#what is the lapd even doing with that budget? absolutely nothing

[ladysophiebeckett]

like yeah, i hate the media coverage for la fires vs valleys inland but that doesn't mean we should lack empathy for the hundreds and thousands of people who just lost their home due to a entire county and state that is not prepared for disasters like this. los angeles is not made up of only 'rich people'. its people fm all walks of life. entire neighborhoods are gone. homes with years and years of belongings are gone. photos, clothes, documents, even the most sentimental knickknack that money will not be able to ever replace. it's sad. it's devastating. stop being fucking dicks about it.

[orionares]

BTHB: Make an Example of Them

BTHB: Make an Example of Them

NCIS: Los Angeles

@badthingshappenbingo

—----

A/N: This takes place during episodes 12x07 "Overdue" through 12x09 "A Fait Accompli."

—-----

December 2020- Brunswick, Georgia

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” 

Ex- NCIS Supervisory Special Agent and FLETC Trainer Benjamin Lowe pulls off his glasses in disbelief at the cadet file that sits at the top of the pile on his desk. He briefly rubs his eyes as he sits at the mahogany desk in his study, hoping that the name of the cadet and more importantly, that the operations manager and office of origin listed is either a mistake or his imagination. 

Applicant Office: NCIS- Southwest: Office of Special Projects, Los Angeles

Operations Manager: Admiral Hollace Kilbride/ Henrietta Lange: 

Applicant Name: Deeks, Martin Atticus 

What in the absolute hell? One of Hetty’s little pet projects got into FLETC? 

Lowe leans back in the chair and pulls the file into his lap. Henrietta Lange is a name he hasn’t heard a lot since retiring from NCIS and opting to teach at FLETC. He’s found it to be a gift, not having to deal with the woman who’d damn near got him killed in 1998 during an investigation in Djibouti and interrupted four of his investigations during the last fourteen years with her little team back in Los Angeles. 

And that  little pet project- the motor mouth had rambled incessantly during every bloody  investigation. When Lowe opens the file and sees the blue eyes, the cocky smirk and the messy blonde hair of Marty Deeks, he remembers his eye twitching during the last investigation while thinking- someone needs to chop off your damn hair.

Lowe’s eyes flicker over to the man’s age and he’s immediately tempted to break open the twenty-six year old scotch sitting in his bookshelf at the obvious gap between the cut off age and Deeks’ age.

“What kind of strings did that little psychopath pull to get you in?” Lowe mutters as he scans the recommendations from LAPD and various members of the Navy, Marines and even Interpol. “Blackmail? Money? Because my God- I’m not wasting time on-”

Reason for termination- Liaison position cut; budget cuts at LAPD

A small smile grows on Lowe’s face at the line at the bottom of the first page. “You sound like a desperate man in need of a job, Detective.” 

He flips the page and scans the first two paragraphs of the interview that had taken place a week prior. Nothing stands out at him- nothing screams out at him to give him answers to the question he needs. 

How did you get into FLETC- no, how did Henrietta get you in?

Lowe glances over to the remaining pages in the file and decides to shut the case and exhale. He replays the last time he’d crossed paths with Henrietta and her merry band of agents. 

“You screwed me, Lange. This is my-”

“Walk it off, Lowe. This investigation is mine."

He huffs in frustration again and makes his decision- Alright, Marty Deeks. You are going to be the shining example of what a FLETC and more importantly, a federal agent shouldn't ever look like. 

Lowe glances back over to the scotch and sighs, thinking- And I’m going to make sure everyone knows that everything and everyone Hetty touches is poison.

—-----

Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Glynco- Brunswick, Georgia- January 2021

"So you're doing Advanced Interviewing? Cool, cool, cool- look, Deeks- there's something you need to know."

Fatima's warning, coming in the form of a nervous, rambling phone call, brings just fabulous news. 

Marty Deeks winces as he gingerly walks behind a group of cadets walking to classroom 226. He inhales and exhales every few steps as he fights off the pain from his sprained ribs and shoulder strain from an overzealous cadet during sparring. 

And now, Deeks thinks as he pauses in front of the classroom, I'm about to be taught by someone who hates me and Hetty. Great.

