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2012-01-06 -Lurid Crime Tales-
Police Team Crashes Into Home Of Armed Combat Vet And Lose
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Posted by Anonymoose 2012-01-06 08:14|| || Front Page|| [11127 views ]  Top

#1 From farther down in the article...
"Stewart served in the Army from July 1994 to December 1998, spending a year based in Fort Bragg, N.C., and nearly three years stationed in Germany, Army records show. He held a post as a communications equipment specialist..."

For the life of me, I can't recall anything involving combat going on during those years.
Posted by Sgt. Mom  2012-01-06 08:59|| www.celiahayes.com  2012-01-06 08:59|| Front Page Top

#2 The real news here is the 'unspecified warrant.' Sounds like there will be some after-action editing of that warrant on the part of the police, along with the usual destruction of records and evidence gone missing, which has become the rule in similar incidents.
Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2012-01-06 09:09||   2012-01-06 09:09|| Front Page Top

#3  Whatever his military experience, Stewart is a 'combat vet' now.
Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2012-01-06 09:09||   2012-01-06 09:09|| Front Page Top

#4 Stewart served in the Army from July 1994 to December 1998, spending a year based in Fort Bragg, N.C., and nearly three years stationed in Germany, Army records show.
...
The elder Stewart said his son suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder,

From the heavy fighting in Germany or North Carolina? I'm sure the reporter was diligent in following up that remark.

There will be several investigations, including one by Ogden police and another outside probe by prosecutors.

The authorities should have put an independent disinterested [not having links with any of the players] agency or agent on the investigation to preclude any tainting of evidence and testimony. Too late now.
Posted by Procopius2k 2012-01-06 09:21||   2012-01-06 09:21|| Front Page Top

#5 More than 24 hours after the incident, the nature of the warrant has still not been published. Very, very suspicious.
Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2012-01-06 09:48||   2012-01-06 09:48|| Front Page Top

#6 Radio man. They do tend to be nervous.
Posted by mojo 2012-01-06 09:57||   2012-01-06 09:57|| Front Page Top

#7 You do wonder what the ostensible reason was for the raid, huh. 'Possible drug activity'? If the man was a known / clearly suspected drug dealer you'd think the police and prosecutors would have leaked that by now. If nothing else a known drug dealer would have a clear arrest record which is a public record, after all, and thus fair game.

We also don't know about Mr. Stewart's real mental situation. Is he just a quiet muttering man or is four-plus batshit crazy and a public danger?

Release the warrant and have a truly outside investigative team review and report. If the police acted properly that will come out. The public needs that assurance.
Posted by Steve White 2012-01-06 10:29||   2012-01-06 10:29|| Front Page Top

#8 If it takes getting a bunch of SWAT honchos whacked to stop all of the unnecessary dramatic entries under "unspecified warrants", I'm ALL FOR it!

You can expect to see a lot more of this in the future. As we complete our decent into a Fascist Police State, expect that a lot of our returning service people and regular folks to push back hard.
Posted by Mad Eye White3586 2012-01-06 10:39||   2012-01-06 10:39|| Front Page Top

#9 I have a strong feeling that after 1998, everything added to his 201 file stopped being unclassified.

His enlistment in 1994 does cover the time period for the National Defense Service Medal, which was issued to all soldiers during GWI until 1995.

It's interesting that there is no MOS of "communications equipment specialist" in the '25', signal MOS list.

Signal people, by the very nature of their jobs, are quite specialized. Many have very high classifications, and they are the largest branch.

They are also essential to many military missions, including those of our elite forces.
Posted by Anonymoose 2012-01-06 10:47||   2012-01-06 10:47|| Front Page Top

#10 I agree, not excited about the loss and injury to the police, but there is some real dodgy stuff going on in this report, starting with the right of the public to know what a public warrent is out for. Second, neighbors were unsuspecting of anything illegal going on so likely not a drug house. Third, why storm the house in the first place if serving the warrent at night and guy is a pot head who works the night shift catch him at the car...unless by storming the house the house and property get included in the search and seizure, but we don't know that because they are being dodgy.
Posted by swksvolFF 2012-01-06 10:53||   2012-01-06 10:53|| Front Page Top

#11 why are yall harping on when the man served? seems like alot of police tactics are coming under fire in the last few years and alot of times the sound like they have Gestapo tactics anyway. Why not tell why they where there? Sounds like another cover your asses raid in which more than likely the police where wrong. Not too mention how many of you would not shoot if a few ppl rushed into your house with guns? Kinda like the 80 year old grandme in Atl. who was killed by the Red Dog drug unit a few years back when they erroneously went into the wrong house.
Posted by chris 2012-01-06 11:11||   2012-01-06 11:11|| Front Page Top

#12 This guy is screwed. He's going down for murder of a peace officer.
Posted by gromky 2012-01-06 11:20||   2012-01-06 11:20|| Front Page Top

#13 ...maybe, but that's one of the protections of a jury trial. The state will have to convince a jury of peers that everything the police did was by the books and reasonable to perform their duties. Stonewalling at the start of the process isn't going to help the state's case.
Posted by Procopius2k 2012-01-06 11:49||   2012-01-06 11:49|| Front Page Top

