TexasCHLforum.com

suthdj wrote:

handog wrote:

suthdj wrote:I have not read every word but most, under what authority were these people(sheep) removed from their homes?
Did they declare marshall law?
What would happen if an owners refused and armed themselves?

Maybe we need to contact our rep's to get bills started to prevent this kind of abuse of power!

The home owner would be cut down in a flurry of machine gun fire most likely. If he's lucky, just a concussion grenade followed by a beating. HOPEfully not infinitely detained. (Read The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA))

On the bright side, said home owner would be a folk hero.

Sad, Sad, Sad state of affairs we have here now.
Worse yet we no longer have a new land to go to, to hide from tyranny and build a new nation, this is it. So where do we draw the line, what is societies "Red Line", will it ever be crossed, or do we just keep falling back to a safe distance and hope for the best!

I think it would have been foolish and counterproductive to respond with force in this situation. I think the best course of action would be to answer the door and simply refuse entry and refuse to leave. Become dead weight if they attempted to drag you out and force them either to drag or carry you down the street --or shoot you on TV. This would have made the nature of the searches rather obvious. And I don't think it has been emphasized enough that these officers pointed guns at people in order to get them to comply. You point a gun at someone it signals intent to kill, and it also indicates they were more interested in quickly getting their way than the safety of the people inside. This is what we've come to, police pointing guns at unarmed people holding children in order to get their way....compliance at gunpoint. As Mao said, "political power comes out of the barrel of a gun." That is the way of the left.

chasfm11 wrote:It will be interesting to see into which category this one falls

http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/crime-law ... and/nXXKw/

FBI, local police conducting massive sweep in Oakland

FBI agents, local police SWAT and the California Highway Patrol were targeting multiple locations.

If I remember correctly, Oakland has had an ongoing gang problem.

Not enough information to comment on how the raid was conducted, but the article says they had warrants to search for both drugs and guns, so my guess is that it was entirely legal.

A-R wrote:

VMI77 wrote:

A-R wrote:

VMI77 wrote:

A-R wrote:Gangbanger vs terrorist ... gangbanger uses targeted killing to "mark his turf" - terrorist uses indiscriminate killing to place an entire populace in fear ... apples vs oranges

Yeah, right, that's why all those drive by's are so accurate and never injure innocent people. And it's not like gang bangers control, say, government housing units, and have the people living there afraid; and of course no one in a gang controlled neighborhood lives in fear, or is afraid for their children to walk the streets. Yeah, you're right, no one fears a gang banger because they're so meticulous in their killing.

I didn't say any of that. Nice job extrapolating what YOU believe I said so it fits your argument.

Both gangbangers and terrorists need to be stopped. But a terrorist believed to have bombs with him and the potential to inflict more indiscriminate killing is a different problem (with different methods/solutions) than the daily localized violent actions of gangbangers.

Again, BOTH need to be stopped and I in no way am debating a moral equivalency between the two. Just trying to explain the difference in response hierarchy, methods, reasoning.

See my edited post, to which I add this: When they conducted the search in question the "terrorist" was on foot, without any bombs, and no better armed than a gang banger. There was no imminent bomb threat. And furthermore, the search was the product of incompetence and would have been unnecessary if this massive and extremely expensive security state was worth the money spent on it.

Hindsight is 20/20. They couldn't possibly know at the time what he did or did not have nor who he may or may not be conspiring with. But they knew he had explosives and had used them.

Different.

As to the rest, you're entitled to your opinion.

How gracious of you. I already addressed the question of hindsight and it's irrelevant to my criticism of the search. Perhaps you misunderstood what I meant by no imminent bomb threat.....the guy was fleeing on foot, his photo was in the news, so there was virtually no way, if he had a bomb, that he was going to be able to conduct another terrorist attack. He may have had something to throw at the police, and he may have been armed, but that doesn't justify the way the search was conducted, and wouldn't even if he was capable of launching another attack. Now we learn the older brother had been on a CIA terrorist watch list for 18 months. So I say again, the money being spent by the surveillance state is not producing results that justify the expenditures, and this whole operation was the product of incompetence from start to finish.

03Lightningrocks wrote:If you fellers are waiting to see me debate if one is worse than the other it isn't gonna happen. They are both scum in my book. My only point was that the two have different motivations for what they do.