Deeks pushes the classroom door open and finds the room to have four rows of three desks each, all facing a broad shouldered older man writing something on the board. Deeks slides into the closest available seat in the back row. 

“Sit down,” Lowe grumbles. He continues to write out the full class name- Advanced Interviewing for Law Enforcement Investigators- on the board as he continues, “I only have you lot for five days and there is a hell of a lot to cover.”

And hopefully you don’t spend half of that picking on me, Deeks thinks. He quickly glances over to the other cadets, recognizing the arrogant ex- soldier mirroring Sam in his early days, the ex- FBI agent going through retraining and two cadets that could be twins scattered around in random desks throughout the room.

“So, let’s begin,” Lowe states. He steps towards the first row of desks and he begins to scan the group of students. “You all already have the basics for interviewing victims, witnesses and suspects but now we’re going to refine it with more techniques, more opportunities to practice those techniques and-”

Lowe stops just as his eyes fall on Deeks. The ex-detective looks down to his desk and waits for the impending comment. 

Briefly, after a few seconds pass, he has hope that Lowe will be professional. 

But of course, Lowe doesn’t. 

“But before we start,” Lowe says with a grin. He walks around the furthest corner desk and towards Deeks. “We have a unique case as a cadet here. A police detective who got in over the age limit."

Goddamn it, Deeks thinks. He sneaks a glance over to another cadet- Jameson or Johnson if he can remember correctly- who eyes him suspiciously. Lowe stops in front of Deeks’ desk and smiles down at him as if looking at a child. “Ladies and gentleman, I’ve worked with this man and he thinks everything is a goddamn joke.”

“Knew something was off,” the ex-soldier mutters under his breath. 

Deeks shakes his head and looks back up to Lowe. “It was a pleasure each time,” he replies through gritted teeth. 

“There’s that sense of humor,” Lowe counters and turns on his feet. “So let’s start this class with you all learning on what not to do when interviewing. Learn from someone who shouldn’t be here, by any means.” 

“And how is that…..sir?” 

Lowe pulls out a chair from an empty desk and turns it towards the class. “By answering a few questions. Sharing your own experience as a ‘liason’. Let’s go.”

This can’t be a thing, can it?  Deeks wonders as he rises to his feet and starts walking up to Lowe, feeling every pair of eyes on him. It’s a stark reminder- a flashback- of his sixth grade teacher who had paraded him up to the front of the class to try to catch him for not paying attention.

He had been paying attention and easily vindicated.

Or the time a Lieutenant Compton had paraded him in front of officers on his first day in the undercover unit as an example of ‘lawyer turned cop wannabe’. 

“Take a seat, superstar,” Lowe orders. He leans against his desk with crossed arms as Deeks sits in the chair. He opts to look straight ahead instead of on the crowd or Lowe.

He wants me to look uncomfortable. He wants to feed off of the power. 

“I’ve crossed paths with you four times, Detective-” Lowe states, “and every single time, you've seen to take things as a goddamn joke. Every time . And that proves that you've skated through this job without a scratch."

He’s underestimating me. Just like so many others have. Deeks shifts in his seat but keeps his eyes glued on the door. "I disagree…sir."

"Really now?" Lowe challenges. He kneels on Deeks' left side and scoffs, "What's the worst thing you've seen on the job?"

Deeks can’t tell what shocks him more- the unprofessionalism or the questions in itself. Even in the sessions with Nate and the NCIS psychologist Kilbride had required the team to go to a few months after his arrival, no’s ever asked that question. 

So Deeks opts for the only thing he can think of. “No.”

"Excuse me?"

“I’m not- I can’t answer that,” Deeks replies, “Your question is leading. Law enforcement officers are usually asked questions like that in therapy or intimate moments. My instinct with a question like that is to recall cases that were traumatic to me physically and or emotionally. So-"

"You got here on special treatment, " Lowe sneers. "What could possibly qualify-”

"You haven’t- Fine." Deeks leans forward and cups his hands together. "You need a cognitive restatement when doing a cognitive interview- think back to such and such and tell me what you hear, see, feel. I have to pick a case first."

In the corner of his eye, he can see a few of the cadets exchange looks. "Do you want something from the years of me going undercover in the LAPD, knowing that no one cared if I lived or died? I could recall the time where after being beaten for hours, my Lieutenant threw me an ice pack and threw me on another case right after? I did that for years- it'd take me a minute to pinpoint one."

