Posts Tagged ‘Waco’
Monday, April 3rd, 2017
The first trial resulting from the 2015 Waco biker shootout, previously scheduled to start May 22, has been delayed:
The trial for Christopher Jacob Carrizal, a member of the Bandidos motorcycle group, had been set for May 22. But state District Court Judge Ralph Strother on Friday postponed the trial after a new attorney brought onto the case indicated she couldn’t be ready in time, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported. A new trial date wasn’t set.
Snip.
The delay means the first trial related to the confrontation between the Bandidos and Cossacks motorcycle clubs and police outside of a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco is set to begin June 5 before a different judge. It involves 50-year-old Kyle Smith, a member of the Cossacks motorcycle club..
Also, the Feds have information on the Waco shootout…but have declined to share it with McLennan County prosecutors until after a federal trial of major Bandido leaders. That trial is set for August but could well be delayed.
If you’ve been following the story here, you probably know most of what’s in this Texas Monthly piece on the shootout:
Enter [McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna. A member of a well-regarded Waco family—his father was the McLennan County district attorney in the late eighties and later a judge on the Tenth Court of Appeals—the 44-year-old Republican was elected district attorney in 2010, beating a longtime Democratic incumbent. Burly and affable, he’s known for his ability to connect with jurors. One reporter who covers the courthouse told me that he recently watched Reyna spend less than twenty minutes at a trial studying a list of sixty or so potential jurors. Then, during the voir dire examination, he called every person on that list by name, chatting pleasantly with them about their lives without once looking at his notes.
At the same time, Reyna is also known to be unyielding at trial, demanding harsh sentences even for first-time offenders. And in the aftermath of the Twin Peaks shooting, he made it clear he had little sympathy for any of the bikers who happened to be at the restaurant. In fact, Reyna had an opportunity to do something no other district attorney in Texas had ever done: seriously cripple the Bandidos and Cossacks in one fell swoop.
Reyna turned to the state’s organized-criminal-activity statute, which had originally been passed by the Legislature to make it easier for police and prosecutors to go after what the statute described as a “criminal street gang,” like the Crips or the Bloods. (The statute defines a criminal street gang as “three or more persons having a common identifying sign or symbol or an identifiable leadership who continuously or regularly associate in the commission of criminal activities.”) Reyna claimed that both the Bandidos and Cossacks were criminal street gangs and that they had come to Twin Peaks to commit or to conspire to commit organized criminal activity, namely murder and assault. According to Reyna, even those Bandidos and Cossacks (and their respective supporters) who didn’t directly participate in the fight were in violation of the statute because they were there to support their gang. As Michael Jarrett, Reyna’s first assistant district attorney, explained in one court hearing: “The act of engaging in organized crime was committed when these people showed up in our fair county with the intent to show themselves as a show of force, both the Cossacks and their ilk and the Bandidos and their ilk.”
Reyna isn’t talking to the news media. But defense attorneys—nearly one hundred have been retained or appointed by the court—are in an uproar. They claim Reyna is going after their clients with no evidence whatsoever that they did anything wrong. “The district attorney seems to have an egomaniacal need to do something big so he can get his fifteen minutes of fame,” said Paul Looney, a well-regarded Houston attorney who represents one of the indicted bikers. “He wants to do something no one has ever done on a scale that has not been accomplished, and in the process, he’s tortured the law and he’s tortured the facts. The only thing he has accomplished is chaos.”
Reyna seems to have lost sight of the fact that America’s system of justice does not allow “collective guilt” for people that have committed no criminal acts who just happen to belong to an organization whose other members have committed such acts. Nine people died in Waco, and the people responsible for killing them (either through criminal activity or police overreaction) should be held accountable. Those nine deaths are the crimes that need to be investigated, and criminal conspiracy charges are only appropriate if one or both gangs openly plotted to kill members of the other gang before arriving at Twin Peaks. Showing up at the same place at the same time wearing the same clothes is not a criminal offense, it’s American citizens exercising their rights of free assembly and free association.
If Reyna can’t plausibly charge individual defendants with homicide, then the McLennan County District Attorney’s office has failed to do it’s job.
Tags:Abel Reyna, Bandidos Motorcycle Gang, Cossacks Motorcycle Gang, Crime, Texas, Waco
Posted in Crime, Texas | 2 Comments »
Monday, May 2nd, 2016
I expected to spend the weekend at the Levitation Music Festival here in Austin, but it got cancelled when it looked like t was going to be rained out. However, I did see a makeup show by Slowdive, which was the biggest reason I was attending anyway.
