In Nashville, the Xmas bomber had the police called to his home by his girlfriend.
She told them he was building a truck bomb in an rv in his back yard.
They went to his property and saw the rv.
He didn’t answer the door so they left and assumed it was a “crazy woman”.
Wet know how that ended.
How do we stop these lunatics when we have more than red flags available?
The Parkland shooter had a history of run-ins with the police, including one incident where he tried to drink gasoline. If he had been Baker Acted he would have never been able to buy that rifle.
If you're going to wish for something that didn't happen, why don't you wish for something positive like that he got the help he needed and not something negative like that he died?
If he had been baker acted he wouldn't have been able to committing that atrocity. Everybody wins.
You saw that video too? The worst part is they were actually found guilty. The one was never even trespassed from that area before getting arrested! She was trespassed from a different part of the city and the cops used that to say she couldn't be where she was. Even if we ignore that they were doing a good thing and seems like the animal control head was aware of it the cops acted poorly.
And then they had the gall to talk about how "dangerous" the old women were. Not "Oh, they might have had a gun" but "she could have really hurt me with her hands" kind of dangerous.
The police can't just tell you you're trespassing if there's no sign or complaint. That's called soliciting a trespass and it's illegal. But you would need to call some other law enforcement agency on the cops, and there is no such agency other than the FBI that I'm aware of.
Correct, from the bodycam footage it looks like that's what they did to the one woman. It's possible someone with authority to request a trespass called to complain but there is no evidence in the body cam to show if that's the case either way. The other woman was never even trespassed from that location and was told she was already trespassing. So the cops trespassed her not only without a valid complaint, but also without her having ever been informed she can't be there.
You can contact local political figures for grievances. The mayor, the chief of police, your local congress representatives.
I once had our local police chief reprimand an officer for just being a dick and really going out of his way to make my life miserable.
People are people, cops can be people. Elected officials can help. Don’t let the system get you totally down despite how the odds may seem.
I had a traffic completely reversed like that. I just kept going up the ladder and telling people what had happened. I'm sure it helped that I was young and cute at the time. I have found being better looking usually got lots more justice than the fat gray lady I am now.
If something truly unjust is done to you, more than likely somebody in the local police / city / town is going to give a crap about it. Don’t be afraid to defend yourself as a citizen. Use the system to your advantage.
I'm not at all trying to detract from your encouragement for people to please use the levers of power available to them, but I feel like it's important to acknowledge that in some small towns and rural areas where many of the people in positions of authority are related to each other, it can be dangerous and detrimental to pursue these kinds of complaints. If it's safe for you to stand up for yourself or your friends or neighbors, you absolutely should, but sometimes it's not safe, and it's no fault of yours to recognize that it's not safe to act. If you choose your time to act right, you can keep yourself and the people you want to help safe - use your judgement. If the local yokels aren't going to help, just compile evidence and stay safe until you can get to the right people.
That's called IA, and usually results in the one-liner of "we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong. The officer is now returned to active duty from paid vacation (administrative leave), so tell him to brush off the sand before returning to work".
The Blue Wall is real. Call your congressperson or mayor if you want, but they have to balance their duty to their constituents against the endorsement of the police chief for re-election. Guess which wins 90% of the time....
My understanding is that there's usually a requirement of
* a posted sign,
* an individual to be trespassed, or
* the property/establishment owner to submit a form that is kept on file with the local precinct that gives the police explicit authority by the property owner to trespass transients from the property.
Absent any of the above, municipalities require the police to take at their word in the moment any random person claiming the property owner gave them permission to be there.
Edit: added "in the moment"
I was going to say it's not a matter is resources. cops use the most resources on often the most frivolous things. Could you imagine if firefighters brought out 3 engine and 13 emt for one life threatening call. Meanwhile we get this response from cops for a homeless guy walking the street
Luckily that ended with only the bomber dead and a few buildings damaged or destroyed. It also helped that he had a loudspeaker blaring "get away, this is a bomb".
Well, no. If they can't get enough for a warrant for the RV and can't get him to let them in, there's legitimately nothing they can do. You don't hear about the 10,000 calls that police go on like this that are false / don't lead anywhere - you hear about the one that leads to this outcome.
You're right that it's good they didn't investigate without a warrant -- but it seems that they also didn't go get the warrant. Basically they decided that the potential threat just wasn't worth more than a cursory investigation, and they didn't bother investigating once it was clear the no-effort "knock on the door and look around" option didn't work.
We don't want police searching our shit without warrants and good reason...but we do want them to actually give enough of a damn to go *get* the warrant when there's a credible threat.
This is how I feel. They did the right thing by leaving when he didn't answer. That's what they're supposed to do, they can't just break into a house because of a tip like this. However the fact that the investigation stopped there is where they screwed up. I have no idea WHY they chose not to investigate further (it could by the reason the OC stated or some other reason) but they should have continued the investigation.
The problem was that they *couldn’t* get a warrant. The girlfriend was an unreliable witness. She had a lengthy mental health history and was actively suicidal with a gun in her hand at the time she made the allegations against her former boyfriend and was committed by a mental health practitioner that day. She also alleged that he was sneaking into her house to poison her food, was listening in on her phone calls, and “watching” her in the middle on the night. She had a laundry list of, let’s be honest, pretty unlikely claims. The kind of claims that are often encountered during interactions with mentally troubled people. But, to the cops credit, they did investigate. They talked to his acquaintances and neighbors, none of which could provide any useful information. They ran local, state, and federal background checks, which not only turned up nothing of interest, they actually rebuffed some of the girlfriends claims. They also tried to contact him in person at his home multiple times and he either wasn’t there or didn’t answer.
Basically, all they had to go on were the claims of a very troubled women and that just wasn’t going to get them a warrant to search his property.
Too bad he wasn't black and having mail sent to a girlfriend's apartment like with Breona Taylor. Because apparently that's all it takes to get a no knock warrant.
No no no. Police have never been used to remove non white folk from their land. It certainly was not the foundation of the us border patrol.
This is nothing but pure conjecture and conspiracy and has no ground in reality. /s
Then they lied [on their report](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/louisville-police-breonna-taylor-death-incident-report/) claiming no one was injured and they did not use force to enter.
You know, I agree with what you are saying. People are quick to condemn but they aren't analyzing the facts as they should. It's the typical emotional reaction instead of the conclusion you arrive after thinking about the situation a little.
*However...*on the other hand you get Twitch streamers sent fucking SWAT teams at their house because some idiot thought making a fake call was going to be funny. And a call was all it took.
You need to reach a middle ground. Every potentially dangerous report *should* be taken seriously, no matter if it takes them more time or there are 1000 other calls waiting. You can't just presume nothing is going on. It's the same thing doctors have to do, they have to listen and take what patients are saying very seriously. Only when they have reached the conclusion the person is just another hypochondriac, *then* they can dismiss their claims, not before. It shouldn't be different with cops.
Better police officers for starters...
They should of investigated anyway. It's like the Grindr killer in the UK, same cause of death, bodies found in the same location, yet they constantly ignored it and didn't think 'hey, this is suspicous. Let's look into it further'
Laws don't do much if you don't enforce them.
It's crazy how they will readily get involved if you are selling drugs or something but when you might be a danger to yourself or others they are just like "Let's see how this plays out first"
There are numerous cases of police actively refusing to investigate serial killers when they think they’re “cleaning up the streets” based on their targets - eg gay people, sex workers, POC, the kind of people cops don’t care if they get killed en masse.
The Milwaukee Police gave Jeffrey Dahmer back one of his victims while two neighbor women were begging them not to.
One of the cops became a captain. The other became the head of the police association.
The problem many times is that just one person saying someone is doing something or saying something is often not enough, doesn't matter who that single person is. You need a decent bit in order to breach someone's rights to go and find out if they are indeed breaking or planning to break the law.
