On Sat, 15 Nov 2003, Dan Minette wrote:
> I remember Ruby Ridge and the controversy surrounding it. There was a
> lot of debate concerning exactly what happened. The range of
> interpretations that I saw was anything from a mistake under fire to
> actions that should have ended up with the trial and conviction of the
> agent involved.
>
> However, during the time, I've also seen multiple times that cops busted
> down doors looking for drugs, killing unarmed people. It certainly
> didn't get the news coverage that Ruby Ridge did. I know in Houston, at
> least, the cops never being convicted. I remember statistics being
> gathered at the time, but not the details of the statistics,
There were two incidents sometime in the past 5 years in Travis County
that got me upset. One was that a drug raid was done on someone's
residence at 2AM. Someone was asleep on the couch, startled awake, and he
sat up. He was shot and killed. The officer that shot him was not
indicted. The second one was that a drug raid was done on someone's
residence at 2AM, and the resident shot an officer. He was tried and
convicted. I hold the person who made the decision to do the raids at 2AM
that way responsible for both those deaths. And you'd think that after
one such death, they might rethink their tactics before they lost an
officer by that method.
The local media covered it. IIRC, the editor of the local paper took a
dim view of the 2AM-raid tactic.
> Indeed, as I mentioned before, I know a member of one of those militias
> who stated "its too bad about the babies, but the agents had it coming"
> after Oklahoma City. The hostility I felt, not just from this man,
> against going after terrorists like this amazed me at the time. I don't
> doubt that you can pull out some quotes from leftists who said the same
> thing, but this is the sorta thing I heard at work from just regular
> folks.
I'm glad I wasn't hearing that at the time -- I'd've been livid. I was
working for the IRS at that point. Until that happened, I never worried
about my being safe at work -- after all, I was a good distance away from
the mail room. I was sitting between two co-workers who got hysterical
before the end of the workday. (I'd used up most of my emotional energy
on personal problems, and I was angry not just that it had happened, but
that it had happened that particular week.)
Now, some of my co-workers had less than flattering things to say about
the administration under which they were working, so it's not as if
everyone working for the feds at that time was happy about everything the
administration had done. There were people I worked with who weren't
happy about what happened at the Branch Davidian compound. There was
active hostility from some people about that. But nobody I worked with
believed that killing anyone involved in anything like that was the
solution, except maybe in the case of Kenneth McDuff (who'd been sentenced
to die for a murder he'd committed, then had his sentence go to life when
the death penalty was declared unconstitutional, and who'd been let out on
parole and then killed again), and then only after due process.
Julia
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