8 ms·

The Texas Biker Gang Shoot-Out

81 points by nkurz 11y ago

jbob2000 11y ago
Police say it's the bikers, bikers say it's the police. I don't trust either of them.
- freditup 11y ago
  Who can tell? Although I bet both groups have some amount of culpability in this one. We'll probably never know for sure what really happened, except possibly if there's video available.
  - caseysoftware 11y ago
    Supposedly there is video footage and there are ballistics reports. So far - as noted in the article - the Waco police have suppressed it. Since we're over 4 months later, I'm not sure how they're still being held without trial. Criminal thugs or not, they MUST have their day in court and the opportunity to defend themselves. Or the system is all a sham after all..
- sandworm101 11y ago
  There are two clear groups (Police and Bikers) but also many subgroups. The bikers subdivide into three: Two gangs and a group consisting of several non-affiliated people. The Police seem to have a clear narrative. The other three groups present conflicting narratives. One might think that the clear narrative makes the most sense. To me it does not. Given what happened (a chaotic firefight at a bar) I would expect a great many conflicting stories to emerge. That's what happens in chaotic situations. So the conflicting accounts from the various biker/bystander groups is in a way a confirmation of the events. It is the police's polished and consistent narrative that seems out of place.
junto 11y ago
Drugs, prostitution, money laundering, violence and protection rackets. I really don't think that we should have a problem with the removal of such people from our society.
- kasey_junk 11y ago
  And what about folks having a hamburger at a restaurant that apparently didn't do anything?
  - kazinator 11y ago
    They can ... stay in society? Apparent trick questions make me nervous.
    - kasey_junk 11y ago
      All 177 people who were at that restaurant were charged with the same thing, even though there is no evidence that they were involved. Like literally the people hiding in the bathroom were charged the same as the people shooting out front. I'm wondering what those folks did to deserve removal from society without question.
      - T-Roy 11y ago
        charged != convicted
        kasey_junk 11y ago
        Nope but in this case it does mean "spent lots (~a month) of time in jail and lost your job".
        kazinator 11y ago
        The justice system can also pull innocent away people from their jobs and families by calling them out to jury duty.
nickbauman 11y ago
Gangs form around an economy. In the case of OMGs, the economy is drug and human trafficking, extortion, contract slaying and various other illicit businesses. Many OMGs are made up of a large percentage of ex military, with the USMC highly represented. Ditto for police forces, maybe not as much USMC. Considering how many soldiers we have, it's no surprise that OMGs are on the rise. You can thank the GWoT for that. They fight over economic power, often expressed as turf wars. So those are the dots. It's not hard to connect them. The bottom line is three gangs met that day. Two of them without an official mandate.
- glibgil 11y ago
  That's the bottom line for anyone who didn't read the article. The article builds a timeline of events that is outside the official story. I appreciate that you recognize the police are a gang, but the article is trying to cover some specific things, not generalities.
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  Read the article and you'll see it's more about the legal aspects of a situation where 177 people were indiscriminately sent to jail on rubber stamped charges. Imagine being in an IRC channel with a 200 people and 10 of them got into a fight, presumably hacked each other, and than everyone in the channel is arrested on felony charges, and sent to jail with $100,000 bonds. Allegedly there may have been provocation and excessive weapons use by the police posing as members of rival groups.
  - nickbauman 11y ago
    No I saw that. But this is Texas we're talking about. Texas is one of the most corrupt states when it comes to criminal justice. There have been articles written about how people end up stuck in the system for years based on only one charge of vagrancy. Lubbock is one of the worst places to get arrested in the US, for example.
joeax 11y ago
“The city of Waco is looking at paying out hundreds of millions of dollars,” says Michael White, Wilson's attorney. This is the real problem. The police operate on a blank check principle and are held to zero accountability. The taxpayers are the real victims here.
- SilasX 11y ago
  Especially when Waco only has ~150k people to begin with: https://www.google.com/search?q=waco+population&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=waco+population&ie=utf-8&oe=...
