Posted on 09/16/2004 10:16:04 PM PDT by Conservative Firster
TWO VIDEO LINKS ON RIGHT HAND SIDE PLAYLIST!!
An FBI agent shot an acquaintance of a border watch group member while trying to serve an arrest warrant, FBI officials said Thursday.
The shooting happened about 11:15 p.m. Wednesday in a grocery store parking lot in Douglas along the southeastern Arizona border with Mexico.
According to the FBI, the agent was trying to serve an arrest warrant on Casey Nethercott of Douglas. Nethercott is a known member of Ranch Rescue, a group that works to protect private property along the southern U.S. border.
Ranch Rescue and several other unauthorized groups have been patrolling along the border looking for illegal immigrants, raising concerns among migrants rights groups about potential abuses.
At the time, Nethercott was with 22-year-old Kalen Riddle, also of Douglas.
Charlene Thornton, special agent in charge of the Phoenix FBI office, said that "actions taken by Nethercott and Riddle led one of the FBI agents to fire his weapon."
The FBI would not elaborate and said it won't release the name of the agent who fired the shot, in keeping with FBI policy.
Riddle was airlifted to a Tucson hospital, but FBI officials did not know his condition.
Nethercott was arrested Wednesday and is in federal custody. An FBI spokeswoman confirmed agents searched Nethercott's Douglas ranch on Thursday afternoon.
The warrant the FBI was trying to serve alleges that Nethercott threatened Border Patrol agents.
According to the warrant, Nethercott refused to pull over for Border Patrol agents on Aug. 31. After a slow-speed chase, the warrant said that Nethercott entered "a compound in Douglas occupied by members of Ranch Rescue." Riddle was identified as one of the people there.
Agents said the Ranch Rescue members were heavily armed and had night vision equipment.
After Border Patrol agents yelled for Nethercott to show his hands, the affidavit says Nethercott refused, and responded:
"I'm going to take care of this myself, we're going to have a shootout."
The affidavit does not say how the standoff ended.
There was no listing for Riddle in Douglas. A phone message left Thursday at a residence listed for Nethercott was not returned.
Nethercott, 37, has a criminal record. He was convicted of assault with a firearm in California and was on parole when he joined Ranch Rescue.
In June, he was also found guilty by a Texas jury of felony firearm possession. The jury was deadlocked on a second charge that accused Nethercott of pistol-whipping an illegal immigrant near a Texas ranch.
Douglas rancher Roger Barnett, who is not part of Ranch Rescue, supports the measures Nethercott took to stop illegal immigration.
He compared the shooting of Riddle to Branch Davidians, who fought federal agents in Waco, Texas.
"Citizens have to get out and protect themselves," Barnett said. "And this is what it leads to."
Border Patrol is not the issue in the article. FBI using powers that ought not to be used at the time is the issue.
The FBI can keep us safe from terrorists internal to our nation but can't find a time and place to arrest a citizen without getting into a shootout and hitting the wrong man?
Yeh, right.
Translation: A group of concerned ranch owners, who's land borders Mexico, are taking steps to protect that land from foreign invaders.
The Senate and the President will do little for fear of not being reelected. Americans need to know that the House level is where their voice is the strongest. put a bill in front of the President and force him to veto. Unfortunately there are many more issues at stake than border security and we have to vote for the man that will do the best over all job. We need to force our representatives to force the issue in Washington.
The sentence preceding the one you cited might explain it. To wit,
"the renegade federal authorities [at Waco] were mostly in organizations that were dumping grounds for employees who were unwanted by the parent agency."
I was talking about the federal psychos.
Gore lost. Get over it.
Douglas militia leader arrested
Arizona Guard member is shot
By Ignacio Ibarra
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Published: 09.17.2004
Convicted felon and militia organizer Casey James Nethercott was arrested by FBI agents Wednesday night in Douglas in connection with a tense confrontation late last month with Border Patrol agents at his nearby ranch.
Kalen Riddle, 22, of Aberdeen, Wash., a member of Nethercott's Arizona Guard, was shot and seriously injured during the arrest, which took place in a Safeway shopping center on Douglas' west side.
