It might even be better to meet at the station house before any shift as the police cars don't stick out like sore thumbs as they would at a coffee shop. At least until this mess is nailed down.
I certainly hope the FBI is working this by now.
The coffee shop is near McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma, about 35 miles south of Seattle.
Unless there is a sincerely strong reason to 'link' the Air Force Base with the shootings, I would not think there was anything related. I realize military bases might be the source of ideas of violence following the Fort Hood episode, but, at this point I think that is more sensationism than reality. Let's catch these people before the people of the area have their lives turned into nightmares. We don't need a return of Al Capone.
It looks to me the people assassinating police officers at vulnerable moments are freelancers and not organized crime necessarily. They might be getting weapons from someone connected with the Air Force Base, but, I doubt all the weapons come from any place, except, the neighborhood. I would be really surprised if the Base had any connections to this.
Chris Monfort
...Thanks to the hard work of reporters at the Seattle Times and P-I, we now know a lot more about Christopher Monfort, the 41-year-old Tukwila man suspected of killing Officer Timothy Brenton on Halloween night....
...Sunday's shooting comes a month after Seattle police officer Timothy Brenton (click title to entry - thank you) was shot and killed Halloween night as he was sitting in a cruiser with trainee Britt Sweeney. Sweeney was grazed in the neck....
...Christopher Monfort, 41, of suburban Tukwila, was charged in the shooting. Days after the shooting, Seattle detectives attempted to question Monfort at his residence. Police say that Monfort then ran from the detectives and tried to use a gun. The detective shot him.
Authorities also linked Monfort to the October firebombing of four police vehicles, with prosecutors saying Monfort waged a "one-man war" against law enforcement....
4 police officers killed in Wash. coffee shop (click here)
Sheriff's official says at least one gunman walked in and opened fire
..."This was a targeted, selected ambush," Troyer said, adding that customers and baristas were in the Forza Coffee shop at the time but no one else was shot at or injured....
This is what bothers me about the predisposition of news media services and politicians that want to turn a 'jerk' that was a psychiatrist into a martyr of jihad. It is stupid. The man at Fort Hood was a lone gunman that was misguided by his own perverted ideas of his own priorities for his life. It is outrageous to believe this is a mass movement within military bases to annihilate the police of a region of the country.
The fact of the matter is simple. None of these police officers would have died if they didn't have their guard down. Police aren't necessarily 'ready to jump to arms' at any second. They expect citizens to act in a non-violent manner unless the circumstances dictate otherwise. This is more or less a predatory person that seeks out police officers to satisfy his idea of justice or self-righteousness.
Imam's e-mails to Fort Hood suspect Hasan tame compared to online rhetoric (click here)
12:00 AM CST on Sunday, November 29, 2009
By BROOKS EGERTON / The Dallas Morning News begerton@dallasnews.com
E-mails between a U.S. Army officer and a radical Muslim cleric did not worry anti-terrorism investigators, they said, because nothing in the correspondence presaged violence. But elsewhere on the Internet, the imam was urging people to kill soldiers and others.
After accused Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan started e-mailing in December, the cleric increased the pace of his fundamentalist rhetoric on the Web, a Dallas Morning News investigation found.
"I pray that Allah destroys America and all its allies," Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric with suspected ties to al-Qaeda, wrote in a February blog entry.
The cleric and the Army major are believed to have met at least eight years ago, when al-Awlaki preached at a northern Virginia mosque attended by Hasan's family. Both were born in the United States to prosperous Middle Eastern parents nearly 40 years ago; both earned advanced degrees at American universities....
...Instead, investigators determined there was no need to probe further because Hasan's questions to al-Awlaki were consistent with his psychiatric research, there was no indication he was planning violence, and he was not "directed to do anything," officials said.
But the Muslim cleric didn't need to give specific direction by e-mail. His exhortations about killing – soldiers, innocent women and children, blasphemers, even oneself – were readily available until his online site went dead a few days after the Fort Hood shootings. The News found al-Awlaki's speeches and blogs by combing through Web archives and reviewing online recordings and transcripts....
I don't believe he was influenced by this cleric either. He could answer that better than anyone and being that he is alive and in confinement, he should be interrogated so long as his lawyer is present. But, the evidence is overwhelming.
The man should just plead guilty rather than put a nation through a trial. I realize his attorney is doing the very best he can given overwhelming evidence to his guilt, but, the military should maintain Nidal Hasan in confinement until they are allowed to understand his state of mind at the time of the killings.
I sincerely believe a lot of the anger has to do with his own priorities and not that of this cleric. I believe he didn't know how to confront violence and fell into familiar patterns of violent Muslims.
I like the idea that this cleric doesn't have access to the 'violence markets' of the USA though.
Good job.
Do more.
Definately. I can't believe Homeland Security hasn't shut this mess down before now. I mean for real. What was the idea? Get the 'Home Boys' of the USA angry as hell so they would pick up a gun and go to a battlefield? That's pretty stupid priorities if that what the thinking was. Shut 'em down. Every government, especially those directly dealing with this mess, should shut them down. Throw 'em in prison for advocating the death of other people.
You know there is such a thing as a 'death threat' that is considered a crime in the USA. Seriously. The websites that advocate 'death threats' to citizens, even unidentified citizens, should be shut down and their contributors charged. Make 'em face a judge. They'll figure it out after that.
There can be a lot more at work here than meets the eye.