- function_seven 11y ago
  > The police operate on a blank check principle and are held to zero accountability. The taxpayers are the real victims here. It's the taxpayers that are giving them that blank check in the first place. They're not victims, they're complicit.
  - RickHull 11y ago
    Which taxpayers voted for the blank check?
anentropic 11y ago
what a bunch of stupid children
kelvin0 11y ago
Almost as bad as some Agile meetings I've attended :)
freditup 11y ago
How in the world is the head of the Grand Jury a Waco police officer who was at least a little involved with the incident? Shouldn't he have been recused from that process?
sandworm101 11y ago
>>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. Hate lawyers and law schools if you want, but they have their time and place. The problem here seams not that officers broke the law, but that they seem not to have any understanding of the law in the first place. Instead of planning and deliberation, they were all showboating against each other. The whole incident reads like a script for Lethal Weapon IV.
meatysnapper 11y ago
I'd be very interested in the bullets recovered from the scene, but it sounds like that's not happening. The whole talk of long guns and a police trap sounds sadly totally expected with American police.
douche 11y ago
Are biker gangs on the rise following Sons of Anarchy, which depicted outlaw biker gangs in a semi-glorious(?) light, or are they just getting more media attention? The Hell's Angels and such have been around forever, but I never much heard about them until a couple of years ago.
- mikestew 11y ago
  I think you answered your own question. The Hells Angels have been around for-...well, since just after WWII. Hunter S. Thompson wrote a book about them. Made somewhat famous when they provided security for a Rolling Stones concert in Altamont, CA and a concert-goer ended up getting stabbed. Much like Sons of Anarchy, the bikes are just a prop; they're really just organized crime. But they've been around, occasionally making news. I probably run in different circles than you do, but Hells Angels have always been popping up in the news from time to time over the years. Are people watching _Sons of Anarchy_ and saying, "I want to join an outlaw biker gang?", and hence "on the rise" as you put it? I dunno, when _Goodfellas_ or _The Sopranos_ came out, did the mafia start to be "on the rise"? No. Such things might get more attention by the media when the topic comes out in popular media, which might sell more ads, so more stories are produced.
WorkingDead 11y ago
There was also a shooting at a Twin Peaks in Webster a few months later. Maybe 'Bike Night' doesn't promote a family friendly crowd. If breasteraunts want to gather these gangs up and feed them alcohol, they should be held partially responsible.
ambiate 11y ago
I have lived in Waco for 5+ years. Never experienced a 'biker gang' or heard of biker related violence here. I had my run with the law that disenchanted me. I saw a city worker stealing mail. I was laughed at by the police officer and almost charged for wrongfully calling 911. City worker tried slamming their car door in my face while I was talking to the officer, and the officer laughed again. I just walked away at that point. The head of the grand jury is obvious bias. The imprisonments for 'being present' are insane. A blanket bail that is an unreasonable amount is odd. The false propaganda that biker gangs from all over the USA were flooding towards Waco with terrorist weapons was just a blatant lie. Tip or not, why was full swat basically waiting in the parking lot before the event? Any other day, they wouldn't care if a few <insert anything not living in Hewitt> picked each other off in the parking lot. If they had a feeling something was going down, why not be proactive instead of reactive? House taxes rise, school budgets cut, service cuts, and dodgy press release guy gets a promotion. yay. At least Baylor made a new shiny stadium to distract the general population. Edit: Oh yeah, the current 'Waco Warrant Roundup' posted names of everyone with known warrants in the county. They're pulling over everyone and running warrant searches. Seems unlawful. I got pulled over and warrant checked because of 'loose articles in truckbed'. It was a bloody tie down strap that was hooked to the truck.
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  Police almost seem like sales people on commission.. Except their sales quotas put people in prison.
metatr0n 11y ago
"In November 2013, two Cossacks were stabbed in a roadhouse parking lot in Abilene;" Roadhouse? As in Logan's Roadhouse? As in the Chili's of the great plains? That stabbing happened in a Logan's Roadhouse parking lot, not the Road House where James Dalton bounced. This is a fascinating story, but it loses some credibility (to me) with a purposeful omission like that.

