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.
Sir, what is that around your kneck? "It's just a stethescope." I know you are concerned about my health, but why does your stethescoped look just like a MP5 submachine gun? And I don't like the look of that blood pressure cuff disguised as a flash bang.
I am glad he made it to the due-process-of-law part.
If he deserves capital punishment I'd volunteer to stick the needle in myself, but there should be a trial first.
Burning people at the stake was supposed to have gone out of style a few hundred years ago.
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 had 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 who 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 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.
Sorry, I have been attacked so much lately as a "cop-hater" (which I most certainly am not) that I guess I have developed a siege mentality.
Now I know what a cop feels like!
Peace.
I don't want "us versus them." If this is going to remain a free country, then law enforcement has to be open, if not before the fact, then after.
My gut feeling about law enforcement and government in general these days is that they have become psychotic - the indication of psychosis being the inability to admit mistakes when they happen.
I make 50 mistakes a day, and admit most of them. I cannot ever remember an LEA or government entity ever admitting to a mistake, can you?
PS - sorry about being a Clymer to you last week. I've calmed down since then. I think there is legitimate reason to fear government these days, and that's all that I was expressing, though I was expressing it inappropriately.
I recall one night, my car died right off the traffic circle in Dothan, Alabama.
It turned out to be a broken wire in the distrubutor. (I have a mental block right now and can't think of the part's name) By luck I happened to have a spaare in my trunk.
Right after pulling over, a Dothan city cop stopped and asked if I needed help. I told him I thought I knew what it was but would appreciate it if he stuck around long enough to see. He not only stuck around but helped me fix it and also kept up a very interesting conversation.
In some places he probably would have searched the car (for his own protection), called for back-up, and cuffed me until he made sure I wasn't the Son of Sam killer.
Nationwide, 51 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed in the line of duty in 2000, according to preliminary statistics released today by the FBI. This number is an increase of 9 from the 1999 total of 42.
In 2000, firearms were again the weapon most often used in the slaying of officers with 33 officers slain with handguns, 10 with rifles, and 4 with shotguns. Two officers were slain with their own weapons. Additionally, 3 officers were killed by vehicles, and 1 officer was killed with a knife. Thirty officers were wearing body armor at the time of their deaths.
By region, 32 officers were feloniously killed in the South, 13 in the Midwest, 4 in the West, and 2 in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. No officers were feloniously killed in the Northeast.
Twelve officers lost their lives in arrest situations: 6 were serving arrest warrants, 3 were investigating drug-related situations, 2 were trying to prevent robberies or apprehend robbery suspects, and 1 was attempting to prevent a burglary or apprehend a burglary suspect. Another 13 officers were murdered while enforcing traffic laws, 10 while encountering ambush situations, 8 while answering disturbance calls, 6 while investigating suspicious persons or circumstances, and 2 while handling prisoners.
The 51 officers were slain in 50 separate incidents in 2000. Forty-eight of these incidents were cleared by arrest or exceptional means. Two suspects remain at large.
In addition, preliminary statistics indicate 83 officers were accidentally killed in the performance of their duties in 2000—an increase of 18 compared to the 65 accidental deaths in 1999.
Final statistics and complete details will be released in the Uniform Crime Reporting Program's publication Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, 2000 expected to be distributed in the fall of this year.
| Table 2.17 | |||||||||
| Justifiable Homicide | |||||||||
| by Weapon, Private Citizen1, 1995-1999 | |||||||||
| Year | Total | Total fire- arms | Hand- guns | Rifles | Shot- guns | Fire- arms, type not stated | Knives or cutting instru- ments | Other danger- ous weapons | Personal weapons |
| 1995 | 268 | 230 | 179 | 18 | 25 | 8 | 24 | 10 | 4 |
| 1996 | 261 | 222 | 184 | 12 | 18 | 8 | 28 | 7 | 4 |
| 1997 | 280 | 238 | 197 | 16 | 14 | 11 | 28 | 6 | 8 |
| 1998 | 196 | 170 | 150 | 6 | 14 | - | 17 | 5 | 4 |
| 1999 | 188 | 154 | 134 | 5 | 9 | 6 | 18 | 9 | 7 |
| 1 The killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony, by a private citizen. | |||||||||
| Table 2.16 | |||||||||
| Justifiable Homicide | |||||||||
| by Weapon, Law Enforcement1, 1995-1999 | |||||||||
| Year | Total | Total fire- arms | Hand- guns | Rifles | Shot- guns | Fire- arms, type not stated | Knives or cutting instru- ments | Other danger- ous weapons | Personal weapons |
| 1995 | 389 | 386 | 351 | 12 | 19 | 4 | - | 3 | - |
| 1996 | 357 | 354 | 326 | 10 | 10 | 8 | - | 1 | 2 |
| 1997 | 366 | 363 | 315 | 14 | 20 | 14 | - | 1 | 2 |
| 1998 | 369 | 367 | 322 | 15 | 18 | 12 | - | - | 2 |
| 1999 | 294 | 291 | 261 | 11 | 14 | 5 | - | 1 | 2 |
| 1 The killing of a felon by a law enforcement officer in the line of duty. | |||||||||
Total Crimes Known: 11,635,100
Violent Crime: 1,430,690
Property Crime: 10,204,500
Murder: 15,530
Rape: 89,110
Robbery: 409,670
Assault: 916,380
Burglary: 2,099,700
Theft: 6,957,400
Motor Vehicle Theft: 1,147,300
Now, of the 11,635,100 or so crimes committed, how many of those were against LEOs and how many were committed against private citizens? I would suggest that the people, not the cops, have a much more dangerous need for firearms.
I dont like the way things are going, I've been seriously considering getting off of SWAT the last few days, for several reasons.
The way I see it we have lost our Christian values in society. Everyone is afraid to profess Christ in public or show those values in their work. I dont think we have to be priests or be floating two feet off of the ground but I have noticed an increase in vulgarity, rudeness, etc. amongst the officers I work with, and society in general. Its troubling. I worry about my children and what things will be like in 10 to 15 more years if we dont turn around.
Thats funny, I dont remember you being a Clymer, I must be getting old ;0).
Peace be with you.
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