GWOT Devil's Advocate
Nov. 30th, 2018 05:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkitty"There are four types of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable and praiseworthy." - Ambroce Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_
There is a rattling on the door of my cage.
I come up with my handgun, tac light on, sight picture acquired, roaring.
"Identify yourself!"
"Blue on blue!" she replies. "Sharon!"
I bring the barrel down to low ready. She is no longer blinded. She is empty handed.
"Sorry, sir, didn't want this on radio. The SLE is here in the DC and he wants to meet with you as you are."
"Time?" I ask instead of looking at my watch, which would require me to change my grip on my handgun.
"0330."
I'd had one hour of sleep. Well, that would have to do. This was apocalpyse.
"Where?"
"Conference room 2. He's got a cop with him."
I holstered. I put down my gun belt, put on my pants, put my gun belt back on again. T-shirt and jacket. Radio, on. Phone back in my pocket.
Behind me, a nest on the floor made of two blankets, a few otherwise useless 2 liter plastic soda bottle holders supporting a broken big of plank as a table.
I blinked, unlocked the cage, locked it again behind me. An interesting misuse of a server rack. But it had certain advantages, including improved odds of waking up. I'd pissed a _lot_ of people off, some of whom I wasn't allowed to shoot.
Sharon stood there. She was also armed, of course, but had a shotgun slung over her shoulder in addition to her handgun.
She motioned very carefully with her off hand.
"I think he meant now."
"Copy that. Now is going to be after a visit to the little data center tech's input/output room."
Visit completed, hands and face washed and pat-dried on the towel I kept hidden under a ceiling tile with another handgun, I allowed Sharon to escort me to the conference room.
The guy in the business suit in his 50s was obviously the cop. Shoulder holster pistol. Ankle holster. Probably a knife or two. Badge clipped to his belt. He did not extend a hand or greet me. He did not sit at the single table in the room, but in a guest type chair - non rolling - scooched into a corner. Properly tactical.
The SLE was less formally dressed, shirt and tie and slacks, no blazer. He was already seated, and motioned me to a seat at the conference table, then for Sharon to close the door.
"[Echo 18]," he stated heavily. "We need to discuss rules of engagement."
I nodded. I did not ask for an introduction to the cop, who might be anyone from a little badly needed security for the SLE to a detective sent down from SJPD to arrest me. Any answer was OK with me. A side perk of being dead.
"Your company sent me your resume. You know guns and you know the law."
I nodded.
"So explain how shooting people for trespassing is OK."
I was way too tired for this conversation. But I'd been way too tired for a lot of conversations recently, including some that had ended suddenly in blood. So here we go.
"Simple trespass, Penal Code 602, is a minor crime. A misdemeanor. The severity goes up depending on where you trespass. An airport, a prison or a military base can become felonies, depending on variables whether you try to sneak in the gate or over the fence. But that's not what's happening on your perimeter today, sir.
"A week ago there were several million more or less happy people in the Bay Area. Today there are at least half a million less, between evacuees, wounded, the dying and the dead. The rest are desperate, starving, frightened and furious.
"The Castle Doctrine, well established in both common law and case law, states that if someone tries to break into your house, especially with weapons, you may work on what is called in California a 'rebuttable presumption' that they are breaking in to kill you. So to quote a TV show, you don't have to wait to kill them right back.
"That's the situation we're in here. Just crossing a line painted on pavement is not the issue. _Why_ the person is coming here is the issue. We don't have the resources to take care of thousands of people. Food, potable water, security - by which I mean keeping them from killing _each other_ - sanitation, medical care, shelter, clothing, bedding, you name it.
"So we have to keep them out. We have to. Or we're all dead. It's that ugly and that simple.
"If Officer Friendly over there would like to charge me with murder, I would demand a jury trial and I would advance at least two lines of defense. One is the Castle Doctrine. These are homes now. If you try to light a house on fire or break into a house with weapons, you deserve what you get. The other is necessity. No court can order someone to lie back and relax and let themselves be killed. Collective self defense is still self defense.
"The counter argument, by the way, is called in common law the felony murder rule. If I kill someone - in any way, by any method! - in the commission of a felony crime, the death is murder. Now consider someone coming on board to steal a loaf of bread. Is stealing food murder? Maybe not that first guy. How about the second? Or the hundredth? Or the thousandth?
"You have a legal department. But I'll make it even simpler. You let _them_ in ... the millions of people we can't help ... and we all die.
"So I do everything I can to prevent it. Physical barriers. Procedural barriers. Guards, with whom I have had this conversation in several forms - and some of whom have chosen to part ways over. Signage, some of which is lying.
"But let's talk about a sign that is not a lie. Excuse me, Deputy, have you been to County?"
His look said it all. Do bears shit in the woods?
