Posted on 03/15/2002 6:22:07 AM PST by Mulder
Edited on 09/03/2002 4:50:06 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Two senior agents from the FBI's Baltimore office told a private detective yesterday that the mistaken shooting of an unarmed Pasadena man likely would be ruled a "clean shoot," and discouraged him from looking into the case further, the investigator said in an interview. Dudley F.B. "Butch" Hodgson, a former FBI agent who has been retained by the shooting victim's lawyers, said he was told by one of the agents: "There's no middle ground in this thing. You're either with us or against us."
(Excerpt) Read more at sunspot.net ...
OK you arrogant bastards, you asked for it. I'm against.
You hit the nail squarely on the head.
The local agencies have sold their souls to the devil [federal government] in the name of federal grants.
And as history has shown, all who sell their birth rights [and souls] do so very cheaply [a bowl of soup, 30 pieces of silver....]
The last years of his career were spent as the Chief Juvenile Detective in his department. When he died, a number of the young men whose lives he’d touched years before came forward to tell how his timely and sometimes tough-love intervention turned them around.
I know that many officers STILL try to live that creed today. I also know that there are officers out there who, despite the rulings by the Supremes that they have no obligation to specific, individual citizens, would stand between one of us and a bullet – and have.
My sister is married to a good guy – who was also a good cop.
And I STILL vividly recall a business trip and having a flat tire. I pulled onto the narrow shoulder and was opening the trunk when I spied a Georgia State Trooper’s car cross the median, hit the flashers and pull in some distance behind me and a bit closer to the road, shielding me and my car from the 70 MPH traffic. SHE got out and asked if I needed any help. I told her I could probably handle it. She said she’d keep her unit there until I got done.
THEN she spotted my cane and saw that I was partially disabled. Before I could object, she was in the trunk, had wrestled the spare to the ground and was jacking up the car, all the while asking me to remain safely near the guard rail. About that time, two county deputies stopped and pitched in. The lady trooper cut her hand fooling with the jack and soiled her freshly pressed uniform wrestling the dirty flat back into the trunk. They couldn’t have been nicer! I took their names and wrote highly complimentary letters to their superiors – all of whom promptly acknowledged them and thanked me for the kind words.
These officers – like my uncle – grasped the significance of “To Protect and Serve.”
I also recognize that the cops – like Gort in “The Day The Earth Stood Still” -- are simply the muscle (the “enforcement”) behind the legislative and statutory “law” enacted by society as a whole. That is, after all, why it’s called “LAW ENFORCEMENT.” And although it could be argued that this society may be morphing into the homonym for “whole” as you read this, these laws are enacted by our alleged “representatives” meeting in generally safe, quiet and opulent chambers far from the increasingly mean streets where the cops ply their trade. If the cops have too many intrusive and abusive laws to enforce, check the nearest mirror for a likeness of the responsible party.
And if the cops ARE abusive to the general citizenry, why aren’t HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS of us RAISING UNHOLY HELL at each and every meeting of the responsible governing body? French political philosopher Joseph D'Maistre declared that "Every people gets the government they deserve."
Have we really become the “nation of sheep” an author foresaw many years ago? If so, we have little right to object to the shearing. Or the coming slaughter and culling of the flock. And my guess is that the culling will begin with the most troublesome and noisiest sheep. And guess who THAT is?
An old friend is a ranking officer with a large police department. I would rate his love of our freedoms and the Constitution against anyone here at FR. A few years ago, he told me that IF the order to begin some sort of weapons round-up among the general citizenry ever came down from “on high,” we would quickly know about it from the reports of disturbances and gunfire from the neighborhood cop shop: Fully HALF the officers in his department are Second Amendment guys. He and they would be the first to resist such an order – physically if necessary. What should scare us all is the shift in our demographics and the continuing leftist indoctrination by the government schools, making it impossible to know how much longer that ratio – and sentiment – will hold.
Having said that, I also recognize that EVERY large barrel contains some bad apples -- and SOME cops are “cowboys.” Some are simply power driven megalomaniacs who would have dropped on the OTHER side of the law had their lives drifted a degree or two off the course they did take.
I believe this to be especially true of far too many federal law enforcement types who have allowed their egos and hubris to become as bloated as the bureaucratic federal behemoth they serve. Their mandate is no longer to “…protect and serve” the citizens who pay their salaries: It is to crush any meaningful resistance to a growing body of procedures, regulations and policies – too frequently enforced under severely tortured interpretations of the underlying legislative enactments (if any) – and often put in place by executive fiat. The massively abused SEIZURE statutes – laws the author of which now seeks to RESCIND! -- spring to mind.
And one cannot but help to wonder how the clear criminality of the Clintons – and their subsequent avoidance of any penalty – has played into the problem. There now seems to be a bright line between the easy, highly flexible, slap-on-the-wrist law for the rich and powerful and the rigidly enforced law against even the tiniest victimless “crimes” committed by those of us further down the food chain. Does anyone in his right mind believe THAT will NOT engender added disrespect for ALL law?
Could those things be a large part of the problem in some of the highly disturbing – and DEADLY (on BOTH sides) – confrontations we have witnessed over the past decade or so? Gordon Kahl, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Waco, Beck… This list WILL lengthen and we’d all better pray that WE will be spared.
Roman historian Tacitus warned that one could tell the level of corruption in a society by the NUMBER of its laws. Anyone doubt the level of corruption here?
Am I the only one who thinks we’re long overdue a serious review of the NUMBERS of laws under which we are now forced to exist – and which are increasingly used not to assure our safety or well-being, but to COMMAND AND CONTROL us and KEEP US IN LINE.
Only the most tyrannical and power-crazed members of law enforcement could possibly object to that.
The modern counterparts of my Uncle Bob would not object.
It is THEY, after all, who are most likely to catch that bullet – probably fired by someone who has symbolically screamed to himself “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE” -- referred to earlier when they sally forth to serve that flimsy warrant or make that bogus arrest.
According to county 911 dispatch records, the Fire Department was called to respond to the shooting at 6:12 p.m., and the first units arrived by 6:15 p.m. Paramedics arrived two minutes later.
By 6:22 p.m., paramedics had finished their assessment and called for a helicopter to transport Schultz to the shock trauma center.
The paramedics were en route to the trauma unit by 6:53, according to the records.
I kinda of doubt the accuracy of the claim of a 40 to 60 minute delay in getting first medical attention.
Yeah, most of us know that. How does it feel to be the declared enemy of the FBI, folks?
A clean shoot seems to be a shooting that is properly covered up.
Someone needs to tell the agent, and fast, that US in the president's context means AMERICANS, and THEM means TERRORISTS and those who support or harbor them. The agent is a loose cannon rolling around deck waiting to explode.
Even if so, what is your point? I would hazard a guess that many people in this country resemble you. Does that mean that some yahoo with a badge can legally shoot you if someone who resembles you commits a crime?
You are probably right. That agent shot an innocent Eagle Scout.
He ought to pay for his action with more than just being given a desk job in another state.
The shooting should be investigated and the same punishment given to him as would be appropriate for a civilian. The ones who have the power need to be held to the same standard, even a higher standard, as the common man on the street.
Sometimes we skim an article instead of reading it carefully and get things mixed up somewhat.
The Federal Agencies are becoming something that you find in totalitarian countries, aren't they?
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