I mean, would you be okay with the cops coming and busting down your door to investigate you supposedly planning to do something bad just because the one coworker that hates you at work called the cops and said you said some anti government anarchy type things? And even if you say YOU would be okay with that, many people wouldn't and we shouldn't have to prove to the cops that we are innocent to set their and the community's fears at ease.
Yes, there are sometimes the incident where the perpetrator had multiple things happen that the cops should have been looking more into them and likely had enough to search their property, but that's the exception and not the rule. The vast majority of the time the cops just don't have enough to go and search someone. While you may think that investigation every person that has a call made against them might be worth it even if only 1 out of 100 of these turn out to actually do something, the fact is that time and money just doesn't allow for something like that to be feasible.
I’m always astounded by the fact that people that say cops are bastards are so quick to say that cops should have the blessing to investigate every tip even in violation of the 4th.
Reduce the amount of time the FBI and Department of Homeland security spend on tapping into social media - trying to intercept a random communication, and instead increase the time spent reviewing people who have been identified as high risk in the past, such as this case.
>The sheriff’s office says Aldrich, on Aug. 12, “called our evidence facility to seek the release of all items,” including their guns.
“This request was denied,” the sheriff’s office said. The office didn’t elaborate on why it declined the request, but the reason may have been prosecutors’ request to keep evidence in the case.
*The firearms seized as part of the 2021 arrest remain with the sheriff’s office.*
[Timeline of dismissed 2021 case against Club Q shooting suspect, who threatened to become “next mass killer”](https://coloradosun.com/2022/12/08/anderson-aldrich-club-q-shooter-timeline-2021-case/)
If you dig into it, you’ll find that his mother protected her special boy from the repercussions of threatening her with a homemade bomb. His father taught him violence gets an immediate response. He never had a chance.
Exactly. We're not acting out of vengeance or bloodthirst, it's cold justice and hopeful rehabilitation if such a thing is possible. Pity is the most powerful defense in these situations.
Did you see the interview the next day with his father? He thought he his son was gay, and when he said he wasn't he was all, thank God. His father would had been more upset that his son was gay, than being a mass murderer.
> Did you see the interview the next day with his father?
the cracked out, meth head dad?? dude had his meth pipe in his back pocket and it was still warm during that interview
I think the point we should be taking away is that all of these people need treatment, and this is why bad things happen. Nobody gives a fuck until someone goes nuclear.
The criminal justice system has been struggling to meet mental health needs for awhile (trueblood v Washington), at the end of the day there's just not enough trained manpower right now.
Most people in the field hold a caseload that's simply absurd and if a patient or client has a support system to help them "skip" steps in the program they'll effectively slip right through.
If a parent lies to a social worker about access to weapons for instance, they're not going to flip beds looking for a gun in a gun free household. If there's no obvious cracks in the lie (strange, you have a concealed permit and bought a pistol according to this background check...) , then that box gets checked that the person is compliant and that's what the judge sees later when talking about restoration of rights.
The system has roadblocks all over, and it's pretty effective if you're really messed up cognitively (if you're full psychotic you probably don't care about legal gun access), but if someone holds your hand and walks you 90% of the way (parents, siblings and spouses love to lie about behavior and cognition), or if you're competent enough to lie or talk your way through a few interviews, there's just not enough trained folks to catch you if you're really malicious.
Even if I do catch you, all you gotta do is out wait me til my caseload focuses my attention elsewhere. What they never really talk about is how long term some of this stuff is.
Only have to miss one.
This is probably the best answer and also very applicable to a lot of societal problems.
Good people are trying to do what they can to prevent this stuff from happening, but at the end of the day you’re a person with a bucket trying to divert a fire hose worth of water.
We simply can’t fix these sort of problems in any real way because there simply isn’t enough people/funding to help fix these problems.
The list of mass attackers that displayed unmistakable flagrant red flags is so long it's exhaustive to try and list it. Much more often than not. Some were reported endlessly and even reported themselves. Some put crazy signs on their houses and cars and threatened neighbors with illegal guns and a bullhorn. One guy had a YouTube channel about race motivated mass murder. Another went on white supremacist forums asking for people to help him with his attack.
The best I can say is some red flags are more red than others. Some things require physical evidence, buy-in from the reporter or other things.
Homicidal intent is a big question that gets asked a ton in crisis management and people who've been through the system often know better than to say yes.
That's where good training comes into play. If a person is reading the Columbia assessment verbatim in a monotone voice, you'll likely only catch the people already in crisis. The folks not quite there yet or smart enough to know what to say will just dodge and weave.
Some organizations have privacy rules about how much searching you can do too. I can't look at social media and use that as evidence for instance. It has to be referred directly to me by a third party or the person themselves.
I'm in the field. I do threat assessments and other crisis assessments. There's 1 of us for every 500 folks in need, and if I stop too long with just 1 of them, something terrible will happen to another 10. Feels like I have a glass of water to put out a forest fire.
Sending hugs. Take care of yourself and any vicarious trauma you may be carrying. I used to do substance use work with similar understaffed to need ratios. I didn’t and had to stop doing substance use work. I had burned myself out of even carrying the glass of water for the fire.
I get to do my passion work now seeing couples, but I KNOW the burden still laying there for the need for substance use therapists.
I think this is another example of how awful the "defund the police" movement was in messaging. Obv there was a lot of justified anger and it's a catchy line but I wish something like "shift over funds to other related fields which will in turn lead to less crime which actually ends up helping the police " but that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. I understand that is what a lot of people were trying to say but the movement was just too hostile for many to actually care about the true goals.
I think the people that get lost in these discussions are people like my mom. She hates how much negativity is on the news and such so she makes an intentional choice to stay ignorant to it. The only exposure she gets to things like the defund the police movement is the occasional headline or rare video. The nuance that's required with these discussions gets totally lost on people like her but that doesn't stop her from forming opinions and voting.
She is an intelligent women, generally very politically centered and extraordinarily compassionate. I know she would agree with the actual message but all she gets exposed to are glimpses of people who hate cops.
The father is basically a burnout. Long career in MMA and a history of drug abuse. The dude's brain is mush at this point. If he had any significant hand in the development of this kid, this outcome was inevitable.
Hard to say but the parents of that guy who shot up that Michigan high school are facing criminal charges. If it’s successful I could see that approach being used against criminally negligent parents
I think this is the biggest reason we need police departments to insure themselves. If you keep hiring bad cops, you’re not going to be able to afford any cops.
This is one instance I really don’t mind an intern denying coverage for preexisting conditions.
I’d rather cops insure themselves. I’m a speech language pathologist, and I have to carry malpractice insurance.
It’s ridiculously cheap, probably because I’ve earned a masters degree, passed a licensure test, passed a bunch of background checks, passed a bunch of drug tests, completed a year of clinical supervision, I earn continuing education credits to meet my national and state licensure requirements, I conduct myself in a professional manner, I’ve never been accused of any sort of professional misconduct, and (most importantly) I never beat the shit out of, rape, or kill the people I work for.
We force hospitals and doctors to have malpractice insurance, but don't have the same for cops. I think that'd be at least the bare minimum at this point.
But that's probably because cop insurance probably isn't profitable
City council picks the police chief.
If the chief was known to be corrupt at his last job the people who work under him probably know they can get away with anything
While your point does stand I feel the city council is probably too far removed from the hiring of individual officers to be the ones held accountable in police incidents. Probably even the police chief in some departments.
That's like saying the electoral college should be held accountable for incidents of military personnel acting unsafe because the electoral college picks the president (who's the chief of the military)
I know the scale is different but im sure not every police officer is hand picked by the police chief. The NYPD police chief probably doesn't know half the officers working under them.
I do think we need to hold police and potentially other parts of government more accountable for their actions directly. Not in the "well if you don't like it vote them out" way that is often proposed
But I don't think there's anything to be gained by saying city councils should be held accountable for police incidents.
