Posted on 01/27/2007 1:36:11 PM PST by tpaine
By Vin Suprynowicz
For years, Garry Watson, 49, of little Bunker, Mo., (population 390) had been squabbling with town officials over the sewage line easement which ran across his property to the adjoining, town-operated sewage lagoon.
Residents say officials grew dissatisfied with their existing easement, and announced they were going to excavate a new sewer line across the landowner's property. Capt. Chris Ricks of the Missouri Highway Patrol reports Watson's wife, Linda, was served with "easement right-of-way papers" on Sept. 6. She gave the papers to Watson when he got home at 5 a.m. the next morning from his job at a car battery recycling plant northeast of Bunker. Watson reportedly went to bed for a short time, but arose about 7 a.m. when the city work crew arrived.
"He told them 'If you come on my land, I'll kill you,' " Bunker resident Gregg Tivnan told me last week. "Then the three city workers showed up with a backhoe, plus a police officer. They'd sent along a cop in a cop car to guard the workers, because they were afraid there might be trouble. Watson had gone inside for a little while, but then he came out and pulled his SKS (semi-automatic rifle) out of his truck, steadied it against the truck, and he shot them."
Killed in the September 7 incident, from a range of about 85 yards, were Rocky B. Gordon, 34, a city maintenance man, and David Thompson, 44, an alderman who supervised public works. City maintenance worker Delmar Eugene Dunn, 51, remained in serious but stable condition the following weekend.
Bunker police Officer Steve Stoops, who drove away from the scene after being shot, was treated and released from a hospital for a bullet wound to his arm and a graze to the neck.
Watson thereupon kissed his wife goodbye, took his rifle, and disappeared into the woods, where his body was found two days later -- dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Following such incidents, the local papers are inevitably filled with well-meaning but mawkish doggerel about the townsfolk "pulling together" and attempting to "heal" following the "tragedy." There are endless expressions of frustration, pretending to ask how such an otherwise peaceful member of the community could "just snap like that."
In fact, the supposedly elusive explanation is right before our eyes.
"He was pushed," Clarence Rosemann -- manager of the local Bunker convenience store, who'd done some excavation work for Watson -- told the big-city reporters from St. Louis. Another area resident, who didn't want to be identified, told the visiting newsmen, "Most people are understanding why Garry Watson was upset. They are wishing he didn't do it, but they are understanding why he did it."
You see, to most of the people who work in government and the media these days -- especially in our urban centers -- "private property" is a concept out of some dusty, 18th century history book. Oh, sure, "property owners" are allowed to live on their land, so long as they pay rent to the state in the form of "property taxes."
But an actual "right" to be let alone on our land to do whatever we please -- always providing we don't actually endanger the lives or health of our neighbors?
Heavens! If we allowed that, how would we enforce all our wonderful new "environmental protection" laws, or the "zoning codes," or the laws against growing hemp or tobacco or distilling whisky without a license, or any of the endless parade of other malum prohibitum decrees which have multiplied like swarms of flying ants in this nation over the past 87 years?
What does it mean to say we have any "rights" or "freedoms" at all, if we cannot peacefully enjoy that property which we buy with the fruits of our labors?
In his 1985 book "Takings," University of Chicago Law Professor Richard Epstein wrote that, "Private property gives the right to exclude others without the need for any justification.
Indeed, it is the ability to act at will and without need for justification within some domain which is the essence of freedom, be it of speech or of property."
"Unfortunately," replies James Bovard, author of the book "Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen," "federal law enforcement agents and prosecutors are making private property much less private. ...
Park Forest, Ill. in 1994 enacted an ordinance that authorizes warrantless searches of every single-family rental home by a city inspector or police officer, who are authorized to invade rental units 'at all reasonable times.' ... Federal Judge Joan Gottschall struck down the searches as unconstitutional in 1998, but her decision will have little or no effect on the numerous other localities that authorize similar invasions of privacy."
We are now involved in a war in this nation, a last-ditch struggle in which the other side contends only the king's men are allowed to use force or the threat of force to push their way in wherever they please, and that any peasant finally rendered so desperate as to employ the same kind of force routinely employed by our oppressors must surely be a "lone madman" who "snapped for no reason." No, we should not and do not endorse or approve the individual choices of folks like Garry Watson. But we are still obliged to honor their memories and the personal courage it takes to fight and die for a principle, even as we lament both their desperate, misguided actions ... and the systematic erosion of our liberties which gave them rise.
No, not obviously! The car belongs to the employee. The employer gets to determine whether, or not to have a parking lot. The city gets to decide whether they'll demand the employer provides a parking lot. The employer's only rightful decision regards the parking of the car. The car and it's contents belong to the owner of the vehicle. The employer decides about the presence of the car, not the contents of the car.
That is the way it has been, until recently. Employers have recently decided they own the inside of the car too. Guess what Luis? The employees are sticking up for their rights and calling their bluff! The only one's backing up the employer's desire are gun grabber's, and little kings that think they own the land from here to China, and up to the stars. They both be the first to _itch someone moves next door and paints their house in hot dog stand motiff.
