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.”
Glad to see you posting again. Are you still doing this on a city owned computer? Or are you really just a TROLL.
I suspect Liz already has your number and is planning to use you as an example in one of her over the top essays.
In the meantime, you keep right on doing what you do. We all enjoy reading your posts.
Semper Fi
An Old Man,p>
Except that this is just another story in a long line of stories that truly shed some not-so good light on the idea of no-nock warrants.
As has been posted, these sorts of raids should be EXTREMELY rare - and under EXTREME circumstances. Law enforcement has chosen to use such raids more and more often, and far too often for relatively small crimes or investigations, and often with tragic or painful results (and even on the WRONG HOME).
How does this relate to the story at hand? Some people might hear a door getting kicked in and react by grabbing their trusty firearm and start blasting -but MIGHT think twice if they hear something indicating a police/FBI/ATF raid.
No, we need to ban no-knock raids because the criminals CAN shout "FBI". Even if you don't care about citizen's rights or lives, think about the officers' lives a ban may save. The fact that a homeowner can't possibly know if a person shouting "FBI" is actually FBI or acting within the law if he is remains a danger to the officers on the raid. Besides, it's not like the police are really good at this sort of thing.
If no knock warrants are banned, anyone busting down the door is a black hat and well within the ROE. Of course, IMHO, that’s true, anyway.
Here's hoping you and your family don't become collateral damage some early morning. lol
1) Correct address.
2) No dogs were injured.
It would stop it for one reason. Anyone breaking into a home shouting police when no knock warrants were not allowed, as the constitution forbids them, then no one would be fooled and would shoot a lot sooner. The victims wouldn’t wait until it was to late and criminals would know that. If you can’t see that, then I feel sorry for you.
"They've said they've done nothing wrong," (Mayor)Calvo said. "I didn't sign up for this fight, but I think what we have to do now is make changes to how Prince George's County police and Prince George's County sheriff's department operate."
Calvo said authorities entered his home without knocking and refused to show him a warrant when he requested one...
When you can't tell the difference between the cops and the bad guys, and the so-called 'good guys' don't recognize a screwed up raid, it's time to end the practice.
Oh wait! Oh wait! Oh wait! I get it now. You’re saying if the cops stopped acting like the criminals, we would be able to more easily tell the difference between the two?
(What did I win?) :-)
Yup, I've got an agenda. There's no excuse for the macho pig BS of a no-knock raid. Ninja suits, masked faces, screaming obscenities, shooting dogs, REGULARLY busting into the wrong house - this kind of stuff belongs in a police state, not the United States.
My agenda is that it will stop, and police officers will act like police officers again. I respect police officers and I hate macho pigs.
So you’re for an ever-expanding police state, where no-knock warrants for a late payment on a refridgerator become the norm?
Your papers, prole
Highly unlikely I won’t have a chance to do anything.
And... I kind of expect it to be a “blaze of glory” lol
Handcuff? Hardly. Police have plenty of other avenues to get their work done w/o killing the family dog and ruining front doors. I say that if no knocks continue in use then the police shouldnt whine when they get shot doing it. There are no means for the home owner to ID the intruder. As such anyone coming thru the front door in the middle of the night of fair game. The safety of the home owner trumps that of the police.
And even killing the homeowners, as well. All with complete impunity...
the infowarrior
That’s my point pretty much. There’s not a reason in the world the FBI or any other agency is going to be kicking my door in. Nothing. Nada.
My door gets kicked in, I’m going to be shooting.
I’m thinking that when I build a house it’s going to be fortified to the point that nobody will be knocking the door down without the aid of a D10 Cat.
Dog shot, beers all around afterwards............
Big BUMP.
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