Scott Adams: “I give Clinton a 50% chance of making it to November with sufficiently good health to be considered a viable president.”
Hillary wants to make it illegal to criticize her.
Indiana governor Mike Pence endorses Ted Cruz.
Once again, Team Cruz wins the delegate selection fight, this time in Arizona, Missouri and Virginia.
Latest poll has Trump and Clinton tied.
Trump isn’t fighting the establishment, he’s part of it. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
It’s good for the sake of the world that Islamic State fighters are no-talent assclowns. Maybe they should have drilled them more on military tactics than reciting the Koran. See how many basic military squad function mistakes you can count them making in this video.
Obama releases Islamic terrorist who helped attack the USS Cole. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
How progressives embraced eugenics with the same fervor they embrace global warming today. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Waco biker fight update, including various (inconclusive) videos.
“More than two decades ago, we heard the ‘misplaced fears’ and predictions of shootouts in the streets of Texas because of the CHL law. It didn’t happen — and it won’t happen because of SB 11, either.”
Abortion clinics are closing in blue states as well.
Rabid Puppies dominate the Hugo nominations again. The science fiction establishment was given the opportunity to address Sad Puppies concerns, but instead they continued to doubled down by backing the Social Justice Warriors at every turn. This has turned Sad Puppy voters into Rabid Puppy voters. The 2015 Hugos: “There are problems, but Vox Day is an odious troll.” The 2016 Hugos: “You know what? Fuck them. They deserve Vox Day.”
Microsoft gonna Microsoft.
Dyson launches a new hairdryer. I really like their vacuum cleaner, which is wonderful for picking up golden retriever hair…
For a brief, shining moment, something interesting actually happened at a soccer game.
This time of year there’s just so much pollen in the air.
Tags:2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, abortion, Arizona, Bandidos Motorcycle Gang, CHL, Cossacks Motorcycle Gang, Crime, Deadpool, Democrats, Donald Trump, Elections, eugeneics, Hillary Clinton, Hugo Awards, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jihad, Microsoft, Mike Pence, Military, Missouri, Rabid Puppies, Republicans, Sad Puppies, Scott Adams, Social Justice Warriors, Ted Cruz, terrorism, Texas, USS Cole Bombing, Virginia, Vox Day, Waco
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Guns, Jihad, Military, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | No Comments »
Friday, March 25th, 2016
Another update on the aftermath of the Waco shootout:
A Texas grand jury indicted 48 more bikers Wednesday in connection with a May 2015 shootout outside a Twin Peaks restaurant that left nine dead, bringing the total number of people facing felony charges to 154.
Prosecutors in Waco announced that all the bikers indicted are charged with engaging in organized criminal activity, meaning they’re accused of being complicit in the shooting that also left 20 people injured. They face 15 years to life in prison if convicted.
McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna won indictments against 106 other bikers in November. In a statement Wednesday, he did not rule out more indictments in what he called “an ongoing investigation.”
Six of the 48 people newly indicted have not been arrested, and their indictments remain under seal. But Reyna and the McLennan County district clerk’s office confirmed they were facing the same charge as other bikers. A spokeswoman for Reyna did not respond to a question about whether the grand jury declined to indict in any cases presented.
Reyna has been harshly criticized by attorneys who say he’s prosecuting dozens of bikers who were at the restaurant only for a peaceful gathering of motorcycle clubs.
Snip.
Prosecutors have not indicted anyone specifically for murder in the nine deaths. The organized criminal activity charge incorporates allegations that every person indicted was responsible for the deaths and injuries that ensued in the gunfire.
Dallas attorney Don Tittle said Wednesday’s indictments appeared to center on bikers who weren’t members of the two major clubs present — the Bandidos and the Cossacks — but rather part of smaller “support clubs.” Dozens of Bandidos and Cossacks have already been indicted.
DA Reyna seems to be working on the novel (to America, anyway) theory of “collective guilt,” that if he can just get a grand jury to indict every member of every motorcycle club present at Twin Peaks that day merely for being in a motorcycle club, that will make up for his inability to charge any individual with murder.