Lowe holds out a hand to stop him but the ex- detective continues, as if on autopilot. He's numb as he continues to recall every traumatic moment that comes to mind. “I could do the times I’ve gone overseas to places like Syria and Iraq and put my life on the line to protect this country?" 

Behind him,  Lowe mutters, "You didn't- You never-"

Deeks feels himself shaking with anger but can’t bring himself to move. Instead, he takes a breath and says as calmly as possible, “I could recall the injuries myself and my team have experienced- the helicopter that nearly killed my wife and took her leg, the TBI I had from a rocket blowing us up in Mexico?”

Deeks drops his shoulders and finally looks back to Lowe. “Or do you want to hear the time when someone took me, tied  me down and drilled in my mouth! Because if you want a memory to start the conversation, I could focus on the sound of the drill or the feel of blood drying on my mouth and my neck from sitting in a room for hours after!” 

“Jesus,” a cadet in the front mutters under his breath. It pulls Deeks back into reality and he lets out a shaky breath. “Most importantly, in cognitive interviewing, you do not overwhelm the person you are interviewing as it will cloud the rapport and their recall. So am I done?”

After a few moments of silence, Deeks looks up to see Lowe staring him down blankly. He’s pale and unnerved as he takes a few steps back from Deeks and rubs his chin. 

“Fine. All of you can go. That’s it for the day.” Lowe mutters. He waves off and turns his away and Deeks doesn’t take another second before calmly rising from his chair and walking back towards the door. He’s the first one out of the room and takes an immediate beeline towards the closest empty classroom. 

Shutting the door behind him, Deeks puts his hands on his knees and mutters, “What the hell was that?”

He slides down to the ground and feels  his body continue to shake. What the hell just happened? What did I just do?

[aion-rsa]

Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel – The Elisa Lam Case explained

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Netflix documentary Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel explores the strange case of Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old Canadian woman who disappeared in January 2013 while she was staying at the Cecil Hotel in downtown LA. It’s a very famous case with many theories posited across the internet, which captured people’s imaginations after some very odd footage of Lam was released by the LAPD, hoping to find out what happened to her. More than two weeks after Elisa was last seen her body was discovered in a water tank on top of the hotel, after guests at the hotel reported a drop in pressure and discoloration of the water.

Was she murdered? Was it suicide? Was it an accident? Or could it even have been something supernatural? This four part docuseries from Joe Berlinger, who made the excellent documentary Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, delves into the case in a way that is sensationally un-sensationalist. Featuring new interviews with the police officers who worked on the case, the hotel manager of the Cecil, guests who were staying at the Cecil at the time, LA historians as well as web sleuths who were obsessed with the case, it’s a grounded and thorough look at what might have happened to Elisa, while attempting to address some of the anomalies that make this case so strange and compelling. We break down the evidence, theories and what might have happened.

Who was Elisa Lam?

Elisa Lam, whose Cantonese name is Lam Ho Yi, was a 21-year-old Canadian former student born to parents from Hong Kong. She loved fashion, The Great Gatsby, and Harry Potter and had been studying at the University of British Columbia. Lam travelled to the US by herself in January 2013, visiting San Diego before she arrived in LA, with plans to go to Santa Cruz and San Francisco. She called her family every day until January 31, when her parents reported her  missing.

In LA Elisa stayed on the 5th floor of the Cecil Hotel, which had had a partial makeover and rebranding calling it the Stay On Main. Initially sharing a dorm with several other girls, Lam exhibited some erratic behaviour including leaving odd notes on the other girls’ beds, until eventually she was moved to her own room.

The Cecil

The Hotel itself which is situated on Skid Row (an area rife with drugs, crime, poverty, and homelessness) has a long established reputation for weirdness. Several people have been murdered or taken their own lives at the location and The Night Stalker Richard Ramirez stayed there during the time he was terrorizing LA. Some think it’s haunted but even if you reject that, it’s certainly been the centerpoint of some very dark activity well before Elisa Lam checked in.

