Posted on 04/06/2008 5:27:22 AM PDT by SkyPilot
Local and state officials entered the temple of a secretive polygamist sect late Saturday, said lawmen blockading the road to the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado.
The action comes hours after local prosecutors said officials were preparing for the worst because a group of FLDS members were resisting efforts to search the structure.
The Texas Department of Public Safety trooper and Schleicher County sheriff’s deputy confirmed that officials have entered the temple but said they had no word on whether anything occurred in the effort.
The incursion into the temple caps the three-day saga of the state’s Child Protective Services agency removing at least 183 women and children from the YFZ Ranch since Friday afternoon. Eighteen girls have been placed in state custody since a 16-year-old told authorities she was married to a 50-year-old man and had given birth to his child.
Saturday evening, ambulances were brought in, said Allison Palmer, who as first assistant 51st District attorney, would prosecute any felony crimes uncovered as part of the investigation inside the compound.
“In preparing for entry to the temple, law enforcement is preparing for the worst,” Palmer said Saturday evening. They want to have “medical personnel on hand in case this were to go in a way that no one wants.”
Apparently as a result of action Saturday night at the ranch, about 10:15 p.m. Saturday, a Schleicher County school bus unloaded another group of at least a dozen more women and children from the compound.
Although members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, have provided varying degrees of cooperation to the sheriff’s deputies and Texas Rangers searching the compound, all cooperation stopped once authorities tried to search the gleaming white temple that towers over the West Texas scrub, Palmer said.
“There may be those who would oppose (entry) by placing themselves between law enforcement and the place of worship,” Palmer said Saturday afternoon. “If an agreement cannot be reached … law enforcement will have to — as gently and peaceably as possible — make entry into that place.”
Sect members consider the temple, dedicated by then-leader of the sect Warren Jeffs in January 2005 and finished many months later, off-limits to those who are not FLDS members, said Palmer, who prosecutes felony cases in Schleicher County.
Palmer said she didn’t know the size or makeup of the group inside the temple.
The earlier refusal to provide access was even more disconcerting because CPS investigators have yet to identify the 16-year-old girl or her roughly 8-month-old baby among the dozens removed from the compound, Palmer said.
“Anytime someone says, ‘Don’t look here,’” she said, “it makes you concerned that’s exactly where you need to look.”
The girl told authorities in two separate phone calls a day apart that she was married to a 50-year-old man, Dale Barlow, who had fathered her child, Palmer said.
The joint raid included the Texas Rangers, CPS, Schleicher County and Tom Green County sheriff’s deputies and game wardens from the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife.
Although CPS and Department of Public Safety officials have described the compound’s residents as cooperative, Palmer disagreed.
“Things have been a little tense, a little volatile,” she said.
Authorities removed 52 children Friday afternoon and 131 women and children overnight Friday. About 40 of the children are boys, said CPS spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner.
No further children have been taken into state custody since Friday, when 18 girls were judged to have been abused or be at imminent risk for abuse. CPS has found foster homes for the girls, Meisner said, and will place them after concluding its investigation.
Meisner declined to comment on the fate of the 119 other children and said authorities were still searching the ranch for others Saturday evening.
“They’re in the process of looking,” she said. “They’re literally about halfway through.”
Checks are long gone. No food stamps either. Just Lone Star pseudo-debit cards.
Not only is it less embarrassing to Texans who find themselves on public assistance, it has cut WAY down on fraud and saves the taxpayers a lot of money.
Really? Well I live in a small town. Everyone knows EVERYONE. I know, personally, our Sheriff, Prosecutor, every school board member, our principal, our superintendant of schools, both judges, every police officer, every county commisioner, and even every non-elected govt employee including the librarian and dogcatcher. But your going to try to convince me that a SHERIFF does not know who the school administrator is? LOL, what a JOKE.
I think calling our School Supt on a saturday would be as simple as calling up any local minister.
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Sunday, April 06, 2008
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....BREAKING NEWS....
Latest Development 11:30 a.m. CDT, Sunday, April 6, 2008
CPS officials start loading buses with women and children at Civic Center and First Baptist Church.
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Latest Development 9:30 a.m. CDT, Sunday, April 6, 2008
Temple search said to be productive and worth the effort. Law enforcement officer told patrons at Eldorado coffee shop this morning that authorities found everything they wanted and more.