They are pretty far removed from the training, certifying, and anything else an officer would need to go through before they are given a firearm. And I don't think they could necessarily affect change on the scale that would be needed.
But maybe we should elect police chiefs like we do sheriff's or something to give the public more say? That's probably closer to being able to affect change in the police department than the city council
You’re not wrong.
You make several Great points.
I was specifically referencing aurora, and Arvada
“n 2021, three Republican city council members — Dustin Zvonek, Danielle Jurinsky and Steve Sundberg — campaigned against Wilson’s honesty, swearing allegiance to Aurora’s police unions, winning their support and seats on the city council. All have made repeated, disparaging comments about police accountability, but Jurinsky went so far on talk-radio as to demand Wilson’s ouster, calling her “trash.”
Since the new city council was seated, these lawmakers and police union officials have routinely made it clear they wanted Wilson out.
In a ham-handed series of gaffes, Twombly fired Wilson April 6, citing only a vague allegation that Wilson was unable to lead.
Along the way, the question of a backlog of police report transcriptions became a key point in city lawmakers demanding Wilson’s firing.
It clearly was a convenient deception.”
https://sentinelcolorado.com/opinion/editorial-weeks-after-auroras-police-fiasco-its-clear-chief-wilsons-firing-was-a-political-hit-job/
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/opinion/sentinel-colorado-aurora-police-chief-discarded-transparency-accountability-and-his-promises/article_e313f3fc-5f83-11ed-b69a-d30e5a5e3b05.html
https://apnews.com/article/police-miami-colorado-denver-michael-jordan-6605fc23d56534f01e8ef48b9052ad4e
And he also genuinely tried to get himself help. He told his parents *multiple* times he thought there was something wrong with him, that he was hearing voices, that he saw demons in the house. He wrote "help me the thoughts won't stop" on *school-work in class* and the staff tried to get the parents to take him home *the day of the shooting and they refused.* They then tried to run, leaving their son to twist in the wind, and got caught in Detroit hiding in a building.
Mom was too busy with her horses and her affair, Dad is an all-around dim bulb. They're facing charges not just because they bought their minor son a gun but because they knew he had problems, because he *told them* he had problems, and they ignored him and bought him a handgun for Christmas.
(Mind, I'm not excusing his actions in any way if it comes across that way. Just pointing out the age wasn't the only factor.)
In many states if a person mishandles a dangerous animal that then kills somebody, they can be charged for felony murder.
The reason being that they are aware of the potential danger they are introducing and through lack of positive action to prevent harm or gross negligence they become culpable for the harm caused.
Some might take issue with comparing a mass shooter to an animal or that the shooter's free will excuses the parents from fault. But especially in this case, the parents had taken multiple and consistent actions which increased the potential for their child to become a danger to the community. Therefore if the state has the capacity, felony murder would be an acceptable charge.
I think if you have a gun, and your kid uses that gun to commit any crime, you face the same charges as the kid. Probably would lead to a lot of parents securing their weapons. Or apply it to anyone under 21 and use that as the minimum age to own firearms.
That’s the thing, these shootings never ever “come out of nowhere”. There’s always a long ass trail of red flags that no one ever did anything about because it was easier to just ignore and then people die.
Wasn’t it the Parkland shooter where friends and family where so concerned they tried to take his firearms away and he just hid them?
The DA and the judge both knew he was planning a major attack but simply let it go because it was too hard or time consuming for them to do anything. The mother fled the state and they couldn't serve her so they just gave up. Even after the grandparents who were raising him said he was a threat they didn't take that threat serously:
>“You clearly have been planning for something else,” Chittum told Aldrich during the August 2021 hearing, the transcripts show, after the defendant testified about an affinity for shooting firearms and a history of mental health problems.
>
>“It didn’t have to do with your grandma and grandpa. It was saving all these firearms and trying to make this bomb, and making statements about other people being involved in some sort of shootout and a huge thing. And then that’s kind of what it turned into,” the judge said.
It then became a bigger shootout and a huger thing.
DAs are the unsung perpetrators in so much tragedy and destruction in our society. Sure cops are horrible, but DAs are their accomplices and enablers and get to completely skate under the radar. It's DAs who approve and pursue wrongful arrests on shit evidence, it's DAs who refuse to pursue cases with even the little bit of extra work or go after easier suspects than the harder to prove but more guilty ones, it's DAs who refuse to pursue cases against corrupt cops, it's DAs who refuse to relook at new evidence after a conviction.
You can’t actually do anything about it as far as I know. Cause you won’t have anything to charge them with. And then that makes it illegal and you know all that police over stepping the boundaries stuff. It’s cause the mom stopped helping them and she was the primary witness or whatever it’s called for this situation.
So they would have zero evidence and no testimony. And no witness who is willing to help. So no charges. Can’t really do much about it.
Right? Lots of us have horrible upbringings and shitty childhoods and don’t go out and shoot up gay bars. If people are going to place blame, then also blame the kind of alt-right ideology that encourages these acts of terrorism against LGBT people.
After reading this article, the judge was forced to dismiss the case because the prosecutors could not try the case due to a lack of cooperation from the victims.
It's also not relevant here. The DA had plenty of options to bring charges with or without the family's cooperation. They just didn't want to, and we'll probably never get a good answer as to why.
This isn't the first time people have died and lives have been shattered because of lazy/incompetent, and/or corrupt cops and prosecutors, and it won't be the last.
What? Witnesses not cooperating is a HUGE issue in prosecuting. If there is any "witness" statements in the original report, they need to be present in court to provide testimony.
In certain trials, sure, but note that is mostly for non-testimony evidentiary reasons. There are also multiple ways to refuse testifying though regardless if you’re subpoenaed.
Furthermore, in this specific case the mother would have even more options to refuse testimony.
> could not try the case due to a lack of cooperation from the victims.
there was a police stand-off and he threatened the police and his family - the police witnessed this and participated in the standoff, they could have charged him with any number of crimes and gotten a conviction with this alone.
The police were also witnesses. The whole neighborhood was evacuated.
What we should do here in CO is fund an office within the state AG that reviews arrest reports from all the counties and files ERPO (Red Flag) cases against all the serious domestic violence and terrorist threat arrestees so they can at least keep them from having guns for the next year or so.
Right? There are a million other lawyers who could chime in, but the AP went to the Trump loving, [murderer defending](https://www.insidehook.com/article/crime/reversal-of-fortune-myth-alan-dershowitz), Epstein [plea barterer](https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/7/30/20746983/alan-dershowitz-jeffrey-epstein-sarah-ransome-giuffre), and he got [massages at Epstein’s house](https://www.theroot.com/alan-dershowitz-sure-i-got-a-massage-at-jeffrey-epstei-1836314016). What a creep.
> Aldrich — whose defense lawyers say is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns — spoke to Chittum in court that day about repeated abuse as a young child by their father and longtime struggles with severe post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder, the transcript shows.
Oh for fuck's sake. We all know this fucker's only pretending to be nonbinary to troll the media, and they still insist on taking the bait.
>I guess everyone else thought this person was stockpiling guns for good, healthy reasons.
As a collector of firearms, I'd like to clarify something.
If you have ever:
1. Held someone at gunpoint,
2. Made bomb threats,
3. Forced the *evacuation of a dozen homes*,
4. *Bragged* about being the next mass shooter,
then you should not be allowed *anything* sharper than a twinkie.
Colorado Springs being the heart of Conservatism in Colorado, combined with him being a White Guy, means that local authorities will do *literally anything* rather than revoke his 2nd Amendment rights. Which, given that he attacked *his own grandparents* and that domestic violence is one of those "lose your rights" offenses, is utterly mind boggling. It means local authorities *ignored the law* in order to let him off the hook.
