cop map debuts

In an effort to reign in the power of America's various police forces and to hold them accountable for their actions, cities across the land have subscribed to a new system for tracking police officers' location and activity in real-time. Pulling data automatically from GPS units already installed in most of the cruisers used by law enforcement today, the system – which is unofficially called Watch-Watching – also relies on input from the officers themselves. By entering an activity-specific code into his laptop computer at least once every fifteen minutes, the public servant tells the system what he is doing, be it patrolling, looking for a suspect, following up on a report, lurking, violating somebody's Constitutional rights, or just plain acting the fool. If the code as entered does not match paperwork filed following an arrest or citation, the system will help individuals wrongfully targeted by the pigs prove that their rights were abused or that they were discriminated against; alternately, codes that do match paperwork can be used to strengthen an officer's case.

Watch-Watching allows ordinary citizens to keep tabs on the persons tasked with keeping them safe. By logging onto QuisCustodietIpsosCustodos.net (Latin for “Who watches the watchers?”), regular citizens can note the location and direction-of-travel of any police officer in their vicinity so that they might go about their business without undue exposure to a role-crazy, rule-heavy cop. Since 11 September 2001, many police departments and tens of thousands of individual cops have convinced themselves that every traffic stop will bag them the next bin Laden, that the protections clearly defined in the United States Constitution do not exist, and that all citizen who step outside the lines – even if only briefly – deserve to be stopped, questioned, and kicked in the head while handcuffed. Today, Americans are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist; instead of protecting us from external threat, many police officers have themselves become internal threats, abusing rights, ending lives, and generally treating us – their pay-masters and the persons they are charged with protecting – with malicious and murderous contempt.

Such abuses of power must end; such overreaches must stop. Only through united action might we guide our police forces back into the roles which they filled for so long – those of selfless helper, trusted protector, and honor-bound guardian. Watch-Watching is just one tool in the citizen's arsenal, just one means by which she can protect her Liberty from abuse, her body from violation, and her virtue from destruction. Other tools include: filming unlawful or overly aggressive police activity and forwarding that footage to copblock.org; knowing one's rights and, more importantly, actively protecting them; maintaining awareness of this growing internal threat by speaking with one's peers and encouraging civic leaders to join in the struggle against persons who think that badges confer special rights. As with any new tool, Watch-Watching will only be a strong as those who wield it; we at Mentiri Factorem Productions suspect that certain police departments and officers will find ways to hide their movements so that they might continue to abuse the rights of non-violent civilians and innocent pursuers of Happiness alike, murdering and maiming to their hearts' content. Therefore, dear reader, keep your head on a swivel, a song in your heart, and drive it like you stole it. Mahalo.

© mentiri factorem fecit; 場黑麥

foreboding forgotten, ignored

Against the advice of more than a half dozen friends and close associates, an area man ignored feelings of foreboding and deeply-rooted worry and set out alone on an arduous, five-day-long bicycle ride through Death Valley. Planning on sticking to side routes, old Indian paths, and animal tracks so as to prove to himself his ruggedness and ability to read the land, 55 year-old chain restaurant owner Nivan Laurentz of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania made it halfway through the first day before disaster struck. According to entries in his diary, as soon as he had moved beyond sight of his car, “GPS batteries died trying to acquire signal; compass gone – lost, or dropped; backup water-sack leaking; backup to backup water-sack rank, foul; two front bicycle tires shredded by sharp rocks; forearms sunburned badly, cheap aloe gel runny and ineffective.”

The only traces of Mr. Laurentz's passage found during a search conducted by Park Rangers and area sheriffs were his diary and a trail of detritus dropped alongside the remnants of a path leading into the deepest and hottest regions of this barren and forsaken land. “The missing person's belongings lay strewn about, as if he were trying to lighten his load, or to find a precious commodity, which out here includes even a mouthful of water,” said Officer Dolores Ovillia, of the California Highway Patrol, who has combed the desert many times in search of lost or wayward citizens. “Then, of a sudden, all traces stop, as if the land had opened up and swallowed him – his bike, his bags, all traces.” Nivan's vehicle was unmolested, leading authorities to rule out foul play. “If this had been robbers or highwaymen lying in wait for an unsuspecting traveler to stop and park and get out for a stretch, then the vehicle would have been entered forcibly, and its contents – even those of comparatively little monetary value – would have been removed to another vehicle or to a different location,” said Agent Padraig Raian O'Malley of the federal Bureau of Land Management, who joined the search on its second day. “We see it out here occasionally, desperate people robbing and killing others and then selling their things at swap meets farther west, but, in this case, we have the trail of detritus and the diary, so we can rule out foul play by all parties but Mother Nature herself.”

One hot, dusty search-party after the next returned to the tent village that sprouted in the parking lot where the missing man's car was found, each group throwing up its hands in defeat and sinking despondently into folding chairs to drink cup after cup of hot green tea. Among the searchers was the California People-Finders Collective, a non-profit organization that specializes in… finding people. Said Webster Dulvishnakov, who canceled plans to attend a friend's wedding in order to help with the search, “We've been using methods developed to find persons buried in avalanches, lining up next to each other in rows and poking long sticks into dunes, trying to locate the body, the bike, anything that might offer clues. In his diary, Mr. Laurentz even talked about being really worried that things might go wrong, foreboding feelings he obviously ignored. I've seen scenario such as this before, though – guy starts feeling old, and, after bicycling around his town for a month, he thinks he's ready to do a Death Valley loop trail, alone, with untested and insufficient supplies, cheap stuff bought at big-box retailers. We People-Finders have located individuals who lost their way after walking ten feet into the woods to take a leak. Talk about one less mouth to feed – some people should just stay at home, and stay alive.” After three fruitless days, the search ended, everyone going home to take cold showers.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit