That was never about justice; it was a crime against humanity

Big news out of Texas yesterday; all outstanding charges in the four year old Waco biker ambush outrage have been dismissed.

Suffice it to say the charges being dismissed should never, in a free country governed by the rule of law, have been laid in the first place. By dumb luck I happened on the live broadcast that Sunday in May, 2015, where Waco police spokesman Sgt. Swanton was hyperventilating about the evil of "outlaw bikers." My first reaction was, this guy is full of shit.

I've never owned a Harley and my only knowledge of "outlaw bikers" is that it wasn't unusual to find yourself working next to one in one of the two dozen or so welding shops I did time in over the years. I never knew any of those supposed biker drug kingpins you read about in the papers. "Satan's Choice" was the crew we had in the K-W area back in the day. They eventually amalgamated with the Hells Angels. The guys I knew were just regular folks working in the welding shop to pay their bills, same as me. If they were big-time criminals, they hid the fact very well.

The best source by far on the Waco tragedy is The Aging Rebel. I've never read anything there that would lead me to believe those guys caught up in this Waco business were any different than the guys I used to work alongside. Regular working folks trying to make their financial obligations. You know, pay their bills and feed their kids, that kind of nefarious stuff.

Even if it's true that it wasn't police bullets that killed every one of the Waco casualties, there is no question that the entire incident was orchestrated by law enforcement agencies. A local cabal of smug law enforcement careerists took it from there. Many otherwise law-abiding people who were guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time had their lives destroyed.

And now they get a "oops, sorry, guess we'll drop the charges..."


That's not nearly good enough.

Meanwhile back in Waco...

Yesterday marked day 1,000 since the infamous "Waco biker massacre." That was the brawl-come-gunfight carefully orchestrated by half a dozen law enforcement agencies in May of 2015.

Bikers are a handy foil for ambitious law enforcement types. I mean, they have "gangs" and tattoos and they ride loud motorcycles and they look scary, at least some of them. And they don't have a well-funded lobby group like Black Lives Matter looking out for their interests.

In other words, they're an easy target. The cops originally corralled 171 people; anyone in the vicinity of the Waco Twin Peaks restaurant who looked like a biker, including unfortunate folks who didn't have tattoos, motorcycles, or gang affiliations, and held them all on a million dollar bond.

Each.

In the immediate aftermath the media treated us to all sorts of fanciful speculation about the biker underworld declaring war on the Waco Police Department.

Yup, Bandidos looting National Guard warehouses for rocket launchers was just one of the hysterical fake-news stories making the rounds.

And then, the story disappeared. The million dollar bonds were reduced and reduced again. The attention span of Jane and Joe Public being what it is, we lost interest. I personally haven't gone out of my way for a Waco update for at least a year.

There's only one place to go for a Waco update; The Aging Rebel. I know nothing about the guy who runs that website, but I find it rings authentic. Here's where things stand almost three years after the event;

One thousand days after Reyna and other local authorities deliberately sought out to obstruct justice in Waco, there remain 45 unresolved civil cases with at least 148 individual complainants in various state and federal courts throughout Texas. There remain 27 unresolved asset forfeiture cases. There remain 171 unresolved criminal cases. Only in Waco in McLennan County in Texas could that be seen as something like justice.

Holy Moly! That's a long time to have these serious criminal charges hanging over their heads for those 171 defendants. Wonder how many jobs have been lost, marriages and families destroyed?

The ongoing cases will keep dozens of lawyers in new Cadillac Escalades for at least the next twenty years.


Only in America!

Wheels of justice turn extra slow in Waco

What do these folks have in common? They're all collateral damage in the long-forgotten "Waco biker massacre"  of 2015.

 

I must admit that I too forgot about the story. Then, while killing time indoors on account of the monsoon rains battering The Bruce today, I decided to check in with The Aging Rebel website.  That's run by a guy who's an advocate for bikers' rights, and he's been on top of this story from the get go.

So what's new in Waco?

Nothing!

The same clique of lying douchebags who were sandbagging the constitutional rights of the folks whose faces you see here are still hard at it two years later! Yes, the jiggery-pokery continues unabated. Why this story is so under the radar of big media is a bit of a mystery.

But maybe not. Don't forget these are all "bikers," and big media and their sources in law enforcement have been brainwashing the public for a quarter century that bikers=criminals.

The bikers will need some powerful allies if this case is ever going to get the attention of Wapo and the NYT.

I think I've got a plan...

Check out the dude in the bottom row, fifth from the left. Is there something about him that makes him not like the other ones? I dare say we could be looking at an African-American!

Let's get Black Lives Matter on the case! Waco would be on the front page of every major newspaper in the land in no time flat!

One year after the fact CNN suggests there might be something a little fishy in the official story of the Waco biker ambush

I'm proud of the fact that the think tank here at Falling Downs had it pegged by the very next day.

One thing we got wrong; turns out there's plenty of video showing what actually happened, and most of it thoroughly discredits what Sgt. Swanton was telling the world that Sunday afternoon last May. The vast majority of those 150 plus bikers currently under indictment were running for their lives when the gunfire erupted.

They are guilty of absolutely nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet, they've had the boot of the state on their necks for a year now. It's destroyed careers, destroyed families, and shows no sign of letting up.

This is a story that every American who cares about their civil liberties, who cares about freedom, and who cares about police power running amok should be on top of.

Government agencies collude to stall justice in Twin Peaks biker ambush

The Waco Tribune informed us today that one of the interminable side-shows that has prevented timely justice in this shit-show is finally over. Yup, the 151 firearms found at the scene have now been positively ID'd.

What does that mean, you ask?

Senior Special Agent Nicole Strong, an ATF spokeswoman, said Thursday that the ATF was asked to perform firearms traces but is leaving any investigative decisions up to the Waco Police Department and the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office.

“We have completed the firearms traces,” Strong said. “It is essentially tracking the life of the firearms, from the point it was manufactured, to who the first purchaser was — which is normally a licensed firearms dealer — to who the next purchaser was all the way down to the final purchase. How many times did it get bought and sold? We are complete with our end of it and, obviously, the investigation is a question for Waco PD. They just asked us to trace the guns.”

Strong said the guns were shipped to a lab in California for the ATF’s role in the investigation.

“The main goal was to see who the legal purchaser was,” she said. “We wanted to know if a gun went from a manufacturer to John Smith and that is the last known purchase, and then that gun ends up in the hands of one of the people in the Twin Peaks shooting who was in prohibited possession. We want to know how it went from a legal possession to an illegal possessor.”

So they want to know how a gun went from "a legal possession to an illegal possessor?" What does that have to do with solving the crimes, if any, committed by the owners of these firearms?

And why are we to believe that any of these guns were in the hands of illegal possessors? There is nothing in Texas law that makes it illegal for a member of a motorcycle club to own a gun.

And note also that after a great deal of unwarranted publicity about the weaponry seized at the crime scene, which we were at one point led to believe numbered in the thousands, the actual number of guns turned over to the ATF was 151. That includes a great many seized from vehicles after the fact which were never a factor in the actual shoot-out.

That might sound like a lot of guns, but a random search of vehicles in any Walmart parking lot in Texas would pass 151 in short order.

The think tank here at Falling Downs caught the unmistakable whiff of bullshit from the moment that first breaking news bulletin from Waco spilled onto the TV screen last May 17.

Ten months later, it's become an unbearable stench.

The war on bikers

Those who follow these matters will be well aware that "bikers" have morphed into yet another target in the "war" that the forces of righteousness have been waging, first on drugs, and then on terror. By now it is plainly evident that these various wars have all melded into one.

That's why nobody in the mainstream media so much as raised an eyebrow last May, when in the days after the Waco Biker Ambush, we were inundated with reports of Bandito associates looting military warehouses for... oh, what was it?... machine guns?... rocket launchers?... tanks?... attack helicopters?

These stories were 100% fabricated bullshit, but they got a lot of attention.

More recently, the war on bikers has been going off the rails somewhat. The Waco cluster-fuck sprouts ten more loose ends every time the local Keystone Cops try to cover up the last loose end. Waco is a story that has been all but ignored by your mainstream media.

Of 177 persons arrested, 9 killed, and 18 wounded, it now looks like a small handful of those 177 may be charged with somethng/anything, most of the 9 killed and 18 wounded were killed and wounded by law enforcement, and the City of Waco will be bankrupt long before all the unlawful arrest, conspiracy, and murder charges against the WPD have been settled. Best coverage by far of the theatre of the absurd that Waco has become can be found at The Aging Rebel.

Meanwhile, you're far more likely to read shit like this. The Daily Beast is widely considered "alt media." It ain't. They reprocess mainstream bullshit but the grammar, syntax, and vocab aspire to a hipster factor that the NYT does not aspire to. But it's the same bullshit.

As the various wars on pretend enemies drag on, you can see cracks in the foundation. Just recently, over in Quebec, the courts threw out the last cases stemming from a major anti-Hells Angels operation back in 2009. The province spent tens of millions of tax-payer dollars building a case against the club, which culminated in 156 arrests. A few low-level guys copped to some low-level charges early on, and everything else has been tossed.

When the truth finally comes out about Waco, these big undercover operations against motorcycle clubs will hopefully be discredited once and for all.

I want to leave off on a sad but hopeful note. The local 1%er guys around here have been the Saddle Tramps since forever, and the local biker boss has been Dudley McMillan just as long.

The Saddle Tramps were all about the usual biker club stuff. Mostly it's a bunch of working dudes who love to ride and fiddle with their machines and maybe tie one on now and then. Ya, once in awhile you'll read something disturbing in the news, but you read disturbing shit about lawyers and cops and journalists too. You can't judge the barrel by the inevitable bad apple.

Dudley passed to his reward this week. Judging by the tributes on his condolences page, this "outlaw biker" was a much loved and highly respected member of his community.

RIP, Mr. McMillan.

If you're an American who cares about your constitution and your freedom, you need to dial into the Aging Rebel

This blog is the go-to source for info on that mysterious "biker shoot-out" in Waco a few months ago.

Ya, you remember what happened. Sgt Swanton went out of his way to explain it to you...

Out of town bikers converged on Waco to do battle.

Because that's what bikers do.

They have gun battles in sleepy small towns... what, you never watched Sons of Anarchy?

But that's what they do.

The "Aging Rebel" seems to have some legit cred among folks involved in biker culture.

And there's never any reluctance to call "bullshit" when bullshit needs to be called.

Well worth a look.

Waco's gross miscarriage of justice continues

WacoTrib.com reports that the eagerly anticipated autopsies of the nine victims in last May's Twin Peaks biker ambush have been released.


But there's a catch. These autopsies have been eagerly anticipated soley because they were expected to inform the public as to how many of the bikers were actually gunned down by law enforcement. That's because Waco PD spokesman Patrick Swanton's various public ruminations defied all credibility. It was immediately obvious that somebody had something to hide.


Well, guess what?.. they're still hiding it! We all knew those nine men died of bullet wounds; we want to know who fired the bullets! So the autopsies come out and we're told they died of bullet wounds.


This is becoming more than a mere miscarriage of justice...


It's an abortion of justice!

Waco legal bigwigs getting desperate to keep Twin Peaks biker massacre under the rug

I see where the McLennan County DA has filed to reverse the ruling that lifted the gag order that was imposed on the Twin Peaks case.


Obviously, you only fight to keep a gag order in place if you've got something to hide, and apparently the Waco PD and the local legal establishment are pissing their pants in fear that the facts around the Twin Peaks biker ambush are gonna come out.


You've probably been too busy reading about a black kid being shot in Ferguson to notice that a few months ago 27 white and hispanic men were shot down in Waco Texas. Word on the street is that virtually all of them were shot down by law enforcement.


But we don't know anything for sure, because law enforcement is doing absolutely anything and everything they can to prevent the facts in this case from making it to the public.


Why?


I think it would be a great step forward if the blacks realized that honkies and spics get shot down in cold blood too.


This case might help to get some inter-racial solidarity going!


White and Hispanic lives matter too!

No point letting nine dead bikers go to waste

I see where Waco Police Department spokesman Patrick "Pinocchio" Swanton has declared his intention to run for county sheriff.


Swanton obviously remains pleased with himself over his moment in the media spotlight after the Twin Peaks debacle last May.

Speaking of which, there doesn't seem to be much progress on that case. It's been what, ten weeks? You'd think those autopsies must be nearly complete by now, wouldn't you?

Sandra Bland autopsy results released in 10 days, families of Waco Nine still waiting for autopsy results after two months

Conveniently, the results of Bland's autopsy confirm the official police story that she suicided in jail. That she should never in a million years have been in jail after her arrest by a totally unprofessional bullying cop remains a fact regardless of the autopsy result.

It should be obvious by now that there's a reason the Waco autopsy results are being suppressed; they won't support the official police story. And yes, they are being suppressed - it simply doesn't take over two months to do nine autopsies.

Justice in America

I grew up believing America was a great country. I grew up listening to the little GE radio beside my bed, which got a total of three stations; one in my home town of Guelph, and two in Chicago. In the late sixties I fell asleep most nights listening to WLS or WCFL.


While still in my teens I hitch-hiked across the western states, a greasy hairball with no legitimate business being there. All my interactions with law enforcement were cordial. Highway Patrol troopers would wave as they passed me, thumb out on a "no-hitch-hiking" interstate.


Where has it all gone so wrong?


It beggars belief that a young black woman can be tossed in jail for not signaling a lane change. Fortunately, the human rights industry has got its teeth into the Sandra Bland case, and one senses that they're not going to let this go.


Nor should they.


But here's what baffles me; not two hours away from where Ms. Bland was accosted, nine men were shot down almost exactly two months before. There has been a complete fog over the story. We have no idea how many of those nine dead died at the hands of police. The human rights professionals and the media who are correctly championing Ms. Bland are completely AWOL on the Waco massacre.


Why?

NPR discovers Texas Biker Ambush

Almost two months after the fact, the news hounds at National Public Radio have sniffed out some incongruities in the Waco Biker Massacre.

What? There was tons of just "regular folks" at that biker show-down?

What? There was Christian biker gangs at that biker shoot out?

What in hell does a "Christian biker gang" even look like?

Well, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and postulate that they probably look like "bikers" who have either "Jesus" or "Christ" or both emblazoned on their biker kit. I don't know enough about the minutia of biker regalia to determine what the difference is between a patch and a cut, but it seems to me that Christian bikers are respected among the biker community.

Respect is of course the common currency in biker culture and among bikers.

I remember a guy who was in my rehab program at the Homewood, one of the premier rehab/ detox destinations in North America to this day, the first time I was going through that shit. He showed me his photo album. He was a full-patch dude in the Satan's Choice, who back in the day were the "outlaw motorcycle gang" to "fear" the most in Southern Ontario.

Every Satan's Choice eventually became a Hells Angel back in the great Ontario patch-over, but that's another story.

A bit of his photo album was biker stuff, the rest was him at Christian revival meetings and doing family stuff with his wife and kids.

There was absolutely nothing scary about the guy once you got to know him. At the same time, things probably wouldn't go well for you if you crossed him.

Respect.

I've never (yet) owned a Harley but I've had respect for biker culture ever since I got to know that guy.

So NPR discovers there may be a element of bullshit in the official Waco story. That doesn't stop them from giving Pinocchio Swanton a free pass on spreading more bullshit.

But it's better than nothing.

If nine black motorcyclists had been murdered in Waco, America would be in flames

But it was a few white guys and a couple of hispanics.

Therefore the media, who NEVER take a police report at face value when a black person is the victim of police violence, have completely ignored the Waco biker massacre.

Don't white and hispanic lives matter too?

Waco judge orders release of Twin Peaks video tapes

Waco Tribune reporter Tommy Witherspoon is live-tweeting from the courtroom that Judge Matt Johnson has ordered the release of the security videos from the Twin Peaks massacre to an attorney representing one of the 177 bikers corralled on May 17.

Those would be the same tapes that Sgt. Patrick Swanton initially assured the public would entirely verify the official police version of what really happened on May 17. Somewhere along the line the Waco PD had a change of heart, and the City has been fighting desperately to prevent their release.

Something about tainting the jury pool...

Ya, I guess it might taint the jury pool if Sgt. Swanton were to be exposed as a serial liar.

Why are nine dead in Charleston infinitely more newsworthy than nine dead in Waco?

On May 17 local police and several federal law enforcement agencies were involved in the shooting of 27 civilians in Waco Texas, nine of whom died of their injuries. The Waco Police Department immediately came up with a far-fetched yarn about a pre-meditated biker battle, into which law enforcement was only drawn when they themselves became targets. The story hit the headlines but had virtually disappeared within 36 hours.

