Island Richards

• Survived Turkey Day, and now I’m back to work bright and early. Rest of the world seems AWOL though. #
• Happy Thanksgiving! Working this morning, then we have 22 people coming to our house for dinner! #
• I’ve been updating my websites. Hackers had caused a lot of damage http://www.islandrichards.com http://www.wisdomworld.com still a few bugs but better. #
• Reboot! It’s a new week! And it is DEAD at the store. I could of stayed asleep! #
• Made it through my day off without getting called in (it rang off the wall though.) Heading for bed so I can start the new work week @5:00am #
• My one day off this week. Waiting for the phone to ring and one of my “employees” to tell me I have to work. #

While working the sales counter at one of my stores Tuesday night, I got a surprise, and not the good kind that Santa brings. I was toiling away, ringing up one customer after another, when a guy put a six pack of 7oz Bud Light on the counter. The kid looked young, so I asked him for his I.D. He handed me his Driver’s License and I typed his birthdate into the cash register which promptly buzzed back at me and flashed the message that the kid was underage.

“You’re not old enough!” I said sternly. He smiled and put his hand out to get his license back. “Nope,” I said, and walked over to the phone and started dialing the police.

“We’ll get that back for you,” I heard as I pushed the buttons. I looked from the phone to the person who was standing in line next to the kid, and recognized that he was a police officer I had seen many times before in the store. He was wearing a knit cap pulled down over his forehead, a clever disguise. This was a @#$%& sting. “I’m officer _________ with the police department, we’re doing compliance checks,” he said, grinning, as the kid hurried past him and out the door.

“Uh huh,” I said, as I finished dialing, and listened to the ring tone.

“Really,” he said, pulling out his badge and waving it.

I ignored him as the voice at the other end of the line answered, “Rock Springs Police Department. Can I help you?”

“I was calling to report a minor attempting to purchase alcohol,” I said with a bit of ice in my voice, “but, apparently, they just ran a ‘compliance check’ on me. Thank you, have a good night.” I hung up the phone, walked to the counter, and tossed the kid’s I.D. on to it in front of the officer, saying nothing.

“The good thing is, you have a choice,” he said, still grinning and sure of himself, pulling a couple of restaurant gift cards out of his pocket to show me.

“I don’t want your @(*#&^% coupons. And I don’t appreciate anyone coming in here and asking me to break the law,” I said pretty angrily, starting to raise my voice.

“Well, there’s uh, a lot of people in town that would uh agree with you, but we uh have to do it,” he said, starting to stammer a little bit, and falling back onto the age old excuse that he’s just doing his job.

“I also think your &%(*#$@ program is worthless. It hasn’t done one God Damn thing to reduce the number of minors drinking alcohol!” Now my voice was even louder.

“Well, that’s your opinion,” he said, not as sure of himself, starting to get a little angry, and definitely not grinning anymore.

“Bull$#*!. It’s not a #*$^@&( opinion,” I said, “I’ve seen the statistics, it hasn’t done one $%&^#* thing!” I growled as he quickly turned around and left the store without another word. He didn’t even have me sign his “compliance check” paperwork.

Obviously, the officer did the right thing by leaving before our argument could escalate, and I was probably out of line taking my anger, at being the target of what I believe is entrapment, out on him.

But. then again, maybe I wasn’t.

First of all, I’ve written before how I feel about what I call “stings” and they call “compliance checks”, but this is the first time I’ve ever personally been the target of criminal investigation by anyone, ever, and it flat out pisses me off. I have always had a very good relationship with the members of law enforcement in my community, and have the utmost respect for them. I know most of them by name, including the officer who was in charge of this sting operation, and have always done my best to make their jobs easier when I come into contact with them. Many of them shop in my stores — on duty, when they are filling up their official vehicles with fuel, and off duty, when they are filling up their own.

That’s part of why this program infuriates me so much. Retail clerks and local business owners are sometimes the police department’s best link to the community. We see large numbers of people every day, and we hear things that help the police out with their investigations. It’s not rare for the police to come visit us, asking for information, looking for leads, or hoping to look at our surveillance cameras in order to help out with a case they are working on. Many local crimes have been solved because an officer has sat down in one of my stores and had coffee with my clerks and my customers. Conversation with the public is sometimes law enforcement’s best investigative tool.

