SmarterthanYou
rebel
https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/something-like-waco-4/
About a year after the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, I was invited to take part in a discussion of the Waco incident on a program on the National Educational Television network. The program was a call-in show, and after my hosts and I had recounted the facts of the Waco raid and its aftermath, I was struck by the remarks that several callers from various parts of the country had to offer. Some of them claimed to know or to have heard about similar incidents in which local, state, or federal law enforcement agencies had staged armed raids on private homes or businesses, without adequate proof of wrongdoing by those against whom the raids had been mounted, and with results that often left innocent citizens injured or their property and rights violated. Although neither I nor my hosts on the TV show had heard of these incidents and to this day I have no way of verifying what the callers were reporting, it began to occur to me then that Waco was perhaps far from being an isolated case. Not too long after the show, however, news of just such mini-Wacos began to creep into the light of day.
The television show on which I appeared was filmed in April 1994. Four months earlier, on January 10, 1994, officials of ten different organizations concerned with civil liberties or Second Amendment rights (including the liberal-to-left American Civil Liberties Union and the conservative Citizens Committee to Keep and Bear Arms) had sent an eight-page letter to President Clinton. The letter detailed several cases of what it called "widespread abuses of civil liberties and human rights" and a pattern of "serious abuse" of the law or proper police procedures by federal law enforcement agencies—the ATF itself, but also the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the FBI. The cases included the Waco assault as well as the attack on Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in August 1992, but the letter also discussed several other incidents that were generally unknown to the public and to this day have not received the public attention they deserve.
The letter noted that "federal police officers now comprise close to 10 percent of the nation's law enforcement force" and that "some fifty-three separate federal agencies have the authority to carry firearms and make arrests." Arguing that the cases reviewed involved abuses such as the "improper use of deadK' force; physical and verbal abuse; use of para-military and strike force units or tactics without justification; use of 'no-knock' entrances without justification; inadequate investigation of allegations of misconduct; use of unreliable informants without sufficient verification of their allegations; entrapment" and several other improper or illegal procedures, the letter called on the President to "appoint a national commission to review the policies and practices of all federal law enforcement agencies and to make recommendations regarding steps that must be taken to ensure that such agencies comply with the law."
More than a year after the letter was sent to the President, I was told by one of its signers that no response had ever been received, and obviously no such national commission has ever been appointed.
About a year after the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, I was invited to take part in a discussion of the Waco incident on a program on the National Educational Television network. The program was a call-in show, and after my hosts and I had recounted the facts of the Waco raid and its aftermath, I was struck by the remarks that several callers from various parts of the country had to offer. Some of them claimed to know or to have heard about similar incidents in which local, state, or federal law enforcement agencies had staged armed raids on private homes or businesses, without adequate proof of wrongdoing by those against whom the raids had been mounted, and with results that often left innocent citizens injured or their property and rights violated. Although neither I nor my hosts on the TV show had heard of these incidents and to this day I have no way of verifying what the callers were reporting, it began to occur to me then that Waco was perhaps far from being an isolated case. Not too long after the show, however, news of just such mini-Wacos began to creep into the light of day.
The television show on which I appeared was filmed in April 1994. Four months earlier, on January 10, 1994, officials of ten different organizations concerned with civil liberties or Second Amendment rights (including the liberal-to-left American Civil Liberties Union and the conservative Citizens Committee to Keep and Bear Arms) had sent an eight-page letter to President Clinton. The letter detailed several cases of what it called "widespread abuses of civil liberties and human rights" and a pattern of "serious abuse" of the law or proper police procedures by federal law enforcement agencies—the ATF itself, but also the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the FBI. The cases included the Waco assault as well as the attack on Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in August 1992, but the letter also discussed several other incidents that were generally unknown to the public and to this day have not received the public attention they deserve.
The letter noted that "federal police officers now comprise close to 10 percent of the nation's law enforcement force" and that "some fifty-three separate federal agencies have the authority to carry firearms and make arrests." Arguing that the cases reviewed involved abuses such as the "improper use of deadK' force; physical and verbal abuse; use of para-military and strike force units or tactics without justification; use of 'no-knock' entrances without justification; inadequate investigation of allegations of misconduct; use of unreliable informants without sufficient verification of their allegations; entrapment" and several other improper or illegal procedures, the letter called on the President to "appoint a national commission to review the policies and practices of all federal law enforcement agencies and to make recommendations regarding steps that must be taken to ensure that such agencies comply with the law."
More than a year after the letter was sent to the President, I was told by one of its signers that no response had ever been received, and obviously no such national commission has ever been appointed.