81 points by nkurz 11y ago

jbob2000 11y ago

Police say it's the bikers, bikers say it's the police. I don't trust either of them.

freditup 11y ago
Who can tell? Although I bet both groups have some amount of culpability in this one. We'll probably never know for sure what really happened, except possibly if there's video available.
- caseysoftware 11y ago
  Supposedly there is video footage and there are ballistics reports. So far - as noted in the article - the Waco police have suppressed it. Since we're over 4 months later, I'm not sure how they're still being held without trial. Criminal thugs or not, they MUST have their day in court and the opportunity to defend themselves. Or the system is all a sham after all..
sandworm101 11y ago
There are two clear groups (Police and Bikers) but also many subgroups. The bikers subdivide into three: Two gangs and a group consisting of several non-affiliated people. The Police seem to have a clear narrative. The other three groups present conflicting narratives. One might think that the clear narrative makes the most sense. To me it does not. Given what happened (a chaotic firefight at a bar) I would expect a great many conflicting stories to emerge. That's what happens in chaotic situations. So the conflicting accounts from the various biker/bystander groups is in a way a confirmation of the events. It is the police's polished and consistent narrative that seems out of place.

junto 11y ago

Drugs, prostitution, money laundering, violence and protection rackets. I really don't think that we should have a problem with the removal of such people from our society.

kasey_junk 11y ago
And what about folks having a hamburger at a restaurant that apparently didn't do anything?
- kazinator 11y ago
  They can ... stay in society? Apparent trick questions make me nervous.
  - kasey_junk 11y ago
    All 177 people who were at that restaurant were charged with the same thing, even though there is no evidence that they were involved. Like literally the people hiding in the bathroom were charged the same as the people shooting out front. I'm wondering what those folks did to deserve removal from society without question.
    - T-Roy 11y ago
      charged != convicted
      - kasey_junk 11y ago
        Nope but in this case it does mean "spent lots (~a month) of time in jail and lost your job".
        kazinator 11y ago
        The justice system can also pull innocent away people from their jobs and families by calling them out to jury duty.

nickbauman 11y ago

Gangs form around an economy. In the case of OMGs, the economy is drug and human trafficking, extortion, contract slaying and various other illicit businesses. Many OMGs are made up of a large percentage of ex military, with the USMC highly represented. Ditto for police forces, maybe not as much USMC. Considering how many soldiers we have, it's no surprise that OMGs are on the rise. You can thank the GWoT for that. They fight over economic power, often expressed as turf wars. So those are the dots. It's not hard to connect them. The bottom line is three gangs met that day. Two of them without an official mandate.

glibgil 11y ago
That's the bottom line for anyone who didn't read the article. The article builds a timeline of events that is outside the official story. I appreciate that you recognize the police are a gang, but the article is trying to cover some specific things, not generalities.
nosuchthing 11y ago
Read the article and you'll see it's more about the legal aspects of a situation where 177 people were indiscriminately sent to jail on rubber stamped charges. Imagine being in an IRC channel with a 200 people and 10 of them got into a fight, presumably hacked each other, and than everyone in the channel is arrested on felony charges, and sent to jail with $100,000 bonds. Allegedly there may have been provocation and excessive weapons use by the police posing as members of rival groups.
- nickbauman 11y ago
  No I saw that. But this is Texas we're talking about. Texas is one of the most corrupt states when it comes to criminal justice. There have been articles written about how people end up stuck in the system for years based on only one charge of vagrancy. Lubbock is one of the worst places to get arrested in the US, for example.

joeax 11y ago

“The city of Waco is looking at paying out hundreds of millions of dollars,” says Michael White, Wilson's attorney. This is the real problem. The police operate on a blank check principle and are held to zero accountability. The taxpayers are the real victims here.