I'm not an expert in criminology but my uneducated opinion is that gang bangers and terrorist represent two completely different challenges to law enforcement as well. Which in turn requires different methods of prevention or detection.

As far as giving up my civil liberties. I am not going to stand by and willfully go along with that no matter if it is a terrorist or gangbanger. Unfortunately for all Americans, we have allowed ourselves to be duped into giving up way to many rights as Americans over the fear of terrorists already.

If I'm one of those fellers you're referring to, let me reiterate --I'm not debating which is worse and don't even think it's relevant. The left is very meticulous in its exploitation of language and the distortion of meaning. What they do, across the board, is lower the denominator by devaluing meaning. The English language has a word to accurately describe just about everything. The aim of the left is to reduce vocabulary and conflate meanings so that in Alice in Wonderland fashion a word means whatever they want it to mean. In the public schools this results in a certain hand gesture or a drawing of a gun being treated like a gun. What happened in Boston attempts to devolve all threats to anyone no matter of what type and no matter by whom, even mother nature, into a single category of "public safety." Thus, the term "public safety" is transformed from what would be a justification of very limited and conditional action as a measure to deal with "terrorism" to a justification for unlimited and unconditional action as a measure of "public safety."

03Lightningrocks wrote:I don't think a gang banger and a terrorist are comparable. In this case it might end up being we have a terrorist wannabe rather than an actual terrorist. But that is still not the same as a gang banger.

About the only similarity I can think of is they are both a danger to the public. The motivations of the two are completely different.

I'm not really arguing semantics and definitions. The fact is, the government can equate similar conditions and circumstances to justify violating the Constitution. The next time they have a dangerous guy on the run, why not do it again? What is the argument for not doing it? An unapprehended gang banger is a continuous threat. If he has murdered once he is going to murder again. It doesn't matter what his objectives are, and anyway, in this particular case, there isn't much evidence that the objective was much more than just killing people. When the government can get away with unconstitutional behavior under the guise of insuring public safety, there is virtually no criminal situation that can't exploit the same claim.

A-R wrote:

VMI77 wrote:

A-R wrote:Gangbanger vs terrorist ... gangbanger uses targeted killing to "mark his turf" - terrorist uses indiscriminate killing to place an entire populace in fear ... apples vs oranges

Yeah, right, that's why all those drive by's are so accurate and never injure innocent people. And it's not like gang bangers control, say, government housing units, and have the people living there afraid; and of course no one in a gang controlled neighborhood lives in fear, or is afraid for their children to walk the streets. Yeah, you're right, no one fears a gang banger because they're so meticulous in their killing.

I didn't say any of that. Nice job extrapolating what YOU believe I said so it fits your argument.

Both gangbangers and terrorists need to be stopped. But a terrorist believed to have bombs with him and the potential to inflict more indiscriminate killing is a different problem (with different methods/solutions) than the daily localized violent actions of gangbangers.

Again, BOTH need to be stopped and I in no way am debating a moral equivalency between the two. Just trying to explain the difference in response hierarchy, methods, reasoning.

See my edited post, to which I add this: When they conducted the search in question the "terrorist" was on foot, without any bombs, and no better armed than a gang banger. There was no imminent bomb threat. And furthermore, the search was the product of incompetence and would have been unnecessary if this massive and extremely expensive security state was worth the money spent on it.

A-R wrote:Gangbanger vs terrorist ... gangbanger uses targeted killing to "mark his turf" - terrorist uses indiscriminate killing to place an entire populace in fear ... apples vs oranges

Yeah, right, that's why all those drive by's are so accurate and never injure innocent people. And it's not like gang bangers control, say, government housing units, and have the people living there afraid; and of course no one in a gang controlled neighborhood lives in fear, or is afraid for their children to walk the streets. Yeah, you're right, no one fears a gang banger because they're so meticulous in their killing.

