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.”
Undocumented non-knockers?
There are numerous ways to use architecture and landscaping to make forced entries difficult, time consuming and otherwise ineffective. In addition to targeted reinforcements.
What are they being trained to do? What's different from the SS Troops?
There is no excuse to disregard the Constitution and impact innocent people: NONE (This is Police State tactics and anyone who condones is of the same ilk that become the Brown Shirts and Jackboots in a society )
Here are a few examples of this unconstitutional Jack Booting - justify them.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4203345.html
http://www.startribune.com/local/26083024.html?location_refer=Homepage:highlightModules:1
http://www.reason.com/news/show/36869.html
http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2006/10/19/chatham/opinion/opinion01.txt
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080106/NEWS17/801060398/-1/NEWS
Maybe in the case of unmarked police cars, yes.
It will be a “blaze of glory”. Only you will be the blaze, lol.
bmflr
in mi, after botching the raid by going to the wrong house, therefore failing to be able to use nearly a pound of marijuana they found, they come back the next day and raid the intended house, convict the kid on a couple grams worth found in the carpet.
success.
Many armed people freeze when they think it is the police. This gives thug invaders an invaluable advantage. The breaking down of the door should be a signal for immediate self-defense, not a government inquiry.
If your door is smashed in by some guys who yell "police" or "FBI" but don't let you actually see any evidence of their identity, are the intruders more likely to be:
What would anyone do if you had a weapon in the house and someone burst into the home forcefully yelling “POLICE!!!” Would you believe it truly was the police?
JoMa
Exactly my policy, too.
3}...the only casualty is the Constitution ...
Might not have been good evidence today, but Im sure it got used...one way or the other...
Honestly, back in the day, I saw more guys let go home when told to 'give it up, cause if I find it, you goto jail'...
one night, probly a half dozen guys all reached down their pants in almost a synchronised movement...Mr leo 'scored' big that night...didnt see him around for a couple weeks either...
An important addition!
Coming from a family with a law enforcement tradition, we will not find agreement here.
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