Free Republic

WACO, Tex. — One year ago Tuesday, law enforcement officials here broke up one of the biggest and deadliest clashes of motorcycle gangs in the country. Gunfire erupted outside a Twin Peaks restaurant at a meeting of a regional coalition of motorcycle clubs after an altercation between two rival groups, the Bandidos and the Cossacks. So many bikers were arrested — nearly 200 — that officials used the Waco Convention Center for initial processing. Police have said that the bikers, who attacked one another and fired on police officers, were part of “a gang-oriented criminal element” that had brought a...

>snip How this story was reported Bikers who might never have considered talking to outsiders before Waco recently spoke with CNN. Some were in the thick of the violence, others were hundreds of miles away. Most face serious prison time. CNN also obtained voluminous documentation, including witness statements, and hours of video evidence from Waco police dash cams, as well as a cameras police set up in the restaurant parking lot. CNN also obtained and reviewed videos from the Twin Peaks surveillance cameras. That evidence, along with interviews with experts and bikers from both clubs, form the basis of the...

What started as a would-be arrest at a Kansas motel ended with four federal agents shot and the motel engulfed in flames. Officers from the U.S. Marshals Service's Fugitive Task Forces were looking for a suspect Saturday night at the Country Club Motel, Topeka police Lt. Colleen Stuart said. But when they reached the motel, someone opened fire and struck two U.S. marshals, an FBI agent and a fourth federal agent, Stuart said. It was not immediately clear which agency the fourth agent belonged to. Their injuries are not considered life-threatening, Stuart said.

A Park County deputy was shot and killed during a shootout with a suspect at a home in Bailey. Two other deputies, also with Park County, were injured. Their injuries are not life threatening. The Park County Sheriff's Office says the shootout involved the three deputies and one suspect. The suspect was also shot and killed.

An off-duty Houston police officer thought he was meeting two men who expressed an interest in buying a couple of his personal firearms. Something didn't feel right to HPD officer C. Curry when he pulled up to a small public park in south Houston on Tuesday. He became the victim of an attempted armed robbery that quickly turned into a gunfight, police said. The officer-involved shooting happened about 1:15 p.m. Tuesday outside Cloverland Park in the 3800 block of Hickok Lane at Scott. Curry had placed an ad on the Texas Gun Trader website about selling two handguns he owned....

Video released by SPD. Seattle Police Department investigators are piecing together the trail of a 35-year-old violent felon after he brandished two handguns at several downtown businesses Sunday, carjacked three vehicles and fired on officers before a fatal confrontation with police in Northeast Seattle. (Video starts near the U of Washington.

Colorado Springs police responded this afternoon to reports of an active shooter at a Planned Parenthood facility:

Idaho State Police are investigating after a Council rancher was shot and killed Sunday by deputies with the Adams County Sheriff's Office. The incident began when a Subaru station wagon crashed into a bull on US 95 north of Council at about 6:45 p.m. Emergency responders and Adams County deputies responded and were working to extricate the two people inside the car. Adams County Sheriff Ryan Zollman said the bull, which was injured in the collision, started charging at emergency responders and other vehicles. "The bull was very agitated and was aggressive to emergency services, as well as the other...

In an opinion released Thursday, Justice Rex Davis of the 10th Court of Appeals declared that officials had sufficient probable cause to arrest two bikers after the May 17 Twin Peaks shootout in Waco. The melee killed nine men and injured another 20, resulting in the arrest of 177 bikers, each initially held on controversial $1 million bonds on a charge of engaging in organized criminal activity. Final autopsy reports were released last week on the nine killed in the melee, but ballistics evidence remains publicly unavailable, pending the completion of an investigation headed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,...

Abel Reyna (AR) and Sgt. Patrick Swanton must have been sweating cold as they blitzed the media with apocalyptic visions of SAMCRO and the Mayans stabbing, shooting, and raping their way across Central Texas Marketplace during church hour, with the heroic police saving the day. But it was showtime, and the news cameras were already rolling. And thus, the "biker shootout" meme was born.

A robbery suspect was killed and his apparent victim was wounded late Sunday in a shootout outside a Benihana restaurant in North Dallas. Witnesses said two men were leaving the restaurant when the gunman approached and asked for a lighter. The robber then put on a mask and pulled a handgun from his waistband, police said. One of the victims pulled out a gun from inside his Chevy Camaro and exchanged fire with the would-be robber. Police said both men were wounded in the exchange. The 28-year-old suspect was taken to Medical City Dallas Hospital and died soon after. The...