Edited to add:

I think what you're missing here is that it doesn't matter what YOU think or what is reasonable. It's how the government is going to skew meanings and interpretations to achieve its goals. The gang bangers are safe. The police are not going to conduct house to house searches to root them out because gangs serve the agenda of the liberal State. As these "public safety" measures expand to obliterate the Constitution they're not going to be used on gang bangers, they're going to be used on veterans, militia members, conservative Christians, and Constitutionalists, and the general law abiding public. Gang bangers don't threaten the socialist State, but people who believe in and support the Constitution and the Rule of Law are an existential threat to socialism.

anygunanywhere wrote:

VMI77 wrote:
And we need to keep this in perspective...there are armed teenage murderers running about in every large US city. Geez, more people are probably killed over the weekend in Chicago than were killed in Boston. ONE 19 yo believed to be armed, and on the run, got a city shut down. The gang problem in LA is a far worse problem than one desperate teenager on the run, yet they're not shutting down LA and going house to house. This Boston episode sets a very dangerous precedent, which I don't at all doubt was part of the reason for the way the authorities responded. If one teenager is this much of a threat in Boston, then why not do the same for a murderous teen on the loose in Chicago, LA, New York, Houston, or La Grange?

He probably would not last very long in La Grange.

Anygunanywhere

I put that in there just for you.

texanjoker wrote:

VMI77 wrote:

surprise_i'm_armed wrote:Well the actions taken by the LEO's were certainly out of the norm, and not desirable from a purely
Constitutional viewpoint.

So what are most of you advocating... that the Boston LEO's should have just gone back to their police station for coffee
and donuts and waited for the bomber brothers to turn themselves in? Sheesh.

They did a manhunt for proven killers, they had a 200 or more round shootout, they killed one of them, and captured
the other one. All in only 4 days from the time of the explosions.

Some people wouldn't be happy if they got hung with a new rope. :-)

SIA

No, they didn't really do a manhunt.....in a real manhunt they would have been using dogs to find the guy like the military uses dogs to find insurgents. Dogs can pick up a trail that is hours old. So why no dogs? Looks to me like they had other priorities, and finding the suspect was not #1.

And another thing that strikes me is the very dangerous way they dragged people out of their homes. In the first place, people in other homes could see what was going on, so there was zero element of surprise had the BG been in one of the homes. They weren't carefully evaluating a potential hostage situation, just kicking in doors....so what would have happened if the BG had surrounded himself with children, mom and dad, and started shooting at the cops when they came through the door? Is that how the cops would have entered if they KNEW a BG was in a home and there was a potential hostage situation....straight through the front door? We know the answer is NOT. So, for expediency they were willing to sacrifice the citizens they're supposed to protect. This was much less a manhunt and much more an exercise in the display of power.

I'll have to address your dog comments as I saw k9's all over the news. I am not sure what you know about dogs, but I have personally worked 2 different dogs so I know a thing or two about doing a man hunt with a k9. You can be sure they tried track the suspect when he fled the vehicle, but tracking a suspect on concrete is a lot different then on grass, ect. Once you loose the scent it becomes a yard to yard or house to house search in the area of containment/perimeter. That is an off leash search in each yard with the dog doing an air scent search. The danger in that type of search is that anybody in the yard is going to get bit so you cannot just do that without extreme caution to avoid an accidental bite. When not doing an off leash search, you work with the team and keep the dog on leash. Given the fact these guys shot at the police and threw explosives, it is going to be a very slow methodical search. You will need numerous dog teams like I saw, and lots of breaks for the dogs as they get tired.

In the video that started this post I am unclear where they are dragging people out of homes. They have people coming out with their hands up. The house is contained and appears to be a different search then all the other footage I have seen. They then have them go down the street. Is "drag' just a term or is there another video where they are "physically dragging" them out of a home.

I wanted to add there are probably areas in this where they should have done better and better respected peoples rights doing the search. I would be curious if it was the same teams that were the more aggressive..I would also be curious the make up of the those teams with regard to combat veterans. No knock on vets, but I have seen the combat vets (Iraq/afghan) take up more aggressive positions when the become LEOs because that is how they operated over seas which doesn't transform well to US SOIL.

Besides having dogs that aren't search dogs, my only knowledge is what I've read about how the military trains and uses various types of dogs. I saw no use of dogs for the search in any of the videos. No checking of a house or yard before entry. I can't be sure of anything....but I've read that they didn't track the suspect with dogs when he fled the vehicle. Now we're also discovering that the surviving brother was unarmed when he was captured. While this doesn't affect how the search was conducted because it wouldn't have been known at the time, the police apparently lied when they claimed they had a gun fight with the suspect and riddled the boat with bullets. So, if they lied about that, we have no way of knowing what else they lied about (and when I say police in this context, I'm talking about the frequently liberal people in charge, not the rank and file officers).

