Posted on 09/10/2001 5:43:42 AM PDT by Israel
The suspect offered no resistance when about 20 federal agents entered his home, said Mark James, special agent in charge of the Kansas City office of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Authorities would not say who lived in the home, but relatives and neighbors identified the resident as 43-year-old James "Jamie" Schwartz.
The standoff began Thursday afternoon at the home about eight miles north of Salem on Missouri 68 when agents tried to serve a federal search warrant and an occupant refused to come out.
A woman left the home Thursday shortly after officers arrived. James would not say where she was or if she had been arrested. No children were in the home when officers arrived.
James said he could not discuss what prompted the search warrant because it had been sealed by a judge. He would say only that agents "found what we were looking for."
Denton County Sheriff Bob Wofford said his department had previous contact with the suspect but he declined to elaborate.
"We knew there was activity here," Wofford said.
The suspect is expected to be arraigned before a federal magistrate in St. Louis, possibly as early as Monday, James said.
A team of 12 negotiators had been unsuccessful in contacting the man throughout the siege, despite using bullhorns, a telephone and robots equipped with audio and visual capabilities.
James said officers decided to enter the home in part because they were concerned about the man's condition.
"The individual would not answer us or respond to us," James said.
About 100 officers, including some from U.S. Customs, surrounded the home throughout the standoff.
Portions of Missouri 68 were closed and two homes located nearby were evacuated. James said the inconvenience caused by the standoff also was a factor in deciding to enter the home.
Mike and Mary Mrozowicz, who live in a nearby home that was not evacuated, said the ranch-style house also has a mobile home on the property.
The Mrozowiczes said they've seen men wearing camouflage clothing and helmets hiding in the nearby woods with guns.
They said they've seen agents coming and going over the last couple of days, but the agents weren't giving area residents any clues what they were doing there.
The warrant was ordered out of the eastern district of Missouri. Jan Diltz, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in St. Louis, said she could not discuss the warrant.
You and I agreed we would ignore each other, remember?
Thanks for playing.
"Women's Justice Center?"
Why the hell would anyone post this crap in FR?!
Here's another paragraph from this same loony report: "The myth of police dangerousness again and again attracts the wrong kind of people to the job. A hyper male ego is the last thing that's needed at ground zero on the critical fault lines of society's problems. And it's the last thing that's needed to handle crimes of violence against women which accounts for about a third of all police calls." [emphasis mine]
Hyper male ego?
This jackass website bills itself as: "Tertulia is a comprehensive, weekly roundup of the latest news on women and women's rights from around the Spanish-speaking world."
Did I go to sleep in 2001 and wake up in 1967?! Mark W.
I dont pull everybody out of the car that I stop, usually only those that I suspect may be driving under suspension, have warrants etc.
It usually goes along these lines. I stop someone for a violation, I tell them why I'm stopping them and ask for a drivers license. If they give me their license I either write a ticket or give a warning. Soft hearted schmuck that I am, most people whom I think are hard working people who cant afford a ticket, I give a break to and tell them to fix whatever the problem is so they dont have to give a days pay to the city.
But if they dont have a license and I suspect there may be a little more to the picture I ask them to step out. I then search them to make sure they dont have any weapons before I sit them behind me in my cruiser to check to see if everything is in order. If it is I go back to plan A, if not, and there is a warrant or something else, I do what I have to do.
We have to search and inventory peoples vehicles if we arrest them and tow the car.
I dont know many guys who pull everybody out and search their cars on every traffic stop. Not saying someone isnt doing it.
Yesterday in briefing one of the guys said that he wasnt giving any more tickets because too many cops were jumping on him for writing people tickets for 5 over the limit.
In Ohio if you are stopped and dont have your drivers license the officer can arrest you, the charge is "fail to display" (drivers license) Its fashionable for people who have reason to lie (DUS, warrant, etc) to give someone elses drivers info if they are stopped. Its fun to show up for court and look stupid when "the real John Doe" shows up instead of the person who used his ID when stopped and the prosecutor throws the ticket out. Most of the "real John Does" have no idea who used their ID when stopped by the police.
Why the hell would anyone post this crap in FR?!
Can you refute the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics data cited in the article?
If you can't, then the only thing you have just proven is that you are a bigot.
The findings were part of a newly-released report based on surveys of 45,000 households every six months between 1992 and 1996.
Violence was defined as anything from a mere threat of violence to rape to assault to homicide.
You are comparing apples to oranges. The U.S. Department of Labor Statistics reports work-related fatalities. The questionable "survey" you reference lumps minor threats (these days "you are a jerk" can be construed as a threat) together with homicide.
