COP SHOOTS ‘ROLE PLAY’ SOLDIERS IN LETHAL ERROR

New York Post ^ | 2/25/02 | Post Wire Services

[Lumberjack]

Perhaps so they can deal with enemies in other countries?

Hmmm, other countries that have an armed populace that they are considering as their target along with local police who might resist such disarmament attempts? Hmmmm, that would mean we are planning to invade either Israel or Switzerland.

No, nothing to see here folks. Ignore the man behind the curtain. All countries allow broad gun ownership and disarmers would have to worry about local police defending the local populace's right to keep and bear arms. Move along...

[sneakypete]

Running this kind of drill in public places is nuts. It may be good practice, but as this event shows, mishaps that include the civilian population are inevitable. The military should drop the practice.

Yeah,if you consider one case every 40-50 years inevitable,I guess it is. The military can't drop that practice because it is ESSENTIAL.

My sympathy to the cop, the same though a little less to the soldiers.

Why? They obviously thought he was role-playing too. Tough cop though, if two spec ops guys can't take him at a traffic stop.

Either one could have taken him easily if it had been a "real world" effort. It wasn't,though. They thought it was a part of the scenario that was being ran,so they didn't make any real effort to hurt him or "take him out". Only to restrain him. He was under no such restrictions,and the result is one dead and one wounded soldier.

[GreatOne]

Robin Sage (previously known as Gobbler's Woods) is the "graduation" exercise for Special Forces candidates.

Looks like the two soliders flunked graduation. Badly. Another article sited as to how the soldiers are trained in judgment and decision-making. Didn't learn well enough.

[Hoosier Patriot]

Lots of questions here.

Only for people whose tinfoil hats are on too tight.

LOL! That's a classic, worthy of framing. "If you dare ask questions, you are a raving tinfoiler! So don't question anything!"

Geesh, when did asking questions about something become against the rules?

[sneakypete]

Posing as civilians, disarming an enemy population one by one would be a slow, tedious and dangerous task. I don't like to think of our military as the gun control of the world.

Lose your tinfoil hat. This has NOTHING to do with gun control,and they don't try to disarm the local population. In fact,they arm the locals and train them in explosives. What they THOUGHT they were doing was disarming a local cop who was working for the occupying enemy forces,and maybe taking him prisoner.

[Poohbah]

Not against the rules. But when people ask questions and make ASSUMPTIONS about the answers before actually getting any, particularly in areas that they know nothing about...

Well, folks like sneakypete, who DO know what they're talking about, get a wee bit testy.

[Riley]

I'd think that everybody around there would be familiar with the ROBIN SAGE exercises, they've been going on for a long time.
Having said that, I'd have expected the two SF trainees to look in the mirror and think "Uh-oh, REAL cop" and behave accordingly.

We have some SFers here- are there exercise guidelines that specify how to deal with the local cops if one runs into them?

[sneakypete]

I used children to recon targets at one time and once had an old geezer use his black-powder cannon in support of an ambush.

You've worked as a G-Chief too? FR mail me which team. We may know one another. We once took the covered bridge by having a couple park near there in their car and start making out. When the woman took her blouse off and both dissapeared in the bottom of the car,the 82nd MP's guarding the bridge couldn't take it anymore. They had to sneak up on the car to see what was going on. They met two M-16's(G),and the bridge was blown.

[PleaseNoMore]

When my brother was a child he used to play in the woods a lot building his pretend Army forts. It was not uncommon for him to "lead" a few of these guys a week out of "Drowning Creek" here. My grandmother used to tease him and call him an Army scout. I remember my grandmother feeding some of these trainees meals. It was very exciting to me, as a child to see the soldiers, hold their rifles, and sit in the jeeps and pretend to shoot the machine guns mounted in them. My brother was always given a token of appreciation be it a MRE, spended shell casings or what have you. It may sound like junk now but then it was a well earned reward for"helping" America's finest.

[sneakypete]

, but some of the training ops in our cities seem new to this observer.

Since when does "new" mean the same thing as "sinister"?

[Joe Brower]

Makes me wonder - what if John Q. Citizen who is on his property happens to run up on some of the Special Ops folks training and feels his life is in danger and kills one? Does he/she get admin leave or a go to jail card?

We know the answer to that one. We'd be eating jail food.

