My Other Favorite Sheriff

Charleston County, SC

It's rare you meet a down to earth guy who started out as a patrol officer in a big city....just like you.
He worked the streets, made the arrests, did the paperwork, went to court...just like you.  He did all the same things you did. Now, he's the Sheriff of one of the largest counties in the state, having earned a sterling reputation of honesty and integrity.
Even when he was Chief of what was then, a fledgling department, he ran calls and was at your back when you least expected it. A highly intelligent man, known for speaking his mind and looking out for the line officers. If you deserved it, you would get an ass chewing and he'd tell you why you deserved it. If you did something great, he'd tell you that too. He did it face to face, without threats or intimidation. He remembered every officer's first name. It was a well known fact that he despised terminating people.

To fully appreciate the Sheriff's qualifications, follow this link.  


It's also rare that the Sheriff of a large county finds himself in a police chase. Little did this reckless driver realize that he almost killed the Sheriff. The Sheriff then went in pursuit of the suspect. Speeds reached 120 mph and the Sheriff's SUV puttered at a mere 95 mph. Attempts to stop this clown with stop sticks proved futile and he continued on his rampage of running people off the road and acting with a total disregard for human life and property.

The Sheriff was finally able to corner the suspect at the end of a dirt road. Surprisingly, the Sheriff popped off 9 rounds at the vehicle tires, trying not to injure or kill the guy. It worked. The vehicle was disabled and the suspect apprehended.

I never would have believed it either. Then again, Sheriff Cannon is also known for his determination.

http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2012/jan/31/sheriff-in-wild-25-mile-chase/

Nice work, Sheriff!

White Trash Day

Lexington County, SC

This lovely couple were being detained in different police cars for stealing items from a parked car outside a convenience store.

Thomas Burke, 46, got a bit rowdy in the back of the squad car and started kicking the window. He breaks the window and while several cops are dealing with his dumb ass antics, his lovely companion, Regina Watts, 48, started her own path of destruction.


Ms. Watts slipped her handcuffs and put them down her pants. She then went on the rampage, tearing apart equipment in the police car. She pulled wires, bent the radio and antennas and then....
she had an epiphany in her drunken, Valium induced state. She urinated and defecated on the floorboard of the police car. How lady like.

There are some things that leave a cop speechless and this is one of them. All kinds of thoughts go through your mind;
You wonder how you're going to explain this to the Sarge. You've got a prisoner who slipped her cuffs and had the potential to escape, there's 2 police cars virtually disabled and one  prisoner no one will want to touch. You won't live this one down for weeks. And then, how do you move or even clean the car without yaking up your lunch?

Combative prisoners, even damaging the window....all been done before. The slipping of the handcuffs.  Been done. The defecating AND urinating in the patrol car -- pretty rare. When that happens, it's usually in their own pants. No one will ever want to drive that car again.

Life as a cop.....the fun never stops.

http://www.thestate.com/2012/01/27/2131058/pelion-couple-damages-police-cars.html

Councilman Calls for Sheriff to Renounce his 2nd Amendment push

My favorite Sheriff, Chuck Wright of Spartanburg County, SC

recently encouraged women to go out and get their concealed weapons permits. He did this because of  recent attacks on women.

(See my post of Sheriff Says Women Should Carry Guns)

When he made this statement, he made it more than once and stood his ground. He did not waiver and he had the backing of the local solicitor's office and even the Governor.
As a direct result of his very public statements, over 600 people from that county recently applied for their concealed carry permits.

One lone, stupid, naive Democrat on county council this week made a news release denouncing Sheriff Wright's actions as irresponsible. WTF? Councilman Michael Brown  believes that the Sheriff's ideas of allowing citizens to legally arm themselves is promoting lawlessness.  Councilman Brown seems to think that more time should be spent counseling at risk youth.  BWAAAA!  I believe many of you laugh with me and you do so for so many obvious reasons.

Mr. Brown has his head in the sand. Ah, on second thought, maybe it's in his ass.
The 2nd amendment is a powerful thing and the Sheriff believes in a person's Constitutional right to bear arms.
He's also a realist. There is no way that the police can protect us all 24/7 and, according to the US Supreme Court, they have no duty to.
Perhaps Mr. Brown should read this document:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1521.pdf

The city of Chicago and the District of Columbia tried banning guns and look what happened to them. They became the most lawless cities in the US.

Nope, the Sheriff of any county has a duty to preserve and protect the Constitution of the US and that includes upholding both the 2nd and 14th amendment, as well as all applicable state laws.

Thumbs up to Sheriff Wright for being a man who tells it like it is!

Burglar Gets a Bullet

North Charleston, SC

When will the bad guys with guns learn? They just don't get it. More and more people are arming themselves against the criminal element and rightfully so.
I don't know about anywhere else, but in South Carolina, there's been a spurt of law abiding armed citizens fighting back.