This policy, where police officers are assigned to investigate normally law abiding citizens, endangers that previously beneficial relationship. When ordinary people become the target of random criminal investigations, how willing do you think they will be, in the future, to cooperate with the police? Instead of feeling secure every time we see a police officer, should we now be suspicious? Should we be looking over our shoulders, nervously waiting for an undercover police officer, or an undercover informant, to ask us to break the law?

And what’s next? Will they be hanging out in the school yard, asking our kids if they want to buy a little meth? Are they going to wander the halls of the Holiday Inn, asking every patron if they want a buy a fun night with a hooker? Maybe they will be standing outside the pet store, asking each customer if they want to buy an orange-bellied parrot? How far is far enough, and when have the police gone to far?

I’ll tell you. Any time the police, and those working for them, ask ordinary people to break the law, they’ve gone too far. Any time the police make ordinary people the targets of criminal investigations, they are crossing the line and endangering what should be great relationship between law enforcement and the general public. This “compliance check” program has already changed what used to be a friendly relationship between this particular officer and myself. From now on, every time we see each other he will remember me being pissed off and raising my voice at him, and I will remember what it feels like to be treated like a criminal suspect.

The fact is, the police need us, ordinary people, to do their jobs. They need a working relationship with the public in order to keep the public safe. They need our support, and our cooperation.

How willing do you think we will be, though, to cooperate with the police, to help them with their investigations, and to help them make the community safer, when tomorrow… they might be investigating us?

-Island

“To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means — to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal — would bring terrible retribution.”  -Justice Louis D. Brandeis, (1856-1941) US Supreme Court Justice

-Authors Note: I think any police officer who is asked to take on an assignment where they have to investigate ordinary people should ask themselves, “Did I join the ranks of law enforcement so I could investigate criminals, or make ordinary people into criminals?” Just saying that “it’s my job” isn’t enough. I’ve heard it from beat cops all the way to the chief of police that they don’t have a choice when it comes to whether or not they run these stings, and I don’t buy it. Wilhelm Keitel was just doing what he was told, too. It’s not an excuse. You always have a choice.

The American voters have cast their ballots, and the decision has been made. Barack Obama is our new President Elect.

First of all, let me be gracious in defeat. I would like to congratulate Senator Obama for attaining the highest office in our nation. Senator Obama ran a superb campaign, and the final vote tallies show just how excellent of a campaign it was. While I definitely did not support his candidacy, I will support him as my President.

Secondly, I want to say, while I will support him as my President, I will be watching him closely over the next four years. While I believe that he should be given the chance to shape policy in the direction which he believes is best for the nation, that policy must stay within the bounds of our Constitution, and I will not tolerate any divergence to the same. I have been an outspoken opponent of what I believe to be Obama’s vision for this nation, but I hope I have been wrong. I have also been very unforgiving about Obama’s past associations, and very suspicious of his economic and political beliefs. I have been very vocal in my suspicion that he is both a Marxist, and a reparationist. There is a chance I have been wrong. There is a chance that he is just another politician, and he may even turn out to be a good President. This is one of those few times that I hope I was wrong in the past. I doubt it, but I am hopeful. Either way, I will be watching.

Thirdly, I have to say, I am proud to be from one the few Red States left in our country. Wyoming voted overwhelmingly Republican, and we sent two great Republican Senators, Mike Enzi and John Barrasso, back to Washington, and picked Cynthia Lummis, a long serving Republican Stateswoman, to replace Barbara Cubin as our sole voice in the House of Representatives. We are one of the few strongholds of conservatism left in the nation, and I wouldn’t think about living anywhere else.

Finally, I have to answer comments that I have heard that the Republican Party is broken, and that we have to remake ourselves in order to come back to the good graces of the voting public. Balderdash. The Republican Party does not have to remake itself, or become more like the Democratic Party, or have a ‘bigger tent’ or become more tolerant, or any of that foolishness. The Republican Party needs to do seven things in order to retake its place as the leaders of our nation.

