Today's award goes to the Los Angeles Police Department, and one officer in particular.
The incident’s details were described in a lawsuit filed by the owners of a Los Angeles medical imaging center, who allege that their business was wrongly targeted by LAPD during a raid in October 2023.
. . .
The plaintiffs say the officers’ behavior was “nothing short of a disorganized circus, with no apparent rules, procedures, or even a hint of coordination.”
At one point, an officer walked into an MRI room, past a sign warning that metal was prohibited inside, with his rifle “dangling… in his right hand, with an unsecured strap,” the lawsuit said. The MRI machine’s magnetic force then allegedly sucked his rifle across the room, pinning it against the machine. MRI machines are tube-shaped scanners that use incredibly strong magnetic fields to create images of the brain, bones, joints and other internal organs.
An officer then allegedly pulled a sealed emergency release button that shut the MRI machine down, deactivating it, evaporating thousands of liters of helium gas and damaging the machine in the process. The officer then grabbed his rifle and left the room, leaving behind a magazine filled with bullets on the office floor, according to the lawsuit.
There's more at the link.
I don't know the cost of restoring and reactivating the MRI unit, but it's got to run into tens of thousands of dollars, given the price of helium and hourly rates for specialist technician assistance. To add insult to injury, no criminal activity or other evidence was found at the clinic.
I've had MRI's done in the past, and always - always - the technicians have warned me ahead of time not to take any metal object with me into the room. It's a very real danger. It's literally killed people before. I think that cop was very fortunate that his rifle didn't discharge as a result of being snatched out of his hands like that.
As for the fruitless raid, and the antics of the officers (all captured on video by the clinic's security system) . . . when did professionalism cease to be a requirement for LAPD's officers?
Peter
6 comments:
And the rest of us are very *unfortunate* that the strap wasn't sufficiently secure to decapitate or break the neck of officer jackass, ridding us of one more tyrannical imbecile. Such a pity. Nothing of value would have been lost.
I read that article - the medical office was raided because their high electricity bills led some idiot to suspect them of being an illegal grow house.
Morons.
The pigs cannot grok that marijuana is becoming legal. They wail and whine that making it legal makes their jobs harder. Just like they did about the Miranda warning.
There is something wrong with that story. An MRI is an electromagnet. It's not just magnetic all the time. The cop had to have walked in while a scan was underway for that to have happened. If that's true then the cop is an even bigger idiot than the story suggests. If it's not the case then something else happened. Very strange.
duh: MRI machine
I'm on the "No MRIs for you" list because an ear implant might possibly be the wrong type of stainless steel and thus magnetic. My research showed that about 250 of the wrong type (out of thousands) were out in the wild when I had my procedure (supposedly all the affected patients were informed), but without the 30 year old documentation, the MRI honchos won't take the risk. (My wife said she'd be quite angry if I got myself killed by an MRI machine. Not sure how she'd kill me again, but I wasn't going to ask.)
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