--GA lawmakers are trying to do their duty, and stop these private infringements.--
The proposed GA bill allows business owners to prohibit employees from bring guns (even secured in the trunk) onto their private parking lots.
--GA lawmakers are trying to do their duty, and stop these private infringements.--
I see that you have not read the actual bill.
--Daffy inference, as the GA bill agrees that an employee has a right to carry arms in his vehicle.--
I see that you have not read the bill. The bill allows the employer to prohibit the employee from bringing guns onto the employer's private parking lot.
--The employer gets to determine whether, or not to have a parking lot. --
And who gets to park in it.
Yes. that's the limit of what he can do. It's a yes, or no, with no conditionals attached.
Something changed in the course of events, other residents note that the shooter was 'pushed'.
I remember when the city arrived in front of my folk's house with a back hoe & a cat intending to excavate grannie's bedroom; no one was shot, grannie got to keep her queen size, and the city finally gave up...Their easement did not extend as far as they claimed, they never finished the project, and somehow we got out of it intact.
I'm on the shooter's side and kind of respect three for four with an SKS at 85+ yards.
I'm also quite impressed with a cop who watches three citizens get shot, takes a grazing wound, then trips off for care without taking any further action (!). I'd really like to hear the oath this gomer took when they gave him a badge.
This post simply emphasizes my single biggest issue with today's society:
I want to support the police and the culture they represent.
But all too often they are treading squarely on my rights and my safety rather than protecting the common good.
That and, all too often, they are as inept as the oaf that ran away from whatever took place in this event;
If sheriff John had done his job there might have been a trial instead of another funeral.
"....within the easement."
The law you cited doesn't say anything about the city having authority to expand or move the easement as they wish. The law you cited talks about an existing easement. The story talks about the city wanting an easement different from the existing one, which they found "insufficient." So that dog ain't gonna hunt. Got anything else?
Bookmark 151
There is no property ownership in America. There is only a lease from the government.
I don't think he should have shot those people, no way. I agree it wasn't life-threatening. I think he'd been pushed too far by the government and he snapped when he became aware of the under-handed way they went about taking his land by forcing a non-existent "easement" on him.
It costs a great deal of money to sue the government, and it can take years. Their resources are unlimited by comparison to this man because they have city or county counsel on the payroll. He worked in a battery recycling plant. Do you really think he could go up against government lawyers with his little salary? You can't win a suit you can't afford to bring forth, and when the government is only picking on one person, there's no co-plaintiff to share the legal costs with.
I sure hope the families of the deceased workers sue the city's butt off and bankrupt the whole town. The people living there should be ashamed of themselves for electing the bastards that put this in motion. Further, the workers were stupid to go onto the property of somebody pointing a gun at them, and I don't care what their bosses told them to do that day. In the same sense that a sewer line isn't worth shooting somebody over as you point out and I agree with, it's also not worth giving your life for.
No, and I didn't say that. I said what I believed the shooter, now deceased, was thinking. I was looking at it from the perspective of some guy who had been harassed by the government for years and finally had had enough when they tried to outmaneuver him by serving his wife with notice late the day before the morning they showed up to dig. It was a heavy-handed, thuggish way to force an easement on somebody by taking their land without due process.
A jury might not have viewed it that way after hearing the evidence of harassment by the city and the way they went about taking part of his property for their own use.
Read the story. The city was dissatisfied with the existing easement. They wanted a larger or wider easement or easement in a different location on the property. If he didn't want to grant the easement, the city should not be able to serve him (actually his wife) with notice the night before that they're coming in the morning to take it anyway, whether you like it or agree or not.
If I want an easement on your property, you have the right not to grant it. If you're willing to grant it for a price, and I choose to pay it, fine, we have a deal. If you're not willing to grant it at any price, tough luck for me. If I have an existing easement on your property and I want to move or enlarge it, same story.
"He was pushed," Clarence Rosemann -- manager of the local Bunker convenience store, who'd done some excavation work for Watson -- told the big-city reporters from St. Louis.
"Some excavation work?" What type of excavation work?
Another site shed some light on that mystery.
Clarence Rosemann, whose family runs the local Handi Mart in the deeply wooded community 100 miles southwest of St. Louis, told reporters for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he and his son dug up sewer lines on Watson’s property about a year back, when Watson couldn’t get the city to consider fixing them. After Watson paid Rosemann to dig up the pipes, Rosemann found that the clog was, indeed, on the city’s right of way, as Watson had contended.
How did Watson know there was a problem with the sewer line before it was dug up? Obviously, it was leaching out, and flooding his yard with raw sewage.
No word on whether the city reimbursed him for the money he spent on their sewer line, compensated him for the damage to his property, or repaired any of the damage. But the article clearly states they weren't satisfied with the legal easement they had for the sewer line, so they notified him they were taking a new easement, and began digging it up within hours. That is not the proper procedure for obtaining an easement. They were trespassing, damaging his property (again), and introducing a potential health risk to his home (again.)
IF YOU COME ON MY LAND, I"LL KILL YOU ~ by Vin Suprynowicz
Thanks for the background info. That makes the city's actions even more reprehensible.
I have to wonder how many people could calmly accept having the neighborhood's raw sewage pumped into their yard.
To read this thread, apparently a lot of them.
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