#14 Chris, we're harping on the 'combat vet' issue - in addition to the whole incident being increasingly fishy with the inspecified warrant and all - because it just seems terribly odd that a peactime Army enlistee whose active-duty service ended fifteen years ago would be repeatedly described in the linked news story as a 'combat vet'. It does not add up. It is just one of a number of things that do not add up. It leads me to wonder if everything else reported in the story about this guy save for the words "and" and "the" is a gross exaggeration on the part of the family, the news media and the Ogden PD.
Posted by Sgt. Mom  2012-01-06 12:04|| http://www.celiahayes.com  2012-01-06 12:04|| Front Page Top

#15 The Feds promoted Randy Weaver as some kind of a super soldier who'd robbed banks and probably booby-trapped the approaches to his home.
That said, you can be stationed one place or another and TDY someplace else, which might be hot. Or you can just go there and not be shown as having left home, if the powers-that-be think that's necessary. It's possible he's been down range. But, so?
Posted by Richard Aubrey  2012-01-06 12:10||   2012-01-06 12:10|| Front Page Top

#16 This looks like another case of police going beyond their authority, and doing it badly. If the facts don't come out within a couple days then you know the police are initiating a cover-up.

And I really hate to think that, because so many good officers serve in the line of duty. Their reputation is ruined by a handful. It's like the Arizona debacle, except with the roles of who won the gun-fight reversed.
Posted by Charles 2012-01-06 14:15||   2012-01-06 14:15|| Front Page Top

#17 Police need to be held criminally and civilly liable for "no-knock" home invasions gone wrong. How many times does this happen because someone believed an unreliable informant, or someone got the address wrong or...These raids NEVER end well, even if they are justified. Best thing is to at least make sure they are justified and rely on competent info
Posted by Frank G 2012-01-06 14:39||   2012-01-06 14:39|| Front Page Top

#18 Transcript of Ogden Police Chief's news conference,over 24 hours old.
Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2012-01-06 16:04||   2012-01-06 16:04|| Front Page Top

#19 From the presser:
This was a knock and announce search where officers announce their presence and wait for the individuals to come to the door. If no one answers, under certain circumstances we enter the home. That's exactly what happened. The officers went to the home with the intent to announce their presence and did so and once they entered the home, there was no answer, no immediate response. They forced entry through the door and when they entered, the officers came under fire.
Posted by Nimble Spemble 2012-01-06 18:16||   2012-01-06 18:16|| Front Page Top

#20 I'm with Frank. You send a SWAT team to a home you'd better be VERY CERTAIN of your information, and VERY CERTAIN that there is no other way to deal with the situation.

The surest way to handle this is defund the SWAT teams by about 2/3rds. That would force the various county and city police forces to consolidate and back off, while keeping SWAT teams around for when you really need them.
Posted by Steve White 2012-01-06 18:38||   2012-01-06 18:38|| Front Page Top

#21 My issue isnt with the veteran, its with the SWAT team to bust a small time pot grower with no other indication that he is criminal and ZERO indication that he is violent. What about simply doing police work, staking him out and arresting him as he leaves the house for work, hmm? What thsi TV-style busting in the door and coming in like Stormtroopers? I hate that an officer died, but (risking getting punched in the mouth) they may have deserved it for acting like Nazis.

And yes there were combat operation in that time frame, I guess those of you who were not in don;t remember Bosnia/Herzegovina - 1995 Operations Deliberate Force and Joint Endeavor that established SFOR (and later morphed into KFOR for Kosovo).

Most of the US NATO forces for that were drawn from USAEUR assets.
Posted by OldSpook 2012-01-06 19:41||   2012-01-06 19:41|| Front Page Top

#22 To put it simply, if its night time, and I hear a knock at the door - I'm upstiars and I will not hear it clearly. Then I hear my door crashing in? You better believe me and my firearm at hand are going to be in a combat crouch taking head shots on these invaders. Especially if I am awakened from a dead sleep. Two shot per target, one in the central cranial mass, the other a few inches below. CQB, its how I was trained.

Our police has got to stop using military tactics if they do not want a military response.

Sorry police, but in this case, you died because you were out of line, and stupid.
Posted by OldSpook 2012-01-06 19:46||   2012-01-06 19:46|| Front Page Top

#23 by the way - I'm pro-cop but 90% (My WAG)of the time these actions by local SWAT teams don't satisfy a level of certainty they should meet, or even come close. When they go wrong and an innocent civilian or cop gets killed by a defending homeowner who didn't know WTF was going on - there needs to be massive repercussions and NO ass-covering. The "quiet knock" is an easy tactic. Too many local Police forces have paramilitary weapons, and less-than training, and use tactics that should be second guessed. I would expect that I or a LEO would be carried out dead if they came in my front door, and I don't have the belief that they are all that competent before getting these warrants. Just MHO
Posted by Frank G 2012-01-06 21:04||   2012-01-06 21:04|| Front Page Top

#24 When the forces for good rappel the 6 feet from the sidewalk to the porch upside-down, the lack of oxygen to their brains can lead to poor decision-making skills and physicality. However, PTSD my ass.
Posted by Slomp Oppressor of the Faeries1490 2012-01-06 22:45||   2012-01-06 22:45|| Front Page Top

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