I used "drag" as a term, admittedly inaccurate based on the video I've seen, although I have seen video where police grabbed and pulled someone along when then weren't moving fast enough to suit them while yelling at them like they were prisoners in a cell block. On the video linked the guy describes being ordered out of the house at gunpoint, and when he asked if he could put his shoes on, was just ordered to move out now. Didn't say he was "grabbed" but it seems like sort of a distinction without much of a difference. Common sense should tell anyone that a guy asking to put on his shoes in that situation was not in any danger and was therefore not being held hostage in his residence. The reality is, the treatment of citizens by the police was strictly for the convenience of the police. It's just a lot easier to point a gun at someone --which at it's root is a threat to kill them-- and yell for them to move, than to treat a person as if they're an actual free citizen with inalienable rights. That's the whole point of a police state, to make it easy for the police, and by extension, the government.

Aside from the contempt shown law abiding citizens, the whole thing strikes me as a kind of keystone cops episode. Two bombs go off. The authorities say they have no idea who did it and appeal to the public for help. After the responding public wrongly identifies two sets of innocent suspects (coach/runner and guys working for The Craft) the FBI finally identifies the suspect after one of the bombing victims points him out. Then it turns out that the FBI had interviewed one of the bombers at the request of the Russians and had at some time placed them under surveillance....yet they had "no idea" who the bombers could be, for what, the first three days of the investigation? Would they ever have tumbled without the witness? They could have picked them up easily on day one or two. Then, after the FBI makes public who they are looking for, the brothers start to run and end up in a shootout with police. At this point you have to wonder if the FBI had yet figured out who the brothers were because if they had they could have arrested them rather easily --as at least one of the brothers was attending school. Somehow, the younger brother eludes the police and hides out, so they shut down a part of the city, close down the highways and public transportation and lockdown people in their homes like they're trying to establish order in a prison. The police force people out of their homes at gunpoint, point guns at people looking out their windows ---which I emphasize again is a threat to kill-- and with all the high tech available like FLIR, and including dogs, can't find one untrained 19 year old until a homeowner points him out. The police show up and shoot the guy's boat to pieces, and we later find out the suspect was unarmed, after the police claimed they engaged him in a gun battle. And this is after some 10 years of building up law enforcement and spending billions of dollars to fight "terrorism," as well as eviscerating the Constitution. What's the pay off, a couple of guys on welfare rig up some bombs and kill and injure a bunch of people right under the nose of a bunch of clueless authorities. Veterans can't buy guns due to erroneous NCIS checks, but foreign nationals associated with Russian terrorists and reported by the Russian government get to live here on welfare, become American citizens ON WELFARE, and then blow up Americans. THIS is what is being celebrated in Boston....what looks like incompetence to me, but at best is stunning mediocrity.

And we need to keep this in perspective...there are armed teenage murderers running about in every large US city. Geez, more people are probably killed over the weekend in Chicago than were killed in Boston. ONE 19 yo believed to be armed, and on the run, got a city shut down. The gang problem in LA is a far worse problem than one desperate teenager on the run, yet they're not shutting down LA and going house to house. This Boston episode sets a very dangerous precedent, which I don't at all doubt was part of the reason for the way the authorities responded. If one teenager is this much of a threat in Boston, then why not do the same for a murderous teen on the loose in Chicago, LA, New York, Houston, or La Grange?

surprise_i'm_armed wrote:Well the actions taken by the LEO's were certainly out of the norm, and not desirable from a purely
Constitutional viewpoint.

So what are most of you advocating... that the Boston LEO's should have just gone back to their police station for coffee
and donuts and waited for the bomber brothers to turn themselves in? Sheesh.

They did a manhunt for proven killers, they had a 200 or more round shootout, they killed one of them, and captured
the other one. All in only 4 days from the time of the explosions.

Some people wouldn't be happy if they got hung with a new rope. :-)

SIA

No, they didn't really do a manhunt.....in a real manhunt they would have been using dogs to find the guy like the military uses dogs to find insurgents. Dogs can pick up a trail that is hours old. So why no dogs? Looks to me like they had other priorities, and finding the suspect was not #1.

