Armed Robbery

Two DPS officers approached a pair of students in an alley on 14th street just north of Wells St. These officers then demanded to now what was in the backpacks of the students, upon finding beer, the officers then confiscated the beer, and took a fake identification from one of the students. This is of course illegal. I cannot go up to you take your backpack, search through it, and then confiscate any items in it, regardless of whether or not you can legally possess said items. DPS cannot do this either. Therefore, since they used their arms as a means of intimidation, the officers are guilty of armed robbery. If I walk up to you pull a gun and demand to see your backpack, and if it, for example, has marijuana in it, I cannot confiscate it, no, that would be armed robbery, even if I left my gun in its holster, that would still be armed robbery. Once again DPS flaunts the law and fail to realize that its officers are not in fact police officers, but rather security guards. So if in the future at any point in time a DPS officer approaches you anywhere that is not on campus property, do not let them search you, but rather fight back against this assault on freedom, and call the police if they try to search you.

DPS Threatens to Murder Area Residents

On the night of Friday September 11, 2009 a DPS officer threatened to murder several area residents by driving over them in his cruiser. The residents were standing on the sidewalk at the entrance of an alley. When the officer approached he ordered them to leave, which was beyond his authority. He then yelled at the residents. When they still stayed put, he threatened to run over all of them with his cruiser, which would have, in all likelihood, resulted in their deaths. As such, he did in fact threaten to murder them. The officer then contacted his superiors. Two commanding officers arrived, along with 5 other officers in 4 squad cars. The officers then interviewed the residents, and concurred that they had not broken any laws, and were within their legal right to refuse to obey the orders of the DPS officer. Moreover, the residents were within their right to refuse to turn over their identifications to the DPS officer, given that he is not a police officer. The commanding officers then apologized for the violent behavior of the DPS officer, and assured the residents that it would not happen again. Nevertheless, this scenario si horrifying, in that a DPS officer threatened to murder people by driving them over with his car. Hopefully in the future DPS will better screen its officers to make sure that they do not threaten nor attempt to murder anyone else.

I again thank my anonymous sources for providing me with the details of this tragic incident.

Swine Flu knows where you live

That's right fellow warrior watchers, swine flu is now on campus, and is spreading pretty fast. According to the university there is only one confirmed case, a female living in Schroeder, although MU won't disclose that last part. In addition, there are several suspected cases living in Straz, although again the university is not commenting on this. One of these cases reportedly ate in the cafeteria potentially infected everyone who was eating there. In addition according to several anonymous sources, a Straz cafeteria employee was sent home today with flu like symptoms, although again this information is not being discussed, and these sources were told only to say that the individual was not feeling well and were informed that the phrase "swine flu" was not to be said in the cafeteria.

It appears that in light of these recent cases the university is attempting, poorly, to cover up the actual extent of swine flu on campus and in doing so is merely increasing the likelihood that it will spread quite rapidly. Rather than being proactive and public about every case, MU is relying on students to determine whether or not they feel healthy enough to go to class, and if they don't they are to call Student Health Services (SHS) in order to find out if they have symptoms which may be swine flu, or H1N1/novel H1N1 as the university prefers, and then quarantine themselves. It would be much more helpful if the university released a daily chart of where the outbreak is occurring. For example if it were the case that the flu was most prominent at Schroeder, it would make sense for students to avoid that cafeteria, yet without any information students are effectively gambling and hoping that they can avoid contracting a deadly virus, which many epidemiologists fear will be as bad as the Spanish flu of 1918 which killed millions. If the outbreaks continue to worsen and people get sicker and sicker, it will be interesting to see if the university continues to try to keep everything under wraps, or if it owns up to the numbers of ill on campus and tries to intervene before something tragic happens. Let us all hope that MU is smart enough to get proactive, by passing out masks and hand sanitizers and isolating sick students.

I would also like to thank all of my anonymous informants without whom posts like this would not be possible. I owe many thanks to these individuals for their inside information into the workings of the university.

More Assaults on the Rule of Law

Apparently DPS not only believes in assaulting the rule of law, but is so arrogant, that it actually brags about its actions. Take for example its response to a fight on the corner of 16th and Wisconsin which occurred at 4:22pm on Tuesday September 1. 10 DPS officers responded to the fight, and attempted to intervene. Given that they were not present when the fight began, they of course had no reason to intervene. They were then brazen enough to call the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) and request their aid. Not request that they come and do their jobs, no, they were there to help DPS be cops. Because that completely meshes with Wisconsin State Law. Oh wait, no it does not. DPS has no right to intervene then, and calling MPD to aid it only shows how absolutely arrogant DPS officers have become. They actually think that they are cops.

Continuing on the theme of DPS officers think that they're cops, they have continued to brag about illegally imprisoning two individuals on the night of August 10-11. For the uninformed that is a Class H Felony in Wisconsin, and as much as DPS, and MU, think they operate in their own universe, they are in fact subject to the laws of the state, yet instead of apologizing, they portray themselves as heroes. Just like all the other people that run around detaining other people, oh wait those are usually serial killers or people taking hostages, but not DPS, no they are heroes.

