Posted on 09/04/2001 1:56:00 PM PDT by TheRealLobo
OK, here is the meat of the argument.
Beck killed a cop. He was guilty of impersonating a US Marshal. He had been tried, convicted and sentenced for committing various and sundry crimes. He was a convicted felon in possession of firearms. He set his own house on fire. He let his dog crap in his neighbor's yards. He threw loud parties. He talked back to his mother, and got kicked off the schoolbus. He wrote and propogated the Red Alert computer virus. He tore wings off of flies. He shot J.R. Ewing. He passed on chain letters. He shot Kennedy from the grassy knoll. He was also in the Texas School Book Depository. He was Jack the Ripper, and grew up to become Albert DeSalvo and was responsible for teaching Charles Manson all he knew. He was a Jehovah's Witness, and a Hare Krishna. He was Deep Throat, and he set up G Gordon Liddy. He shot Vince Foster and leaked the story about Monica Lewinski. He was the undercover agent who paid Randy Weaver to saw off the shotgun. He escaped from the Branch Davidian compound after setting it on fire. He invented white-out and the pull-tab. He's eaten spotted owl and bald eagle. He's responsible for global warming and the next ice age. He designed the Edsel. He threw away 60,000 ballots for Gore or Bush in Florida. He invented Disco. He had a lousy singing voice. He once wiped his grandmother's kiss from his cheek. He stepped on cracks. He caused brownouts in California by running his air conditioner on "high". He was a fan of American League baseball. He dabbled in astrology and the occult. He wore white after labor day. His socks didn't match.
If anyone deserved to die that day, it was Beck.
I empathize with the family of the slain officer. If it was within my power to bring him back, I would. My heart aches for them. By ALL accounts, and most everyone on FR agrees, he was an honorable man who did NOT deserve to die. How I feel about the man, is NOT how I feel about the actions of the agency he worked for.
However, I have received MANY replies and read MANY posts, that say what Beck did excuses what the BATF and the LA County Sheriff's office did. The BATF and the LA County Sheriff's office shot up two other houses, on either side of his. The BATF and the LA County Sheriff's office DID unlawfully discharge their firearms with reckless disregard for human life. Their reaction put the lives of innocent civilians in danger. Many will argue with me about this, stating that Beck was responsible for that. Regardless of Beck being the perpetrator, the Law Enforcement Agencies in this country have ALWAYS been held to a higher standard. There is NO excuse for the actions taken by these LEOs in the way they turned that neighborhood into their personal free-fire zone. THIS is the point I and many freepers have been trying to make. The federal authorities have allowed this to happen far too often. I will be sending a letter to Mr Ashcroft, demanding an investigation to find out WHY the authorities thought themselves above the law and posing more of a threat to innocent civilians than to the perpetrator.
Did he kill the deputy, probably (there was talk at one point about friendly fire). Did the deputy deserve to die, no.
Could the BATF have confronted this guy in any other manner that wouldn't have put innocent civilians in a suburb in mortal danger. Hell yes.
Stay well - Yorktown
What should be your reaction?
Cower in fear...
Call the police... (they're already shooting at you)
Shoot back?
Hell, who knows?
What the heck happened this time? Where they going to take his house? We need more information on Beck, and that can take up to a year or more to come out. More and more, people are engaging willfully in a fight they know they will lose, and that will cost them their lives, what is that? What is happening in common with them?
How so? Telling your neighbors you are a US Marshal is not the same thing as flashing a badge and ordering people around. If it is, then the BATF should head to Tommy Lee Jones' house and burn him out.
Another point, that seems to get somewhat lost in the shuffle:
The level of hostility and distrust that so many feel for the alphabet agencies is rising to dangerous levels. This doesn't just develop in a vacuum. There are good reasons that many here have to doubt what we are being told. We've been lied to before. It is becoming increasingly believable that this is yet another example of our government at war with its own citizens. Like you said, this may have been a really "Bad Guy(TM)", he may have deserved arrest, jail, death sentence, whatever. But were these the actions of responsible law enforcement?!?! What if, just WHAT IF, this had been a law-abiding, second-amendment-believing citizen who simply refused to give up his guns? Many of us find this scenario easily imaginable. We can even reasonably speculate that they intend to scare us with these tactics to keep us in line. And THAT is something that deserves to be recognized and examined. We have no reason to trust our own government. Big Problem.
"From My Cold, Dead Hands" is in need of an update...
"From My Crispy, Charred Hands" is looking more likely.
What should be your reaction?
If I see someone firing at my home and I have NOT identified them as police I will definitely shoot them and unless they are more than 600 yards away I will probably kill them when I shoot. If there is a way I can positively identify them as LEO's I will probably hold fire while I try to get them to cease fire. I note these comments are made living in a town where I know the entire police force from civic functions. That will cause me to hold fire when I see someone I know that is a LEO. I try am sure of my target before I fire.
Stay well - Yorktown
I agree with your main thesis...this is entirely unacceptable. Whether from over-exuberance, confusion, poor training, poor leadership, bad cops, bad procedural/department policy, there should be a thorough investigation into why they so blindly targeted the wrong houses. This must be corrected.
"GOVERNMENT IS NOT REASON. IT IS NOT ELOQUENCE. IT IS FORCE. AND, LIKE FIRE, IT IS A DANGEROUS SERVANT AND A FEARSOME MASTER."
The author?
George Washington.
For you kids still in government schools, he is the dead white European guy who has been replaced by MLKing as the Father of Our Country.
Fair enough. What has disturbed me is the the way some of us on this site seem to act exactly like the lefties do- in their case they (lefties) get their nipples in a twist over Black Panthers, Move Africa geeks, the Weathermen, or the poor North Korean soldiers threatened by landmines in the DMZ. In our case, any white guy shot by cops turns into Nathan Hale.
I think the cops were pretty inept, and i'm taken aback at their poor fire control, but just because Beck owned guns doesn't make him a martyr- the SLA owned guns too.
I'm ALL over that as a LAS-A-BC myself. But at this point, I'm trying to get PASSED the argument about Beck's actions that day.
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