[sneakypete]

That said, there were obviously some blunders made in the preparation of this exercise.

I'd call it more than just a blunder. Unless a arrest of the two was a part of the scenario,I'd like to know why the guy driving the truck didn't tell the two soldiers this wasn't a part of the scenario,and to relax. Or if he did,why they didn't listen to him. This was one of the reasons I always drove the students on their recons myself when I was playing G-Chief. They might not listen to a civilian auxiliary,but they would damn sure listen to me because they knew I could get them bounced out of the program.

[sneakypete]

No, nothing to see here folks. Ignore the man behind the curtain. All countries allow broad gun ownership and disarmers would have to worry about local police defending the local populace's right to keep and bear arms. Move along...

ROFLMAO! You need to increase your meds.

[fourdeuce82d]

I am stunned by a) the complete ignorance of the tin-foil brigade b) the paranoia that leads to instantly assume the worst and c) the willingness of the TFB to comment on things they know nothing about.

Posts like the one you responded to help me understand why so many people think we are in-bred, toothless, crusty-bottomed retards. Truly some of the most inane, uninformed gibbering I have ever seen.

Good job responding.

[sneakypete]

We have some SFers here- are there exercise guidelines that specify how to deal with the local cops if one runs into them?

Yeah,I don't know from the POV of a G-Chief if they are "official" or not,but I ALWAYS made a point of talking with the local cops and not only letting them know what was going on,but involving them in some of the operations.

I have no real solid idea of what happened here. I can only guess,and my guess isn't much better than anybody else's at this point. I'm sure it won't do any good to ask anybody either,as everybody in a position to know what happened would have already been warned to not discuss it. The only people free to talk would be the ones who only know rumors. Rumors can SOMETIMES be the same as facts,but you can't count on it.

[FreedomPoster]

You're the one characterizing them as "sinister". I don't believe I ever identified them as such. Worthy of observation - sure. "Sinister"? No, I don't own that much tin foil.

Who urinated in your breakfast cereal?

[XJarhead]

Hmmm. . . why are there practicing disarming?

Probably because shooting a civilian during an exercise would be unacceptable. Also, believe it or not, there are times when getting a captive may be more important than killing someone.

But that doesn't fit as well into conspiracy theories, does it?

[XJarhead]

Isn't there a Posse Comitatus Act that addresses this? Why does our government fail to abide by their own laws? The person or persons responsible for these soldiers and their illegal training exercises should be in the iron bar hotel for an extended period of time.

Uh, just an idea here, but perhaps they were training for conducting these operations in other countries. I was not a special forces guy, but whenever any unit I was in did training exercises in the U.S., it was not in preparation for actually fighting on U.S. soil. We trained here because that's where our base was located, not as part of some secret plot to impose martial law.

Better check under your bed for some listening devices to make sure "they" aren't tailing you. Sheesh....

[sneakypete]

I am stunned by a) the complete ignorance of the tin-foil brigade b) the paranoia that leads to instantly assume the worst and c) the willingness of the TFB to comment on things they know nothing about.

This is nothing. You should have been around a couple of years ago when Delta ran that training operation in that small Texas city. WND jumped on the bandwagon and started writing stories about how the Apache gunships were conducting live-fire operations over the city,and even had a source they quoted who claimed to have read a secret "eyes-only for the president" executive order (that SHOULD have been a first good clue it was HorseHillary!)that stated this was training for disarming America. FR was full of threads about people outraged over US helicopters firing machine guns into the cities,etc,etc,etc.

BTW,myself,Chapita,and another poster who chooses to remain anomonous exposed WND's "source" as a phoney after the first story,and even pointed out flaws. They ignored us and continued to write these stories for a couple of weeks before finally backing down and admitting their souce "may be unreliable". The had been stating he was a Colonel in the Texas NG,and what he was was a Colonel in the Texas Militia. His "extensive background in military intelligence and covert operations in VN" amounted to his time as a enlisted man aboard a Navy ship floating offshore. Good job responding.

Thanks

[sneakypete]

You're the one characterizing them as "sinister". I don't believe I ever identified them as such. Worthy of observation - sure. "Sinister"? No, I don't own that much tin foil.

That seemed to be your implication. If it wasn't,I apologize for reading you wrong.