That’s not going to fly. Quantity is absolutely no substitute for quality in the criminal justice system. Ten months after the Twin Peaks shootout, public officials seem no closer to determining who killed who that day, and what role law enforcement overreaction and incompetence played in those deaths.
Tags:Abel Reyna, Bandidos Motorcycle Gang, Cossacks Motorcycle Gang, Crime, Texas, Twin Peaks, Waco
Posted in Crime, Texas | No Comments »
Thursday, February 25th, 2016
Been too long since I did a Texas vs. California roundup, so here it is:
Dark Age California:
There are large areas of Central California that resemble life in rural Mexico. Within a radius of five miles I can go to stores and restaurants where English is rarely spoken and there is no racial or cultural diversity—a far cry from Jeb Bush’s notion of an “act of love” landscape.
With unemployment at 10% or more in the interior of the state, with the public schools near the bottom in the nation, and with generous entitlements, it is no accident that one in six in the nation who receive public assistance now live in California, where about a fifth of the population lives below the poverty line.
One in four Californians also were not born in the United States; more than one in four who enter the hospital for any cause are found upon admittance to suffer from Type II diabetes. The unspoken responsibility of California state government is to bring state-sponsored parity to new arrivals from Oaxaca, and to do so in ideological fashion that ensures open borders and more government. It is the work of a sort of secular church, and questioning its premises is career-ending blasphemy.
“California has come a long way to dig itself out of budget deficits, but the state remains on shaky ground due to nearly $400 billion in unfunded liabilities and debt from public pensions, retiree health care and bonds.” More: “It’s California’s debt and liabilities that are concerning financial analysts, particularly the state’s rapidly growing unfunded retiree health care costs, which grew more than 80 percent over the past decade. California has promised $74 billion more in health and dental benefits to current and retired state workers than the state has put aside.” (Hat tip: CalWatchdog.)
And new accounting rules make those unfunded liabilities harder to ignore.
The problem might not be quite as bad as it is did not CalPERS and CalSTARS insist on politically correct investments. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
San Francisco political officials indicted:
A retired city employee and a former city commissioner who are at the center of bribery allegations involving Mayor Ed Lee were charged with multiple felonies including bribery and money laundering, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon announced at a news conference Friday afternoon.
Also charged Friday was political consultant and former San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education President Keith Jackson, who pleaded guilty last year to racketeering charges.
The district attorney’s office charged recently retired Human Rights Commission employee Zula Jones, ex-HRC commissioner Nazly Mohajer and former political consultant Keith Jackson.
Remember that Zula Jones and Nazly Mohajer were fingered by Leeland Yee’s attorneys as being the go-betweens for bribing Lee. This brings up the question (yet again): Why hasn’t Lee himself been indicted?
And speaking of California government officials being indicted: “Retired Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca pleaded guilty Wednesday to lying to federal investigators, a stunning reversal for the longtime law enforcement leader who for years insisted he played no role in the misconduct that tarnished his agency.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Jerry Brown vetoes kangaroo court minimums for college sexual assault cases.
“Brown pushed for the giant pension fund CalPERS to lower its assumed investment return from 7.5% to 6.5%. Given that the world is headed towards deflation and that CalPERS earned only 2.4% for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2015, Brown’s request seemed entirely reasonable. Instead, the board approved a staff proposal to move to the 6.5% target over 10 years.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
CalPERS board President Rob Feckner, serving his twelfth term, casts deciding vote against proposal for term limits for board members. “Feckner was president of the California School Employees Association for four years and executive vice president of the California Labor Federation for five. Such a conflict of interest wouldn’t be tolerated with the president of other boards of directors. But with CalPERS, it’s par for the course.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
San Diego voters: We want pension reform! Union-stacked Public Employment Relations Board (PERB): Get stuffed, peasants! Result: Lawsuit. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
The middle class is fleeing California. “In 2006, 38 percent of middle-class households in California used more than 30 percent of their income to cover rent. Today, that figure is over 53 percent.”
California tech industries continue their exodus to Texas:
The tech industry in the Bay Area has become a victim of its own success – and state policies. Like many other California businesses, tech firms are relocating or expanding operations in others states – particularly Texas – at an alarming rate.