Parts of The Cecil were rebranded in 2011 as the Stay On Main, which had its own entrance and a separate website and was marketed as budget accommodation for travellers. The hotel itself was still home to long term residents and Cecil guests and all floors were accessed via the same elevators.

The elevator footage

To truly get a sense of this you need to watch for yourself. The CCTV footage was taken in an elevator in the Cecil on the 1 February and sees Lam behaving very strangely, pushing several different buttons, appearing to hide, then jumping in and out of the elevator and making some unusual hand gestures. 

There are all sort of theories about what’s going on here – that she might be hiding from someone in the corridor, or even playing a game with them, that she’s trying to escape from someone who is holding the lift doors open or that she might have been experiencing hallucinations.

The elevator footage was released by LAPD on 15 February, at which point Lam’s body still hadn’t been found, in the hope that it might help move the investigation forward.

The discovery of the body

On February 19 Elisa Lam’s body was discovered in a water tank on top of the Cecil. She was naked, and her clothes were in the tank with her as well as her watch and room key. The body was discovered by a maintenance worker investigating low water pressure and reports from other guests that the water in their rooms was discolored and had a strange taste. 

The roof of the Cecil can be accessed by an exterior fire escape ladder and also by an alarmed door. The maintenance man used the door, but it seems to be the case that Elisa Lam did not, since the alarm was not activated (it can only be shut off with a key, which Lam did not have access to).

Hatch open, or closed?

Whether the hatch to the water tank where Lam’s body was found was open or closed is a major point of contention. An LAPD spokesperson at the time said on camera that he believed the police found the hatch closed, but in this documentary the maintenance man insists that the lid was open when he found her. It makes quite a big difference – it would have been very difficult – impossible perhaps – for Elisa Lam to have shut the hatch after getting in herself so it would mean someone else was involved in her death. 

The coroner’s report

The report indicated that there were no significant injuries on Elisa Lam’s body and that the only significant drugs in her system were the medications she was prescribed for her bipolar disorder (though it was noted that these were in smaller measures than they should have been suggesting she was underdosing). No sign of rape or sexual assault was found. 

The report issued a finding of accidental drowning and suggested her bipolar was a significant factor, though lots of online sleuths were unhappy with this verdict, because the circumstances were so strange and there were so many unanswered questions.

What was going on in the lift? 

The fact is no one knows and while her behavior is certainly very odd it is not necessarily inconsistent with someone having a psychotic episode, the documentary explains. The mystery of why the door didn’t close might not be that mysterious after all – youtuber John Lordan who became obsessed with the case and visited the Cecil to try to make sense of various aspects found that one of the buttons Lam pressed was the door hold button, which would keep the doors open for 2 minutes. 

It’s possible that perhaps Lam’s odd behavior is her trying to activate a motion sensor in the lift, trying to get the doors to close and not realising that she’d pressed the door hold button.

People creeped out by the footage online have suggested various spooky theories including connections to the movie Dark Water, based on the story published in 1996 and the movie released in 2002 (they are eerily similar) and the ‘elevator game’ – a sort of urban legend where pressing various keys in sequence is supposed to give the player access to another dimension (here’s a good explanation of the game and its heritage). These are undoubtedly nothing to do with anything but have added to the mythos of the case.

It’s also possible that the lift behavior had absolutely nothing to do with her disappearance, odd though it was. That is to say, even if she was behaving strangely in the lift, and even if  she was just being a bit weird by herself, that doesn’t mean she was… or was not… in contact with someone else before her death. 

Why did it take the police so long to find her body?

The LAPD searched the hotel after it became clear that there was no footage of her leaving the Cecil and although they ventured onto the roof and took sniffer dogs into the hotel they didn’t check the water tanks. Why not? Some people think it’s part of a cover up – a plot perhaps between the police and the Cecil – but the officers who worked the case insist it’s not that. 

So what actually happened to Elisa Lam?

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Sadly, we don’t know. The documentary leans into the verdict that it was an accident – that Lam was having an episode brought on by not taking her medication for bipolar, that she climbed out of the fire escape, climbed up the outside of the building, got into the water tank, removed her own clothing, was unable to get out (assuming she tried) and drowned. This is an unsatisfying conclusion for many internet detectives but with absolutely no suspects, no evidence of injury to her body, no reason to think it was suicide and no other logical explanation, this is where we find ourselves. It’s a somewhat uncomfortable verdict but the only reasonable one remaining. 

Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel is available to stream on Netflix now.

The post Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel – The Elisa Lam Case explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3aUQqJr

[fapangel]

President Trump is about to lift the Obama error ban on allowing the Police to getting and using military grade equipment and weapons. Is this a good thing or bad in your thoughts on this?

It’s good, because “militarization of police” has absolutely nothing to do with the equipment they use, because the difference between military and police is all about training, not toys. 

We’ve a ready example in the Chris Dorner manhunt, where a single ex-military man with a rifle drove the Los Angeles Police Department insane with terror. The LAPD were so terrified of this one man with a rifle that on two separate occasions they mag-dumped on civilians in pickup trucks that were the wrong model and color to be the suspect’s vehicle. One man was rammed off the road before LAPD officers riddled his vehicle with bullets, and two little old Hispanic ladies, who were driving away from the cops when the LAPD lit them up with over a hundred rounds.

The attacks that rattled the LAPD so badly that they were blowing away any civilian in a pickup truck that got within a hundred yards of them were described by Dorner himself as “unconventional asymmetric warfare,” (and indeed were.) For the military, which has been fighting urban/rural insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan for 16 years now, that’s also known as “Tuesday afternoon.” Soldiers operating road checkpoints have established procedures for flagging down vehicles, and when they open fire, they actually stop the vehicle and kill the occupants with swift and lethal efficiency. Few incidents illustrate the vast discrepency between trained military soldiers and police officers better than the Dorner incident, but the many errors of the fabled FBI raid on the Waco compound, where the Feds had all the time in the world to bring in specialized “shooters,” equipment and lay plans for an orchestrated assault, and managed to get four FBI agents - and every noncombatant in the compound - killed anyways is a close second. The cavalcade of planning fuckups in that raid are heartbreaking to read. There is absolutely no comparing civilian law enforcement and actual soldiers - which is often seen in reverse when governments try to use soldiers as police in various overseas “peacekeeping” operations. The military has their own dedicated branch of military police for a very, very good reason. 

Equipment vs. Mindset

A few years back MuckRock got tons of data via FOIA request on what equipment was distributed to which states - go ahead and look up your own state, if you’d like. The sample data in the MuckRock article (for Missouri) matches what I found for my own state - namely, the vast majority of things local PDs buy is the kind of stuff you buy at your local military surplus store - clothing, supplies and various odds-and-ends, not advanced electronics or weapons. Adverse-weather gear, magazine pouches, clothes, kneepads, scope rings, scope mounts, even filing cabinets make up the vast bulk of it. This shouldn’t be a surprise - most of what any Police Department spends is on boring essentials like these. They already have guns, because Law Enforcement has always had access to the same vendors that supply the military. All they get from this program is a bargain. 

And what a bargain. A tremendous amount of caterwauling and hand-wringing was done over local PDs buying surplus MRAPs, but police departments have always had armored personnel carriers - they’re called SWAT tanks. A SWAT Tank has exactly one job - to drive a bunch of highspeedlowdragoperatorz from the “road” end of the driveway up to the house housing the “barricaded gunman.” Traditionally you have two options for buying these - pay a specialized company to up-armor an existing commercial vehicle, which is very expensive (this Nat. Geo documentary shows the process in detail,) or buy an actual military APC that’s also offered in disarmed “law enforcement” models from a major arms manufacturer (even more expensive.) The MRAPs, however, are worn-out from service in Iraq and Afghanistan (which is why Iraq got so many of them free; they weren’t worth the cost to ship home,) and the military is eager to be rid of the rest, as they’re useless for anything outside of their specialized role and all the armor makes them a maintenance hog. Local PDs, however, are going to leave them in a garage most of the year, and these vehicles come with stuff like built-in night vision that would cost your average PD more to buy alone than they’re paying for the entire vehicle. 

This applies to everything else available through the program. Police have always used grenade launchers of any kind employed by the military for deploying tear gas grenades, they’ve always been able to buy select-fire/fully automatic rifles and submachine guns, (many, like select-fire variants of Ruger’s Mini-14, were built and marketed specifically to Law Enforcement markets,) and of course most police wear body armor. PD’s have always been able to buy pretty much any weapon of mayhem or destruction they can justify, with the only limit being the budget - and many PDs have long had a penchant for buying fancy toys that spend most of their time collecting dust in an armory. 

