Posted on 08/08/2008 9:20:58 AM PDT by DCBryan1
4 gunmen bust doors, yell ‘FBI,’ loot home
BY JACOB QUINN SANDERS
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Two men kicked in the front door, splintering it near the bolt-lock. Two more kicked in a side door. All four had guns. It was 3 a.m. “FBI! FBI!” the men shouted, one pulling what looked like a badge out of his shirt before stuffing it back in. “Where’s your money?”
Lloyd McCuien lay facedown on the living-room floor of his Pulaski County house — off Arkansas 365 outside Maumelle and within sight of Interstate 40 — surrounded by seven family members. “It took me about 10 or 20 seconds to get my mind woken up,” McCuien, 42, said, “to realize that the real FBI didn’t wear a red bandanna over their face and a white T-shirt. These weren’t the FBI. They were self-employed.” And this was a robbery, one the Pulaski County sheriff’s office is investigating.
The gunmen ransacked the house and searched room to room to gather all the occupants in one place, pulling some out of bed at gunpoint. One of the men was heavyset, McCuien said. The other three were skinny. “They sounded young,” Mc-Cuien said. A bear of a man — he looks uncannily like The Green Mile actor Michael Clarke Duncan — McCuien tried to steal an occasional peek to see if he could see a face. “Look down,” one gunman said. A few minutes later, he tried again. “I said look down!” the gunman said, following his remark with a smack on the back of Mc-Cuien’s head with a handgun. McCuien said he heard someone say pull out the duct tape. “Either they couldn’t get the tape to work or something because they decided not to tie us up,” he said.
About then, a neighbor returned home, McCuien said, and the gunmen — organized to the point of choreography until then — started bickering. “One of them said it was time to go, time to go,” McCuien said. “But another one said no, he wasn’t leaving without taking something.” The gunmen grabbed an Xbox video-game console, baseball caps and clothes, a .45-caliber handgun and McCuien’s wallet. “They took my TV off the wall like they put it there,” he said. “Just real quick, smooth and easy.”
A vehicle with a hatchback pulled up outside, and the men left in it. According to a sheriff’s office report, the robbers left behind the duct tape, a black leather bag and a glove. “They took my nephew’s clothes, man,” McCuien said. “The TV I understand. Plasma, 42-inch. But his clothes? What are they going to do with those? Wear them?” McCuien said he believes his house was targeted specifically, though he doesn’t know the reason. “I don’t know exactly why or by who, but somebody who knows somebody or somebody who’s somebody’s cousin thought we had something in here they wanted,” he said. “This kind of thing doesn’t really happen around here.”
Sheriff ’s office spokesman John Rehrauer concurred, saying violent acts are unusual in that area. The sheriff’s office does not keep track of home-invasion robberies, Rehrauer said, but crime statistics kept by the agency showed 15 robberies of people in Pulaski County in 2008 through June, a decrease of seven from the same period a year earlier.
FBI special agent Steve Frazier, spokesman for the agency’s Little Rock field office, said he had not been notified of any possible impersonations of bureau personnel.
After the gunmen left, McCuien said, he called 911. The respondents “were real law enforcement this time — uniforms, patrol cars, everything,” he said. Deputies had made no arrests by late Thursday. McCuien said his house on Ingram Road was recently remodeled, but he didn’t suspect any of the white and Hispanic crew that worked on it.
“No, man, these were all brothers who came up in here this morning,” he said. “Sorry to say.” And, he said, he tends not to keep large amounts of cash in his house. “Where would I get it?” he asked. “I’m out of work right now, just like almost everybody else, it seems. I have no idea why somebody thought I was rich.”
McCuien said he grew up in the same neighborhood of calm and winding, sidewalkless roads, old and moldering mobile homes, and clean, newer brick houses on large lots. He lived in Phoenix for 11 years, he said, owning a dumptruck firm. He moved back about six years ago, he said, after his father had a stroke. He stayed after a sister got sick, and when she died, he moved into her house.
“This is the first I’ve heard of something like this happening around here,” he said. “I wasn’t really thinking I’d make history in this neighborhood.”
As for me, I have a working relationship with local law enforcement, and they know that I will probably consent if they need to come to talk to me (after a phone call to my lawyer) when they come during daytime, but a night raid on an FFL-SOT holder will get them into a belt-fed firefire fight in a residential neighborhood.
I have enough to worry about with gang-bangers, MS-13, Aryan nation idiots, Hells angels, and various wannabes trying to increase their firepower by knocking off FFL-SOT's like the Kehoe brothers did to another Arkansas FFL holder (Killed the whole family, incl. 8 y/o girl)for 20 AR-15s). You probably remember the shootout with cops, the big blue suburban in a dash cam shootout where the cop and perp fired 30 rounds and no one got hit? That was a good guy.
Anyways...we need to do something about these damn no-knock raids. They should be so damn rare that only when life and limb are in IMMEDIATE and IMINENT danger should one be conducted (preferbally with the mayor, chief of police, and signing judge at the scene).
<.../.pissed off at WOD/JBT rant off>.
Amen.
He should have known they weren’t real law enforcement when they didn’t shoot the dog.
Agreed, stop this nonesense.
Sounds like his cousin is trying to outfit a new crib.
Lol!
I’m afraid that you are correct.
I wonder if that might be the only difference in some cases.
the truth is, this would have gone off the exact same way if these hoodlums shouted "Bloods!"
and the fact that you guys are comparing this to one bad raid in PGC shows you simply have an agenda and are using it to justify your picking and choosing of these events.
i'm not going to get into another drawn out discourse. we all know PGC turned out to be wrong. tell me how many successful raids occur on a daily basis. hundreds. you just do not read about them.
LMAO!!! Good one.
besides which a ban on raids would close down several reality teevee shows.
Anyone breaking down my door any time of day is going to get shot. But I’ll serve tea and cookies if they come with a warrant.
Should read:
Anyone breaking down my door any time of day is going to get shot. But I’ll serve tea and cookies if they knock and offer a warrant.
you post “They should be so damn rare that only when life and limb are in IMMEDIATE and IMINENT danger should one be conducted (preferbally with the mayor...”
Well, this mayor was present:
http://us.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/07/mayor.warrant/index.html
recently remodeled, but he didn’t suspect any of the white and Hispanic crew that worked on it.
you never know when somebody will see something shiny and desire to have it for their own...whether or not its of any real value...
best to keep prying eyes outta yer toybox, esp round Christmas and B-days etc etc etc... while I disagree with many here about drugs and their availability, the WOsD no-knocks are gonna keep setting the stage for ninjas to be killed en masse before too long...
LFOD...
If someone kicks my door in at three am they are getting all barrels of every weapon I have access to until they TOSS their frigging badges and ID cards DOWN the hall to me. In the mean time, I’ll take out anything that moves.
It will be THEIR fault, not mine.
I’ve never broken the law and if someone comes in screaming FBI, they damned sure better be wearing good armor, because if not, most of what I have will go through walls, people, and cars to name a few things.
I won’t tolerate a home invasion. Period.
Define successful...
No knock raids except in case of extreme danger to innocents {meaning private citizens and not the Cops as that is part of their job} should be forbidden or very limited conditions. The element of surprise alone should not be a good enough reason. The cop swearing the warrant should be by law forced to be the one to serve it as well.
“Should we ban traffic stops, too, since those have been abused by criminals?”
In most cases YES. We all know that most stops are just an excuse to steal money from the public and have nothing to do with public safety.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.