Posted on 05/11/2018 1:32:43 PM PDT by Elderberry
It’s been three years since the bloodiest motorcycle gun battle in Texas history — a melee at high noon featuring dozens of guns, chains, knives and even machetes — left nine bikers dead, 18 injured and 177 in jail.
There are still few answers about what happened on May 17, 2015, or why the Bandidos Motorcycle Club and the rival Cossacks went to war at a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco as local and state police watched nearby.
But as Thursday’s deadline approaches for new charges, the aggressive law enforcement effort once billed as a pro-active crackdown on biker violence has instead devolved into a struggling investigation marred by lack of evidence, prosecutorial overreach and a lame-duck district attorney’s office hobbled by unrelated allegations of corruption.
So far, not a single biker has been convicted of a crime. The only trial so far ended in December in a hung jury, with 10 jurors voting for dismissal of the conspiracy case against a Bandidos chieftain from Dallas.
And more than 150 criminal cases have been dismissed outright, including more than 60 just this week. A growing number of civil lawsuits seek millions of dollars in damages for bikers who lost their lives, their jobs or their resources.
UNCERTAINTY AHEAD: Lives in limbo for bikers expecting a child
Today, the beleaguered district attorney’s office is left with just two dozen criminal cases, including new charges of causing injury while inciting a riot, a far simpler crime to prove than the conspiracy to commit murder charges that were initially filed against so many. Several bikers are also charged with murder and tampering with evidence.
“They jailed them first and investigated second,” said Houston attorney Paul Looney, whose clients’ cases are among those dismissed. “They never had any evidence.
(Excerpt) Read more at houstonchronicle.com ...
“There are still few answers about what happened on May 17, 2015, or why the Bandidos Motorcycle Club and the rival Cossacks went to war at a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco as local and state police watched nearby.”
Seems to me that there may yet be a case made that the cops “didn’t just watch!” Cops “watching” are not usually carrying AR-15’s.
Law enforcement and Waco are terms that do not work together.
True across decades.
Basically the Houston “justice” authorities engineered the whole thing, in hopes of glory when they pretended to “solve” the case.
And the Houston Chronicle is lying its head off, pretending not to know what really happened.
The police just “watched”? And their bullets just happened to end up in most of the dead bodies?
Sorry. I mean Waco. Crime in Waco, newspaper in Houston.
“They jailed them first and investigated second,” said Houston attorney Paul Looney, whose clients’ cases are among those dismissed. “They never had any evidence.”
For once a lawyer speaks the truth.
Yep; this article explains in a way that parallels my understanding of what happened that day and afterward.
The fault lies mostly at the feet of the DA at the time; Reyna. One bad apple and all that... What the police did and how they followed through with their mission is something law enforcement everywhere will be looking at to study all the ways that went wrong. It’s above my pay grade.
With that said, though, the few real thugs who are actually guilty of serious crimes could have already been brought to justice if "Mr. Ham Hands" hadn't arrested pretty much everybody who was at the restaurant and tried to charge all of them with murder instead of admitting he over-reacted and immediately release most of those he arrested.
Most of the guys whose lives were ruined by false arrest and ludicrously high bail were at the restaurant to attend the "Meeting of the Minds" - which up to that date had always been a peaceful event. I've been to one or two myself and never felt the least bit threatened, nor was I worried about violence breaking out. The chosen location for a Meeting of the Minds is supposed to be, and prior to Waco always was, treated as "neutral territory" by everybody in attendance.
I honestly think that the reason the prosecutor and cops started hiding evidence, and are still trying to weasel out of telling the whole story, is that during their investigation they realized that most of the dead were killed by police bullets. If I'm wrong, then all they have to do to convince me is release all the evidence they collected.
The whole thing was a cluster-f--k from the word go.
Yes, I think that's clear. The majority of those killed were shot with 5.56mm NATO, not pistol bullets.
The only people with AR's at the scene were various LEOs, therfore LEOs killed most of the people who died.
So, then we move to: were LEOs justified in shooting the people at the event. That is, literally, the $$ MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION !! It is likely going to be asked over and over again by the families of the dead, via their wrongful death lawsuits, of jurors in the Waco area.
It might be hard to convince a jury that shooting someone from the roof across the street with a scoped rifle is a legitimate form of self-defense. The claim will be made "he had a gun in his hand". If they can prove that, it might work.
I expect another claim will be "he had a knife in his hand".
No, that won't work, at all.
Anyway, I hope to see the county bankrupted. Just because these things keep happening there, so they need to pay this time.
Is it possible that FBI “undercover informants” instigated the whole thing? Then the cops shot a bunch of them?...Just askin’
It’s the kind of thing we’ll probably never know for sure, because the prosecutors, judges, politicians, and news medias are all stinking liars. But it certainly looks like the FBI or the cops or the prosecutors started it, and that the cops did most of the shooting, from sniping positions.
Waco seems to go in for this kind of thing.
Not possible-more like likely...
It’s more than that.
Go back to the very earliest articles, when they interviewed people who had been nearby and whose phones the police had taken.
After the scene was already secured law enforcement prevented emergency medical care long enough for people to bleed out. People who the video likely shows were simply trying to retreat.
None of these cases will end in convictions, because the administration in Waco is not going to release all of the discovery material.
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