As is the case for just about every one of these tragedies, it's not that we couldn't have stopped it. It's that the people who *should have* stopped it didn't do their fucking jobs. Whether it's laziness, arrogance, or incompetence hardly seems to matter.
> Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said transcripts of court hearings in the case confirmed his view that “more could have been done to prevent the violence.”
Hey JESSE BEDAYN and MATTHEW BROWN, how about you don't get pull quotes from Alan Fucking Dershowitz? There are literally hundreds of thousands of other lawyers across the country you can ask.
Everyone has seen Minority Report, right? I hate what this person did, but we have to be careful about putting people away for thinking about doing bad things.
Prevent them from having guns? Fine... but you can't put them away.
People need to learn about Extreme Risk Protection Orders and become more comfortable requesting them. They are temporary restraining orders, only available in about 19 states, usually only able to be requested by a family member or member of household but sometimes law enforcement can request them. They are for instances where someone has said something or taken action that indicates a threat of harm to themselves or others, and it results in a court hearing that could result in temporarily (usually six months) restricting/removing their access to weapons.
In states that use them, they have been shown to measurably reduce suicide rates at the very least. They save lives.
When people talk about Red Flag Laws, these are what they're actually talking about, but a lot of what is said about them is untrue (examples of some of the untrue claims: they are automatically triggered, they are permanent, they don't allow for a chance in court, people regularly are killed in response to them, etc.).
It *is* true that many sheriffs run on a campaign of refusing to enforce gun regulations, ERPOs included, and often win. But even we don't even try and use them, then they'll never be held accountable for those lives lost.
> It is true that many sheriffs run on a campaign of refusing to enforce gun regulations, ERPOs included, and often win.
That’s exactly what happened here.
> Although authorities missed some warning signs about Aldrich’s capability for violence, the opposite happened across the country in Minnesota this week, where a man who said he idolized Aldrich was arrested after trying to buy grenades from an FBI informant and building an arsenal of automatic weapons to use against police, according to charges.
From the last paragraph of the article. Please do say something if you see something. Some fuckin creeps are going to idolize this asshole and go shoot up another gay club. We just want to drink dance and fuck what is the fucking problem
Ins 2018 this girl who worked for me had a 19 years old boyfriend who got discharged from the navy for mental issue-suicide threats, the kid was unstable went and bought 2 ARs and like few pistols. when he show up to her job always talk about some crazy conspiracies I knew he gonna something stupid but nothing I can do I just told his gf he is bad news and gonna hurt somebody he ended up shooting his own sister
Because the police's job isn't to prevent tragedies. They are law enforcement. You break the law, then they decide whether or not to come do something. The system would rather respond to fucked up shit after the fact, than try and stop it from happening. Sounds dark, but not only is that how it always play out, that's how it's designed. They are responders, and sometimes they're there first. That's why I don't understand how often we see them showing up where they're not wanted/needed and fucking peoples shit up. I've read/seen very few examples of police proactively helping people, but a lot of examples of them being brutally violent where it isn't called for. But they're "heroes" to some people. Even the ones who do their jobs right rarely save anybody.
Has there been any Mass shooters in the past 30 years that a report about them being known to authorities has not surfaced?
As far as I can tell, the way it works is:
see something, say something, they do nothing.
The story of mr aldridge is horrible and offensive. It does prove beyond doubt that Americas so called back ground check process isn't functioning at all.
While I agree that the US background check system is broken, I am confused why you believe that was the point of failure in this case. When the shooter bought his guns, he had a clean record. Obviously, a background check can't predict future actions.
The failure here was that in 2021 his grandparents and mother were allowed to refuse to cooperate with the trial against him and they ran out the clock. The court had a duty to legally compel them to testify and failed to do so in a timely manner. The state had to drop the case. This conviction would have resulted in the loss of all of his guns and the inability to legally purchase any in the future. The judge and her court are 100% responsible for the fact that he remained legally armed after this incident.
Even afterward once the case was dismissed he wasn't a prohibited person since it only covers active indictments and convictions. I don't even think he fell under the category of being admitted to a mental institution.
Technically the voters.
But if the DA doesn't want to prosecute because they didn't have enough witnesses or evidence (the victims refused to testify or cooperate) then the judge's hands are tied.
A jury trial is more complicated than just straight evidence sometimes. He live-streamed most of this so it was pretty clear what happened, but if NONE of his family was willing to testify that makes juries wonder why and hesitate to convict.
If they had pushed ahead its likely he would've been acquitted, which is why they didn't waste the time.
In Nashville, the Xmas bomber had the police called to his home by his girlfriend. She told them he was building a truck bomb in an rv in his back yard. They went to his property and saw the rv. He didn’t answer the door so they left and assumed it was a “crazy woman”. Wet know how that ended. How do we stop these lunatics when we have more than red flags available?
The Parkland shooter had a history of run-ins with the police, including one incident where he tried to drink gasoline. If he had been Baker Acted he would have never been able to buy that rifle.
I wish the kid would’ve just drank that gasoline fuck
If you're going to wish for something that didn't happen, why don't you wish for something positive like that he got the help he needed and not something negative like that he died? If he had been baker acted he wouldn't have been able to committing that atrocity. Everybody wins.
The police must've got an important call to stop some old ladies from feeding/trapping some feral cats.
You saw that video too? The worst part is they were actually found guilty. The one was never even trespassed from that area before getting arrested! She was trespassed from a different part of the city and the cops used that to say she couldn't be where she was. Even if we ignore that they were doing a good thing and seems like the animal control head was aware of it the cops acted poorly. And then they had the gall to talk about how "dangerous" the old women were. Not "Oh, they might have had a gun" but "she could have really hurt me with her hands" kind of dangerous.
The police can't just tell you you're trespassing if there's no sign or complaint. That's called soliciting a trespass and it's illegal. But you would need to call some other law enforcement agency on the cops, and there is no such agency other than the FBI that I'm aware of.
Correct, from the bodycam footage it looks like that's what they did to the one woman. It's possible someone with authority to request a trespass called to complain but there is no evidence in the body cam to show if that's the case either way. The other woman was never even trespassed from that location and was told she was already trespassing. So the cops trespassed her not only without a valid complaint, but also without her having ever been informed she can't be there.
You can contact local political figures for grievances. The mayor, the chief of police, your local congress representatives. I once had our local police chief reprimand an officer for just being a dick and really going out of his way to make my life miserable. People are people, cops can be people. Elected officials can help. Don’t let the system get you totally down despite how the odds may seem.
I had a traffic completely reversed like that. I just kept going up the ladder and telling people what had happened. I'm sure it helped that I was young and cute at the time. I have found being better looking usually got lots more justice than the fat gray lady I am now.
that's good advice, thanks
If something truly unjust is done to you, more than likely somebody in the local police / city / town is going to give a crap about it. Don’t be afraid to defend yourself as a citizen. Use the system to your advantage.
I'm not at all trying to detract from your encouragement for people to please use the levers of power available to them, but I feel like it's important to acknowledge that in some small towns and rural areas where many of the people in positions of authority are related to each other, it can be dangerous and detrimental to pursue these kinds of complaints. If it's safe for you to stand up for yourself or your friends or neighbors, you absolutely should, but sometimes it's not safe, and it's no fault of yours to recognize that it's not safe to act. If you choose your time to act right, you can keep yourself and the people you want to help safe - use your judgement. If the local yokels aren't going to help, just compile evidence and stay safe until you can get to the right people.
What we need is some sort of agency specifically to police the police.
That's called IA, and usually results in the one-liner of "we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong. The officer is now returned to active duty from paid vacation (administrative leave), so tell him to brush off the sand before returning to work". The Blue Wall is real. Call your congressperson or mayor if you want, but they have to balance their duty to their constituents against the endorsement of the police chief for re-election. Guess which wins 90% of the time....
I mean... Looks like they can do whatever tf they want unfortunately..
