#los angeles sheriff’s department

[thisisabernieblog]

This may be one of Lee Camp's best episodes, as it covers the #TwitterFiles and the censorship by the US government, gangs in the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and the Washington Post actually covering Israeli war crimes! With the addition of Mexican President AMLO calling the US an oligarchy.

@lordandgodoftheobvious @brendanicus @apas-95 @petalsbleedingbeak @cavern-creature @missedthestartgun @whatevergreen @dicknouget @definitely-ellie @reinforced-fear-be-damned @they-will-not-contain-us

[247liveculture]

A police force initiates an investigation into the alarming incident captured on camera, involving a Los Angeles deputy forcefully slamming a Black woman to the ground. 

[politijohn]

Source

“…records show over 700 law enforcement entities had access to this database, from small sheriff's offices, to the Los Angeles and New York police departments, to federal law enforcement agencies and military police units.”

[the1920sinpictures]

1925 Los Angeles Sheriff's Department "Night Squad". From America in the 1920's, FB.

[memecucker]

My dad has a story about how he’s pretty sure he’s in some kind of LAPD white-list because back in the 80s he was walking down a street and a motorcycle cop (who didn’t have his sirens on) ran through a red light and got clipped by a fire truck (that did have its sirens on) and got flung into a ditch and was pinned underneath his bike. My dad ran over to help and pulled the bike off him and saw he was really badly hurt and fading in and out of consciousness so he picked up the guys radio and shouted “help help! Officer down at (intersection)” and within 5 minutes like a dozen squad cars showed up and shoved aside my dad and any other onlookers and brought the guy to the hospital themselves

A day or two later my dad then decided he would call LAPD headquarters and when the person at the phone asked what he wanted he asked “how is Officer (name) doing?” and the cop answering the phone suddenly got defensive and was like “Who are you? Why are you calling about him?” and my dad said he was the person that called for help using the guys radio and pulled the bike off him. The person on the phone then asked for my dads information and said “We’ll let him know you called.” and hung up

Awhile later my dad noticed there still hadn’t been any word from LAPD and he hadn’t even heard anything on the news about it (they may have wanted to suppress the story since the other car was a fire truck responding to a fire so they can’t exactly blame the other party) but eventually got a letter in the mail from the LAPD and it consisted of a generic sounding “Thank You For Being a Friend of the Los Angeles Police Department. We greatly appreciate your earnest support blah blah” and it did have a genuine seeming signature from Chief Darrell Gates but otherwise read like a thank you letter they send out to people that sent donations to a fundraiser. And my dad’s initial reaction was like “wtf that’s it?” bc like he didn’t save him for an award or anything but this seemed kinda underselling that he literally saved that guys life so it felt a bit ungrateful

But after that incident he noticed that anytime he got pulled over by LAPD, after the officer would go back to their car to talk to dispatch they would always return and tell my dad he was free to go. This wouldn’t happen if he was pulled over by Sheriff’s Dept or Highway Patrol or any other department but specifically LAPD seemed like they treated him special. One time he got pulled over for a DUI and the LAPD cops felt they couldn’t let him go because his BAC was way too high so they did bring him into the station and put him in the drunk tank overnight and the next morning they told him he was free to go and that just never showed up on his record or anything and he doesn’t even remember getting booked bc I guess a cop owed him a life debt

[s-leary]

