his mother isn't being charged with anything.  The video clearly shows her dropping him off at the girl, who he then pursues.  He's charged with aggravated assault, kidnapping, and unlawful imprisonment   So he did get hands on her.

He has a past history of coming up behind young girls and attacking him, which his mother surely knows.  In my eyes she's absolutely an accomplice and an equally unhinged and dangerous person.  As I see it she delivered him to the scene.  He's currently on probation for similar blitz attacks on young girls.

The mother claims she pulled over at a random place and told him to get out and exercise.  This is an obvious lie and she should be charged for her role in this attack.  Why she's enabling this?  Unknown.  Uncared.  Charge her.

There was a Timothy Tan Guan, someone with the same name and age in the same town in Arizona, who allegedly did some truly bizarre damage at the airport involving 600 eggs, a hammer, and a hose, that ended up costing over $70,000 in damage.

Almost seems like his mental illness rampaged out of control and nobody dealt with it for years and years.

Anyway, bless this girl for escaping and getting to safety.  Many thanks to the neighbor who stepped up and got her home.  Something needs to be done about that guy's mother.  Glendale PD needs to step up their game on this dangerously unregulated family.  They need a caseworker.