Posted on 10/07/2015 1:59:36 PM PDT by Prolixus
Plenty of folks responded by Facebook to a Sept. 30 Trib editorial that questioned the notion of the state’s helping local authorities pay for expenses arising from the deadly May 17 Twin Peaks shooting, particularly given the ongoing lack of transparency by those local authorities. A selection of the comments:
Tonya Hilcher Gonzales: Waco should not get a dime from the state for the mess they created. Over four months later, they still won’t release the ballistics report. Four months later and we still don’t know how many of the nine were murdered by Waco police. I hope everyone remembers that the current grand jury has a Waco police detective for a grand jury foreman. No help from the state!
Laurie Claytor Jahns: Considering the fact that a Waco Police Department officer is the grand jury foreman, I have to wonder if evidence (before a grand jury) will matter. So far everything points to law enforcement (being guilty), not the parties unlawfully arrested, detained, shot, murdered, etc. If they are so transparent, why can’t they come up with more than “out-of-town thugs” (to describe the bikers)?
Marc George: No outside agency should pay a dime. The investigation has been shrouded in secrecy and lies. They slandered a lot of people, then put a gag order so that nobody could defend their name. Nine people died with about 20 wounded and the authorities are playing games.
Traci Peachy Cromwell: The people of Waco voted the district attorney, city council, etc., into place and they all had a part in the decision-making that day; therefore, the city should carry the burden, not the state. If the citizens of Waco say they support their district attorney and law enforcement, then they should have no problem with the cost. The state should use the money to do a full investigation of why there are no indictments yet and the lack of transparency. They should then decide on their next steps based on the outcome of the investigation.
Edgar Gifford: It is a god-like feat to instantly know what happened with so many “uniformed” bikers at that moment of truth. When you hear, in a single incident, how every witness has a different story and viewpoint, imagine then hundreds of witnesses (in this instance). I believe Waco police did as good a job as humanly possible. Blaming the police for what the district attorney’s office deems legally prudent seems crazy.
Marc Irving: How many times has Waco Police Sgt. Patrick Swanton changed his story?
Rhonda Elder: No release of information? Then no state funds for the police for their hiding evidence. My son Matthew Mark Smith had a beautiful heart. People loved him and he always was there for his boys. My son respected the mothers of his boys and I taught him to stand up for what you believe. My son was shot in the back — only a coward would do that. We have kept quiet about this, but it’s starting to really anger me. Show the video now.
Jerry Couger: Our family lost a loved one that terrible day. He also was a good man and wonderful father who missed seeing his daughter graduate, get two awards and a scholarship by 12 days because he was murdered. Who fired those shots? Who put up cameras in advance? Who placed law enforcement and snipers in place before bikers arrived? Who won’t release videos? No, don’t spend a dime of state taxes to help those who murdered our loved ones. This is hard enough on the families as is and we sure don’t need to feel we are aiding the ones who killed our family members. Let Waco pay. And let us see all of your evidence.
Robert Rutherford: Like many, I watched this go down on TV; unlike many, I found it hard to believe hundreds of such bikers were headed to Waco after the shooting (as news bulletins insisted). So I drove to Waco, and drove and drove, and did not see one biker. Yet still such reports came in. So I watched, listened. My conclusion: The city of Waco and all agencies associated with it should pay tenfold to the victims who did not fire a shot, who came in peace. From what I see, that’s 99 percent of them. Since the Department of Public Safety was there — yes, Texas should get the checkbook out and everyone involved on a local level should be fired and charged.
Theresa Evans: I find it hard to believe all these bikers came to Waco for just a drink and meeting with more weapons than people and even more loaded weapons in their vehicles. Twin Peaks was warned not to hold the meeting but did anyway. They knew weeks before the incident that this might turn out as it did. Twin Peaks should pay. I don’t think all bikers should have been arrested but you are guilty by association. You choose to hang with people who do bad things, then you get the same rep as those people.
Paul Barron: Waco and McLennan County own this debacle. Big Brother doesn’t need to bail them out on the taxpayer dime.
Lisa Dickison: One can support law enforcement and think this situation was not handled the way it should be handled.
Yes, we can, or could, if more folks just skipped Gator's posts and went to the next.
Why waste time reading from a source you already know is a sink?
Troll’s bait declined.
“...I am betting that “TG” will be around a lot longer than the single theme’ers that are hung up on covering up for biker gangs that perpetrated the shootings at Waco. What will all you do once the harsh sentencing is handed down?
The public does not like to have lowlife criminal types openly defy public goodwill by starting an all out gang war at a busy public facility....”
