Friday, April 10, 2015

Final Shots From February

Looks like my aim is good even if fired too late:

"‘American Sniper’ jurors: Ex-Marine knew right from wrong" Associated Press  February 26, 2015

STEPHENVILLE, Texas — Jurors who rejected an insanity defense and convicted a former Marine in the deaths of famed ‘‘American Sniper’’ author Chris Kyle and his friend said Wednesday the man’s past behavior undermined his argument that he couldn’t tell right from wrong.

After a two-week trial in which jurors heard testimony about defendant Eddie Ray Routh’s erratic behavior, including statements about anarchy, the apocalypse, and pig-human hybrids, they convicted him Tuesday night in the deaths of Kyle and Chad Littlefield at a Texas shooting range two years ago.

Juror Christina Yeager told ABC’s ‘‘Good Morning America’’ that Routh displayed a similar pattern in prior run-ins with police — he would become intoxicated and then tell responding officers he was a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder. ‘‘Every time something bad happened he pulled that card,’’ Yeager said.

Barrett Hutchinson said jurors were not convinced by the claim that Routh was having a psychotic episode when he shot the men.

‘‘He knew the consequences of pulling the trigger,’’ Hutchinson said.

Routh showed no reaction as a judge sentenced him to life in prison without parole, an automatic sentence since prosecutors didn’t seek the death penalty in the capital murder case.

The verdict capped an emotional trial in which prosecutors painted the 27-year-old as a troubled drug user who knew right from wrong, despite any mental illnesses. Defense attorneys said he had schizophrenia and was suffering from a psychotic episode at the time of the shootings. Routh’s defense team said they would appeal.

While trial testimony and evidence often included Routh making odd statements and referring to insanity, he also confessed several times, apologized for the crimes, and tried to evade police after the crime.

Routh’s trial drew intense interest, in part because of the film based on the memoir of Kyle, a former Navy SEAL, about his four tours in Iraq.... 

You see how much it is garnering here.

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Forgive me for thinking that may be a fiction given all we have seen and read over the last few years. Seems to be the rule now. 

So where is Kyle's next mission?

"Agency issues recommendations after girl kills man with Uzi" by Felicia Fonseca, Associated Press  February 25, 2015

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — The state’s workplace safety agency has issued several recommendations that it says could help prevent accidental shootings such as the one at a northwestern Arizona shooting range last year involving a 9-year-old girl using an Uzi.

Charles J. Vacca died in August of a gunshot wound to the head after he stepped back to let the New Jersey girl hold the fully automatic machine gun by herself. The gun’s recoil wrenched its barrel upward and a bullet hit him in the head, killing him.

An investigation by the Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health of the outdoor shooting range in White Hills found no serious violations. But the agency recommended having a range-safety officer on site, limiting weapons for certain shooters, and ensuring that shooters are comfortable with weapons before they are placed on automatic.

A safety officer isn’t required, but the agency said that person could have pointed out that Vacca was out of position when instructing the girl and called to cease fire at the range. The state agency said Vacca should have been standing completely behind the girl, rather than to her side, and should not have had his hand below the magazine so that he could prevent the gun from rising when she fired.

Some of the recommendations already are in place at the shooting range about 60 miles south of Las Vegas. Children now must be at least 12 years old or 5 feet tall to handle semi-automatic rifles and machines guns, but the range coaches have discretion based on the shooter’s experience, the state agency’s report noted.

Sam Scarmardo, who operates the outdoor range in the desert, declined to comment Tuesday. He previously has said the girl’s parents had signed waivers saying they understood the rules and were standing nearby, video-recording their daughter, when the accident occurred.

Prosecutors declined to file charges, saying Vacca was the most culpable.

Regulations at shooting ranges around Arizona vary. Some do not rent automatic weapons and have no age limits, while others leave it up to range instructors.

State Representative Sonny Borrelli, a retired Marine who represents Lake Havasu City, said he doesn’t believe state regulations are needed.

‘‘That person that was there that was accidentally killed was a qualified individual,’’ Borrelli said. ‘‘I’d like to see the industry come together and come up with their set of standards, because they actually know the industry better than a lot of these legislators around here.’’

The stop at the shooting range was set up by a Las Vegas tour company. Another range coach who was working that day told the state agency that he voiced concerns to the tour driver that the mini Uzi was not appropriate for the 9-year-old, but was told it was not his call.

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"Autopsies differ on police shooting" by Nicholas K. Geranios, Associated Press  February 27, 2015

SPOKANE, Wash. — An independent autopsy of an unarmed Mexican man killed by police in Washington state showed he was shot up to seven times — including twice from behind — contradicting earlier statements from authorities, an attorney for the man’s family said Thursday.

So it's not just blacks getting gunned down.

The independent autopsy found that Antonio Zambrano-Montes, 35, had at least two entrance wounds on the back of his body, said lawyer Charles Herrmann, who is representing Zambrano-Montes’s estranged wife and two daughters.

His comments came a day after a spokesman for the special unit investigating the Feb. 10 shooting in Pasco said five or six bullets struck Zambrano-Montes but none from behind.

The immigrant’s death has prompted calls for a federal investigation, along with a series of demonstrations in Pasco, an agricultural center of 68,000 about 130 miles southwest of Spokane. 