Some companies spend significant amounts of time and money finding and training the right workers, only to see them poached by a flashy startup within a number of months. The need for a more stable workforce was one of the main reasons cloud-computing company LiveOps Cloud moved from Silicon Valley to a suburb of Austin, Texas, CEO Vasili Triant told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Other reasons to move or expand out-of-state are government-created: high taxes, burdensome regulations, unaffordable housing due to excessive development fees and restrictive land-use policies. California’s highly-educated workforce is not so unique anymore, and its quality of life has been tarnished by regulatory and affordability issues. Texas, by contrast, has no personal income tax and no corporate income tax (though it does have a less-onerous gross margins tax), and is universally hailed for having one of the friendliest business climates in the nation.
Google, Facebook, Apple, Dropbox, Oracle and nearly two dozen other Bay Area tech companies have all built or expanded facilities in Texas just since 2014, the Chronicle reported. There have been more than 1,500 publicly reported California “disinvestment events” across all industries over the past seven years, according to a November report from Spectrum Location Solutions, an Irvine-based business relocation consulting firm, although it estimated the actual tally at as high as 9,000. A California business “can save 20 percent to 32 percent of labor costs by relocating a facility out of state,” Spectrum president Joe Vranich told us last year.
More on the theme:
Between 1997 and 2000, during the peak of the dot-com boom, the Bay Area was a net importer of Texans: About 1,500 more households moved into the region from Texas than vice versa, bringing an additional $191 million (2015 dollars) in taxable income into the region, according to IRS data, which tracks the movement of taxpaying residents.
The trend changed in the early 2000s, and Texas has been a net importer of Bay Area households ever since. Between 2009 and 2012, as the recession was winding down and the second tech boom was revving up, the region lost about 1,430 households to Texas, and nearly $390 million in taxable income.
Snip.
I had a guy working for me (in the Bay Area) making $200,000 a year, struggling to pay his bills,” company CEO Triant said. “In lots of places in the country you’re living high on the hog on $200,000. … As far as work life balance and employee morale, we have absolutely seen a remarkable increase since moving here; it’s night and day.”
The firm still keeps a small Bay Area office, and Triant speaks fondly of his hometown of San Diego and California in general.
But when it comes to building a company and running a business, he has found a new home in Texas. “I want my employees to be able to have a good quality of life, live in a city with low crime rates, good schools,” he said. “And that’s what we’re doing here.”
“It’s no coincidence that Texas and Florida have thrived while New York and California have not. High levels of taxes, spending, and regulations make it more difficult for entrepreneurs to be successful. When entrepreneurs cannot expand their businesses and hire new workers, everyone is hurt, not just the rich.”
In the course of verifying a Rep. Joe Straus campaign ad, Polifact confirms that Texas has grown twice as fast as the rest of the country.
The University of California, Berkeley, is running a $150 million deficit this year. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
UC Academic Senate rejects task force’s proposed retirement benefits plan that, keeping with Jerry Brown’s modest pension reforms, would pay them a measly $117,020 pension benefit. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
“What’s more important: High-speed rail or water? Proponents of a proposed ballot measure would force voters to choose just that. The measure would redirect $8 billion in unsold high-speed rail bonds and $2.7 billion from the 2014 water bond to fund new water storage projects.”
Speaking of water restrictions, looks like Californians will get to enjoy them for another year.
Sure, Covered California (California’s ObamaCare) may be incompetent. But it’s also corrupt. The state auditor “criticized the exchange for not sufficiently justifying its decision to award a number of large contracts without subjecting the contractors to competitive bidding.”
California is releasing many felons as part of a “mass forgiveness” program. Including a murderer who tied up a husband and wife and beat them to death with a pipe.
California adds Aloe Vera to list of cancer-causing substances. “The problem is that the 800+ chemicals listed in Proposition 65 are not devised to protect consumers, but rather serve as a cash cow for private trial lawyers to sue small business and reap the hefty settlement payout. Since 1986, nearly 20,000 lawsuits have been filed, adding up to over half a billion dollars in settlement payments by business owners.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
San Francisco’s planning process is designed for gridlock.
Bankrupt San Bernardino has reached a settlement with its firefighters union.
Heh. “The movement to emblazon state legislators with the logos of their donors has collected tens of thousands of signatures for its would-be ballot initiative.The measure, formally called the ‘Name All Sponsors California Accountability Reform (or NASCAR. Get it?) Initiative,’ would require all state legislators to wear the emblems or names of their 10 top donors every time they attend an official function.” The ballot initiative has already collected 40,000 signatures…
Huge soda pop collection is coming to the Dr Pepper museum in Waco.