1. We need to self police and purge our Party of the corruption that seeped into the ranks during our years of power. From the halls of Congress, to the living rooms where local Party officials meet, the people who have used political power to advance personal prosperity, illegally and unethically, need to be stripped from their positions of leadership, and censured or prosecuted as the situations dictate. Sarah Palin set a standard for us in how she hit hard against entrenched corruption in Alaska, and we would do well to heed her example.
2. We need to go back to the basics of what makes our Party great. We need to embrace the foundations of our party’s history, such as constitutional constructionism, federalism, individual responsibility, and conservative fiscal policy. We need cast off this idea that it is our job to include all points of view in our Party, and instead set a steadfast standard that others can look up to and join with as they see and understand the superiority of the Conservative Republican Platform.
3. We need to learn from the success of the Democratic Party and use their methods to teach conservative values from the bottom up. We need to become ‘community organizers’ in our own right, and work hard to make sure that our values are taught in our preschools, in our grade schools, our middle schools, our high schools, and ultimately in our colleges and our universities. We need to create our own educational programs to counter the liberal programs that have become entrenched in the liberal controlled education systems. We need to promote and support conservative community programs and charities, and take advantage of any chance to promote conservative social efforts wherever we see them.
4. We have to find strong, honest, charismatic, conservative leaders to take control of the current Republican Caucus in Congress. We cannot afford to have congressional leaders who cannot relate to the national constituency. The chosen leaders have to be able to articulate our congressional objectives, and communicate their importance to the American people. A Democratic majority can stonewall a Republican minority, but they cannot stand against a resolute American public that demands results. When the inevitable political infighting begins in the now too powerful Democratic Party, a calm, steadfast Republican minority can show America what leadership should look like.
5. We have to recruit, promote, and support good conservative leaders at all levels of local and statewide government. The first, and most important, place we can do this is on school boards nationwide. If we can shift the political balance of our education system, we can begin to take the control of our classrooms out of the hands of the far left.
6. We have to recruit, promote, support good conservative candidates to challenge the Democrats for control of Congress in 2010. The Democrats have two years ahead where they will have control of the White House and both houses of Congress, and we can take advantage of those two years to recruit candidates and build successful campaigns. The political infighting of the Democratic Party is inevitable, and a unified Republican Party can take advantage of that to make huge gains in congressional seats.
7. We have to find a great, young, ambitious, charismatic, conservative leader, who has a bulletproof past, who has a grand vision for our nation, to lead our party to victory in the 2012 Presidential race. I know this is asking a lot, but our Party needs a young Ronald Reagan — male, female, black, white, latino — it doesn’t make a difference. If we put forth anything less, then we will be trying again in 2016.

That’s it. My seven steps to reclaim conservative values in America. Will it happen? I don’t know. If the Republican Party can find the right leadership, then I think it can happen. If they want me to come do it for them in Washington, they can always give me a call. Otherwise, I’ll be here in Wyoming working on it at the local level.

Until then….

-Wisdom

That’s it! I have to say something! Yes, I have a hang up, and it’s because of something you refuse to do!

Hang up!

I know that fifteen minutes is way too long to be away from your husband and you can’t bear to not speak to him for the twenty seconds that it’s going to take for me to ring up your ho-ho’s and Diet Coke. I know that it is super important that you tell your wife how much you miss her while I ring up your cup of coffee and bag of M&M’s.

I know how important it is that you tell your little thing on the side exactly where you are every step, and every second; “I’m walking down the candy aisle, sweety. I’m standing in front of the pop cooler, twinkie. I’m walking toward the front counter, sugar. I’m standing at the counter, sweetcakes.”

I’m going into diabetic shock listening to you, jackass!

I know how incredibly important it is that you have that cell phone glued to your ear 24 hours a day, seven days and week!

You, though, apparently don’t know how incredibly rude and obnoxious you are! First of all, I know that, to you, I’m just a piece of crap convenience store clerk. But, do you know what? You can at least show me the common courtesy of acknowledging my existence during the twenty seconds of time that our lives are forced to intersect. Beyond me, you are also being rude to the people who are forced to stand in line behind you while you stumble through the buttons on the credit card machine while your phone sex operator whispers sweet nothings in your ear. Stop forcing the rest of us to listen to your little love chat with your stud muffin!

If speaking to an actual human being is too complicated for you, I suggest that you avoid human interaction completely and buy your Midol from a veding machine. Otherwise, just HANG UP!