The problem has nothing to do with equipment. Consider this picture of police officers from the Ferguson riots, helpfully labeled by Business Insider (fullres here:)

There’s only one piece of equipment in this photo that police rarely, if ever, have used in decades past. Not the short-barreled rifle - they’ve always had those, especially SWAT teams. Not the mag pouches - every cop has two of them on their duty belt. Kevlar helmets are standard-issue riot gear, and so are gas-masks, (for protection from their own tear-gas.) That’s all the same old shit.

The problem is the camouflage uniforms. 

Of everything in this picture, it’s the MARPAT camouflage that is completely useless for police officers standing on an urban street. Not only is there no woods to hide in, but the aim of a police officer, especially deployed for riot duty, is to be visible. Police uniforms are a visible symbol of their status as enforcers of law and order. These officers lined up outside of the Ferguson PD are a great example of riot gear combined with the visible uniform presence, with the man closest to the camera displaying the usual “uniform” of either SWAT or riot control - a simple single-color black outfit with patches on it. This Minneapolis Police statement concerning SWAT uniform color changes illustrates why - dark uniforms don’t blend into urban environments any better than anything else, but they do make the presence of body armor (almost always black-covered) less obvious to anyone that might be shooting at them. And even then, their vests say POLICE on them in Big White Letters. 

A reminder - SWAT teams are specialized shooters; armed and armored for full-on firefights - and even they subordinate tactical effectiveness of their outfits to some degree to maintain the symbols identifying them as enforcers of law and order. Even if they didn’t, they’d use purpose-made urban camouflage, not milsup MARPAT that does nothing (to say nothing of those coyote-brown combat boots.) 

That MARPAT camo is the visible symptom of the real problem - these police are playing as soldiers, which they’re most certainly not. The camo doesn’t just complete the “image” of a high-speed-low-drag-OPERATOR, it also works against the image of Enforcer Of Law And Order which has always been an integral part of how police keep the peace; by emphasizing their presence as a deterrent to would-be crime. Even riot control ops rely on this; the image of a uniform line of black-clad cops beating their batons on their shields like an advancing shield-wall of ancient warriors is potent and intimidating. Abandoning that image to drape themselves in military garb is the one tangible, equipment-related signifier of their shift in mentality. Even the uniforms would’ve meant nothing had the Ferguson PD not acted the way they did; running around in gaggles vaguely resembling “fire teams,” pointing rifles everywhere like kids playing soldier, rather than comporting themselves as riot control officers always have (with specific tactics, weapons and equipment meant for the job.) 

Hyperventilating over “military equipment” is a folly exclusive to people utterly ignorant of firearms and the distinctions (or rather, lack thereof) between them, and Obama’s cancellation of the program only shut off a cheaper source of vital mundane equipment needed by every department, and of serviceable SWAT rifles for the many, many small PDs that are trying to up-gun for possible response to active-shooter terrorist attacks with limited small-town budgets.

Mentality

Years ago, one of my family members was a beat cop in a local city PD. Whilst milling around outside of another Suspected Barricaded Gunman call, one of the SWAT team members scuttled over to a mud puddle in a pothole, dipped his fingers in, and started smearing his face with mud, for face camo. The nearby rubbernecker’s gaggle, observing this display on a balmy summer afternoon with nary a cloud in the sky, stared in silence before turning their baffled, questioning gazes, as one, onto my relative. 

He could only sigh, shrug, and say “Uh… they don’t get out much.” 

The urge to play Soldier is nothing new - just check out an airsoft event sometime if you doubt me - but the Dorner manhunt and the Waco mess exemplify the disasters that ensue when police officers mistakenly think they’re capable of doing a soldier’s job, or that police situations should be approached like they’re soldiers jobs. Arguing about where the police buy the same equipment they’ve always used will simply obfuscate the source of the problem, rather than solving it. 

Sheriffs are elected officials. If you don’t know who’s running your PD - and how - you should educate yourself. The power is in our hands - it’s about time we used it.