A new report adds to a growing line of research showing that police departments don’t solve serious or violent crimes with any regularity, and in fact, spend very little time on crime control, in contrast to popular narratives. ... More notably, researchers analyzed the data to show how officers spend their time, and the patterns that emerge tell a striking story about how policing actually works. Those results, too, comport with existing research showing that U.S. police spend much of their time conducting racially biased stops and searches of minority drivers, often without reasonable suspicion, rather than “fighting crime.” Overall, sheriff patrol officers spend significantly more time on officer-initiated stops – “proactive policing” in law enforcement parlance – than they do responding to community members’ calls for help, according to the report. Research has shown that the practice is a fundamentally ineffective public safety strategy, the report pointed out. ... Decades of data similarly shows that police don’t solve much serious and violent crime – the safety issues that most concern everyday people. Over the past decade, “consistently less than half of all violent crime and less than twenty-five percent of all property crime were cleared,” William Laufer and Robert Hughes wrote in a 2021 law review article. Laufer and Hughes are professors in the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania’s Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department. Police “have never successfully solved crimes with any regularity, as arrest and clearance rates are consistently low throughout history,” and police have never solved even a bare majority of serious crimes, University of Utah college of law professor Shima Baradaran Baughman wrote in another 2021 law review article, including murder, rape, burglary and robbery. Existing research also affirms the findings in the recent report on police work in California. Law “enforcement is a relatively small part of what police do every day,” Barry Friedman, a law professor at the New York University School of Law wrote in a 2021 law review article. Studies have shown that the average police officer spent about one hour per week responding to crimes in progress, Friedman wrote. Police spend most of their time on traffic violations and routine, minor issues, like noise complaints, according to three different, recent analyses of dispatch data from Los Angeles, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, Seattle, and New Haven, Connecticut. The New York Times reviewed national dispatch data from the FBI in June 2020, and found that just 4% of officers’ time is devoted to violent crime. “We hope the report helps reshape the narrative about the relationship between law enforcement and safety,” Smith told me. Californians “should understand that a reimagination of community safety is far overdue and that equitable and community-centered solutions” are more effective alternatives.

[beardedmrbean]

The Kansas legislature passed a bill Wednesday that would classify organized retail crime (ORC) a felony offense, joining nine other states that have passed similar laws in the last year. 

ORC refers to orchestrated groups of shoplifters who commit smash-and-grab robberies of stores or target cargo carriers.

The state’s upper chamber passed the Substitute House Bill 2144, which would split the felony charges into two tiers. A theft of merchandise valued at more than $3,000 would be classified a felony and those convicted would face between 31 and 136 months behind bars. If the amount stolen exceeds $15,000, the sentence range is between 38 and 172 months. 

'BURGLARY TOURISM' PLAGUES SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AS UNVETTED FOREIGNERS RAID LUXE HOUSES

The bill still has to be signed by Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, before it goes into effect. 

In support of the bill, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach wrote that ORC isn’t "mere shoplifting."

"These crimes typically involve stealing for personal use. It is large-scale theft of retail merchandise that represents a concerted effort to victimize a business, often with the intention of reselling the items for financial gain and often using those financial proceeds to fund additional criminal activity," he said.

A 2023 report from the National Retail Federation, the world’s largest retail association, found that organized retail crime was a primary driver of the massive amount of "shrink" retailers saw in 2022, with non-employee stealing making up 36%. 

The term "shrink" typically means theft and other forms of inventory losses, and retailers nationwide experienced $112 billion in losses in 2022. 

Texas, Virginia, Alabama, Indiana, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Oregon enacted retail theft laws last year, while California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana and North Carolina passed ORC laws in 2022. 

"While theft has an undeniable impact on retailer margins and profitability, retailers are highly concerned about the heightened levels of violence and threat of violence associated with theft and crime," the NRF wrote on its website. 

State Senate Republicans who voted for the bill argued that ORC needs its own category since shoplifters who steal for their own use versus those who are part of a broader organized scheme are charged the same way. 

"Currently we don’t have the proper tools to prosecute that type of crime, so that’s what this bill does," state Sen. Kellie Warren, a Republican, said of the bill, The Topeka Journal reported. 

Some states hit hard by retail theft have gone so far as to create their own law enforcement task forces to address it. The NRF found that Los Angeles was one of the hardest-hit cities in California for ORC, leading the LA County Sheriff Department to create the Organized Retail Theft Crime Task Force.

Meanwhile, opponents of tough-on-crime laws such as these argue the harsher penalties are too extreme for the crimes and could prevent a person from being rehabilitated. Maine’s legislature passed a bill in the House this week that would prohibit charging people who already have two prior convictions of theft if the third theft is worth less than $500. The state’s current law permits a felony charge for the third conviction if the crimes all occur within a decade. 