I don't see how an investigation by federal thugs will help -- unless it is for promotional purposes.

Herrmann commissioned the second autopsy by a Seattle pathologist, Dr. Carl Wigren, who performed it Feb. 20. Herrmann released a portion of the report Thursday.

‘‘The report reflects a total of as many as seven rounds striking Zambrano,’’ Herrmann said. It also found entry wounds on the back of the victim’s right arm and one buttock, he said.

The independent autopsy found the Pasco orchard worker also was shot in the face, stomach, chest, arm, and scrotum, according to a diagram provided by Herrmann.

At a news conference Wednesday, Kennewick Police Sergeant Ken Lattin was clear that the official autopsy showed Zambrano-Montes was not hit anywhere on the back of his body. That would indicate Zambrano-Montes was not shot while running from the officers.

Franklin County’s coroner, Dr. Sig Menchel, performed the official autopsy days after the shooting.

Lattin is a spokesman for the regional law enforcement task force examining the shooting. On Thursday, he referred questions to county prosecutor Shawn Sant in Pasco. Sant did not immediately return a telephone message.

The final medical examiner’s report is not finished, but it could be done within a month, Lattin said Wednesday.

He said preliminary results of the official autopsy showed three officers fired a total of 17 shots. Police have not said how many shots each officer fired or whether bullets from all three officers struck Zambrano-Montes.

On the afternoon of Feb. 10, Zambrano-Montes was throwing rocks at passing vehicles and later at responding officers, authorities say.

Video taken by a witness shows the man running from officers. As the officers draw closer, he stops and faces them. Multiple gunshots are heard, and he falls, twisting, to the ground as the shooting continues.

Lattin said officers fired stun guns at least twice but failed to stop Zambrano-Montes before using their lethal weapons. The officers felt threatened, police said.

The stun guns don't work? After all the money and electricity put into them? Kind of hard to believe, as is everything I read in the propaganda pre$$ these days. None of it makes sense.

Zambrano-Montes’s death at a busy intersection has sparked two weeks of protests in the city, where more than half the residents are Hispanic but few are members of the police force or the power structure.

How many of us -- black, white, whatever -- are part of the power structure? 

This blatant attempt to divide along those lines by the monied media really calls into question the coverage, as does the amount of attention the agenda-pushers are spending on it in the face of so many one-day wonders.

Additional protests are planned for Saturday.

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At least the Globe weighs in on the matter:

"Shocking video of Pasco, Wash., police killing must prompt inquiry" February 25, 2015

A POLICE officer fatally guns down a man in cold blood. The shooting is captured on video, which promptly goes viral. The footage shows the man fleeing from several officers. As he turns to face them, he is shot and falls dead to the ground.

The description may sound similar to the shooting of an unarmed man in Ferguson last year, or to the killing of a 12-year-old in Cleveland last November. But this episode occurred earlier this month, in Pasco, Wash.; the victim was a 35-year-old undocumented Mexican immigrant named Antonio Zambrano-Montes. There is outrage in Pasco — about 700 people marched in one protest — but not a lot of hope that justice will be served. Although the killing has been viewed almost 2 million times on YouTube, the reaction has been relatively muted, in part because Pasco, a city of approximately 68,000 that’s about 60 percent Hispanic, also has a sizable undocumented population that has been afraid to protest loudly.

That's why businesses and the wealthy elite like them, too. No messy demands, complaints, or TAXES to heed.

Police said Zambrano-Montes, an orchard worker, was throwing rocks in a busy intersection and hit two police officers.

Not that he deserved to die, but what exactly was he doing throwing rocks into traffic

According to the police account, he refused to drop the rocks before he fled and was shot dead. Some 15 rounds were fired by police in a congested area. But it’s clear from the video that Zambrano-Montes posed no serious risk to the officers, and a more proportionate response was called for. The Pasco Police Department has a track record of excessive force, and the regional special investigations unit already has exonerated police in three recent Pasco police shootings. One of the officers involved in the death of Zambrano-Montes was accused of racially profiling a Hispanic woman in an arrest that led to second-degree burns on her hands, and ultimately a $100,000 jury verdict in her favor.

An expedited federal investigation of this shooting is in order. Local Hispanic leaders rightly believe that the findings of a regional investigation unit will lack credibility. The family of Zambrano-Montes has hired the national civil rights attorney who represented the families of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old in Cleveland. As the Justice Department prepares to sue the Ferguson Police Department over a pattern of racially discriminatory tactics, it should not passively wait for justice to be thwarted in Pasco. The deterioration of police relations in minority communities requires more policing of police, and killings like the one in Pasco demand stricter accountability on the federal level.

Look, no one more than me wanted to believe in the truthfulness of ma$$ media reporting regarding the removal of the cloak of AmeriKan tyranny; however, since when has the agenda-pushing paper been in the business of truth?

As for oversight by the feds, they are worse than the locals. In fact, all these staged and scripted false flags are enabling the feds to come in and look over your department, look over their department. There seems to be something far more sinister at work here.

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Also see: Obama plan seeks to ban bullets that can pierce armor

Globe put a silencer on that because I never saw it in print.