Hospital officials in Tucson said Riddle was in guarded condition, but his mother, Janice Binks-Riddle, said her son had undergone surgery to remove his spleen and had been placed in a drug-induced coma, with his prognosis still uncertain.
Nethercott, 37, was initially booked into the Cochise County Jail but was transferred to federal custody in Tucson on Thursday, said Carol Capas, a spokeswoman for the Cochise County Sheriff's Department. He is charged with assaulting a federal officer during an incident that occurred Aug. 31.
FBI officials said actions taken by Riddle and Nethercott caused an agent to draw his weapon and shoot Riddle. The name of the agent is being withheld as a matter of policy, said agent Susan Herskovits, an FBI spokeswoman.
She said search warrants were served at Nethercott's Warrior Ranch, about three miles west of Douglas, on Thursday afternoon.
Nethercott's Arizona Guard, which mixes anti-immigrant and private-property-rights rhetoric in its Internet appeal for members, is an offshoot of Ranch Rescue, splitting off after a rift developed between Nethercott and Ranch Rescue organizer Jack Foote.
Foote moved Ranch Rescue from Texas to Arizona early in 2003 after Nethercott, formerly of California, bought the Douglas-area ranch that now serves as headquarters for his Arizona Guard.
Ranch Rescue now lists a Sierra Vista address. Foote did not reply to telephone calls and e-mails seeking comment on Nethercott's arrest and his split with Ranch Rescue.
A complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Tucson states that on Aug. 31, three Border Patrol agents turned on their lights and sirens while trying to stop Nethercott near his home, but he ignored them and continued onto his property, where agents observed Riddle carrying a firearm and several armed men taking defensive positions within the ranch compound.
The complaint says Riddle "moved his weapon towards the front, still pointed at the ground," when the agents stopped outside Nethercott's ranch.
Nethercott shouted verbal commands and issued orders by radio as he threatened the Border Patrol agents, according to the complaint.
After initially listening to Nethercott, Riddle said he was getting down on the ground as ordered by the agents.
Nethercott called Cochise County sheriff's deputies to the scene, saying Border Patrol agents had members of his organization on the ground and were pointing weapons at them.
Nethercott warned that if the deputies did not arrive quickly, there would be shooting between the group and Border Patrol agents.
By the time the deputies arrived, other Border Patrol agents had also arrived. The deputies found at least seven Border Patrol vehicles, with at least as many agents shielded behind their vehicles with their handguns drawn, as well as some with AR-15 rifles, all pointing toward the Arizona Guard compound.
Nethercott told deputies that at no time did agents activate their emergency lights in an attempt to stop him and that they aimed weapons at Riddle, who only had a rifle slung over his shoulder.
Nethercott, a twice-convicted felon, told deputies that he was angered because Border Patrol agents had ordered Nethercott to lie on the ground "like a criminal."
Deputies were able to defuse the situation when Border Patrol agents retreated from the property, about a half-mile east of the Douglas Border Patrol Station.
The incident was reported to the FBI, which got an arrest warrant for Nethercott on Sept. 8 from U.S. Magistrate Judge Glenda E. Edmonds in Tucson.
Bill Dore, a friend and honorary member of the Arizona Guard, said Nethercott called him at about 1 a.m. Thursday and told him about the arrest and shooting, and asked him to watch after his ranch and dog.
Nethercott was convicted on federal weapons charges earlier this year and was free on bond pending a decision by Texas authorities on whether he would be retried on assault charges stemming from a 2003 incident in which he was accused of beating two illegal immigrants detained in a Ranch Rescue operation in Hogg County, Texas.
Riddle's mother said her son, who stands 6 feet 8 inches tall and weighs 380 pounds, is a "gentle giant" of Norwegian descent. But like many young people, he had grown up "with so much anger" and he "fell in with these hate groups," she said.
The Arizona Guard's Web site includes a mission statement that reads: "We are an Organized Militia Dedicated to the Defense of American Patriotism and to help local ranchers and citizens defend property from illegal alien activity and drug running operations."
The case illustrates the threat to migrants, law enforcement officials and others posed by Nethercott's group and other self-proclaimed militias and extreme anti-immigration groups, said Jennifer Allen, director of the Tucson-based Border Action Network.
