SWAT standoff next door this morning...

[luke strawwalker]

Well I was going to sleep in this morning until the phone started ringing off the hook... When Betty left for work this morning (to take Keira to school and then off to the school she works at) she found the road blocked by a large number of police and sheriff's cars and a fire truck and other emergency vehicles. She stopped and asked what was going on but they wouldn't tell her. My brother Jason and his wife left for work at the county drainage district, and passed a SWAT armored vehicle coming out on their way into town...

They were calling me to tell me they left the back door unlocked and wondering what was going on, and to let me know the SWAT team was on the way out. Later after Jason got to work, he found out from a buddy who'd gotten a call that there was some sort of suicide standoff... Betty saw only one car with its light bar on-- a sheriff's car at the old farmhouse next door that used to belong to my grandmother's sister before she passed away. Apparently whomever is living there now (the property still belongs to my Dad's cousin but there's a lot of different folks living around there now) went bonkers and was suicidal and holding the police at bay with some sort of weapon(s)... I went out and sat on the end of the porch with the binoculars for awhile and watched the show... I watched the SWAT team get a briefing and orders apparently and then hold up a dry erase board to go over their strategy before the climbed onto the sides and back of the armored vehicle and moved up to the small farmhouse a couple hundred yards away. Then they got on the loudspeakers or bullhorn and tried to talk the guy out... I went inside for the camera and apparently they moved around to the other side of the house... took pics. There were about 10 units and SUV's, along with a fire truck and EMS truck on the road in front of the house, and apparently the road was shut down for awhile. There was also a white transport van ("bread truck" style van) that they had apparently transported the team out in. Lot of AR's visible through the binoculars...

Anyway, I guess it's all over now... they were packing it in a little while ago...

later! OL JR :)

[shrox]

The United States of America is a police state. It's certainly not "free for all".

[shrox]

I am certainly glad you were not subjected to crossfire.

[tmacklin]

Just about a year ago while looking out the windows of our former pharmacy in Denton, I saw a couple of nondescript older cars pull into our parking lot about 50 yards away from our building. The occupants of these cars were four or five buff but scruffy young men all in civilian clothes. My first thought was, "Here comes another load of dopers with a forged Rx for hydrocodone". That was before they opened the trunks of their cars and donned their flack jackets with "Police" and "US Marshall" displayed on the backs of the jackets, soon followed by their semi-auto hardware....assault weapons.

They were soon joined by another half dozen or so agents, mostly US marshals, who went through the same routine. They all milled around for 15-20 minutes, checking their equipment and ammo and giving each other "high fives" like a bunch of football players psyching up for the kickoff.

After a while, one of the younger agents walked into our building looking for a toilet. I directed him downstairs to the public restroom . When he came back and on the way out I asked him if they were "cops or bounty hunters". He replied "We are US Marshals with the Fugitive Task Force, and we're getting ready to ruin somebody's day."

About five minutes later they all saddled up in their beaters and headed south to points unknown. Never saw anything in the newspaper or on the tube. But the dope fiends continued to haunt us until we finally through in the towel.

Welcome to the Penal Colony!

[ghrocketman]

Nuthin' like a lil' SWAT-Action to add flavor to the day.

[Gingerdawg]

Glad your safely out of any crossfire.
What does a SWAT team do in a suicide situation? Holler through the bull horn " don't kill yourself or we'll shoot you"?

[tmacklin]

Glad your safely out of any crossfire.
What does a SWAT team do in a suicide situation? Holler through the bull horn " don't kill yourself or we'll shoot you"?


On April 19, 1993 they hollered "This is not an assault! Do not fire upon our tanks."

[rocketguy101]

Glad your safely out of any crossfire.
What does a SWAT team do in a suicide situation? Holler through the bull horn " don't kill yourself or we'll shoot you"?

I don't care who you are, _that's_ funny! :chuckle:

[tbzep]

semi-auto hardware....assault weapons.
Those two terms are mutually exclusive. Unless you are Diane Feinstein or the "never mind the facts, make the story exciting" media.


.

[tmacklin]

Those two terms are mutually exclusive. Unless you are Diane Feinstein or the "never mind the facts, make the story exciting" media.


.


I know. I just threw in the term so Peter might understand what I was referring to. ;)

[tbzep]

I know. I just threw in the term so Peter might understand what I was referring to. ;) :chuckle: :chuckle: :chuckle:




.

[luke strawwalker]

Well, I sent the pics to the Houston news stations (NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox) and sent a tip at about 7 am when it was just starting-- did get two confirmation emails from the CBS and Fox affiliates that they were checking on it and the "information officer" of the county agency (sheriff's dept I'd suppose) said they were dealing with "a suicidal individual in a standoff situation". No massive amounts of gunfire, no tanks spraying napalm, and the feds and DPS didn't take over my house for a couple months and demolish it and knock holes in the wall and write profanities everywhere like they did in the barn and house across the road in Waco, so I guess it all ended peacefully... They didn't bother to cover a darn thing... not a peep on the news... They MIGHT have at 12:30 or 1 pm, but there was a BAD wreck in Houston with a big dump truck caroming off a car at a toll plaza, slamming into another car and flipping it up on its side and pinning it to the K-rail when the whole thing caught fire and burned-- Precinct deputy and his wife were involved, 2 killed, not sure who, when I tuned out... they were wall to wall covering that by 12:50 or so, so I tuned out... it was all over out here by then anyway...

BTW... went by the Davidian "compound" out on EE Ranch Road off FM 2491 just east of Bellmeade (NE Waco) last year... there's a monument there now and a new church, looks like a new compound of some sort-- guess some of them are rebuilding-- looks like a mini-commune or something...

Went out there years ago when there was rubble still on site-- burned out buses and stuff they'd pulled from underground, and stuff like that... the house across the road the gov't guys confiscated as a "command post" and tossed the owners and their kids out on their ears for the duration of the standoff was still there... I read the stories about how the Feds and "law enforcement officers" had just totally demolished the place-- if they wanted to run a phone wire or cables for power or TV or whatever, they just knocked a hole in the wall, wrote profanities all over the house, everything. There used to be a barn on 2491 back toward Waco a couple miles or so that the gov't took over from some local farmer who'd just built it, and the Feds and LE set up shop in there as a secondary command post and logistics center... out of range of the compound... the house was the forward command post. They demolished it SO badly, and the gov't stiffed both him and the family who's house they took away from them, that he didn't bother rebuilding it... BUT he painted the ENTIRE STORY of how sorry the Feds and LE were and just what he thought of them on the tin walls of the wreck they left of his barn... I guess he either finally tore it down or the gov't made him tear it down, or his kids tore it down or something after he passed... I dunno...

If you ask my opinion, we've been a police state since November 22, 1963... that's when the change of power took place, and they've been consolidating their position ever since... 9/11 and the Gulf Wars and all that has just been used to that end... everything we've seen since has been to that end... That's why I could care less about the USA... it's been dead and gone a long time-- it's only now that the stink is truly beginning to rise and the buzzards are gathering... This country certainly doesn't stand for any of the ideals and beliefs I stand for anymore... pays them lip service, but everything they DO is against what is good and right and proper... and God will judge this country for it, make no mistake... just a matter of time.

Later! OL JR :)

[Closet Astronaut]

Remember Jericho!