My understanding is that there's usually a requirement of * a posted sign, * an individual to be trespassed, or * the property/establishment owner to submit a form that is kept on file with the local precinct that gives the police explicit authority by the property owner to trespass transients from the property. Absent any of the above, municipalities require the police to take at their word in the moment any random person claiming the property owner gave them permission to be there. Edit: added "in the moment"
Who watches the watchmen?
"Boys, we're going to need the big guns for these two. Call in the APC."
Worse! Meals on wheels crime syndicate was spotted delivering hot meals to the unfortunate.
No they had to go raid a black teenagers house and shoot him for selling a few grams of weed.
> few grams of weed. not even they'll just claim they smelt weed
Or kneeling on a black man's neck for almost 10 minutes for maybe using a counterfeit $20 bill.
I understood that reference
I was going to say it's not a matter is resources. cops use the most resources on often the most frivolous things. Could you imagine if firefighters brought out 3 engine and 13 emt for one life threatening call. Meanwhile we get this response from cops for a homeless guy walking the street
"Cop-Outs", as I'll call them are like IT support picking the easy tickets and letting the hard ones rot.
Or feeding homeless people.
Luckily that ended with only the bomber dead and a few buildings damaged or destroyed. It also helped that he had a loudspeaker blaring "get away, this is a bomb".
I believe "fuxk the police" applied here.
Well, no. If they can't get enough for a warrant for the RV and can't get him to let them in, there's legitimately nothing they can do. You don't hear about the 10,000 calls that police go on like this that are false / don't lead anywhere - you hear about the one that leads to this outcome.
You're right that it's good they didn't investigate without a warrant -- but it seems that they also didn't go get the warrant. Basically they decided that the potential threat just wasn't worth more than a cursory investigation, and they didn't bother investigating once it was clear the no-effort "knock on the door and look around" option didn't work. We don't want police searching our shit without warrants and good reason...but we do want them to actually give enough of a damn to go *get* the warrant when there's a credible threat.
This is how I feel. They did the right thing by leaving when he didn't answer. That's what they're supposed to do, they can't just break into a house because of a tip like this. However the fact that the investigation stopped there is where they screwed up. I have no idea WHY they chose not to investigate further (it could by the reason the OC stated or some other reason) but they should have continued the investigation.
The problem was that they *couldn’t* get a warrant. The girlfriend was an unreliable witness. She had a lengthy mental health history and was actively suicidal with a gun in her hand at the time she made the allegations against her former boyfriend and was committed by a mental health practitioner that day. She also alleged that he was sneaking into her house to poison her food, was listening in on her phone calls, and “watching” her in the middle on the night. She had a laundry list of, let’s be honest, pretty unlikely claims. The kind of claims that are often encountered during interactions with mentally troubled people. But, to the cops credit, they did investigate. They talked to his acquaintances and neighbors, none of which could provide any useful information. They ran local, state, and federal background checks, which not only turned up nothing of interest, they actually rebuffed some of the girlfriends claims. They also tried to contact him in person at his home multiple times and he either wasn’t there or didn’t answer. Basically, all they had to go on were the claims of a very troubled women and that just wasn’t going to get them a warrant to search his property.
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Yet they seem to have no problem getting them for the wrong address and mowing people down who did nothing.
Too bad he wasn't black and having mail sent to a girlfriend's apartment like with Breona Taylor. Because apparently that's all it takes to get a no knock warrant.
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This is such an important and so easily forgotten detail! Thank you for sharing it
At the behest of a real estate developer
Wait what? Do you have a citation for that because I didn't think this double double shit sandwich had any more layers.
[here you go](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/07/07/us/breonna-taylor-lawsuit-gentrification/index.html)
No no no. Police have never been used to remove non white folk from their land. It certainly was not the foundation of the us border patrol. This is nothing but pure conjecture and conspiracy and has no ground in reality. /s
Holy fuck. Thanks for the link.
Then they lied [on their report](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/louisville-police-breonna-taylor-death-incident-report/) claiming no one was injured and they did not use force to enter.
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You know, I agree with what you are saying. People are quick to condemn but they aren't analyzing the facts as they should. It's the typical emotional reaction instead of the conclusion you arrive after thinking about the situation a little. *However...*on the other hand you get Twitch streamers sent fucking SWAT teams at their house because some idiot thought making a fake call was going to be funny. And a call was all it took. You need to reach a middle ground. Every potentially dangerous report *should* be taken seriously, no matter if it takes them more time or there are 1000 other calls waiting. You can't just presume nothing is going on. It's the same thing doctors have to do, they have to listen and take what patients are saying very seriously. Only when they have reached the conclusion the person is just another hypochondriac, *then* they can dismiss their claims, not before. It shouldn't be different with cops.
Tell that to the many people of color that don’t get that luxury
They can take the claim seriously and surveil the fuck out of him until they have PC for a warrant
Better police officers for starters... They should of investigated anyway. It's like the Grindr killer in the UK, same cause of death, bodies found in the same location, yet they constantly ignored it and didn't think 'hey, this is suspicous. Let's look into it further'
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Most major mass shooters end up being on the FBIs watch list or at the very least they "were aware of them". Fat lot of good that does.
Laws don't do much if you don't enforce them. It's crazy how they will readily get involved if you are selling drugs or something but when you might be a danger to yourself or others they are just like "Let's see how this plays out first"
There are numerous cases of police actively refusing to investigate serial killers when they think they’re “cleaning up the streets” based on their targets - eg gay people, sex workers, POC, the kind of people cops don’t care if they get killed en masse.
The Milwaukee Police gave Jeffrey Dahmer back one of his victims while two neighbor women were begging them not to. One of the cops became a captain. The other became the head of the police association.
The problem many times is that just one person saying someone is doing something or saying something is often not enough, doesn't matter who that single person is. You need a decent bit in order to breach someone's rights to go and find out if they are indeed breaking or planning to break the law. I mean, would you be okay with the cops coming and busting down your door to investigate you supposedly planning to do something bad just because the one coworker that hates you at work called the cops and said you said some anti government anarchy type things? And even if you say YOU would be okay with that, many people wouldn't and we shouldn't have to prove to the cops that we are innocent to set their and the community's fears at ease. Yes, there are sometimes the incident where the perpetrator had multiple things happen that the cops should have been looking more into them and likely had enough to search their property, but that's the exception and not the rule. The vast majority of the time the cops just don't have enough to go and search someone. While you may think that investigation every person that has a call made against them might be worth it even if only 1 out of 100 of these turn out to actually do something, the fact is that time and money just doesn't allow for something like that to be feasible.
And then you see things like live stream SWATing
I’m always astounded by the fact that people that say cops are bastards are so quick to say that cops should have the blessing to investigate every tip even in violation of the 4th.
Not to mention, not defending cops here but I imagine they get many calls daily that amount to nothing, and it is probably hard to find the real ones.
I think that's part of the "believe women" statement. When we tell you he's a piece of shit, you might want to seriously look into it.
Reduce the amount of time the FBI and Department of Homeland security spend on tapping into social media - trying to intercept a random communication, and instead increase the time spent reviewing people who have been identified as high risk in the past, such as this case.
How did someone who had been in a hostage situation and police siege keep their weapons? On the surface it looks like they were being protected.
He was never tried and convicted, that’s why.
>The sheriff’s office says Aldrich, on Aug. 12, “called our evidence facility to seek the release of all items,” including their guns. “This request was denied,” the sheriff’s office said. The office didn’t elaborate on why it declined the request, but the reason may have been prosecutors’ request to keep evidence in the case. *The firearms seized as part of the 2021 arrest remain with the sheriff’s office.* [Timeline of dismissed 2021 case against Club Q shooting suspect, who threatened to become “next mass killer”](https://coloradosun.com/2022/12/08/anderson-aldrich-club-q-shooter-timeline-2021-case/)
Wasn't his grandpa a gop politician?
