The rule in media is that if they mention your middle name you killed someone, so Thomas Franklin May is nominally guilty.

His ex-wife put out a restraining order against him, so he drove out to where she was and shot her in her car.  She was 36. He also shot a nearby 63 year old woman and a 94 year old woman, I assume so they wouldn't turn into Agents.

It's hard not to judge a book by its cover when the book is wearing a big America # 1 t-shirt and a Harley Davidson cap even if that is the mandatory uniform of Alabama and he drives a Jeep.  Why is this idiot in sneakers?

Police did not release a motive. "We really don't know what's in a person's mind when they do something like this."

Yes we do, same thing every time: "It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks."

About three hours later, when city officers already had left campus, a man driving a white Jeep Liberty with the same tag number police had released as the suspect's pulled into the parking lot where the shootings occurred. Photographer Todd van Emst, who was taking photos of the scene for The Associated Press, said the man asked to use his cell phone. Van Emst said the man gestured and said he "did all this."

Uh oh, someone broke the fourth wall. It's hard to believe that a man with a white Jeep Liberty needs to drive back to the scene of the crime to make a call; and anytime anyone asks to borrow your cell phone you should assume they're running a short con, duck.  No, Thomas Franklin May chose to go to the media.  Did he think they'd be sympathetic?  Doubtful. They'd let him go?  No.  He loves the liberal media?  It's Alabama.  He went because he figured they'd do what he needed them to do: soft ball the bad guy and publish his side of the story.

The media will drop a blonde in a war zone without a moment's hesitation, but what they don't like is a gunman out of context, and this guy was way the hell out of context.  So rather than sitting him down to figure how this can be Bush's fault, they called the cops.

And then this happened:

After members of the media called 911, police arrived within minutes, knocked the man to the ground and handcuffed him, van Emst said.

If it takes you minutes to drive to somewhere to knock someone down, you probably didn't need to knock him down.   Not that May didn't deserve it, but in truth knocking him down was van Emst's right, not the police's.   Read that again.  The police have a partial monopoly on power because they promise us to use it judiciously, when necessary-- but we often forget that we humans retain a special right for scenarios, like the scenario of a homicidal maniac in a white car (protip: if not female or Asian = INSANE) coming up to ask to borrow your cell phone.   That guy you're allowed to hit, if you can.

The point here is not that the photographer should have tackled him.  The point is the more police get to use our right of force, the more we become afraid, or even forget, to use it ourselves.  The result is that the tenuous duopoly of force becomes a monopoly.  Rates will go up.

II.

But as much as May's outfit reveals a lot about his thinking, it also affects his thinking, or do women not feel any change in personality when they wear Louboutins? Well, while you ponder that link exchange take a look at the Navy Seal arresting May-- that's standard police attire. What the hell kind of town is Opelika that the cops wear sneakers because they expect to be doing a lot of running?  That guy came dressed for Two Men Enter One Man Leaves, and goddam if he's not going to get a front incisor as a souvenir for his kid.

This is the full, uncut banner picture at the top of the website of the Alabama Department of Public Safety Highway Patrol Division:

Where's the highway?  Is this steganography?

Note that this banner is for the state police's website, i.e. this is their idea of public relations.  I don't fault them for preparing for Red Dawn, but why tell us this is who they are?  If this is who they want us to think they are, how will their actions mirror this desire?  Not to mention recruit the kind of people who think 24 is a training video which it was, until season 4, then it kind of got weak.

Listen, I've been to Mobile about a thousand times, and every time I've wanted air support.  Parts of it are tough, I get it, and off topic I will mention that if you're married in Mobile it is 100% certain one of you is cheating.   But all that paramilitary gear is after the crime stuff--it helps them catch the bad guys but does not Protect & Serve you from the bad guys.  (Note that this guy already had a protection order against him.)  Where your head is at, how you carry yourself, who you think you are all affect your behaviors, and vice versa (vee-kah ver-sah.)  Get dressed.

I get the police's position.  There's such a huge anti-police, anti-government philosophy that cops don't know if a guy is going to squirt them with a bottle of HIV just on principle, so if there's a homicide suspect who is still standing you make him not be standing, and then you can explain he has the right to a totally ineffectual public defender.  

Thomas Stupid May is going to get what's coming to him, because this is, after all, Alabama.  But May was in uniform.  What would they have done if he was wearing an America Is #965868 t-shirt?

---

More on the Alabama shooter

The iPad and The Death Of Techno-fetishism