The bad guys are too stupid to watch the news or read. Too bad. They might learn something.
What would they learn? They might learn that if they are in the act of committing a dangerous felony, that the homeowner could shoot back and they could die.  Oh yes, the homeowner or the victim of a crime such as this, who actually had to use deadly force, is immune from criminal prosecution and from any civil action. Imagine that...the victim has a few rights.

In this particular incident, a man is taking a nap when a neighbor calls to alert him of 2 guys breaking in to his apartment. He confronts the 2 burglars going through his kitchen cabinets. One burglar is armed and points a gun directly at him. He flees upstairs and gets his own gun. He comes downstairs and shoots one of the burglars. They both fled in a car. As luck would have it, their driving sucked enough to draw the attention of the po-po.
Naturally, they were most reluctant to stop for the police. After all, one guy has a gun shot wound and there's a stolen gun in the car. Oh yes, let's not forget the burglary.  Dumb shits. They're lucky they're not dead.

And here's a shocking statistic, the bumbling burglars are both black males, 18 and 19 years of age.

http://www.live5news.com/story/16597438/shooting-north-charleston

CWP Holder Shoots Armed Robber

Spartanburg, SC


Anyone who has spent any time in the southeast knows all about the Waffle House. They're open 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, and on all holidays. They still use the old fashioned, short order cook language, with the waitress and the cook bantering back and forth.
A particular bit of Waffle House slang was an inspiration for a Hootie and the Blowfish album titled "Scattered, Covered and Smothered." The WH definition is 'scattered' on the grill, 'covered' in onions, and 'smothered' in cheese. Oh yea, their food is a heart attack looking for a place to happen.
But there's always their famous coffee and sweet tea....which is always free to first responders.

And considering they are open 24/7, the customers and clientele are always varied. From cops, truckers, blue collar workers, and of course, the after night club crowd. With that last thought, some Waffle Houses have been forced to hire off duty cops on Friday and Saturday nights just to deter some of the problems associated with alcohol consumption. So it seems pretty clear that there's always someone in a Waffle House.

It is said that if there is a Waffle House open following a disaster, it's a positive sign that things are recovering. It's a sign of normalcy. An oasis in the middle of a desert.

Imagine some moronic thug and his friend who hatch this ingenious plan to rob a Waffle House. It tends to conjure up hilarious laughter from cops. Even if a robbery or other crime went down successfully, I have found that waitresses and cooks have pretty good memories and take criminal matters upon their turf rather personally.

So here we have 2 black male thugs who attempt to rob a Waffle House at 1:15 a.m.
A customer in the restaurant was a concealed weapon permit holder and he was armed. The permit holder attempted to detain the robber at gun point until the arrival of police. However, one robber was stupid enough to point his handgun at the permit holder. 19 year old Dante Lamont Williams was shot and killed by this armed law abiding citizen. He was shot once in the head and once in the chest. The other robber fled the scene.

According to the Law Abiding Citizen's Self Defense Act, and the Protection of Persons and Property Act, the CWP holder has the right to employ deadly force in self defense, defense of a third person, or to prevent the commission of a dangerous felony.
Williams and his cohort were clearly armed and presenting a threat. What I see is that a law abiding citizen took the appropriate action necessary to eliminate a threat. Unless the CWP holder violated the terms or conditions in their permit, (for example, the Waffle House could have had a sign prohibiting concealed weapons upon their premises), then it is clear that the CWP holder not only acted within the legal limits of the law, he also did the world a favor.

A Night of Foolishness

Most of the time, I pick a story and run with it. Usually I'm just ranting on about what's wrong in the world or oddities I come across. Sometimes people tell me stories and I might share it with you. I do love a good story, bizarre and otherwise.

It was late on Sunday. Generally speaking, a night that's rather chilly outside does help keep the roaches inside. Sunday night had a weird aura about it. Maybe because of the Monday holiday or maybe there was just something in the air. It seemed like every call involved alcohol, juveniles, and the weird and stupid.

It was kind of a chilly night for the southeast. The temps were hovering around freezing so what people that were out, they were bundled up.
Last night, the flag-me-down light was lit on the patrol car. At least 4 times, people waved us down as we were randomly patrolling.

For instance; It's 11:30 p.m. and we spot a w/m juvie loitering around the parking lot of a closed drugstore. He waves at us. We pull off to speak with him and then 3 more younger kids on bicycles come out from the side of the building. The one that waved us down was the oldest and 15 yoa. He apparently didn't mean to wave us over to him. While we're talking to him, we notice he's got a wad of tobacco wedged in his cheek. He's also wearing braces. My partner makes him dump the can and spit out the crap in his mouth. How can his orthodontist not notice that? All the kids have their own phones so we get an adult from one of them. An 18 year old brother comes to pick them up some 20 mins later. It's cold out and all of them were wearing some kind of camoflauge hunting gear. They looked like a bunch of mini me rednecks.
They really weren't a major problem and had respectful attitudes...but my kids sure as hell wouldn't be out at this time of night, school night or not.