SilasX 11y ago
Especially when Waco only has ~150k people to begin with: https://www.google.com/search?q=waco+population&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=waco+population&ie=utf-8&oe=...
function_seven 11y ago
> The police operate on a blank check principle and are held to zero accountability. The taxpayers are the real victims here. It's the taxpayers that are giving them that blank check in the first place. They're not victims, they're complicit.
- RickHull 11y ago
  Which taxpayers voted for the blank check?

anentropic 11y ago

what a bunch of stupid children

kelvin0 11y ago

Almost as bad as some Agile meetings I've attended :)

freditup 11y ago

How in the world is the head of the Grand Jury a Waco police officer who was at least a little involved with the incident? Shouldn't he have been recused from that process?

sandworm101 11y ago

>>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. Hate lawyers and law schools if you want, but they have their time and place. The problem here seams not that officers broke the law, but that they seem not to have any understanding of the law in the first place. Instead of planning and deliberation, they were all showboating against each other. The whole incident reads like a script for Lethal Weapon IV.

meatysnapper 11y ago

I'd be very interested in the bullets recovered from the scene, but it sounds like that's not happening. The whole talk of long guns and a police trap sounds sadly totally expected with American police.

douche 11y ago

Are biker gangs on the rise following Sons of Anarchy, which depicted outlaw biker gangs in a semi-glorious(?) light, or are they just getting more media attention? The Hell's Angels and such have been around forever, but I never much heard about them until a couple of years ago.

mikestew 11y ago
I think you answered your own question. The Hells Angels have been around for-...well, since just after WWII. Hunter S. Thompson wrote a book about them. Made somewhat famous when they provided security for a Rolling Stones concert in Altamont, CA and a concert-goer ended up getting stabbed. Much like Sons of Anarchy, the bikes are just a prop; they're really just organized crime. But they've been around, occasionally making news. I probably run in different circles than you do, but Hells Angels have always been popping up in the news from time to time over the years. Are people watching _Sons of Anarchy_ and saying, "I want to join an outlaw biker gang?", and hence "on the rise" as you put it? I dunno, when _Goodfellas_ or _The Sopranos_ came out, did the mafia start to be "on the rise"? No. Such things might get more attention by the media when the topic comes out in popular media, which might sell more ads, so more stories are produced.

WorkingDead 11y ago

There was also a shooting at a Twin Peaks in Webster a few months later. Maybe 'Bike Night' doesn't promote a family friendly crowd. If breasteraunts want to gather these gangs up and feed them alcohol, they should be held partially responsible.

ambiate 11y ago

I have lived in Waco for 5+ years. Never experienced a 'biker gang' or heard of biker related violence here. I had my run with the law that disenchanted me. I saw a city worker stealing mail. I was laughed at by the police officer and almost charged for wrongfully calling 911. City worker tried slamming their car door in my face while I was talking to the officer, and the officer laughed again. I just walked away at that point. The head of the grand jury is obvious bias. The imprisonments for 'being present' are insane. A blanket bail that is an unreasonable amount is odd. The false propaganda that biker gangs from all over the USA were flooding towards Waco with terrorist weapons was just a blatant lie. Tip or not, why was full swat basically waiting in the parking lot before the event? Any other day, they wouldn't care if a few <insert anything not living in Hewitt> picked each other off in the parking lot. If they had a feeling something was going down, why not be proactive instead of reactive? House taxes rise, school budgets cut, service cuts, and dodgy press release guy gets a promotion. yay. At least Baylor made a new shiny stadium to distract the general population. Edit: Oh yeah, the current 'Waco Warrant Roundup' posted names of everyone with known warrants in the county. They're pulling over everyone and running warrant searches. Seems unlawful. I got pulled over and warrant checked because of 'loose articles in truckbed'. It was a bloody tie down strap that was hooked to the truck.

nosuchthing 11y ago
Police almost seem like sales people on commission.. Except their sales quotas put people in prison.

metatr0n 11y ago

"In November 2013, two Cossacks were stabbed in a roadhouse parking lot in Abilene;" Roadhouse? As in Logan's Roadhouse? As in the Chili's of the great plains? That stabbing happened in a Logan's Roadhouse parking lot, not the Road House where James Dalton bounced. This is a fascinating story, but it loses some credibility (to me) with a purposeful omission like that.