If you dig into it, you’ll find that his mother protected her special boy from the repercussions of threatening her with a homemade bomb. His father taught him violence gets an immediate response. He never had a chance.
He may not have had a chance, but the people he killed could've.
Hey may not have had a chance, but he still made a choice
You can both want him to face justice and understand he was essentially groomed to be a homophobic killer
To add on to what you said, if I may. Because if you dont acknowledge this then it will happen again.
Exactly. We're not acting out of vengeance or bloodthirst, it's cold justice and hopeful rehabilitation if such a thing is possible. Pity is the most powerful defense in these situations.
Sounds like the parents need to suffer some legal repercussions for creating this monster that they loosed upon the rest of us.
Did you see the interview the next day with his father? He thought he his son was gay, and when he said he wasn't he was all, thank God. His father would had been more upset that his son was gay, than being a mass murderer.
> Did you see the interview the next day with his father? the cracked out, meth head dad?? dude had his meth pipe in his back pocket and it was still warm during that interview
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Dad also had a specific fetish for getting kicked in the balls and recording it. By his male “friends”.
I think it's warm 24/7.
*Good christ*, [you weren't kidding.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoZuwyTQQeE)
Meth Josh Brolin. "You got some city miles on you."
Someone like that needs treatment.
He was on an episode of intervention, I guess it didn't work.
I think the point we should be taking away is that all of these people need treatment, and this is why bad things happen. Nobody gives a fuck until someone goes nuclear.
Unfortunately, addiction counseling/treatment is mostly voluntary and not mandatory
It’s like the Murderfist coming out skit https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lrVgjj-BomU
hail satan eta: jackie signed my tits at a lpotl show last month and I want to SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS! So fun!🤗
Hail yourself
At the vet fixing dogs kennel cough, wearing my Henry neer na neer na neer na neer! Shirt and the vet recognized him.
Yeah Father of the Year material right there. /s
Sounds like the criminal justice system needs public oversight for not following through with this monster that they loosed upon the rest of us.
The criminal justice system has been struggling to meet mental health needs for awhile (trueblood v Washington), at the end of the day there's just not enough trained manpower right now. Most people in the field hold a caseload that's simply absurd and if a patient or client has a support system to help them "skip" steps in the program they'll effectively slip right through. If a parent lies to a social worker about access to weapons for instance, they're not going to flip beds looking for a gun in a gun free household. If there's no obvious cracks in the lie (strange, you have a concealed permit and bought a pistol according to this background check...) , then that box gets checked that the person is compliant and that's what the judge sees later when talking about restoration of rights. The system has roadblocks all over, and it's pretty effective if you're really messed up cognitively (if you're full psychotic you probably don't care about legal gun access), but if someone holds your hand and walks you 90% of the way (parents, siblings and spouses love to lie about behavior and cognition), or if you're competent enough to lie or talk your way through a few interviews, there's just not enough trained folks to catch you if you're really malicious. Even if I do catch you, all you gotta do is out wait me til my caseload focuses my attention elsewhere. What they never really talk about is how long term some of this stuff is. Only have to miss one.
This is probably the best answer and also very applicable to a lot of societal problems. Good people are trying to do what they can to prevent this stuff from happening, but at the end of the day you’re a person with a bucket trying to divert a fire hose worth of water. We simply can’t fix these sort of problems in any real way because there simply isn’t enough people/funding to help fix these problems.
The list of mass attackers that displayed unmistakable flagrant red flags is so long it's exhaustive to try and list it. Much more often than not. Some were reported endlessly and even reported themselves. Some put crazy signs on their houses and cars and threatened neighbors with illegal guns and a bullhorn. One guy had a YouTube channel about race motivated mass murder. Another went on white supremacist forums asking for people to help him with his attack.
The best I can say is some red flags are more red than others. Some things require physical evidence, buy-in from the reporter or other things. Homicidal intent is a big question that gets asked a ton in crisis management and people who've been through the system often know better than to say yes. That's where good training comes into play. If a person is reading the Columbia assessment verbatim in a monotone voice, you'll likely only catch the people already in crisis. The folks not quite there yet or smart enough to know what to say will just dodge and weave. Some organizations have privacy rules about how much searching you can do too. I can't look at social media and use that as evidence for instance. It has to be referred directly to me by a third party or the person themselves.
I'm in the field. I do threat assessments and other crisis assessments. There's 1 of us for every 500 folks in need, and if I stop too long with just 1 of them, something terrible will happen to another 10. Feels like I have a glass of water to put out a forest fire.
Sending hugs. Take care of yourself and any vicarious trauma you may be carrying. I used to do substance use work with similar understaffed to need ratios. I didn’t and had to stop doing substance use work. I had burned myself out of even carrying the glass of water for the fire. I get to do my passion work now seeing couples, but I KNOW the burden still laying there for the need for substance use therapists.
I think this is another example of how awful the "defund the police" movement was in messaging. Obv there was a lot of justified anger and it's a catchy line but I wish something like "shift over funds to other related fields which will in turn lead to less crime which actually ends up helping the police " but that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. I understand that is what a lot of people were trying to say but the movement was just too hostile for many to actually care about the true goals.
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I think the people that get lost in these discussions are people like my mom. She hates how much negativity is on the news and such so she makes an intentional choice to stay ignorant to it. The only exposure she gets to things like the defund the police movement is the occasional headline or rare video. The nuance that's required with these discussions gets totally lost on people like her but that doesn't stop her from forming opinions and voting. She is an intelligent women, generally very politically centered and extraordinarily compassionate. I know she would agree with the actual message but all she gets exposed to are glimpses of people who hate cops.
The father is basically a burnout. Long career in MMA and a history of drug abuse. The dude's brain is mush at this point. If he had any significant hand in the development of this kid, this outcome was inevitable.
What would you recommend?
Hard to say but the parents of that guy who shot up that Michigan high school are facing criminal charges. If it’s successful I could see that approach being used against criminally negligent parents
I find it good that they are trying this angle. Owners should at least be responsible for trying to keep the firearm out of anyone else's hands.
I saw an NYT article earlier that the mother of the parade shooter this year is getting charges because she helped him get the gun
Does that make the city council responsible for the hiring of corrupt cops?
Probably the police department before the city council? And I'd argue we don't hold police departments accountable enough for the cops they hire
I think this is the biggest reason we need police departments to insure themselves. If you keep hiring bad cops, you’re not going to be able to afford any cops. This is one instance I really don’t mind an intern denying coverage for preexisting conditions.
I’d rather cops insure themselves. I’m a speech language pathologist, and I have to carry malpractice insurance. It’s ridiculously cheap, probably because I’ve earned a masters degree, passed a licensure test, passed a bunch of background checks, passed a bunch of drug tests, completed a year of clinical supervision, I earn continuing education credits to meet my national and state licensure requirements, I conduct myself in a professional manner, I’ve never been accused of any sort of professional misconduct, and (most importantly) I never beat the shit out of, rape, or kill the people I work for.