[radicalgraff]

"Google LASD Gangs"

Graffiti seen in a public toilet in LA, referring to the murderous police gangs active withing the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department

[tieflingkisser]

Police killed Niani Finlayson seconds after responding to her 911 call, video shows

Body camera reveals Los Angeles deputy fired at woman who sought help for domestic violence as nine-year-old daughter watched

The Los Angeles sheriff’s department (LASD) released body-camera footage on Friday of an officer fatally shooting Niani Finlayson, 27, who had called 911 for help during a domestic violence incident. The footage from the 4 December encounter showed that deputy Ty Shelton shot Finlayson four times within roughly three seconds of entering her home.

[...]

Body-camera footage from two deputies showed that when they arrived outside the apartment, they could hear a woman screaming from inside. When Finlayson opened the door, her nine-year-old daughter was standing next to her and appeared to tell the officers that the man had hurt her – seemingly saying that he had “punched” or “pushed” her, although the LASD distorted the daughter’s voice and her comments aren’t clearly discernible. Finlayson appeared to be holding a kitchen knife and seemed to saythe ex-boyfriend had attacked them, saying: “I’m about to stab him because” he had hurt her daughter. A female deputy entered the home first, and Finlayson and her ex moved to the opposite end of the room. Shelton followed inside a moment later and fired four shots at Finlayson almost as soon as he entered. Shelton fired at Finlayson as her daughter stood nearby. The daughter ran into the kitchen after he fired the shots and her mother collapsed on the ground. The ex screamed: “No, no, why did you shoot?” The LASD did not release footage of the aftermath. The video showed that Shelton had entered with a Taser in one hand and a firearm in the other, but it did not appear that he or the two other deputies on scene used any “less lethal” weapons or other tactics to de-escalate the situation before Shelton fatally shot Finlayson.

[rapeculturerealities]

Police killed Niani Finlayson seconds after responding to her 911 call, video shows | California | The Guardian

The Los Angeles sheriff’s department (LASD) released body-camera footage on Friday of an officer fatally shooting Niani Finlayson, 27, who had called 911 for help during a domestic violence incident.

The footage from the 4 December encounter showed that deputy Ty Shelton shot Finlayson four times within roughly three seconds of entering her home.

[247liveculture]

In an incident that should have been a routine traffic stop, a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy stationed in Palmdale punched a mother in the face as she held her 3-week-old baby.

[cloverdaisies]

CLOVERDAISIES’ WATTPAD ☆ BOOKS

hi deobis! ∩^ω^∩ here is a link and description of my books in case you were looking for a read ! <3 if i’m not active on here i’m usually posting updates over on wp so don’t hesitate to come say hi!

# TARGET: lover

member: juyeon

genre: mafia au

status: completed

description: “late at night, a wander down the streets of downtown is not the safest trip for a young girl approaching her mid twenties to endeavor on..

when yanked head first in to danger, y/n can choose one of two reckless fates... he's cold, twisted, murderous in intent, nothing but a facade of someone who's lost his way in such a dark world...

is it possible that someone so cruel, could ever find love in this dysfunctional world of money, drugs & murder?

mission accepted - welcome to TARGET: lover.. ”

a/n: listen this is the first book i’d ever wrote, i know she’s not everyone’s cup of tea but she means a lot to be so please be nice to her <3

☆*:.｡.

# JUVENILE

member: sunwoo

genre: bad boy cliché, college au

status: completed

description: “LOS ANGELES COUNTY SHERIFFS DEPARTMENT: "the court hear by sentences that sunwoo kim, will face up to 6 months and 10 days in prison with no chances of parole on charges of vandalism and possession of Class A substances."

kim sunwoo returns to campus after being released from juvie but has the old him ever changed? still smoking, drinking and partying with his insane friend group. juvie didn't scare him one bit.

it's been 5 months since Y/N, introverted, clever and pretty, moved to LA. she's only heard rumors of sunwoo kim. the young criminal who no one wanted to get on the wrong side of, the news of him coming back was the buzz of the entire campus.

an unexpected encounter brings two opposite people.

a/n: probably one of my proudest works! juvenile is the most successful book of mine and to this day i still sm in love with the characters and universe i created in this lil world.

☆*:.｡.

