Tag Archives: Department of Homeland Security

02.11.11
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Walmart fires brave employees who intervene to protect workers and customers from violence


Memo to Big Sis: Your little terrorism prevention videos now playing in Walmart are having their intended effect…teaching us to act helpless and not to defend ourselves in a crisis situation.

If you see something, say something…but just don’t DO anything. And don’t bother asking a Walmart employee to help stop what’s going on. Company policy says “NO!”.

Concealed Carry? Fuggeddaboudit.

Utah County Walmart employee fired after intervening in employee scuffle

James Dallin, an assistant manager with 10 years of experience with Walmart, was fired Jan. 4 after separating a worker from an angry husband on Black Friday in November at the store in Cedar Hills.

Dallin said Thursday he was violently shoved from behind. Then, he said the husband went after his wife — Dallin’s co-worker.

“Flung her, right away, verbally started abusing her,” Dallin said.

The man grabbed the woman hard by the arm and berated her as he escorted her down an aisle. Minutes later, the man still had a firm grip on his co-worker’s arm and was continuing to verbally abuse her when Dallin said he pushed the man into a shelf and told him to leave, then escorted him out of the store.

The man complained, and six weeks later, Dallin was fired for violating Walmart’s policy on “workplace violence.”

“The thing I have a problem with is you have to react,” Dallin said.

Darn straight! Sometimes you just have to clean somebody’s clock. Especially when the honor and safety of a woman is at stake.

So, Walmart’s excuse?

Walmart issued a new statement Thursday on Dallin’s firing, and also on the company’s response to intervening employees.

“After a thorough review of witnesses statements, video surveillance and other information, it was determined that Mr. Dallin’s actions escalated the matter in such a way that it put his own safety and that of others around him at risk,” Walmart spokesman Dan Fogleman said. “What we want to avoid is having a situation escalate that might result in someone getting hurt. Our management team is aware of this and expected to act accordingly.”

Yeah, um, okay.

Lori Poulsen, Justin Richins, Shawn Ray and Gabriel Stewart were fired a week after disarming and detaining Trent Allen Longton, a convicted felon, Jan. 13 at the Walmart in Layton.

A police report shows Longton stashed a netbook computer under his clothes. After being shepherded back to the loss prevention office, the workers say Longton pulled out a gun, rushed them, grabbed Stewart, put a gun to his back and said, “Don’t make me do this.”

Despite disarming the gunman and holding him until police arrived, the workers were fired under the Walmart policy for dealing with shoplifters. They were supposed to “disengage” and “withdraw” when the gun came out, but the workers contended they had nowhere to go.

So employees are just supposed to wait around for a supervisor, or for a supervisor’s supervisor, or the Department of Homeland Security to come around and walk the offender through the employee handbook and remind him of all the rules he’s breaking? Politely ask him to step down and we’ll resolve the matter through hand-holding, deep breathing, and quiet airing of grievances?

Give me a freaking break.

Can you imagine how many people on the ground would have died, and how the history of this entire country might have been different, if the brave people on Flight 93 had “disengaged” and “withdrew”, allowing the terrorists to seize control of the plane and crash it into the White House?

Memo to Walmart employees from HQ: If you value your job, just keep to yourself when someone comes in brandishing a weapon and threatening harm to everyone there. Let shoplifters steal whatever they want. Let your co-workers get their heads bashed in. We don’t care. We just don’t want the situation to “escalate”.

Memo to customers: Shop elsewhere if you value your safety.

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01.05.11
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John P. Wheeler: Disoriented or poisoned? What did he know?


Some things about this story about John P. Wheeler aren’t adding up for me. First, some facts about his recent career with the Pentagon.

He served as the Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force, Washington, D.C. from 2005-2008, when he became the Special Assistant to the Acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Logistics and Environment. His mission was to carry out tasks and monitor programs in support of goals as directed, and support the Air Force Secretariat with data gathering, team organization, liaison, analysis and/or options for action. Principal tasks included standing up Cyberspace Forces and placing Precision Strike technology and Real Time Streaming Video targeting links into the hands of groundfighters in combat.

I can’t begin to pretend to be an armchair forensics expert, but here are my questions:

  1. Why didn’t people who encountered him call the police or a doctor?
  2. Who works at the DuPont chemical building where he was last seen? Does anyone there know him or has he been seen meeting with any DuPont employees?
  3. Is anyone doing an autopsy to see what substances might have been in his bloodstream at death?
  4. His biography shows an interesting work history.  For most of his career, he was mainly a soldier, law student, entrepreneur and business turnaround consultant, as well as holding various mid-level, semi-influential posts with Reagan and GHW Bush. Suddenly, in 2005, he began working as a Special Assistant to various Air Force muckety mucks, followed by a stint as a consultant at Mitre Corp.  What did he know? What else did Wheeler do in his job with Mitre Corp. and the Department of Homeland Security besides “providing part-time support to outreach activities aimed at promoting discussions among government, industry and academia on cyber defense topics.”?
  5. When we read, “But police said he was scheduled to take an Amtrak train from Washington to Wilmington on Tuesday, Dec. 28”, who was responsible for that (re)scheduling?
  6. Is there any real connection between his dispute over a neighboring property? What was the deal with the smoke bombing of that property the day before he was found dead? More importantly, does Wheeler, who seems to have been an intelligent fellow familiar with the rule of law in an ordered society, fit the profile of a man who would firebomb a neighbor’s under construction house because it would “block [his] view”? Is it so easy to believe that a property dispute like this would lead to his murder and his body being dumped in Newark?

I smell something more than smoke bombs being thrown at a neighbor’s house. I smell a convenient, highly pre-meditated cover for a murder.

Video examples of some of the results of John Wheeler’s work with the Pentagon since 2005:

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