The group has issued repeated warnings about what it calls the growing danger of vigilantism.
Allen said Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard shares responsibility for the shooting incident because he and other law enforcement officials in Arizona have allowed these groups to operate with seeming impunity.
"While some of the individual vigilantes may deny any overt connections to white supremacy, the movement they are creating is part and parcel of the white supremacist movement," she said. "It's not about private property or immigration; that's a lie. It's about racism. These are hate groups, and these are hate crimes."
Goddard said his office has worked diligently to address what is primarily an issue for the federal government and for local jurisdictions.
He said he has met with federal officials from the United States and Mexico, and has appealed to his counterpart in Sonora and other border states, church groups and advocacy groups, asking them to come forward with specific evidence of a crime committed against a migrant by a militia member.
To date, no victim has come forth, he said.
"We need a witness to make a case," he said. "It's an issue we all have to struggle with, but it doesn't have a simplistic answer."
I have a little inside info on this as I have friends who know these guys and who have been to the ranch. The one surprising thing is that Riddle (known as "Tiny") did anything to deserve being shot. My source tells me, and the Star article alludes to, on August 31st Riddle put his weapon on the ground and assumed a "spread eagle" position. Why would he submit then but later, on Sep 15 in the Safeway parking lot, do something to lead an agent to shoot him?
The answer here is not to hunt down and break up nutty border militia groups like this. For all there whackiness these guys hadn't hurt anyone and were very careful of how they treated border intruders. If they'd just been left alone and if the border would have been secured they would have had no more reason to exist and would have broken up on their own. This is a symptom of our intolerable border situation.
"If the jaywalkers weren't out there breaking the law, then we wouldn't have to be swerving trying to hit them!"
Thanks. I definitely wandered into a thread I should have avoided! :)
And this is relevant to the history of federal law enforcement lying how? What does who is president have to do with bureaucrats lying?
My, how times have changed.
You assume things the article did not give.
Chances are good that Riddle has a criminal record also.
Assumption
Charlene Thornton, special agent in charge of the Phoenix FBI office, said that "actions taken by Nethercott and Riddle led one of the FBI agents to fire his weapon."
But they will not say what those actions were? Seems suspicious to me.
Remember that Nethercott told the agents there would be a shoot out.
An entirely different day, incident, and government agency.
He cancelled out his "law abiding citizen" status with that willingness to shoot at federal agents.
Assumption, nowhere in the article does it say that either man shot at the agents or even showed a weapon.
Riddle was acting in an aggressive manner or he wouldn't have been shot.
Assumption
I'm not defending the men in any way.
There is not enough information to make any assumptions. The only thing we know is that the man that got shot was NOT the man the agents were initially after.
If the men took such drastic action why did only one agent shoot? He was the only one with a vantage point to see the action? Possibly.
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when they deserve it.
Not all government actions are deserving of support. Some are, but some are not.
Without more detailed information I question the shooting of a man that the agents were not initially after. That's all.
Last year, three million illegal immigrants entered the United States. There have been several incidents where Mexican Army units have penetrated into American territory and shot at Border Patrol. Where is your outcry against the assaults on Border Patrol agents by Mexican soldiers? I dare say Border Patrol agents are more threatened by Mexican soldiers and violent criminals than they are by these militia members.
The bottom line is that our borders with Mexico and Canada are so porous as to be virtually nonexistent. This is the real problem, and not a few loose cannon gringos.
Saw this headline and thought for a second that maybe Dan Rather was holed up in there, making his last stand, with some more TANG "documents".
The Feds should go after the illegal aliens. Our troops should be placed on or borders. The biggest danger to us comes from within.
It is nonsense to claim that controlling immigration is impossible. From 1920 to the 1960s, there was relatively little immigration into the United States, despite the huge displacements of people that were caused by the two World Wars, the Nazi "Final Solution," and the Communist conquest of Eastern Europe and China. Arguably, our country did too little at that time to help the victims of persecution. However, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Israel, and other countries were in greater need of immigrants than the U.S. was and absorbed many of the refugees from war and totalitarianism.
American guilt over past faults in immigration policy should not restrain taking effective measures with regard to illegal immigration.
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