Not a very scientific survey. I will stick with the U.S. Department of Labor Statitics numbers, thank you.
Is your life so meaningless that your only amusement is to harrass people who politely ask you not to?
Do you seek or get permission from the owner? Do you obtain a search warrant? Don't you need "probable cause" to get such a warrant?.
Is this also true if you tow a car for a parking violation?
And you remind me of one of those people who resort to personal attacks when they lose an argument.
The scientific survey you reference lumps threats and homicides together. If you know of a way to objectively compare that with the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers which only address occupational fatalities, please enlighten me.
He Who Goes To Law Takes A Wolf By The Ears
by Hunter S. Thompson
Special to lexisONEsm
I am not a criminal defense lawyer, but I have what they call "a very strong background" in the criminal justice system, and much of that background is based on extremely personal experience. I have taken that wolf by the ears many times, and I have learned many powerful lessons along the way. It is not the most desirable and certainly not the most efficient means of gaining an education in law. I would not recommend it for my son, for instance, or for anyone else's children. There is no prestige in it, and sure as hell no money. It is like getting an education in electricity by wandering around in a lightning storm with a long steel rod in your hands.
I have known a few jails in my time, and I have been in many courtrooms for many deeply disturbing reasons. My parents were decent people and I was raised, like my friends, to believe that the police were our friends and protectors — the badge was a symbol of extremely high authority, perhaps the highest of all. Nobody ever asked "Why?" It was one of those unnatural questions that are better left alone. If you had to ask that, you were sure as hell guilty of something, and probably should have been put behind bars a long time ago. It was a no-win situation.
My first face-to-face confrontation with the FBI occurred when I was nine 9 years old. Two grim-looking agents came to our house and terrified my parents by saying that I was "a prime suspect" in the case of a federal mailbox being turned over in the path of a speeding bus. It was a federal offense, they said, and probably carried a jail sentence.
Mailboxes were huge back then. They were heavy green vaults that stood like Roman mile markers at corners on the neighborhood bus routes and were rarely, if ever, moved. I was barely tall enough to reach the mail-drop slot, much less big enough to turn the bastard over and into the path of a bus. It was clearly impossible that I could have committed this crime without help, and that was what they wanted: names and addresses, along with a total confession. They already knew I was guilty, they said, because other culprits had squealed on me. My parents hung their heads and I saw my mother weeping. I had done it, of course, and I had done it with plenty of help. It was carefully plotted and planned, a deliberate ambush that we set up and executed with the fiendish skill that smart 9-year-old boys are capable of when they have time on their hands and a lust for revenge on a rude and stupid bus driver who got a kick out of closing his doors and pulling away just as we staggered to the top of the hill and begged him to let us climb on.... He was new on the job, probably a brain-damaged substitute, filling in for our regular driver, who was friendly and kind and always willing to wait a few seconds for children rushing to school. Every kid in the neighborhood agreed that this new swine of a driver was a sadist who deserved to be punished, and the Hawks A.C. were the ones to do it. We saw it more as a duty than a prank. It was a brazen insult to the honor of the whole neighborhood.
We would need ropes and pulleys and certainly no witnesses to do the job properly. We had to tilt the iron monster so far over that it was perfectly balanced to fall instantly, just as the fool zoomed into the bus stop at his usual arrogant speed. All that kept the box more or less upright was my grip on a long, "invisible" string that we had carefully stretched all the way from the corner and across about 50 feet of grass lawn to where we were crouched out of sight in some bushes.
The rig worked perfectly. The bastard was right on schedule and going too fast to stop when he saw the thing falling in front of him. The collision made a horrible noise, like a bomb going off or a freight train exploding in Germany. That is how I remember it, at least. It was the worst noise I'd ever heard. People ran screaming out their houses like chickens gone crazy with fear. They howled at each other as the driver stumbled out of his bus and collapsed in a heap on the grass. The bus was empty of passengers, as usual at the far end of the line. The man was not injured, but he went into a foaming rage when he spotted us fleeing down the hill and into a nearby alley. He knew in a flash who had done it, and so did most of the neighbors.
Never believe the first thing an FBI agent tells you about anything — especially not if he seems to believe you are guilty of a crime. Maybe he has no evidence. Maybe he's bluffing. Maybe you are innocent.
Maybe.