We get flagged down at a gas station some 20 mins later by 2 w/m's who were gassing up. We recognize one as an arrest from the week before for being loud, wasted and stupid. He's whining like a girl because his former girlfriend got on his Facebook page, posted a nasty status update, changed his Facebook password and did the same on his yahoo email account. After she did all that, she sent him a text taunting him. If the idiot hadn't given her his passwords, it never would have happened. Nothing criminal yet. Sorry about your luck.
Funny. He's wearing camo pants and his buddy is wearing a camo vest.
Wear your camo day! No one told us.

We all know that jurisdictions can often be a puzzle. Sometimes you have to go outside your jurisdiction to get to the other side, or maybe your jurisdiction is one side of the street. We're passing a cemetery at 1:30 a.m. and a car's tail lights catch our eye. We turn around and enter the cemetery. Sad but true fact... the bronze vases and other statuary are often stolen and taken to scrap yards for the cash. Scrap yard dealers don't care where it came from. Even though we're very sure the cemetery is not in our jurisdiction, we pull in behind a mini van. We ask dispatch to call the proper jurisdiction, but we light them up and approach, seeing 3, maybe 4 people inside the van. We shine our lights around inside and don't see much of anything that would indicate criminal activity. We start asking questions of their reasons for being there and got a crazy ass answer. They show us some electronic equipment and a cell phone app. They were ghost hunters! Too funny not to believe from a couple of pimple faced geeks.
We cancel the back up and tell them to leave. We laugh hysterically and try to tell dispatch what we just did without sounding like giggly little girls.

About 2 a.m. and we're sitting at a traffic light minding our own business when some old guy over at the local Stop n Rob is yelling, "HEY MR. POLEECE!" We do our civic duty and make a u-turn. It becomes apparent that our number one fan is wearing a good many layers of clothes and is not so coordinated. He can't wave his arms and walk at the same time. It puts him off balance and he falls. All those layers of clothes protects him though, as he barely notices and bounces right back up like it's an every day occurrence. We get up close with the car. We get 10 feet away from him and we give each other that silent look. You know, that certain "oh, shit" look partners give each other when they know that the last thing they wanted to deal with tonight was a slobbering, smelly drunk. Yea, we both have to get our asses out of the car and freeze while talking to this drunken fool. The guy's a mumbler and we hear every other word, and that word we do hear jumps about 10 decibels. He's a wobblin' and holding on to the car to steady himself. We finally get that the Stop n Rob was not hospitable to him and ejected him from the premises. He was indeed insulted. Of course, when you're dealing with a smelly drunk, they always want to get up close and personal, and they want you to give them a ride. Stupid ass doesn't even remember how he got there. As luck would have it, we were able to contact someone who got him in about 20 minutes. WHEW! Crisis averted.

Some of you have laptops in your car and there's those rare occasions that they actually work. The DMV goes down, the server is slow...blah, blah. You shut it down, you sign back in. No luck. When this happens, you have to do it the old-fashioned way. Call the dispatcher on the radio and run it. The dispatchers know who has computers in their cars and who doesn't. Sometimes it's kind of boring and someone needs to liven things up. We ran a guy's DL number the other day and well, we were saving this one for a special occasion. We gave the dispatcher the DL number. Within seconds, the dispatcher is attempting to pronounce an Indian first name that is about 15 characters long. She tries it twice and then catches on by saying, "you have it on your screen, don't you?" We will, of course, be paying for that one.

It's 3 a.m. and most everyone with any sense is inside some place warm. Oh Christ! Wal-mart is open 24/7.
Oh no....a shoplifter on a motorized shopping cart. Hot pursuit. It was a harrowing and exhausting chase, but we caught our man. He did not want to go to jail.
And get this, the very large larcenous lunatic was wearing a green camouflage hat.

Seriously?

Lancaster, SC

Seriously? Are you that stupid? You're a sworn law enforcement officer so you have to know that today's technology won't allow you to get away with much.

Kenneth Perdue

36 year old former Deputy Kenneth Perdue here of the Lancaster County Sheriff's office, must have thought that being on duty, in uniform, and driving his patrol car wouldn't get him noticed. Stealing $500. worth of ceramic tiles from a house under construction falls in to the "Are you that freakin' stupid?" category.

Things are tough out there and I would love to renovate my kitchen for free, but I sure as hell am not going out there and steal the products to make it happen. I need my job too much to pay those other bills.

Needless to say, the Sheriff of Lancaster County is quite embarrassed by the incident, and rightfully so.
Dude! You're a freakin idiot!