La Familia’ drug cartel members indicted (click here)
By Mike Robinson
November 20, 2009
CHICAGO -
Fifteen people with ties to the Mexican drug cartel La Familia Michoacana have been indicted on charges of taking part in a major Chicago-area cocaine conspiracy, prosecutors announced Friday. The people charged in indictments returned Thursday were arrested in August as part of the government’s Operation Coronado, an effort launched in 2007 to break La Familia’s grip on the U.S. cocaine market. The cartel is named for the State of Michoacan in southwestern Mexico and is accused by federal prosecutors of being responsible for hauling vast quantities of cocaine into the United States from south of the border. Drug Enforcement Agency officials have arrested more than 300 people in 19 states as part of the operation, prosecutors said....
Hearing scheduled for meth cartel’s ‘puppet master’ (click here)
By Staff, City News Service
Thursday, November 5, 2009
A preliminary hearing was scheduled Thursday for one of 13 people arrested in San Diego during a nationwide sweep targeting a fast-moving Mexican drug cartel known for its violence and control over the methamphetamine trade.
Angel Quintero Castillo was arrested last month as part of Project Coronado, an ongoing federal government campaign against La Familia. One local prosecutor described Castillo as a “facilitator.”
“Angel was a puppet master who arranged the deals through telephone conversations,” Deputy District Attorney Carlos Campbell alleged....
The most recent 'Cosa Nostra' of Mexico. I wouldn't completely dismiss the possibility of the 're-establishment' of still more drug crime networks. The northwest USA has a lot of ports, and the La Familia Port City of Wilmington, North Carolina has recently been shut down. I think anything is possible here and police 'on the street' should conduct themselves accordingly. Body armor, etc., if they don't already. I don't care who they are. I don't care if they are Park Police.
In some ways this mimics what Mexico is going through. Brazen drug gangs out to kill police and military to have control over their networks. They are no different than any other organized crime network in that they adhere to 'religious dogma' and the 'reign of poverty' to justify their actions. They believe they have better law than the law that exists and are threats to a nation's sovereignty.
The rise of Mexico's La Familia, a narco-evangelist cartel (click here)
By Sara Miller Llana Staff writer
from the November 22, 2009 edition
Mexico and the US are working together bring down Mexico's newest, most violent drug cartel. Last month, 303 alleged La Familia members were arrested in 38 US cities. Fifteen members were indicted Friday in Chicago.
Apatzingan, Mexico - They hand out Bibles to the poor in the rural foothills of the state of Michoacán. They forbid drug use, build schools and drainage systems, and declare themselves the protectors of women and children.
But this is no church group. This is La Familia Michoacána, Mexico's newest drug-trafficking gang, which now reigns over Mexico's methamphetamine trade. What began as a self-declared vigilante group doing "the work of God," now is seen as the nation's most violent criminal group.
Its influence stretches well beyond this patch of Mexico called "La Tierra Caliente" or "Hot Land." Last month, in the largest coordinated action against a Mexican trafficking organization north of the border, the United States arrested 303 alleged La Familia affiliates in 38 US cities. It was the culmination of "Project Coronado," which has nabbed more than 1,100 suspects in 44 months....
..."La Familia doesn't kill for money. It kills only those who deserve to die."...
Who decides among them 'what act' is deserving of death? That is what that statement means. Someone is deciding 'those who deserve to die.' Really? Just on a whim? Or. Are there actual 'Credos' that dictate such judgements? Just curious.
They didn't leave a stone unturned. They do have their own 'credos in print.'
"The Craziest One."
Nazario Moreno González (click here for Wiki), the group's preacher.
Mexico offers $2 million for top drug lords (click here)
Most-wanted list a challenge to cartels' violent grip along the border
updated 6:48 p.m. ET, Mon., March. 23, 2009
MEXICO CITY - Mexico's government on Monday offered $2 million each for information leading to the arrest of 24 top drug lords in a public challenge to the cartels' violent grip on the country.
The list indicated that drug gangs have splintered into six main cartels under pressure from the U.S. and Mexican governments. The two most powerful gangs — the Pacific and Gulf cartels — each suffered fractures that have given rise to new cartels, according to the list published by the Attorney General's Office....
...La Familia’s boss and spiritual leader Nazario Moreno González, (click here) (a.k.a.: El Más Loco or The Craziest One) has published his own 'bible', a copy of this 'bible' seized by Mexican federal agents reveals an ideology that mixes evangelical-style self help with insurgent peasant slogans. Moreno González seems to base most of his doctrine on the work by a Christian writer John Eldredge. The Mexican justice department stated in a report that Gonzalez Moreno has made Eldredge’s book Salvaje de Corazón (Wild at Heart) required reading for La Familia gang members and has paid rural teachers and National Development Education (CONAFE) to circulate Eldredge's writings throughout the Michoacán countryside. An idea central to Eldredge’s message is that every man must have "a battle to fight, a beauty to rescue and an adventure to live." Eldredge quotes from Isaiah 63, which describes God wearing blood-stained clothes, spattered as though he had been treading a wine press. Then he writes: "Talk about Braveheart. This is one fierce, wild, and passionate guy. I have never heard Mister Rogers talk like that. Come to think of it, I never heard anyone in church talk like that, either. But this is the God of heaven and Earth."...
...The La Familia members use murder and torture to quash rivals, while building a social base in the Mexican state of Michoacán. It is the fastest-growing cartel in the country’s drug war and is a religious cult-like group that celebrates family values. In one incident in Uruapan in 2006, the cartel members tossed five decapitated heads onto the dance floor of the Sol y Sombra night club along with a message that read: "The Family doesn’t kill for money. It doesn’t kill women. It doesn’t kill innocent people, only those who deserve to die. Know that this is divine justice."...
These boys have got 'God Complexes' big time. I guess they believe 'God is on their side.' Huh?