"County is a No Hostage Facility. This site, given the emergency conditions we are trying to survive under, I have unilaterally and without authority declared a No Hostage Facility. Thus the signs at the gate. If you attempt to take hostages _here_, you endanger everyone's lives several different ways - we can't call the police, we have to strip the perimeter to try to deal with you so we can all get killed that way, you can bargain with your hostages to get in worse and worse situations with untrained people, the list goes on and on and on.
"The only answer to the Hostage Game is not to play. We're not LAPD or Russian Army, we're not going to shoot the hostage. But we are going to shoot the hostage-takers as if the hostages don't exist, right away, as soon as we can, because that is the best and under these conditions _ONLY_ method for trying to save their lives - which are probably lost - but also ours as well, which we can save only through violence with speed.
"So, Deputy, do you have to wait for someone to shoot you before you can shoot them?"
He was very, very alert at this point. This was a shooting people type conversation.
"No," he said warily while assessing whether I could out draw him. Almost certainly not.
"Let's ignore the cop problem for a minute. We empower police to act on behalf of the public trust, so if you don't obey the cops, you're breaking the law; if you threaten them you're not just threatening a person you're threatening everybody; and if you look like you might shoot one they can light you up and go home feeling good about the whole thing.
"I'm not a cop, thank God. Because if I were the po-po, my department would call me to 24/7 duty until this is resolved. Sticking with my outside employment instead would probably get me fired from my agency. All police are disaster service workers. But you have to be alive to get fired, right? How do you like the safety I'm providing, Deputy?"
The deputy now looked like he was sucking on a lemon. I'd called him out.
"The duty I was called out to was to secure this site. That's not stuff. That's people. But for people to survive, they need stuff.
"That is the authority under which I'm going out day after day to go get stuff. Finance orders, requisitions, purchase orders. Commercial paper to cover my ass against allegations of burglary and strongarm robbery. Because necessity is a weak reed. Oh, and cash which is probably worthless soon, with which I fucked over several friends ... to get stuff. Lifesaving stuff. Because friends are disposable, but the stuff can be used to save the lives of your people.
"So there it is. The other reason that I have to go out with the convoys, to make sure that getting stuff doesn't turn to robbery, then rape, then murder. To stop that particular stone before it starts rolling."
The SLE now looked as tired as I felt.
"I've asked for cops, no answer. I've asked for military, even though they're customers, sorry we're busy. I've asked Corporate Security for backup and they started laughing.
"They want to evacuate the site. Buses for eight hundred."
And fuck the rest. There would be no contractors among the chosen few.
"And what about their families, sir?"
He blinked.
"When newly elected President Carter was briefed on the evacuation plan for DC, he learned that Marine One would carry him and his key staff to safety. Marine Two would carry the First Family and more key staff. Carter asked, 'What about all their families?'
"They would wait hours for buses to take them to the nearest military base. Which in nuclear war would mean taking them from a place where they will be vaporized in minutes to another place where they will be vaporized in minutes.
"This is nuclear war. But people are still human. I don't have a family, so I'm cool. But try to load eight hundred people without their families and you'll have a riot that Jesus with a bullwhip couldn't control.
"Speaking of which, do you have security on your family as well?"
With infinite tiredness, he spoke slowly.
"They are in the hands of God."
He paused.
"They were at Fisherman's Wharf."
In the City. Well within blast and thermal range, but not within the radius of total destruction. They were dead beyond doubt, and if they were lucky it was quick.
'I'm sorry for your loss' just doesn't cut it. So I said nothing.
The SLE continued heavily.
"These people are my family now. Through some accident, some miracle, some happenstance ... I am charged with their safety and well being."
I drew my handgun and the deputy, caught flat footed, started his draw. I gave it to the SLE butt first. The deputy finished his draw and acquired a sight picture on me. Too late, I could have dropped your protectee three times over, or him and then you twice. Or you twice and then him, if I cared if I survived.
Sometimes the only way to demonstrate incompetence in others is to challenge it, at some risk.
I'd bet my life, and the site. And I'd won. It was getting to be a habit.
Startled, the SLE took the firearm.
"Would you kill to protect your family, sir?"
He set it on the table and with a finger, turned it ninety degrees so that the barrel pointed at none of the three of us.
The deputy stopped muzzling me and switched to low ready. The SLE growled, "Put that away!" and he holstered, needing to look at his holster to do so. Noob.
"Yes," the SLE said slowly. Then slid the pistol back to me.
"Carry on," he said and got up and headed to the door.
The deputy followed. The SLE growled to him, "You're fired! Go to your day job, fool!"
They argued further as the SLE left. I motioned Sharon forward.
"Escort the deputy off the site, please, he was just termed."