# 1984

member: chanhee

genre: 80s, romance

status: completed

description: what happens when a present day girl gets sucked into the 80s - big hair, big stars, old cars and young hearts.. the year is 2021, full of social media absorbed teens using these little silver boxes called mobile phones... hopeless without today's unrealistic present... what happens when Y/N, your typical zombified teenager is warped into the past... does she come back with more than she bargained for ?...

a/n: probably the most detailed book i’ve ever written, 1984 depicts a whirlwind of a vintage romance that if you’re into the 80s vibes you’ll love.

☆*:.｡.

# ANGEL BOY

member: juyeon

genre: boarding school romance

status: ongoing almost complete

description: “when American dream girl Y/N finally pulls the last straw with her father, she gets shipped off to an all girls private school in England..

is there more to the school than lacrosse and rich girls?...

a Lee Juyeon fanfiction, based on and inspired by Wild Child”

a/n: i absolutely love the film wild child and became so inspired to write something like it, there’s a lot of characters to get to know who aren’t necessarily based on k-pop idols but i created them myself and i hope you could love and get to know them as much as i do

☆*:.｡.

# MENSWEAR

member: juyeon (sorry i’m in love with the man)

genre: angsty college au

status: ongoing

description: "i love you, i told you i do."

"i want to see sunshine, flowers, hold someone in the long grass on a summers day. i want to be in love like the poets write, the story the birds sing to. but i'll never be that guy. i'll never be your romantic shit show of a love story."

"but you are."

a lee juyeon fanfiction set in the same universe as juvenile, a kim sunwoo fanfiction. ”

a/n: right i absolutely loved juvenile so much that i had to write a spin off with juyeon’s character, yes it’s only at the beginning ! but summer awaits and i will be working hard to complete it ! <3

☆*:.｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆ !

i know it’s a lot of juyeon but there is more to come ! i can’t wait to cherish the summer and give you more members books ! i hope that this rough index could lead you into my little romantic world and give you some laughs along the way

sending my love always,

clover <3

[readingsquotes]

The recent ProPublica report on American Patriots’ Three Percent “friendly sheriff's list,” along with their success in infiltrating police departments, brings this point home. Within it, we see their leader lamenting, “Our country is being invaded at the Southern border,” using the same rhetoric as Trump, Abbott, and other conservative politicians when he continues with “Haitians, Middle Easterners, South American invaders that are coming in.” This shows one explicit point of connection in thinking between the right, law enforcement, and armed right-wing groups.7 Another is in a shared antipathy with left-wing protesters, also discussed in Part I. On both perceived “threats” to their vision of the country, the police have not only been lenient in allowing armed groups to menace and even kill protesters, but we’ve also seen law enforcement and paramilitary organizations work directly together through the reporting on AP3 mentioned above with the piece providing extensive evidence of law enforcement on the border working in collaboration with the militia as well as police asking them to infiltrate Black Lives Matter protests in Oklahoma City for surveillance purposes.

In addition to this recent reporting, last year, the supervisor of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department surveillance branch was indicted for providing information directly to the Proud Boys.8 This pattern of police and paramilitary cooperation is growing, not slowing. The police in Los Angeles allowing counterprotesters to attack students calling for a ceasefire in Palestine was highly predictable given what we know, and with the continued protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza happening, it’s only a matter of time before we see this combination lead to violence again.9

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Bezzle excerpt (Part IV)

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and TOMORROW in SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

This week marks the publication of my latest novel, The Bezzle, and to celebrate, I'm serializing an excerpt from Chapter 14 in six parts:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

The Bezzle is a revenge story, a crime novel, and a technothriller. It stars Martin Hench, a hard-fighting forensic accountant who specializes in unwinding high-tech scams. Hench made his debt in last year's Red Team Blues (now in paperback!); The Bezzle is a standalone followup:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865854/redteamblues

The serial tells the tale of Stefon Magner, AKA Steve Soul, a once-famous R&B frontman whose disintegrating career turned to tragedy when his crooked manager forged his signature on a rights assignment contract that let him steal all of Stefon's royalties, which ballooned after modern hiphop artists discovered his grooves and started buying licenses to sample them. The first three installments related the sad circumstances of Stefon's life, and the real-world analogues (like Leonard Cohen and George Clinton, both of whom were pauperized by sticky-fingered managers) as well as one real-world countermeasure, copyright termination, a thing that more artists should know about and use:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/26/take-it-back/

