So, when the SEALs are squaring off against the cops, we can’t help but think of last summer’s popcorn movie, Cowboys vs. Aliens. We guess Hollywood doesn’t have any choice if they want to make a cowboy movie, because fighting Indians isn’t PC any more. But how do SEALs wind up fighting cops?

You might have already guessed that alcohol was involved. Why, yes, indeedy, it was.

But New York’s bizarre gun laws are also involved, as is the NYPD brass’s preference for collaring the law-abiding who made a technical error, versus the actual criminals who might be connected and make it hard for a guy.

Now, if the SEAL’s commander has authorized the frogman in question to carry, the NYPD is going to have to let him go (whereupon he surely will experience that quaint Naval custom, captain’s mast, for having the firearm and ethanol about his person simultaneously).

A bad day for Shaun Day began mildly enough:

Shaun Day was on a leave from his duty as a Navy SEAL duty when cops nailed him for running a red light in Manhattan, New York on Thursday.

Or as the inimitable New York Post phrased it:

Shaun Day, 29, was on a two-week leave when cops harpooned him for running a red light at 12:30 a.m. at Second Avenue and East 26th Street.

Then it got worse:

NYPD officers searched Day’s pickup truck and found a 9mm semiautomatic pistol and three magazines full of ammo.

In New York, you can incite murder and riot, and the mayor’s your pal. You can call for jihad and celebrate the massacre of thousands, and they’ll invite you to build your Mosque de Triomphe on the embers. But you better not carry a gun, unless you’re a violent criminal, or politically connected, in which case the cops show you professional courtesy.

So it was bad for Day. But it hadn’t got as bad as it was going to get. At this point, he told the cops that he was a SEAL. “Prove it,” said the cops, expecting him to produce a SEAL Affinity MasterCard or maybe a secret decoder ring. Laughing at his SEAL story, the cops lugged him, but not to jail. Bloomberg’s new welcome for vets is the Cuckoo’s Nest: Day was thrown into the psych ward in Bellevue.

The Navy sent their own pshrink and sprung Day from from the laughing academy — even if he were mentally ill, that wing of Bellevue is not a hospital that ever makes any patient better — and brought him back to his base. We bet he’s really glad he let the nice cops search his truck. (Ask any lawyer about this. There is only one right answer. The one PO Day gave — or that the cops say he gave — isn’t it).

The rebarbative politician/DA Cy Vance, Jr., has “deferred” but not dropped the charges against Day. After all, to quote that great philosopher from the pages of Carroll,Humpty Dumpty, “The question is, who is to be master  — that’s all.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on by Hognose.

About Hognose

Former Special Forces 11B2S, later 18B, weapons man. (Also served in intelligence and operations jobs in SF).