Al Qaeda's Syria affiliate said on Saturday it would prosecute members involved in an shoot-out in northwest Idlib province that killed at least 20 members of the country's Druze minority. In an official statement published on Twitter, Nusra Front sought to allay fears of further attacks on minorities, saying that some of its members acted "in clear violation of the leadership's views," reports AFP. On Thursday, residents of the village of Qalb Lawzah protested after a Tunisian Nusra leader tried to seize a Druze man's home, accusing him of being loyal to the Syrian regime, the Syrian Observatory for Human...

An attorney for two men arrested in the May 17 Twin Peaks shootout between rival bikers says his clients are being held illegally and is seeking to replace all McLennan County judges connected to the case. Austin attorney Adam Reposa alleges in motions filed Tuesday that the charging documents filed against his clients, and the 168 others jailed in the chaotic melee, are legally insufficient. He also claims that the $1 million bonds are unreasonably oppressive and that the judge who set them and the judges who, so far, have not reduced them have shown bias and should be recused....

The shootout in Waco that killed nine motorcycle gang members began in the weeks before Christmas with a beating at a Toys for Tots event in Wise County and a murder in Fort Worth, according to law enforcement sources. The backdrop is a growing turf battle between the Bandidos – which has controlled Texas for years – and the Cossacks, a lesser-known biker gang that has been gaining power by aligning itself with Bandido rivals, the sources said. On Dec. 12, 10 Bandidos burst into Gator’s bar in Fort Worth and "without saying a word, started punching and attacking people,"...

A surveillance video clip shows a man driving into his garage when three armed men come in as the garage door is attempting to close. The man, an off-duty police officer, was with his wife in the car. Things turn violent quickly, as one of the armed robbers starts to open the man’s car door while he has a gun in his hand. Within a second, both men fire a shot. The victim seems to get his shot off just a split second before the armed robber. The ‘victim’ fires several more rounds at the man, which hit his intended...

I'm not a soccer fan, but I am a big fan of humor and well done parody. If this doesn't make you laugh, nothing will! (I clicked excerpt to make the link easy)

On Friday, Jan. 9, at around 2 p.m. on a sunny afternoon, four armed individuals entered the shop and encountered Becky Bieker apparently alone behind the counter. Based on ensuing events, it seems fair to surmise that their intent was robbery. But whatever their plans may have been, they went awry when Jon Bieker, watching the store’s closed-circuit TV, saw his wife being brutally beaten and emerged from the rear portion of the store to protect and defend her. The way events were reported by local print and broadcast media, “gunfire broke out”; “shots were fired”; “a shootout ensued”; in...

One of the cops wounded in a wild Bronx shootout didn’t appreciate a hospital sympathy visit from Mayor Bill de Blasio, the wounded officer’s dad told The Post on Tuesday. The mayor accompanied NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton to St. Barnabas Hospital overnight to see wounded plainclothes officers Andrew Dossi, 30, and Aliro Pellarano, 38. “He wasn’t too happy about the mayor’s visit,” Dossi’s dad, Joe, told The Post at the family’s home in Rockland County. “He (Dossi) deals with some crappy people every day and getting no support (from the mayor), come on. These are the guys in the trenches...

I teach students to make a decision about being put under restraint before they get into a deadly force situation.   By restraint, I mean that the aggressor/attacker is attempting something, or commanding you to do something, that significantly reduces your options for resistance.  One of the simplest of these is for someone to aim a gun at you from a vehicle, and order you to get into the car.  It is almost always better to run for cover at that point.  Criminals do not want to move you somewhere for your benefit. Other examples are: they are going to...

Via Bob Owens at Bearing Arms, in a “better world” without concealed carry, they would have robbed her blind and maybe shot her in the face for good measure. Alas, in the fallen world in which we live, she took the chief’s advice and sent them to the hospital.Would they have fired at her if they hadn’t seen her go for her gun first, though? Yep, she says. No doubt: “Don’t pull it,” one of the men warned, she told WDIV.He shot, putting four bullets in the 51-year-old woman, three of them lodging in her side and the other in...