I stumbled back to my cage to get some sleep. One body need you can't get around, even in an apocalypse.
There is a rattling on the door of my cage.
I come up with my handgun, tac light on, sight picture acquired, roaring.
"Identify yourself!"
"Blue on blue!" she replies. "Sharon!"
I bring the barrel down to low ready. She is no longer blinded. She is empty handed.
"Sorry, sir, didn't want this on radio. The SLE is here in the DC and he wants to meet with you as you are."
"Time?" I ask instead of looking at my watch, which would require me to change my grip on my handgun.
"0330."
I'd had one hour of sleep. Well, that would have to do. This was apocalpyse.
"Where?"
"Conference room 2. He's got a cop with him."
I holstered. I put down my gun belt, put on my pants, put my gun belt back on again. T-shirt and jacket. Radio, on. Phone back in my pocket.
Behind me, a nest on the floor made of two blankets, a few otherwise useless 2 liter plastic soda bottle holders supporting a broken big of plank as a table.
I blinked, unlocked the cage, locked it again behind me. An interesting misuse of a server rack. But it had certain advantages, including improved odds of waking up. I'd pissed a _lot_ of people off, some of whom I wasn't allowed to shoot.
Sharon stood there. She was also armed, of course, but had a shotgun slung over her shoulder in addition to her handgun.
She motioned very carefully with her off hand.
"I think he meant now."
"Copy that. Now is going to be after a visit to the little data center tech's input/output room."
Visit completed, hands and face washed and pat-dried on the towel I kept hidden under a ceiling tile with another handgun, I allowed Sharon to escort me to the conference room.
The guy in the business suit in his 50s was obviously the cop. Shoulder holster pistol. Ankle holster. Probably a knife or two. Badge clipped to his belt. He did not extend a hand or greet me. He did not sit at the single table in the room, but in a guest type chair - non rolling - scooched into a corner. Properly tactical.
The SLE was less formally dressed, shirt and tie and slacks, no blazer. He was already seated, and motioned me to a seat at the conference table, then for Sharon to close the door.
"[Echo 18]," he stated heavily. "We need to discuss rules of engagement."
I nodded. I did not ask for an introduction to the cop, who might be anyone from a little badly needed security for the SLE to a detective sent down from SJPD to arrest me. Any answer was OK with me. A side perk of being dead.
"Your company sent me your resume. You know guns and you know the law."
I nodded.
"So explain how shooting people for trespassing is OK."
I was way too tired for this conversation. But I'd been way too tired for a lot of conversations recently, including some that had ended suddenly in blood. So here we go.
"Simple trespass, Penal Code 602, is a minor crime. A misdemeanor. The severity goes up depending on where you trespass. An airport, a prison or a military base can become felonies, depending on variables whether you try to sneak in the gate or over the fence. But that's not what's happening on your perimeter today, sir.
"A week ago there were several million more or less happy people in the Bay Area. Today there are at least half a million less, between evacuees, wounded, the dying and the dead. The rest are desperate, starving, frightened and furious.
"The Castle Doctrine, well established in both common law and case law, states that if someone tries to break into your house, especially with weapons, you may work on what is called in California a 'rebuttable presumption' that they are breaking in to kill you. So to quote a TV show, you don't have to wait to kill them right back.
"That's the situation we're in here. Just crossing a line painted on pavement is not the issue. _Why_ the person is coming here is the issue. We don't have the resources to take care of thousands of people. Food, potable water, security - by which I mean keeping them from killing _each other_ - sanitation, medical care, shelter, clothing, bedding, you name it.
"So we have to keep them out. We have to. Or we're all dead. It's that ugly and that simple.
"If Officer Friendly over there would like to charge me with murder, I would demand a jury trial and I would advance at least two lines of defense. One is the Castle Doctrine. These are homes now. If you try to light a house on fire or break into a house with weapons, you deserve what you get. The other is necessity. No court can order someone to lie back and relax and let themselves be killed. Collective self defense is still self defense.
"The counter argument, by the way, is called in common law the felony murder rule. If I kill someone - in any way, by any method! - in the commission of a felony crime, the death is murder. Now consider someone coming on board to steal a loaf of bread. Is stealing food murder? Maybe not that first guy. How about the second? Or the hundredth? Or the thousandth?
"You have a legal department. But I'll make it even simpler. You let _them_ in ... the millions of people we can't help ... and we all die.
"So I do everything I can to prevent it. Physical barriers. Procedural barriers. Guards, with whom I have had this conversation in several forms - and some of whom have chosen to part ways over. Signage, some of which is lying.
"But let's talk about a sign that is not a lie. Excuse me, Deputy, have you been to County?"
His look said it all. Do bears shit in the woods?