And another thing that strikes me is the very dangerous way they dragged people out of their homes. In the first place, people in other homes could see what was going on, so there was zero element of surprise had the BG been in one of the homes. They weren't carefully evaluating a potential hostage situation, just kicking in doors....so what would have happened if the BG had surrounded himself with children, mom and dad, and started shooting at the cops when they came through the door? Is that how the cops would have entered if they KNEW a BG was in a home and there was a potential hostage situation....straight through the front door? We know the answer is NOT. So, for expediency they were willing to sacrifice the citizens they're supposed to protect. This was much less a manhunt and much more an exercise in the display of power.

handog wrote:This whole tragic episode proves just how prepared they are are for martial law in this country. And how incompetent the DHS is. They spent a trillion dollars on surveillance and could not prevent this bombing. They have a legion of new recruits who are willing to kick in doors of law abiding citizens without a search warrant and supersede the fourth amendment for a pay check. And who found the bomber? A citizen breaking the law by going outside of his house to smoke a cigarette in his own back yard. And so, let's strike up the band. Have a parade. Have the Red Socks pitcher and all the fans congratulate the great job Police have done to keep us safe.

And he paid for it too....they destroyed his $50K boat and left him holding the bag for it.

texanjoker wrote:Guess I will be the only one not afraid to post in disagreement. Are there any proven cases where somebody went outside and was arrested? I have not read about one. They asked people to stay inside and they did while they went house to house in a contained area looking for a terrorist believed to be armed with weapons and explosives. It obviously worked because the terrorist stayed put and they were able to apprehend him w/o anybody else being injured. Obviously the residents of Boston who lived through this don't have an issue with it due to the parades, ect they are throwing for the officers.

Wow. Just wow. I've seen the videos of people being pulled out of their homes at gun point, hands over their heads, while the cops yelled at them like they were criminals. There is a photo out there of an officer pointing his M4 at someone looking out their window. The video below, a TV station video, says they BROKE DOWN A DOOR and forced the cowering residents outside at gun point. That is what you're supporting? Even some of the cheerful slaves admitted they were scared and intimidated at being forced out of their homes at gun point. They ordered people to get away from their windows --that too was in one of the videos. On one video the guy says his neighbor went outside, refused to go inside, and was arrested and taken to jail. Can I prove it, no. But what difference does it make? Here's a 4th Amendment refresher:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized

Am I secure in my home when law enforcement points a gun and me and orders me to leave my home? You're down with pointing guns at people holding babies? Do you place any limits on what orders you will follow? Would YOU break down my door under similar circumstances, point a gun at my wife and force her out of our home at gunpoint, without a warrant, without probable cause that she'd committed a crime, and try to pretend as they did here, to be in hot pursuit? The officers that participated in these tactics are helping the left kill our Republic and turn this country into a police state. Like another posted here, I too would be dead. No, I wouldn't have shot at police or displayed a weapon of any kind, but I would have refused their orders, I would not have left my home under my own power, and they would have had to drag, carry, or kill me in front of the TV cameras.

BTW, this de facto martial law wasn't just pulling people out of their homes at gun point, it included shutting down transportation and businesses, preventing people from going to work, and costing people millions of dollars in lost revenue. Just what is the difference between shutting down a city and going house to house at gun point to find one criminal versus doing the same thing in Chicago or Los Angeles to find a bunch of criminals? Why not use this tactic on the gang bangers in South LA? If some deranged lunatic is running around my city and I want to keep my business open that is my business --if I don't live in a police state. And if no one wants to patronize my business under such conditions, that's their business....or at least, that's the way it works in a free country. Hey, the people involved, many of them at least, are apparently fine with being treated like prisoners, and being "locked down" in their cells. Well, I"m not, and I think a lot other people posting here aren't either, and I'm not going to cheerily slip on my shackles to make it easier for law enforcement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... -ZUN3Li0#!

anygunanywhere wrote:

jmra wrote:How exactly did it fail? Do you actually believe the purpose of this exercise was to catch a 19 year old fugitive?

"Yesterday a major US city – perhaps as many as 1 million people – was put under martial law...And Bostonians cheered them for it. Some even called for a parade to honor the men who treated them like prisoners in their own homes."

I believe the people who engineered this constitutional heresy are celebrating a huge win. Now they know that they can fabricate news that will cause Americans to roll over and play dead while goons dressed in black come in and do whatever they wish.

This was just an exercise, an excursion to see how far TPTB could push their way into trampling the Constitution. This was a trial run for the declaration of martial law.

I agree. It was a win for TPTB, a failure on the part of the peasants.

Anygunanywhere

Didn't you hear, according to the MSM, those people being run out of their homes at gunpoint were being "rescued."