Posted on 03/11/2016 8:23:28 AM PST by Elderberry
At least one federal agency called upon to assist Waco and McLennan County law enforcement officials after the Twin Peaks shootout has completed its task.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has traced the histories of 151 firearms recovered from the restaurant grounds and seized from bikers vehicles May 17 after nine people were killed, two dozen wounded and 177 jailed on engaging in organized criminal activity charges.
Senior Special Agent Nicole Strong, an ATF spokeswoman, said Thursday that the ATF was asked to perform firearms traces but is leaving any investigative decisions up to the Waco Police Department and the McLennan County District Attorneys Office.
We have completed the firearms traces, Strong said. It is essentially tracking the life of the firearms, from the point it was manufactured, to who the first purchaser was which is normally a licensed firearms dealer to who the next purchaser was all the way down to the final purchase. How many times did it get bought and sold? We are complete with our end of it and, obviously, the investigation is a question for Waco PD. They just asked us to trace the guns.
Strong said the guns were shipped to a lab in California for the ATFs role in the investigation.
The main goal was to see who the legal purchaser was, she said. We wanted to know if a gun went from a manufacturer to John Smith and that is the last known purchase, and then that gun ends up in the hands of one of the people in the Twin Peaks shooting who was in prohibited possession. We want to know how it went from a legal possession to an illegal possessor.
Houston attorney Paul Looney, who represents Cody Ledbetter, a member of the Cossacks motorcycle group, has asked a Waco appeals court to order 19th State District Judge Ralph Strother to set a speedy trial date for Ledbetter.
He said the news that the ATF has finished its trace work is meaningless to his client because he did not have a weapon that day.
I dont think it matters much, Looney said. There wasnt ever a weapon that anybody thought that my client had from the very beginning. Law enforcement knows my client didnt have a weapon, so it doesnt help my client a bit.
District Attorney Abel Reyna did not return phone messages left at his office. His first assistant, Michael Jarrett, has said that it could be up to a year before analysis of evidence from the case is finished and that his office is not ready to go to trial.
It just perplexes me that they went and arrested everybody and indicted everybody and then chose to throw the evidence together later, Looney said Thursday. That is just not the way we do things in America. In America, we get our evidence together, then we follow it with an arrest and indictment. This is my first experience with arrest them first and figure out the evidence later. If that is the reason they are delaying my clients trial, that is just unconscionable.
Looney said he and his client, who is free on bond, are waiting for the 10th Court of Appeals to rule on his application for writ of mandamus, which asks the court to order Strother to give Ledbetter a trial date.
I dont know how they can ignore that request, but in this case, the unbelievable seems to be the routine, Looney said.
The term of the grand jury that returned indictments against 106 bikers was extended through March to continue the Twin Peaks investigation. The grand jury is set to return March 23 to consider the remaining cases.
Delay,delay,delay.
On Looney’s website:
“Mr. Looney has won 60 criminal defense trials since 1995 with ZERO convictions!”
But here is where he lost his defense of a notorious drug dealer charged with murder!
The jury may have gotten mad at Looney “
http://blog.chron.com/houstonlegal/2011/03/i-object-more-than-200-times-a-day-i-object/
ATF? Now there’s a trustworthy bunch.
This is a disgrace to the state of Texas.
Thanks for the post, I posted another article yesterday stating that the ATF had done the firearms checks. I was asking myself why the ATF would have done that instead of the FBI. It was not clear that what was done was the tracing of ownership of the weapons, not the ballistics tests.
I am convinced that there is an unseen Fed agenda behind the way this is being handled. I doubt very seriously this will be concluded before Obama is out of office.
This is just insane.
I'm curious what the data looks like. Private transactions between individuals require no documentation, and excepting jurisdictions requiring registration or licensing, a paper trail will not exist. Guns in that category cannot be assumed to be "illegal". The laws regulating firearms purchases restrict the distribution of the background check paperwork, so how does the ATF do this?
“This is a disgrace to the state of Texas.”
This is what happens to a good state when under the thumb of the federal government. Take the feds out of the loop and this would have never happened in the first place.
I hope they traced all the LE guns too and all their throw down guns, too.
Cody apparently saw the first shooting. He may have been shot or stabbed in the fight.
He threw a punch at a Cossack who went by the nickname “Chain.” Chain dodged it, threw a punch of his own. The biker then whipped out a handgun, pressed it to Chain’s chest and pulled the trigger.
Chain fell to the pavement.
He was the first to die.
“What the hell?” Ledbetter thought. The man had pulled out a gun at a fistfight.
” Take the feds out of the loop and this would have never happened in the first place.”
LOL! And just how were the Feds responsible for the gang fight?
Any of them trace back to Fast and Furious?
Not anymore.
That’s an interesting story...Loony represents some real scum doesn’t he?
” a paper trail will not exist “
...
Correct. There is no paper trail. The “trace” is an investigation.
The ATF contacts the manufacturer asking which licensed firearm dealer purchased that serial number. The ATF then contacts that licensed dealer, who is required to maintain paper records of the sale. If that is not the person who had the firearm when it was confiscated as evidence, I presume they ask that person what happened to it. Stolen? Private sale? etc.
Thankfully there IS no data base or federal paper trail.
“Thats an interesting story...Loony represents some real scum doesnt he?”
The familiar line.
“Looney has previously sought to portray Zamora as a family man and former youth baseball coach who lived in a simple home across the street from his parents.”
I would like to see the justification for search and seizure of the vehicles. Unless the bikers had access to the vehicles during or after the shootout, I don't see any probable cause to search their property. BATFE needs to be disbanded and just about all federal firearms laws need to be repealed (keep the one that forbids frivolous lawsuits against gun makers whose products function as designed).
“I would like to see the justification for search and seizure of the vehicles. Unless the bikers had access to the vehicles during or after the shootout, I don’t see any probable cause to search their property. “
The bikers had access to the vehicles. Fired weapons were filmed being tossed into vehicles.
That's good enough for me - but only on the specific vehicles where they had probable cause.
“That’s good enough for me - but only on the specific vehicles where they had probable cause. “
Given the mass confusion of 200 bikers involved in a gang war and a similar number of vehicles in vicinity of said gang war, it is only reasonable to circle the net around all as all were part of the crime scene.
If you can’t trust the government, who can you trust?
:)
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