Several school buses from San Angelo ISD and Schleicher County ISD are lined up at Schleicher County Courthouse in Eldorado. It appears they are preparing to relocate women and children removed from YFZ Ranch. As yet no comment on where the buses are headed.
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Latest Development 12:30 a.m. CDT, Sunday, April 6, 2008
SWAT team, surveilance aircraft assists as building by building search continues at YFZ Ranch. No report of violence.
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Latest Development 11:24 p.m. CDT, Saturday, April 5, 2008
Midland S.O. SWAT team makes entry on north side of YFZ Temple annex. Still no report of violence.
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Latest Development 10:50 p.m. CDT, Saturday, April 5, 2008
SWAT team clears YFZ Temple, moving to annex No report of violence.
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Latest Development 10:45 p.m. CDT, Saturday, April 5, 2008
Law enforcement officers entering temple as raid at YFZ continues. No report of violence.
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\Latest Development 8:30 p.m. CDT, Saturday, April 5, 2008
AP reports authorties preparing to enter the temple at the YFZ Ranch and FLDS faithful are refusing to cooperate. Ambulances and medical personnel have been called to the compound just in case. More info as soon as it becomes available.
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Latest Development 6:00 p.m. CDT, Saturday, April 5, 2008
Three ambulances seen heading past police check point toward YFZ Ranch
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UPDATED 4:30 p.m. CDT, Saturday, April 5, 2008
CPS confirms 183 persons removed from YFZ Ranch
School buses and buses from First Baptist Church of Eldorado were used Friday and Saturday to transport 183 persons from the YFZ Ranch. Of that number, 137 were said to be children 17 years and younger. The remainder were adult women. All were taken to the Schleicher County Civic Center where the children were turned over to Child Protective Services.
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We have schools, and they even teach spelling.
You believe salvation is by works?
Too bad this didn’t happen in your town, so they could’ve used school buses. Of course, using your logic, that would prejudice every juror who had a child in school.
I asked more politely before, but rec'd no answer.
Several school buses from San Angelo ISD and Schleicher County ISD are lined up at Schleicher County Courthouse in Eldorado. It appears they are preparing to relocate women and children removed from YFZ Ranch. As yet no comment on where the buses are headed.
“Several school buses from San Angelo ISD and Schleicher County ISD are lined up at Schleicher County Courthouse in Eldorado. It appears they are preparing to relocate women and children removed from YFZ Ranch. As yet no comment on where the buses are headed.”
Yup, there we go.
If you need buses in a hurry on a Sunday, don’t bother with the school district, they’ll be hours getting there. Commandeer them from the local church (which will probably volunteer them anyway.)
For those that don’t know, San Angelo is about 50-60 miles from Eldorado, as best I recall. So at a minimum, you’re looking at 4 hours from “go” to get buses in from there.
Go easy on the deluded poster, she has probably been fed the lies of mormonism so long she cannot read the Bible clearly any longer, if she ever could. The mormons often divert a discussion into the specious issue of ‘biblically condoned/taught’ polygamy when the issue at hand is the adultery of their peepstone false prophet, Joseph Smith (and later ‘Bringum Young’). Go easy on them, they are deeply deluded.
Oh, I do not dispute that, but the differences are real. Further, the differences might be a bit more heated if they came into a Baptist commune, and rounded up a bunch of bpatists and hauled them away in buses which said “Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception” on the front.
Exactly.
So they took the first available buses to remove the potential victims from harm first, and then used their regular governmental resources to move them on later.
I really can’t see anything wrong with this.
Prove it.
Good excuse. I do not buy it. ALL the school buses in the county were in use.. on a SATURDAY no less.
Suuuuuuuure.
Go Greyhound.
That’s because you don’t have an axe to grind.
I guess he’s never seen football night in Texas between private schools. Especially when one school has the team bus break down...
Um, you’ve obviously never dealt with school administrators.
Good luck getting them to do anything quickly.
Yep. Bashin’ heads one minute, sharing ice cream at the Dairy Queen the next.
I believe in love towards thy neighbor and as such, charity to the neighbor is an essential element of faith. A wise tenent of my belief:
'...[T]o do good to the neighbour for the sake of God, thus with God and from God, is what is called religion.'
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