"Why deny it, Hunter?" said one of the FBI agents. "We know exactly what happened up there on that corner, on Saturday. Your buddies already confessed, son. They squealed on you. We know you did it, so don't lie to us now and make things worse for yourself. A nice kid like you shouldn't have to go to federal prison." He smiled again and winked at my father, who responded with a snarl: "Tell the Truth, damn it! Don't lie to these men. They have witnesses!" The FBI agents nodded grimly at each other and moved as if to take me into custody.
WHACK! Like a flash of nearby lightning that lights up the sky for three or four terrifying split seconds before you hear the thunder — a matter of Zepto-seconds in real time — but when you are a 9-year-old boy with 2 full-grown FBI agents about to seize you and clap you in federal prison, a few quiet Zepto-seconds can seem like the rest of your life. And that's how it felt to me, that day, and in grim retrospect I was right. They had me, dead to rights. I was guilty. Why deny it? Confess now, and throw myself on their mercy, or what? What if I didn't confess? That was the question. And I was a curious boy, so I decided, as it were, to roll the dice and ask them a question.
"Who?" I said. "What witnesses?"
It was not a hell of a lot to ask, under those circumstances — and I really did want to know exactly WHO, among my best friends and blood-brothers in the dreaded Hawks A.C. had cracked under pressure and betrayed me to these thugs, these pompous brutes and toadies with badges and plastic cards in their wallets that said they worked for J. Edgar Hoover and they had the right, and even the duty, to put me in jail, because they'd heard a "rumor in the neighborhood" that some of my boys had gone belly up and rolled on me? What? No. Impossible. Or not likely, anyway. Hell, nobody squealed on the Hawks, or not on the President, anyway. Not on me. So I asked again: "Witnesses? What witnesses?"
And that's when I first grabbed that wolf, folks. I had no choice. It was self-defense. I didn't want to do it, and I sure as hell didn't plan to, but he got too close to me and he smelled like death, so I seized him — and everything since then has been like a chain-reaction, a series of finely connected explosions.
We never saw those FBI agents again. Never. And I learned a powerful lesson: Never believe the first thing an FBI agent tells you about anything — especially not if he seems to believe you are guilty of a crime. Maybe he has no evidence. Maybe he's bluffing. Maybe you are innocent. Maybe. The law can be hazy on these things. But it is definitely worth a roll.
"Were it made a question, whether no law, as among the savage Americans, or too much law, as among the civilized Europeans, submits man to the greatest evil, one who has seen both conditions of existence would pronounce it to be the last; and that the sheep are happier of themselves, than under the care of wolves." - THOMAS JEFFERSON, "Notes on the State of Virginia," 1784
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's books include "Hell's Angels," "'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72," "The Proud Highway," "Better Than Sex" and "The Rum Diary." His new book, "Fear and Loathing in America," has just been released. A regular contributor to various national and international publications, Thompson now lives in a fortified compound near Aspen, Colo.
With parked cars we can tow them if they are a hazard, if the registration is expired or if they are abandoned junk MV's. If the car is locked up we generally dont search them too much, just write down on the inventory sheet what we can see from the outside.
You are correct that the Courts have upheld police's right to do a lot of things which, although IMO are a direct violation of the spirit and letter of the Constitution.
It is also true that a lot of cops do a lot of things which the courts do not allow just because they can get by with it.
I have a friend who is a retired FBI agent. We once were discussing the little town of Ludowici, Georgia. This agent would never use his credentials for personal indentification, for one thing, it is illegal to do so, and it is just not good form. He did do so on one occassion.
He was driving a plain unmarked vehicle, (not a black Crown Vic, with black premium tires, no chrome etc.). He was looking for someone in Ludowici to ask some questions of when he noticed the Ludowici town police take notice of him. Sure enough, after about 10 minutes the local cop pulls him over, and asks, not for his license, but for ID. The agent knows this was his chance. He pulls out his plastic laminated credentials, opens it and says, "did you have probable cause to stop me."
The local about faints on the spot, turns red, stutters and profusely apologizes. The agent decides to cut the guy some slack, after all, he might need the guy's help sometime.
| U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Fatalities per 100,000 Year 1999 |
|
| Commercial Fishermen | 162 |
| Timber Cutters | 154 |
| Air Pilots | 65 |
| Construction Laborers | 37 |
| Garbage Collectors | 34 |
| Truck Drivers | 28 |
| Electricians | 12 |
| Gardeners (non farm) | 11 |
| Police | 11 |
| Carpenters | 7 |
The Bureau of Labor Statistics data displayed shows the relative danger of on-the-job fatalities for a number of occupations. The data shows that a garbage collector has a three times better chance of "not coming home to his family" in the line of duty than a police officer.
Can you refute that statistic?
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