Tags:Austin, Berkeley, California, CalPERs, CalSTARS, Crime, Democrats, Ed Lee, high speed rail, Keith Jackson, Lee Baca, LiveOps, Nazly Mohajer, pension crisis, Regulation, Rob Feckner, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Francisco, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, Vance Ginn, Waco, waste, water, Welfare State, Zula Jones
Posted in Austin, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, January 20th, 2016
The Dallas Observer has two interesting pieces up on the Waco biker shootout:
First, a profile of the Cossacks, which paints them as a tough but mostly mostly law-abiding group. Much of the piece covers Jake “Rattle Can” Rhyne, a Cossack who worked a day-job as an iron-worker and helped coach his children’s sports teams.
That was until May 17, 2015, when a gunfight took his life, along with those of eight other men. The details are sketchy, and Waco police haven’t done much to answer the lingering questions, but a melee involving an “outlaw” club, the notorious Bandidos, left Jake dying in the parking lot of the Waco Twin Peaks, bleeding from bullet wounds to his neck and torso.
Witnesses say he convulsed and bled for up to 45 minutes, receiving no medical help from police who swarmed all around him. Ambulances were parked nearby, but Rhyne spent his final moments with a young Cossack who desperately tried to staunch the bleeding with a bandanna. Jake Wilson, the “brother” who was with him, calls his death “a very big injustice.”
Second, an interview with Wilson, one of the surviving Cossacks, who claims Waco police made no attempt to tend to the wounded, or even allow them to be tended to.
John Wilson: … I ask him if several of us couldn’t pick up Jake along with some other ones that were wounded and carry them to the ambulances, and he basically told me that if I didn’t want to get shot, I wouldn’t.
[So the police] made no attempt during that time to give first aid or any kind of aid to Jake.
No. Absolutely not. Every one of those cop cars had some kind of first aid kit in ‘em. And not a single one at any time walked over, brought us a first aid kit, offered to tie a tourniquet on anybody, patch a hole, anything. Our guys were sitting there with nothing but bandannas in their hands trying to stuff bullet holes.
Could you tell from your vantage point looking at Jake [Rhyne] if there was a lot of blood loss?
Yes.
So it’s possible — I’m not a doctor, of course, and neither are you — that he bled out.
Well, I have to assume that those guys that were alive 30 minutes after the fact that died without medical care, you know, we can only make assumptions, but their odds of survival would have been better if they’d had medical care. Would they have died anyway? Maybe. As you say, I’m not a doctor. But they certainly deserved the opportunity to try to live. And to try to recover from it. And the opportunity was sitting right there in an ambulance 50 yards away that they weren’t allowed access to.
This accords with previous reports of police not offering medical aid to the wounded.
I’ve often defended police over unrealistic expectations that they always make the exact right call in split-second life-or-death situations. But there was nothing split-second in a Waco aftermath that saw people bleeding to death (some from police bullets) tens of minutes after the scene was secure. That smells less like incompetence and more like (at a minimum) manslaughter.
I’ll reiterate something I’ve said before: One need not take every statement of motorcycle gang members facing possible capital murder charges at face value to believe that something went badly wrong with the police response in the Waco shootout.
Tags:Bandidos Motorcycle Gang, Cossacks Motorcycle Gang, Crime, Jake Rhyne, John Wilson (Cossacks), Texas, Waco
Posted in Crime, Texas | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 6th, 2016
Three of the top Bandidos leaders have caught federal charges.
National leaders of the Bandidos biker gang were arrested Wednesday on charges of racketeering and waging a deadly “war” on the rival Cossacks gang, federal authorities said.
An indictment announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Antonio accuses three Bandidos leaders of sanctioning a three-year fight that included violent clashes with rival gangs and distribution of methamphetamine.
The accusations focus on a rivalry that came under renewed attention in May, when a meeting of biker groups at a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas, ended in gunfire that left nine people dead.
Authorities believe that the fatal confrontation began when members of the Cossacks crashed a meeting of a confederation of biker clubs that included the Bandidos at a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco. The dispute ended in gunfire between the bikers and police standing nearby.
The federal indictment accuses John Portillo, the Bandidos’ national vice president, of using dues and donations to pay legal expenses of its members days after the Waco shooting. Portillo, along with national president Jeffrey Pike and national sergeant-at-arms Justin Cole Forster, are charged with racketeering, drug distribution and other crimes.