One month later a mentally unstable sociopath murdered nine people in a Charleston church. That story too hit the headlines, but unlike the Waco murders, this story has staying power. A week after the fact, the Charleston nine remain at the top of the news cycle, while the Waco nine are long forgotten.

Why?

Why has one story been suppressed while the other gets non-stop headline treatment across all mainstream media platforms?

After all, Waco is the more important story.

Charleston is about race, hatred, mental illness, and above all, the frightening access that mentally ill people in America have to firearms. Since that latter point is not a discussion America is willing to have, the conversation instead turns to symbols.

Maybe it's time to ban the Confederate flag...

Waco, on the other hand, is about the deliberate perversion of due process. It's about half a dozen government agencies conspiring to deny justice to those caught up in the case. It's about shielding the culpable individuals and organizations from being brought to justice. More than that, it's about the national media colluding in that conspiracy.

Nothing to see here, folks...

More hilarious anti-biker BS!

Authorities in California are ratcheting up the anti-biker PR to credibility-defying heights with this effort.

Police in Paso Robles cordoned off the streets around the police station last night in anticipation of a possible attack by the Vagos MC.

Because that's what "motorcycle gangs" do; attack police stations!

Multiple officers from departments all throughout the county are currently surrounding the police station as a precautionary measure...

Ya right! There follows a list of five local police departments plus the California Highway Patrol, all of whom will no doubt be billing the tax-payers for over-time pay.

And if you think the story's not retarded enough, wait till you get to the part about the "bullet bouncers!"

Who makes this shit up!?

I can see why Chief Robert Burton isn't making himself available for comment...

I'd be embarrassed too!

Waco update: first they shot the bikers, now they steal their stuff

Here's how things work in America today. To say things are "unresolved" with respect to the Waco biker massacre would be an understatement of epic proportions.

What we know for sure is that most of those hardened desperadoes are walking out of jail after their lawyers negotiate 98% write-downs of their bail-bonds. That obviously wouldn't be happening if the State had the slightest hope of a case against them.

But that's not going to stop the forces of law and order from stealing the property of the folks they set up there in the Twin Peaks parking lot a month ago. Nope, a smattering of Harleys, a few pick-up trucks, and a Toyota Venza are soon coming to a police auction near you.

Apparently some of these vehicles had a handgun in the glove-box.

A handgun in the glove-box of a pick-up truck in Texas? Who can even imagine such a thing?

Or in the saddle bag of a Harley...

And apparently having a Bandido T-shirt is cause for having your truck or motorcycle stolen by the police.

Funny how the Waco PD has plenty of time to get the forfeiture paperwork ducks in a row but no time to clarify to the public why virtually everything in Sgt. Patrick "Pinocchio" Swanton's original press briefing has changed numerous times since.

Over 130 of those "criminal bikers" corralled in Waco Biker Massacre out on bail

And most of them out with drastic reductions in their bail bonds. Like from a million down to $25k in most cases. That's 98% off! Wish I could get that at TSC!

Obviously the state knows they don't have a case.

In the meantime, the public is still waiting for the CCTV video we were promised by Sgt Patrick "Pinocchio" Swanton way back when.

What really happened?

Wacked in Waco; when Police lie it proves their integrity

We're closing in on one month since that infamous "brawl that became a shoot-out" between biker gangs in Waco. Still no autopsy results. Still no video footage. Still so many unanswered questions.

Like, just for instance, how many of the nine dead and eighteen wounded were shot down by the police.

In fact, the story has pretty much disappeared. Certainly nobody anywhere near the mainstream media is questioning the official story, as promulgated in its manifold iterations by Sgt. Patrick "Pinocchio" Swanton from day one.

I was watching those live pressers from Waco on that fateful Sunday, and it was the sheer implausibility of Swanton's version of events that first drew me to this story. The fact that the story kept changing just made me more suspicious.

The Waco Tribune editorialized about the biker massacre the other day. To their credit, they allow that the bikers have some valid points. At the same time, they had this rather novel explanation as to why Sgt. Swanton keeps shifting the narrative;

The fact that Swanton continually revised information — and in a crisis situation — speaks of his integrity.

There you have it. He's not lying; he's "revising information."

And that proves he's a man of integrity.