Today's installment weaves in a major subplot for the first time in the serial: Los Angeles's notorious, murderous Sheriff's Deputy gangs. These are another unbelievable true tale: for decades, the LASD's deputies have formed themselves into criminal gangs, some of which require that initiates murder someone to be inducted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs

They sport gang tattoos, have secret signs, and run vast criminal enterprises. This has been the subject of numerous investigative press reports, and one extensive official report that called the gangs "a cancer":

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/deputy-gangs-cancer-los-angeles-county-sheriffs-department-scathing-re-rcna73367

The sordid tales of the LASD gangs beggar belief. For example, deputies in charge of LA County jails forced inmates to pit-fight and took bets on the outcomes:

https://www.aclu.org/publications/report-cruel-and-usual-punishment-how-savage-gang-deputies-controls-la-county-jails

The taxpayers of LA have shelled out tens of millions of dollars to settle claims against LA's criminals with badges:

https://news.yahoo.com/deputies-accused-being-secret-societies-230851807.html

Periodically, LA judges and officials will insist that they are tackling the problem:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-05-17/dozens-of-lasd-deputies-ordered-to-show-suspected-gang-tattoos-reveal-others-who-have-them

But at every turn, the LA police "unions" manage to crush these investigations:

https://abc7.com/los-angeles-county-lasd-deputy-gangs-cliques/13492081/

And top cops are right there with them, insisting that these aren't "gangs" – they're just "subgroups":

https://lapublicpress.org/2024/01/former-la-sheriff-villanueva-sheriffs-gangs-are-just-subgroups/

It's very weird being an Angeleno and knowing that one of the largest, most militarized, best funded police departments in the world has been openly captured by a hyperviolent crime syndicate. When I was in the Skyboat Media studios last December with Wil Wheaton recording the audiobook for The Bezzle, Wil broke off from reading to say, "You know, someone's going to read this and google it and have their mind blown when they discover that it's real":

https://sowl.co/8nyGh

That's one of my favorite ways to turn literature into something more than entertainment. It's why I filled the Little Brother books with real-world surveillance, cryptography and security tech, giving enough detail to advance the plot and give readers an idea of what search terms would let them understand and use the concepts in the novel. That's something I'm happy to keep up with the Hench novels, unpicking the inner workings of scams and corruption. The more of us who are wise to this, the sooner we'll be able to get rid of it.

Here's part one of the serial:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/17/the-steve-soul-caper/#lead-singer-disease

Part two:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#copyright-termination

Part three:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/20/fore/#lawyer-up

And now, onto part four!

The last of the boxes had been shelved.

Benedetto rose from his chair. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said to the movers, and dug a roll of twenties out of his pocket and handed each of them two of their own. He turned to me as they filed out. “You wanna get sushi? The place next door is great.”

The empty storefront was in a down-­at-­heels strip mall in Eagle Rock. On one side, there was a Brazilian jujitsu studio that never seemed to have any students training in it. On the other side was Sushi Jiro, name on a faded sign with half its lightbulbs gone. Beyond that was a vaping store.

“The place next door is good?”

He laughed. “You San Francisco motherfuckers got terrible LA restaurant radar. Put Sushi Jiro in the Mission and it’d have a Michelin star and a six-­month waiting list. Here it’s in a strip mall and only the locals know how good it is. Bet you never had a decent meal in this town, am I right?”

“I’ve had a few,” I said, “but I admit my track record isn’t great.”

“Let’s improve it.”

The sushi was amazing.

#

Inglewood Jams had the kind of books that were performatively bad, designed to foil any attempt at human comprehension.

But whoever cooked them was an amateur, someone who mistook complexity for obfuscation. Like cross-­referencing was a species of transcendentally esoteric sorcery. I don’t mind cross-referencing. It’s meditative, like playing solitaire. I had Bene­detto send over some colored post-­it tabs and a big photocopier with an automatic feeder and I started making piles.