This past week DPS continued to think that it was a branch of the Milwaukee Police Department, on the evening of September 3, a DPS car "aided" MPD officers in purusing a suspect who was guilty of violating an open container law. Which, by the way, is a municipal offense, and is only a ticktable offense. Yet, MPD, which has clearly forgotten its role in upholding the law, asked DPS, a private security contractor and not a police force, for help in catching a kid who was given a ticket. Now if that isn't great police work I don't know what is. Run down a kid to give him a ticket, and break the law by having a private security contractor get involved in the chase, instead of doing something useful, like arresting people who commit felonies.

In a second instance last week, MPD again asked for DPS assistance because of someone urinating in public. The fact that MPD ran after someone for this and needed DPS' help for this, is pathetic on the part of MPD, in that it can't even do its own job. In addition, it is sickening that MPD is calling DPS over and over again to "aid" in detaining people. DPS cannot legally act in this capacity, they are not nor have they ever been police. They are private security contractors, much like Xe and ArmorGuard. In fact it would probably make us all safer if the university replaced DPS with one of those groups, I mean they have tanks, and helicopters, and are experienced in ignoring any form of law and just doing whatever they can to oppress people. So really we have two options right now, either fight back against oppression, or embrace it wholesale and hire mercenaries to "protect" us from "criminals".

DPS Officers Invade an Apartment

This morning at 5 am two MU DPS officers entered an apartment in a university owned apartment complex. They did so because the door was ajar. Not because of loud noises, not because of any suspicious activity, but rather the door was ajar. In doing so they trespassed and committed a Class A misdemeanor according to Wisconsin State Statute 943.14 which states "Whoever intentionally enters the dwelling of another without the consent of some person lawfully upon the premises, under circumstances tending to create or provoke a breach of peace, is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor." The key here is that in entering the apartment and waking and then berating the occupants, the DPS officers clearly intended to wake people and breach the peace of the apartment. As such the officers committed a Class A Misdemeanor.

In addition the officers did not have a right, as agents of the owner of the property, to enter into the apartment under the terms of the lease, particularly Section 4.2(a) of the lease, which states that entering into the apartment is only allowable without prior written and/or verbal consent, if there is a health/safety emergency. Given that a door being ajar is not a clear sign of a safety emergency they, as agents of the owner, did not have the legal right to enter the apartment. Thereby, they not only committed a misdemeanor, but also violated the terms of the lease.

Once again DPS oversteps its bounds and violates the rights of multiple people on campus. In berating the students, they created a climate of fear within the apartment. No one would positively react to people in fake cop uniforms going into his apartment at 5 am, shining flashlights around, opening his bedroom door, and the proceeding to berate him for having an apartment door which was ajar. Hopefully this blatant assault on freedom will not go unpunished and the two officers who committed this crime will be reprimanded in order to guarantee that it never happens again.

In Financial News

For the curious out there MU's endowment in 2001 stood at $2 million. Today it stands at over $260 million. Before the financial crisis the endowment stood at over $330 million. For a supposedly Jesuit and Catholic institution, the radical increase in endowment is surprising, especially given that this money comes from the pockets of indebted students. Instead of increasing its tuition by about $1,000 a year, the university could do something like reroute endowment money to making tuition affordable. Back in the 1920's, when MU was run by Jesuits who believed in what they taught, it was cheaper to get a law degree at MU then at UW-Madison. Now days, there is no way that a student could achieve this, at least not without massive financial aid lowering MU's tuition cost. The absurd cost of $29,000 per year, puts most MU students well over $100,000 in debt before graduation, meaning that they are unable to start paying for things like a car or a house, until a decade after graduation. Given that the church teaches that people have a right to an education, and that charging excessive amounts for anything is a grave sin, MU is clearly flaunting Catholic teachings in favor of embracing a culture of greed which is promoted by the "leading" US educational institutions. Harvard has a large enough endowment for all of its students to attend for free, yet it still charges $40,000+ a year to attend. MU should separate itself from greedy schools like that, and instead cater to all people, instead of only to the wealthy.

DPS officers commit Class H felony

That's right, last night DPS officers responded to a shooting in the campus area. In doing so they apprehended and detained two suspects in the shooting. According to Wisconsin state statute 940.30 "Whoever confines or restrains another without that person's consent and with knowledge that he or she has no lawful authority to do so is guilty of a class H felony." That sounds exactly like what happened last night. Yet DPS brags about their response, as if it were some heroic act, rather than a felony. Sure people should respond when they physically see another person in trouble. DPS, should not, however, use video cameras to monitor the entirety of the campus area, and then show up and illegally imprison people. It's not their place, if they want to do that, then they should become cops. Moreover, the reaction of DPS, and their bragging about it fosters a culture on campus in which students feel that DPS has the right to respond this way. Students believe that they are being made safer because DPS officers ride around in their cars, with their faux police badges, and guns. The question is, wouldn't we be even safer if we hired Xe, formerly Blackwater Security, to patrol campus with tanks, helicopters, and assault rifles? The answer is, of course, but we would then be living in a self imposed police state. Freedom matters, and so does the law, which is why the DPS officers who responded last night should be arrested and charged with illegal imprisonment. Only through rejecting the oppression of DPS can we foster a culture of freedom and a true rule of law, for if some are exempt from following the law, then there is no true rule of law on campus.