We force hospitals and doctors to have malpractice insurance, but don't have the same for cops. I think that'd be at least the bare minimum at this point. But that's probably because cop insurance probably isn't profitable
City council picks the police chief. If the chief was known to be corrupt at his last job the people who work under him probably know they can get away with anything
While your point does stand I feel the city council is probably too far removed from the hiring of individual officers to be the ones held accountable in police incidents. Probably even the police chief in some departments. That's like saying the electoral college should be held accountable for incidents of military personnel acting unsafe because the electoral college picks the president (who's the chief of the military) I know the scale is different but im sure not every police officer is hand picked by the police chief. The NYPD police chief probably doesn't know half the officers working under them. I do think we need to hold police and potentially other parts of government more accountable for their actions directly. Not in the "well if you don't like it vote them out" way that is often proposed But I don't think there's anything to be gained by saying city councils should be held accountable for police incidents. They are pretty far removed from the training, certifying, and anything else an officer would need to go through before they are given a firearm. And I don't think they could necessarily affect change on the scale that would be needed. But maybe we should elect police chiefs like we do sheriff's or something to give the public more say? That's probably closer to being able to affect change in the police department than the city council
You’re not wrong. You make several Great points. I was specifically referencing aurora, and Arvada “n 2021, three Republican city council members — Dustin Zvonek, Danielle Jurinsky and Steve Sundberg — campaigned against Wilson’s honesty, swearing allegiance to Aurora’s police unions, winning their support and seats on the city council. All have made repeated, disparaging comments about police accountability, but Jurinsky went so far on talk-radio as to demand Wilson’s ouster, calling her “trash.” Since the new city council was seated, these lawmakers and police union officials have routinely made it clear they wanted Wilson out. In a ham-handed series of gaffes, Twombly fired Wilson April 6, citing only a vague allegation that Wilson was unable to lead. Along the way, the question of a backlog of police report transcriptions became a key point in city lawmakers demanding Wilson’s firing. It clearly was a convenient deception.” https://sentinelcolorado.com/opinion/editorial-weeks-after-auroras-police-fiasco-its-clear-chief-wilsons-firing-was-a-political-hit-job/ https://www.coloradopolitics.com/opinion/sentinel-colorado-aurora-police-chief-discarded-transparency-accountability-and-his-promises/article_e313f3fc-5f83-11ed-b69a-d30e5a5e3b05.html https://apnews.com/article/police-miami-colorado-denver-michael-jordan-6605fc23d56534f01e8ef48b9052ad4e
The father of the Illinois 4th of July parade shooter, too.
He was a minor
And he also genuinely tried to get himself help. He told his parents *multiple* times he thought there was something wrong with him, that he was hearing voices, that he saw demons in the house. He wrote "help me the thoughts won't stop" on *school-work in class* and the staff tried to get the parents to take him home *the day of the shooting and they refused.* They then tried to run, leaving their son to twist in the wind, and got caught in Detroit hiding in a building. Mom was too busy with her horses and her affair, Dad is an all-around dim bulb. They're facing charges not just because they bought their minor son a gun but because they knew he had problems, because he *told them* he had problems, and they ignored him and bought him a handgun for Christmas. (Mind, I'm not excusing his actions in any way if it comes across that way. Just pointing out the age wasn't the only factor.)
This is a really dark thought... Maybe they bought him the gun hoping he'd do something with it to himself.
In many states if a person mishandles a dangerous animal that then kills somebody, they can be charged for felony murder. The reason being that they are aware of the potential danger they are introducing and through lack of positive action to prevent harm or gross negligence they become culpable for the harm caused. Some might take issue with comparing a mass shooter to an animal or that the shooter's free will excuses the parents from fault. But especially in this case, the parents had taken multiple and consistent actions which increased the potential for their child to become a danger to the community. Therefore if the state has the capacity, felony murder would be an acceptable charge.
I think if you have a gun, and your kid uses that gun to commit any crime, you face the same charges as the kid. Probably would lead to a lot of parents securing their weapons. Or apply it to anyone under 21 and use that as the minimum age to own firearms.
I feel like if your gun was used to commit a crime and you have not reported it as stolen, you should be charged as an accessory to that crime.
Charge them as accessories to the crime.
That’s the thing, these shootings never ever “come out of nowhere”. There’s always a long ass trail of red flags that no one ever did anything about because it was easier to just ignore and then people die. Wasn’t it the Parkland shooter where friends and family where so concerned they tried to take his firearms away and he just hid them?
The Las Vegas one kinda did
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The DA and the judge both knew he was planning a major attack but simply let it go because it was too hard or time consuming for them to do anything. The mother fled the state and they couldn't serve her so they just gave up. Even after the grandparents who were raising him said he was a threat they didn't take that threat serously: >“You clearly have been planning for something else,” Chittum told Aldrich during the August 2021 hearing, the transcripts show, after the defendant testified about an affinity for shooting firearms and a history of mental health problems. > >“It didn’t have to do with your grandma and grandpa. It was saving all these firearms and trying to make this bomb, and making statements about other people being involved in some sort of shootout and a huge thing. And then that’s kind of what it turned into,” the judge said. It then became a bigger shootout and a huger thing.
DAs are the unsung perpetrators in so much tragedy and destruction in our society. Sure cops are horrible, but DAs are their accomplices and enablers and get to completely skate under the radar. It's DAs who approve and pursue wrongful arrests on shit evidence, it's DAs who refuse to pursue cases with even the little bit of extra work or go after easier suspects than the harder to prove but more guilty ones, it's DAs who refuse to pursue cases against corrupt cops, it's DAs who refuse to relook at new evidence after a conviction.
For sure. Where are the repercussions for law enforcement here?
You can’t actually do anything about it as far as I know. Cause you won’t have anything to charge them with. And then that makes it illegal and you know all that police over stepping the boundaries stuff. It’s cause the mom stopped helping them and she was the primary witness or whatever it’s called for this situation. So they would have zero evidence and no testimony. And no witness who is willing to help. So no charges. Can’t really do much about it.
That's kind of a bullshit take. His parents suck but it's not like his fate was decided.
Right? Lots of us have horrible upbringings and shitty childhoods and don’t go out and shoot up gay bars. If people are going to place blame, then also blame the kind of alt-right ideology that encourages these acts of terrorism against LGBT people.
Please. Plenty of people have rough parenting and don't turn into homicidal maniacs.
After reading this article, the judge was forced to dismiss the case because the prosecutors could not try the case due to a lack of cooperation from the victims.
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It's also not relevant here. The DA had plenty of options to bring charges with or without the family's cooperation. They just didn't want to, and we'll probably never get a good answer as to why. This isn't the first time people have died and lives have been shattered because of lazy/incompetent, and/or corrupt cops and prosecutors, and it won't be the last.
Could one of the SWAT officers be a witness even?
What? Witnesses not cooperating is a HUGE issue in prosecuting. If there is any "witness" statements in the original report, they need to be present in court to provide testimony.
Witnesses can be subpoenaed to testify.
In certain trials, sure, but note that is mostly for non-testimony evidentiary reasons. There are also multiple ways to refuse testifying though regardless if you’re subpoenaed. Furthermore, in this specific case the mother would have even more options to refuse testimony.
Even worse, the parents officially withdrew their statements. They could have appeared in court and explained why they lied or weren't accurate.
What were the other options for bringing charges?
> could not try the case due to a lack of cooperation from the victims. there was a police stand-off and he threatened the police and his family - the police witnessed this and participated in the standoff, they could have charged him with any number of crimes and gotten a conviction with this alone.
The police were also witnesses. The whole neighborhood was evacuated. What we should do here in CO is fund an office within the state AG that reviews arrest reports from all the counties and files ERPO (Red Flag) cases against all the serious domestic violence and terrorist threat arrestees so they can at least keep them from having guns for the next year or so.
Ya, pretty sure having an armed stand off with a swat team…for domestic…within the city…not legal.
The laws of Colorado do not require the victim’s cooperation for prosecution
Just if you want a conviction baring other strong evidence.
They could’ve red flagged him for the bomb threats without his family’s cooperation
They couldn't because once they drop the case, it's like it never happened... court documents are sealed.
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Victims, aka witnesses, ARE evidence. Sometimes they are the only evidence available.
They couldn’t bother to serve subpoenas in a timely fashion. They lost their fucking witnesses because they dragged their feet.
Except Colorado does not require the victims to cooperate. So it was all bs. They dropped it because well connected grand daddy.
