Four weeks after the deadly May 17th shooting incident outside a Waco Twin Peaks restaurant, more details have come out concerning the incident, but significant questions still remain about the actions taken by law enforcement and the police’s account of what transpired.
Although the national mainstream media has largely moved on from the Waco story, if critics of the police are correct, the incident represents an unprecedented civil rights violation and media cover-up campaign by the Waco authorities.
Police in Waco still have yet to state how many bikers, if any, were killed by the police, or to explain why the police showed up in force at all prior to the meeting on May 17th.
In a statement on Friday, the police said that of 16 officers that were in the parking lot, only three fired a total of 12 shots. However, the statement still didn’t clarify how many of the bikers were killed by police. Authorities say they have not recieved final autopsy results that would clarify ballistics.
Then there’s the issue of the vague charges and mass arrests: if innocent people were arrested, held for weeks, and publicly accused of heinous crimes, it’s a nightmare scenario for dozens of people, impacting their work, family and personal reputations.
There are mounting reasons to believe that’s what happened. As the AP reported on May 22nd, over 115 of the men taken into custody had no criminal record but were still held on $1,000,000 bond, for what have been called ‘fill in the name” charges of engaging in organized criminal activity:
Waco police have said that all those arrested after the shooting belonged to criminal motorcycle gangs. Most of them were being held on $1 million bonds Thursday, charged with engaging in criminal enterprise. Nine people were killed in Sunday’sshootout.
Although dozens of those arrested do have criminal records, 117 did not have any convictions listed under their names and birthdates in a database maintained by the Texas Department of Public Safety. The database also shows five of the people killed had convictions in Texas.
One example of how the police seem to have ignored the line between biker groups with known criminal connections, and non-criminal motorcyclists, involves four men from the Austin area who were part of a motorcycle club called the Grim Guardians: Juan Garcia, Drew King, Jim Harris and Bonar Crump.
There is nothing at all to indicate the Grim Guardians are anything more than what they claim to be: a group of Christian motorcyclists committed to helping children. Austin police do not have the Grim Guardians listed as a criminal biker gang.
*lots more at Breitbart link;
Idk.