None of those three shows up on the list of bikers arrested at the Waco shootout.
“Using dues and donations to pay legal expenses of its members days after the Waco shooting…” Is that illegal? I’m actually asking here. I’m not aware of that violating any specific law, but I could be wrong.
Federal charges are heavy, as Uncle Sam has essentially unlimited resources with which to investigate and make the case. As the Bandidos have been involved in drugs in the past, that may be the easiest charge to make stick. But it’s still mighty curious that no one has been charged with murder for a shootout that left nine dead….
Tags:Bandidos Motorcycle Gang, Cossacks Motorcycle Gang, Crime, Jeffrey Pike, John Portillo, Justin Cole Forster, Texas, Waco
Posted in Crime, Texas | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, November 11th, 2015
106 bikers involved in the Waco biker shootout have been indicted. (A complete list of those indicted can be found here.)
However, as far as I can tell, the indictment is only for engaging in an “organized criminal conspiracy.” No one has yet been charged with murder.
More indictments may be due the next time a grand jury meets, which will be later this month. Hopefully standard information (like ballistics reports) the Waco police have thus far withheld will finally be released.
Tags:Bandidos Motorcycle Gang, Cossacks Motorcycle Gang, Crime, Texas, Waco
Posted in Crime, Texas | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 7th, 2015
More than four months after nine people were killed in the biker shootout at a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, the details of who did what to who and why remain as murky as ever.
Of 170 (per the Dallas Morning News, 177 from other news sources) bikers arrested, all are now out of jail and none have been charged with murder.
As far as I can tell, ballistics reports for the shooting have never been released, and a gag order on all attorneys involved in the case remains in place, and restaurant surveillance video of the shootout has never been released to the public.
Something isn’t adding up here.
We know that at least some of the bikers involved were hit by police bullets. In a piece by Nathaniel Penn in GQ, he suggests that the vast majority of deaths from the shootout came from law enforcement.
Now, the first two or three pops—me and half my crew being ex-military, we know what small-arms fire from pistols sounds like. We also know what squad automatic weapons [typically used by the military and law enforcement] sound like. After the third pop, it was nothing but squad automatic weapons.
Snip.
Not a single law-enforcement person lifted a finger to help any of the wounded. And they made it pretty clear that they were going to be violent if we tried to take our guys to the ambulance. Three men were bleeding out before our eyes. If those men were still alive 30, 40 minutes after being shot, they could have been saved. A prospect named Trainer from out of Tarrant County chapter was shot. They zip-tied him and laid him on the ground next to a Bandido they had handcuffed. I noticed him jerk a few times, laying there. We were sitting there, 30 feet from him, and weren’t able to help him. About two hours later, somebody walked over, looked at him, and covered him with a yellow sheet.
Nor has the post-shootout response of the local criminal justice system been a model of impartiality:
Justice of the peace Walter “Pete” Peterson’s across-the-board imposition of $1 million bonds—“to send a message,” he said—was almost certainly illegal. Waco P.D. officer Manuel Chavez later admitted in court that Peterson signed all 177 of the so-called cookie-cutter probable-cause affidavits in bulk, without specifying the evidence against each individual defendant. Peterson, it turns out, is a former state trooper with no legal training.
Nevertheless, the Waco 177 still have their work cut out for them. The judge in the case, Matt Johnson, is the former law partner of district attorney Abel Reyna. Incredibly, the foreman of the first grand jury to be convened, James Head, is a Waco P.D. detective. “He was chosen totally at random, like the law says,” Reyna insisted to local reporters. If this seems brazen, consider that the commission to appoint jurors was originally going to be led by Reyna’s own father. Reyna only backed down under pressure, acquiescing to the process that led to Head’s selection. Asked why he’d permit an active police officer to lead a grand jury investigating possible police misconduct, state district judge Ralph Strother said, “I just thought, ‘Well, he’s qualified. He knows the criminal-justice system.’”
One need not take every statement of motorcycle gang members facing possible capital murder charges at face value to believe that something went badly wrong with the police response in the Waco shootout…
(Hat tip: Reason.)
Tags:Bandidos Motorcycle Gang, Cossacks Motorcycle Gang, Crime, Nathaniel Penn, Texas, Waco
Posted in Crime, Texas | 1 Comment »
Monday, June 8th, 2015
Three weeks after the May 17th biker shootout, it’s still not clear who instigated the fight.