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“...covering up for biker gangs that perpetrated the shootings at Waco...”? Are you accusing the BATF and their local Waco government supporting LEOs of being biker gangs? And are you predicting that “harsh sentencing” will be handed down for the misdeeds of these governmental employee statists?
When all you criminal biker gang sympathizers wake up from your looooong drag on the Big Bamboo doobie, the light of harsh reality will be blinding.
At least you won’t have any more involved than some FR bandwidth, while many of the thugs you failed to rescue from the reality and consequence of gang murder will begin a long time of chopping cotton for TDC and some of them will be waiting on Old Sparky in the Walls Unit.
You thinking you are going to get some promotion by brown-nosing instead of posting something, ANYTHING, original, valid or cognizant about the Waco shootem up?
More than likely some recycled zot-ie trying to suck a way back in to good graces.
By about tenfold, the same public rejects the pabulum of gullible rubes who obediently swallow wholesale the most ridiculous LEO garbage.
The article is titled "Roar of the Crowd" for a reason.
X-spurt, ANSWER ME THIS: If gang experts and LEO were as good as you believe them to be in identifying hardened dangerous Texas residents at Waco, who in LEO is responsible for two thirds of them never having been arrested before?
Is Texas LEO that inept and amateurish?
Or are these "criminals" that smart, skilled, and wily?
Which is it, X-spurt?
Meant to ping you to my post 66 above! :^)
My answer is to drag your puffy little butt down to Waco and try to pull the same stunt. If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.
You’ll rapidly find that “Conservative Texans” believe in the rule of law and do not suffer well idiots and blowhards that think they can run roughshod over the rights, safety and goodwill of our ‘non-criminal’ citizens.
The only ones you guys are convincing that the criminal biker gangs are not being fairly treated are other criminal biker gangsters or suckups to criminal bike gangsters (its gotta make a sane person wonder why supposedly good persons see no problem blindly defending blatantly out and out criminals). When its all said and done, justice will prevail.
If it was me, I would do a Judge Roy Bean on anyone of those Bandidos, Cossacks or support “clubs” that had a gun that was fired that day or who had gunpowder residue on them at Twin Peaks that day.
“...If it was me, I would do a Judge Roy Bean on anyone of those Bandidos, Cossacks or support “clubs” that had a gun that was fired that day or who had gunpowder residue on them at Twin Peaks that day....”
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Do you have a link to the forensics reports of the “gunpowder residue” tests done on all the arrested (and dead and wounded/hospitalized) bikers that day? And, of course, the results of any residue tests done on LEO, both federal and local, present that day? That will be very helpful along with ballistic reports on the bullets/fragments recovered from the dead and wounded bikers and LEO...oh, I forgot, there were zero LEOs killed or wounded that day.
I’m sure that the highly competent BATF and Waco authorities had these tests properly done, and reports prepared, for you Judge Bean types. Right? And I’m sure they can hardly wait until they’re allowed to make the information in these reports public...right?
You refuse to offer any kind of explanation for the FACT that two thirds of the "criminal biker gang" members arrested at Waco, all residents of Texas, had totally clean records, zero police record, in the state of Texas.
If you are correct and all of them are criminals, how is it that so many had gone for so long without ever tangling with Texas cops and "experts" before May 17?
Is it:
A. Law enforcement was too inept to catch them
B. The criminals were too savvy and smart for law enforcement
Judge Roy Bean don’t need no stinkin forensics reports. Its look em in the eye, tell em “You are found Guilty” and take out to the tree and stretch em.
Wonder just how many folks commit or are accessary to murder that have no other criminal record? Once is enough, Stretch em!
Judge Roy Bean don’t need no stinkin forensics reports. Its look em in the eye, tell em “You are found Guilty” and take out to the tree and stretch em.
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Yep...kind of like Stalin and his folk. We must NOT be an enemy of the State.
Again, you fail to answer my straightforward question or to offer an alternative explanation as to why two thirds of so-called hardened criminals in Texas had totally evaded police up to this mass arrest.
What have you posted, boy wonder?
Again, can’t wait for the civil suits...
Physician, heal thyself.
Seriously. Can we discuss important issues here or not?
Yes, we can, or could, if more folks just skipped Gator’s posts and went to the next.
Why waste time reading from a source you already know is a sink?
Coming out of the local Waco paper; this is really bad for the cover up.
Time to shine light on this whole mess and let it disinfect it all.
Yep, a whole lot like the way those bike gangs treat any other ‘different gang’ member unlucky enough to come across 3 or more Cossacks or Bandidos. Remember the biker several gangers ran down and beat with ballpeen hammers? Lovely friends you guys want.
These scumbags deserve what they give. Stretch em.
LOL! Point taken! {^)
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