"County is a No Hostage Facility. This site, given the emergency conditions we are trying to survive under, I have unilaterally and without authority declared a No Hostage Facility. Thus the signs at the gate. If you attempt to take hostages _here_, you endanger everyone's lives several different ways - we can't call the police, we have to strip the perimeter to try to deal with you so we can all get killed that way, you can bargain with your hostages to get in worse and worse situations with untrained people, the list goes on and on and on.
"The only answer to the Hostage Game is not to play. We're not LAPD or Russian Army, we're not going to shoot the hostage. But we are going to shoot the hostage-takers as if the hostages don't exist, right away, as soon as we can, because that is the best and under these conditions _ONLY_ method for trying to save their lives - which are probably lost - but also ours as well, which we can save only through violence with speed.
"So, Deputy, do you have to wait for someone to shoot you before you can shoot them?"
He was very, very alert at this point. This was a shooting people type conversation.
"No," he said warily while assessing whether I could out draw him. Almost certainly not.
"Let's ignore the cop problem for a minute. We empower police to act on behalf of the public trust, so if you don't obey the cops, you're breaking the law; if you threaten them you're not just threatening a person you're threatening everybody; and if you look like you might shoot one they can light you up and go home feeling good about the whole thing.
"I'm not a cop, thank God. Because if I were the po-po, my department would call me to 24/7 duty until this is resolved. Sticking with my outside employment instead would probably get me fired from my agency. All police are disaster service workers. But you have to be alive to get fired, right? How do you like the safety I'm providing, Deputy?"
The deputy now looked like he was sucking on a lemon. I'd called him out.
"The duty I was called out to was to secure this site. That's not stuff. That's people. But for people to survive, they need stuff.
"That is the authority under which I'm going out day after day to go get stuff. Finance orders, requisitions, purchase orders. Commercial paper to cover my ass against allegations of burglary and strongarm robbery. Because necessity is a weak reed. Oh, and cash which is probably worthless soon, with which I fucked over several friends ... to get stuff. Lifesaving stuff. Because friends are disposable, but the stuff can be used to save the lives of your people.
"So there it is. The other reason that I have to go out with the convoys, to make sure that getting stuff doesn't turn to robbery, then rape, then murder. To stop that particular stone before it starts rolling."
The SLE now looked as tired as I felt.
"I've asked for cops, no answer. I've asked for military, even though they're customers, sorry we're busy. I've asked Corporate Security for backup and they started laughing.
"They want to evacuate the site. Buses for eight hundred."
And fuck the rest. There would be no contractors among the chosen few.
"And what about their families, sir?"
He blinked.
"When newly elected President Carter was briefed on the evacuation plan for DC, he learned that Marine One would carry him and his key staff to safety. Marine Two would carry the First Family and more key staff. Carter asked, 'What about all their families?'
"They would wait hours for buses to take them to the nearest military base. Which in nuclear war would mean taking them from a place where they will be vaporized in minutes to another place where they will be vaporized in minutes.
"This is nuclear war. But people are still human. I don't have a family, so I'm cool. But try to load eight hundred people without their families and you'll have a riot that Jesus with a bullwhip couldn't control.
"Speaking of which, do you have security on your family as well?"
With infinite tiredness, he spoke slowly.
"They are in the hands of God."
He paused.
"They were at Fisherman's Wharf."
In the City. Well within blast and thermal range, but not within the radius of total destruction. They were dead beyond doubt, and if they were lucky it was quick.
'I'm sorry for your loss' just doesn't cut it. So I said nothing.
The SLE continued heavily.
"These people are my family now. Through some accident, some miracle, some happenstance ... I am charged with their safety and well being."
I drew my handgun and the deputy, caught flat footed, started his draw. I gave it to the SLE butt first. The deputy finished his draw and acquired a sight picture on me. Too late, I could have dropped your protectee three times over, or him and then you twice. Or you twice and then him, if I cared if I survived.
Sometimes the only way to demonstrate incompetence in others is to challenge it, at some risk.
I'd bet my life, and the site. And I'd won. It was getting to be a habit.
Startled, the SLE took the firearm.
"Would you kill to protect your family, sir?"
He set it on the table and with a finger, turned it ninety degrees so that the barrel pointed at none of the three of us.
The deputy stopped muzzling me and switched to low ready. The SLE growled, "Put that away!" and he holstered, needing to look at his holster to do so. Noob.
"Yes," the SLE said slowly. Then slid the pistol back to me.
"Carry on," he said and got up and headed to the door.
The deputy followed. The SLE growled to him, "You're fired! Go to your day job, fool!"
They argued further as the SLE left. I motioned Sharon forward.
"Escort the deputy off the site, please, he was just termed."
I stumbled back to my cage to get some sleep. One body need you can't get around, even in an apocalypse.