Evidently at least 50 of those arrested have been released after their initial $1 million bail was reduced. Several hundred bikers also peacefully protested the mass arrests following the Twin Peaks shootout. Somehow bikers in Texas seem to have gotten the crazy notion in their head that “peaceful protest” doesn’t include looting local businesses…
Members of different gangs give conflicting accounts of the shootout. Two bikers just released claim to be members of the Los Pirados motorcycle club, and claim it was the Cossacks, not the Bandidos, starting trouble. The piece also mentions three other motorcycle gangs or clubs present besides the Bandidos and Cossacks, including two (Sons of the South and American Legion Riders) that I hadn’t seen mentioned in previous reports. Combined with those listed from previous reports, that puts members of Bandidos, Coassacks, Scimitars, Vaqueros, Los Pirados, Leathernecks, Boozefighters, Sons of the South, American Legion Riders and Veterans on the scene of the shootout.
Reason has been critical the police response to the shooting, especially since “more than 115 of the 170 people arrested in the aftermath of a motorcycle gang shootout outside a Central Texas restaurant have not been convicted of a crime in Texas.”
A longish profile of the Bandidos, which offers conflicting accounts of their current level of criminality.
On the one hand:
“They tell you up front: ‘We live by our own rules. We have our own morals, code of ethics, and this is our world,’ ” said Carlos Canino, head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Los Angeles. He described the Bandidos as “a lot rougher” than the Hells Angels, but “not as outwardly sophisticated.”
“They’ll fight at the drop of a hat,” he said of the Bandidos.
Police contend the Bandidos have stayed involved in drug trafficking, prostitution and other crimes.
On the other:
Houston lawyer Kent Schaffer, who has represented Bandidos for more than 30 years, said there are more police officers indicted on felonies every year in the Houston area than Bandidos.
He said current members are not like the men of the 1970s, “when they all had long hair, beards, missing teeth and tattoos – some of the older guys look that way, but most look like mainstream society.” They are engineers, oil field workers, computer programmers, he said, with college degrees, short hair and khaki pants.
“Most of these people have respectable jobs, pay their taxes and don’t have felony records,” Schaffer said.
“Most don’t have felony records” would seem to be damning with faint praise…
Other relevant links:
Dutch police indicted 14 members of the Bandidos, seizing a number of weapons in the process, including five rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Now, I’m not an expert on Dutch firearms law, but I’m going to guess those are not legal in civilian hands…
The Republic of Texas biker rally, far and away the largest in Texas, is in Austin June 11 through 14. I’m betting the police presence will be even heavier than usual…
Tags:American Legion Riders Motorcycle Gang, Bandidos Motorcycle Gang, Cossacks Motorcycle Gang, Crime, Pirados Motorcycle Gang, RPG, Sons of the South Motorcycle Gang, Texas, Waco
Posted in Crime, Texas | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 27th, 2015
We’re finally starting to get a fuller picture of how the Waco biker shootout between the Bandidos and the Cossacks actually went down. A Cossack who was there says that they were set up by Bandidos who invited them to Twin Peaks.
He said that the Cossacks were invited to the Twin Peaks patio that day — by a Bandido leader, who offered to make peace in a long-running feud between the two gangs. That invitation was a setup for an ambush, though, according to the Cossack. That’s why the dead included six Cossacks, one Scimitar (an ally of the Cossacks) and only two Bandidos.
Snip.
“It was a setup from start to finish,” he said.
The Cossack’s story has been impossible to verify, but it is largely consistent with what police have said about how the brawl began.
Related stories:
“While the black Baltimore rioters and looters were called thugs, no white Waco rioters and looters were thus characterized. I wonder, why might that be? Oh, yeah, that’s right: there are no white rioters and looters in Waco.”
Here’s some maybe-not-entirely-wrong pop-psychological analysis of the shootout as almost entirely a generational issue: the Bandidos are old and the Cossacks are young.
Cossacks cancel a rally in the town of Mingus over safety concerns.
Information on the Indian American LLC that owns the Waco Twin Peaks.
The owner of an adjacent restaurant is suing Twin Peaks for damages. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Tags:Baltimore, Bandidos Motorcycle Gang, Chalak Mitra Group, Cossacks Motorcycle Gang, Crime, Mingus, riot, Scimitars Motorcycle Gang, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waco
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