Tag: Stratton

How about a law requiring at least one cash register to be staffed?

My 64 years as a police officer, both paid and as a volunteer, put me in contact with many people who just cannot learn from experience. They just keep committing the same offenses, paying more fines and serving more and more jail and probation time, all the while unable to figure out that what happened to them is their own fault.

Like many retired geezers, I belong to a breakfast group that meets several times a week. Unlike most others, we tend to move our location regularly and have tried many different restaurants.

As a private citizen, my first thoughts after seeing the video of the recent attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump involved mostly anger and revulsion. However, as a retired police command officer with experience in preparing security preparations for presidential appearances, my questions, after a few minutes of analyzing the situation, became primarily about how the Secret Service could let such a thing happen.

I spend quite a bit of time on my computer, and I thought that I knew all about how to prevent myself from being scammed. Not clicking on unknown or questionable sites, not answering calls from unknown callers and other safety measures are things that I try to practice all of the time. I was sure that no scammer could get to me, but one apparently did.

Jan. 10, 2024, marked the end of a significant phase — one that outside of God and family has pretty much dominated my life. It is the date that my resignation as an auxiliary police officer took effect, and it is the date that marks exactly 64 years of my having been a certified, sworn police officer.

I am just about fed up with the ever-growing campaign to totally remove any mention of Christ from references to the Christmas season. “Happy holidays” just doesn’t cut it, and I am seeing and hearing so much of that phrase, and just the word “holidays,” that I’m about to scream.

During the calendar year of 2022, the number of line-of-duty officer deaths in the U.S. was 246, swelled somewhat by the COVID-19 epidemic. Covid deaths were in the line of duty as well as those who died at the hands of assailants because police officers could not hunker down and avoid public contact like civilians did. But the number who died from senseless violent actions totaled 78, with 64 officers dying as result of gun violence, and 14 from assaults by vehicle.

Just when you begin to think that the Biden administration couldn’t possibly do any more damage to the mores and values of our society, they manage to come up with just one more thing that is counterproductive to everything that most of us have been taught — the idea that working, paying one’s bills and keeping a good credit rating are positive things.

The U.S. Congress has for months been working on passing a new bill to ban assault weapons. A group of Democrats, now supported by nearly enough RINO Republicans to get the bill passed, claim that the bill is the answer to the problem of mass shootings in this country.