When will it end???

I am starting to see a trend in this country that I am not very happy about.

In a time span of less than a month, there have been three shooting sprees - one in Oakland, another in Pittsburgh, and most recently one here in the Long Beach area. And the results are not good: seven police officers were killed in two of the three aforementioned incidents (4 from Oakland - one of which was declared brain-dead; and 3 from Pittsburgh). Yesterday, a senseless act of violence occurred at Long Beach Memorial Hospital - a worker came in with two guns, killing his boss and another co-worker before committing suicide.

I'm not sure what it is, or what drives individuals to go postal and cause major problems. But something has to be done about this trend - and fast.

$

I did hear that the city of LA passed an ordinance allowing the LAPD officers to roll Code 3 at their own discretion on any major "Hot Shot" call - which means, like Metro, the officers will respond Code 3 if they feel that the Hot Shot call poses a threat to life.

One thing I do like LAPD to do is to have the dispatchers start using their "channel markers" in the event there is a life-threatening situation in progress. Outside of L.A., its called a 10-33, others call it a Code-33; Metro Police calls it "Code Red". These channel markers on the radio frequency is a beeping tone that is heard once every 8 seconds. LAPD really needs to utilize this - an Air unit told dispatch once at least three times to keep one of the radio frequencies clear during a pursuit. Chief Bratton, I hope you're reading this...

$

Somewhat of a busy Saturday coming up - I need to pay a few bills and then pickup bookshelves from Ikea. Then from there...who knows...

Well I hope everybody has a great weekend. More from me soon.


Rob