One night, I worked later than I planned. Sushi Jiro was becoming a serious hazard to my waistline and my sleep-­debt, because when your dinner break is ten yards and two doors away from your desk, it’s just too damned easy to get back to work after dinner.

That night, I’d fallen into a cross-­referencing reverie, and before I knew it, it was 2 a.m., my lower back was groaning, and my eyes were stinging.

I straightened, groaned, and slid my laptop into my bag. I found my keys and unlocked the door. The storefront was covered with brown butcher’s paper, but it didn’t go all the way to the edge. I had just a moment to sleepily note that there was some movement visible through the crack in the paper over the glass door when it came flying back toward me, bouncing off my toe, mostly, and my nose, a little. I put my one hand to my face as I instinctively threw myself into the door to close it again.

I was too late and too tired. A strong shoulder on the other side of the doorframe pushed it open and I stumbled back, and then the guy was on me, the door sighing shut behind him on its gas lift as he bore me to the ground and straddled my chest, a move he undertook with the ease of much practice. He pinned my arms under his knees and then gave me a couple of hard hits, one to the jaw, one to the nose.

My lip and nose were bleeding freely and my head was ringing from the hits and from getting smacked into the carpet tiles over concrete when I went down backward. I struggled—­to free my arms, to buck off my attacker, to focus on him.

He was a beefy white guy in his late fifties, with watery dark eyes and a patchy shave that showed gray mixed in with his dark stubble. As he raised his fist for another blow, I saw that he was wearing a big class ring. A minute later, that ring opened my cheek, just under the orbit of my eye.

Apart from some involuntary animal grunts, I hadn’t made a sound. Now I did. “Ow!” I shouted. “Shit!” I shouted. “Stop!” I shouted.

He split my lip again. I bucked hard but I couldn’t budge him. He had a double chin, a gut, and he was strong, and used that bulk to back up his strength. It was like trying to free myself from under a boulder. That kept punching me in the face.

The strip mall would be deserted. Everything was closed, even the vaping store.

Shouting wouldn’t help. I did it anyway. He shut my mouth for me with a left. I gagged on blood.

He took a break from punching me in the face, then. I think he was tired. His chest heaved, and he wiped sweat off his lip with the back of his hand, leaving behind a streaky mustache of my blood.

He contemplated me, weighing me up. I thought maybe he was trying to decide if I had any fight left in me, or perhaps whether I had any valuables he could help himself to.

He cleared his throat and looked at me again. “Goddammit, I messed your face up so bad I can’t tell for sure. I hope to fuck that you’re Martin Hench, though.”

Even with my addled wits, this was an important piece of intelligence: he came here for me. This wasn’t a random act of senseless Los Angeles street violence. This was aimed at me.

I was briefly angry at Benedetto for not warning me that Chuy Flores was such a tough son of a bitch. Then I had the presence of mind to lie.

“I don’t know who the fuck this Mark Hendricks is.” My voice was thick with gargled blood, but I was proud of Mark Hendricks. Pretty fast thinking for a guy with a probable concussion. The guy slapped me open-­handed across the face, and as I lay dazed for a moment, he shifted, reached into my back pocket for my wallet, and yanked it—­and the seat of my pants—­free. Before I could react, his knees were back on my biceps, pinning my arms and shoulders. It was a very neat move, and fast for an old guy like him.

He flipped my wallet open and squinted at it, then held it at arm’s length, then smiled broadly. He had bleach-­white teeth, a row of perfectly uniform caps. Los fucking Angeles, where even the thugs have a million-­dollar smile.

“Shoulda sprung for botox,” I slurred.

His grin got wider. “Maybe someday I will. Got these in trade from a cosmetic dentist I did some work for.” He dropped my wallet. “Listen, Martin Hench, you stay the fuck away from Thames Estuary and Lawrence Coleman.”

“It’s Lionel Coleman,” I said.

“What the fuck ever,” he said. He labored to his feet. I stayed still. He looked at me from a great height, and I stared up his nostrils. Without warning, he kicked my ribs hard enough that I heard one of them crack.

“You’ve been told,” he said to my writhing body, and let himself out.

ETA: Here's part five!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#poacher-turned-keeper