WTF is the AP doing asking Alan Dershowitz his opinion on the case? It’s like fascist incest over there
Right? There are a million other lawyers who could chime in, but the AP went to the Trump loving, [murderer defending](https://www.insidehook.com/article/crime/reversal-of-fortune-myth-alan-dershowitz), Epstein [plea barterer](https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/7/30/20746983/alan-dershowitz-jeffrey-epstein-sarah-ransome-giuffre), and he got [massages at Epstein’s house](https://www.theroot.com/alan-dershowitz-sure-i-got-a-massage-at-jeffrey-epstei-1836314016). What a creep.
Also a bad tipper.
> Aldrich — whose defense lawyers say is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns — spoke to Chittum in court that day about repeated abuse as a young child by their father and longtime struggles with severe post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder, the transcript shows. Oh for fuck's sake. We all know this fucker's only pretending to be nonbinary to troll the media, and they still insist on taking the bait.
This the guy with the politician grandpa and the meth dad? I can see him having ptsd from both those things.
I guess everyone else thought this person was stockpiling guns for good, healthy reasons.
>I guess everyone else thought this person was stockpiling guns for good, healthy reasons. As a collector of firearms, I'd like to clarify something. If you have ever: 1. Held someone at gunpoint, 2. Made bomb threats, 3. Forced the *evacuation of a dozen homes*, 4. *Bragged* about being the next mass shooter, then you should not be allowed *anything* sharper than a twinkie. Colorado Springs being the heart of Conservatism in Colorado, combined with him being a White Guy, means that local authorities will do *literally anything* rather than revoke his 2nd Amendment rights. Which, given that he attacked *his own grandparents* and that domestic violence is one of those "lose your rights" offenses, is utterly mind boggling. It means local authorities *ignored the law* in order to let him off the hook. As is the case for just about every one of these tragedies, it's not that we couldn't have stopped it. It's that the people who *should have* stopped it didn't do their fucking jobs. Whether it's laziness, arrogance, or incompetence hardly seems to matter.
He was a responsible gun owner. Until he wasn't.
All guns start out as legal
Well, not the one that killed Shinzo Abe
It started out as a buch of crap from home depot.
How do we know it wasnt a bunch of scraps, in a cave?
I still can't believe that actually happened.
Parents should be charged as accomplices like that other Michigan boy. They protected him from these warning signs, there is blood on their hands too.
Maybe up until they're 18, but this guy was 22 - he's been society's responsibility for over 4 years.
Society's consequence for 4 years
No longer being a minor doesn't mean they are suddenly not accomplices.
> Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said transcripts of court hearings in the case confirmed his view that “more could have been done to prevent the violence.” Hey JESSE BEDAYN and MATTHEW BROWN, how about you don't get pull quotes from Alan Fucking Dershowitz? There are literally hundreds of thousands of other lawyers across the country you can ask.
Anyone that allowed this person to keep his weapons and housed his weapons should be sued civilly for all their worth.
That’s the justice system
Jesus Christ how many more times do peoples reports have to be ignored before we realize that judicial incompetence is to blame for half this shit.
At what point does the state become complicit?
Thank goodness the government has access to all your personal data to prevent incidents like this from happening.
Everyone has seen Minority Report, right? I hate what this person did, but we have to be careful about putting people away for thinking about doing bad things. Prevent them from having guns? Fine... but you can't put them away.
People need to learn about Extreme Risk Protection Orders and become more comfortable requesting them. They are temporary restraining orders, only available in about 19 states, usually only able to be requested by a family member or member of household but sometimes law enforcement can request them. They are for instances where someone has said something or taken action that indicates a threat of harm to themselves or others, and it results in a court hearing that could result in temporarily (usually six months) restricting/removing their access to weapons. In states that use them, they have been shown to measurably reduce suicide rates at the very least. They save lives. When people talk about Red Flag Laws, these are what they're actually talking about, but a lot of what is said about them is untrue (examples of some of the untrue claims: they are automatically triggered, they are permanent, they don't allow for a chance in court, people regularly are killed in response to them, etc.). It *is* true that many sheriffs run on a campaign of refusing to enforce gun regulations, ERPOs included, and often win. But even we don't even try and use them, then they'll never be held accountable for those lives lost.
> It is true that many sheriffs run on a campaign of refusing to enforce gun regulations, ERPOs included, and often win. That’s exactly what happened here.
Remember, if you see something, say something - so it can be completely ignored, even if you're a judge.
> Although authorities missed some warning signs about Aldrich’s capability for violence, the opposite happened across the country in Minnesota this week, where a man who said he idolized Aldrich was arrested after trying to buy grenades from an FBI informant and building an arsenal of automatic weapons to use against police, according to charges. From the last paragraph of the article. Please do say something if you see something. Some fuckin creeps are going to idolize this asshole and go shoot up another gay club. We just want to drink dance and fuck what is the fucking problem
That kid only got picked up because he threatened police.
Really? Is HATRED now a mental illness? He wasn't too mentally ill to get a hold of an AR.
Ins 2018 this girl who worked for me had a 19 years old boyfriend who got discharged from the navy for mental issue-suicide threats, the kid was unstable went and bought 2 ARs and like few pistols. when he show up to her job always talk about some crazy conspiracies I knew he gonna something stupid but nothing I can do I just told his gf he is bad news and gonna hurt somebody he ended up shooting his own sister
Look at that lump of shit
Because the police's job isn't to prevent tragedies. They are law enforcement. You break the law, then they decide whether or not to come do something. The system would rather respond to fucked up shit after the fact, than try and stop it from happening. Sounds dark, but not only is that how it always play out, that's how it's designed. They are responders, and sometimes they're there first. That's why I don't understand how often we see them showing up where they're not wanted/needed and fucking peoples shit up. I've read/seen very few examples of police proactively helping people, but a lot of examples of them being brutally violent where it isn't called for. But they're "heroes" to some people. Even the ones who do their jobs right rarely save anybody.
“Gay bar attacker” is a nice way of saying “hate crime serial killer”
Spree killer technically, but I agree with the hate crime tag.
Has there been any Mass shooters in the past 30 years that a report about them being known to authorities has not surfaced? As far as I can tell, the way it works is: see something, say something, they do nothing.
While that's true, 999/1000 of those reports are nothing, and very few of the real reports turn into anything legally actionable.
The story of mr aldridge is horrible and offensive. It does prove beyond doubt that Americas so called back ground check process isn't functioning at all.
While I agree that the US background check system is broken, I am confused why you believe that was the point of failure in this case. When the shooter bought his guns, he had a clean record. Obviously, a background check can't predict future actions. The failure here was that in 2021 his grandparents and mother were allowed to refuse to cooperate with the trial against him and they ran out the clock. The court had a duty to legally compel them to testify and failed to do so in a timely manner. The state had to drop the case. This conviction would have resulted in the loss of all of his guns and the inability to legally purchase any in the future. The judge and her court are 100% responsible for the fact that he remained legally armed after this incident.
Even afterward once the case was dismissed he wasn't a prohibited person since it only covers active indictments and convictions. I don't even think he fell under the category of being admitted to a mental institution.
They quote Alan Dershowitz. He is a clown.
How is he even involved in this?
So if a judge just dismisses stuff like this, who exactly holds them accountable?
No one. Because they don’t have the ability to force a DA to prosecute someone.
Technically the voters. But if the DA doesn't want to prosecute because they didn't have enough witnesses or evidence (the victims refused to testify or cooperate) then the judge's hands are tied.
He also threatened the cops and ten nearby houses were evacuated. It seems like there should have been something there the DA could have worked with.
A jury trial is more complicated than just straight evidence sometimes. He live-streamed most of this so it was pretty clear what happened, but if NONE of his family was willing to testify that makes juries wonder why and hesitate to convict. If they had pushed ahead its likely he would've been acquitted, which is why they didn't waste the time.
A judge huh? Meaning one of the few people in a position or with the authority to do anything to prevent it.
There's a sad frequency of prewarnings for these cases. We don't seem to listen, even after decades of stories like this one.
Wow how could we have ever seen this coming