Ramesh Nyberg On the Outside Looking In At first, being on the other side in the civilian world was odd after being in law enforcement for 27 years. Then, things started settling in and I learned that certain humility comes with retirement and I let things be. That was 12 years ago. Just a month ago, I learned a new side of civilian life: being the family of a crime victim. Someone very close to me, a minor, was molested…
Werewolves Hiding in Plain Sight Among Sheepdogs Ed Nowicki – Guest Columnist Many of you are familiar with Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s brilliant metaphor, “Of Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs,” when Col. Grossman equates the role of law enforcement to be similar to that of a sheepdog, protecting the herd (society) from the wolves. I absolutely agree with Col. Grossman’s observations. There is another predator I see lurking among the sheepdogs. While this predator may not be as physically dangerous as…
Ramesh Nyberg A Disappearing Act Like No Other Not long ago, my wife and I saw a play by a small acting group here in south Florida, called “The Camp.” It was about an American regiment pressing towards Berlin at the end of WWII. During a stop in a small German village, they come across a strange area and start to investigate. To their horror, they find a concentration camp, abandoned by the Nazis, but still occupied by dead and…
Ramesh Nyberg Policing is anything but simple these days. Policing in the 21st century has taken on some pretty complex and interesting tasks. We’ve gone from the cheery “constable” who used to walk down the sidewalk, twirling a baton, to a high-tech entity carrying things like TASER®s, body-worn cameras and weapons with laser sights. Our “control and regulation” is way beyond the simple scope of poking our head into the doors of shopkeepers and asking how their day is going….
…and nothing but the truth. Ramesh Nyberg It’s all relative. Isn’t it? I mean, EVERYTHING – it’s all relative to your personal perspective. The idea of “wealth,” for example, has a different meaning and different threshold of net worth, depending upon where you live, how old you are and a bunch of different factors. For the past several years, we’ve been hearing this wave of antipolice vocalists, all chanting how horrible and brutal and corrupt and oppressive American police are….
Ramesh Nyberg A Master Interviewer – Gregory M. Smith April 19, 1953 – October 27, 2017 You’ve heard it before: Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach. As one who did and one who taught (and still does), I respectfully disagree. But, I won’t use myself as an example because that would be presumptuous. Instead, I’ll use as an example a guy named Greg Smith who just passed away a few months ago. Greg was a really special…
Ramesh Nyberg I was an investigator for 22 years in homicide, working death scenes of all kinds, but I’ve never been to a scene littered with the bodies of innocent schoolkids. I’m thankful for that. And, so, on the very day I am writing this latest column, it is the same day that the students, faculty and staff of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas are returning to school for the first time since the shooting. I dedicate this column not only to…
Ramesh Nyberg Beware of falling iguanas. No…really. Though we don’t have any signs which actually say this in South Florida, it is a possibility. It even happened to my neighbor. Let me back up a bit. From Palm Beach County south to my neck of the woods, and all the way down to the tip of Key West, we are pretty much overrun with lizards of all kinds. In the last 15 years or so, though, the iguana population has…
Ramesh Nyberg The Monsters Among Us “Hey!” Steve Martin’s character yells to his boss in the 1979 comedy classic, The Jerk. “These oil cans are defective!” And, he chuckles as he watches them, one by one, spring leaks. His boss spots the bumbling, rifle-toting assassin across the street on the hill and yells back, “We don’t have defective cans; we have a defective person over there!” We are in the “defective people” business. Whether the people we deal with are…
Ramesh Nyberg Moving Forward in Reverse Mercifully, the door has closed on a summer which has been tumultuous, frustrating, violent, and divisive. But, even with fall being just around the corner, I can’t help but get the feeling that all of the anger, rage, mistrust, hatred, and misperceptions have only just begun. As I write this, there are reports of Confederate statues coming down and being dismantled in the middle of the night, and more vitriol and finger-pointing on social…