Waco discussion - Yeehaw we're glowing

[Xarpho's Return]

I hate to necro a two year old thread but previously I had held the opinion that the cultists started the fire and the government was just too incompetent to do anything afterwards after things went south.

But with the discussion on Waco and that Trump speech, I did some more reading into it and one detail was bugging me. The fire trucks. The feds basically blocked the fire trucks from entering until basically everyone was dead.

According to the official story, the fire started around 11:30, visible flames appeared at around 12:07, a call was made at 12:12, the fire trucks show up but at 12:22 they get held by a checkpoint and don't get allowed to pass for another 15 minutes! By the time they arrive at 12:43 the roof had collapsed and dozens are dead.

Even if the Davidians started the fire, the idea in these sorts of government raids is to minimize loss of life. Feds should've called the fire trucks immediately when the fire started, had them put out the fire, and THEN made arrests. Calling the fire department that late and then holding them up for as long as they did is either involuntary manslaughter if through sheer incompetence and second-degree murder if they knew what they were doing.

If they had gotten the fire trucks there first (or better yet, had emergency vehicles on scene from the start), then they would've looked like the "heroes" of the story or at the very least given them plausible deniability, whereas calling them late and tying them up at checkpoints made them look incompetent or worse.

 

[Strix454]

I hate to necro a two year old thread but previously I had held the opinion that the cultists started the fire and the government was just too incompetent to do anything afterwards after things went south.

But with the discussion on Waco and that Trump speech, I did some more reading into it and one detail was bugging me. The fire trucks. The feds basically blocked the fire trucks from entering until basically everyone was dead.

According to the official story, the fire started around 11:30, visible flames appeared at around 12:07, a call was made at 12:12, the fire trucks show up but at 12:22 they get held by a checkpoint and don't get allowed to pass for another 15 minutes! By the time they arrive at 12:43 the roof had collapsed and dozens are dead.

Even if the Davidians started the fire, the idea in these sorts of government raids is to minimize loss of life. Feds should've called the fire trucks immediately when the fire started, had them put out the fire, and THEN made arrests. Calling the fire department that late and then holding them up for as long as they did is either involuntary manslaughter if through sheer incompetence and second-degree murder if they knew what they were doing.

If they had gotten the fire trucks there first (or better yet, had emergency vehicles on scene from the start), then they would've looked like the "heroes" of the story or at the very least given them plausible deniability, whereas calling them late and tying them up at checkpoints made them look incompetent or worse.

The official response to situations like that is usually that the other side (the cultists) were still shooting or that there was a presumption that they might open fire on the fireman. And there is often a tendency to keep people out of harms way because the law enforcement will bear all the blame if someone like a fireman or an EMT gets shot.

Unofficially, if you get into a firefight with law enforcement and you actually kill some of them (as happened in Waco), they are not going to try very hard to save the lives of the people who did it. People will get left to bleed out on the ground, the EMTs are not going to be in any hurry and the police are going to use every procedure they have to slow things down. But knowing that and proving that they did actual legal wrong are two different things.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

The official response to situations like that is usually that the other side (the cultists) were still shooting or that there was a presumption that they might open fire on the fireman. And there is often a tendency to keep people out of harms way because the law enforcement will bear all the blame if someone like a fireman or an EMT gets shot.

Unofficially, if you get into a firefight with law enforcement and you actually kill some of them (as happened in Waco), they are not going to try very hard to save the lives of the people who did it. People will get left to bleed out on the ground, the EMTs are not going to be in any hurry and the police are going to use every procedure they have to slow things down. But knowing that and proving that they did actual legal wrong are two different things.

I've seen domestic standoffs before, some that end up going for 8, 10, 12 hours, and they always have emergency vehicles on standby in case shit goes down. I would expect if they didn't want the local firefighters to show up (and to note, the ones that showed up were "real" firefighters, not a volunteer fire department, despite being out in the sticks) they'd have their own people there...but again, that can be chalked up to incompetence.

 

[Unique User Name]

Unofficially, if you get into a firefight with law enforcement and you actually kill some of them (as happened in Waco), they are not going to try very hard to save the lives of the people who did it.

Officially, Christopher Dorner shot himself in the head to escape a fire set off either due to a tragic accidental sparking of tear gas cannisters or a speculation that Dorner himself started the fire, and could unfortunately not be apprehended and tried.

Unofficially, people on that day heard and recorded police chatter off of the internet of police knowingly and maliciously using "burners" and were hoping to "burn this motherfucker".

I think they do a much better job encrypting their shit now that anyone in the country might be able to overhear and easily record things. But, oh to be a fly on the CB radio emergency channel in Waco, Texas April 19th, 1993.

30 years coming up soon frens.

I've seen domestic standoffs before, some that end up going for 8, 10, 12 hours

TBF, that standoff was in its second month. You're not keeping everyone and everything around. And you wouldn't bring them in even if you know that you are going to change that situation fairly soon since you don't want to call attention to that.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I've seen there's a Netflix documentary about it, wonder if it will go the current year of "Feds dindu nuffin" or the truth.

 

[duckbutter&toejamsandwich]

I've seen there's a Netflix documentary about it, wonder if it will go the current year of "Feds dindu nuffin" or the truth.

It was mostly truthful. It didn't mention some of the worst of the Feds actions and it downplayed others, but the Feds came off as the villains. They did constantly bring up that the Davidians were a cult of sex abusers, which to my knowledge most of the surviving members deny to this day.

 

[Whatevermancer]

I remember this tragedy every time some murrican lolbert tells me how his AR-15 will save him from the government.

 

[Strix454]

It was mostly truthful. It didn't mention some of the worst of the Feds actions and it downplayed others, but the Feds came off as the villains. They did constantly bring up that the Davidians were a cult of sex abusers, which to my knowledge most of the surviving members deny to this day.

The Davidians were a group that was fighting multiple internal civil wars at the time and had been fighting with itself since the 1950s. Koresh eventually won the 1980s war, but there were at least two breakoff factions that wanted to bring him down after. There was the George Roden faction. George was the son of the woman who had previously led the group. Roden and his followers had at least two armed confrontations with Koresh and his followers. One confrontation ended up in gunfire. There was a trial, but no convictions. George Roden eventually killed someone with an ax but got off on an insanity defense.

Then there was Marc Breault who joined the group, rose in the leadership, had a falling out with Koresh and then left the group to fund what amounted to a dirty war against Koresh. Breault hired private investigators and started spreading the sex cult stories in various places. There was a woman in the group that had been a maid of honor at Breault's wedding. He knew she had a young daughter and that she had an ex-husband. Eventually he contacted the non-custodial father, told him that his daughter was being sexually abused and got him to launch a child custody case in a different state which was based on the idea that the child had to be saved from the "sex cult". Breault personally travelled with wife and entourage to the child custody hearing to testify about all all the sex cult stuff.

The anti-Koresh groups - all of which were no better than Koresh himself - started pulling every lever of media and police influence they could get access to in order to go after Koresh.

In May 1992 there was a suspicious incident where a UPS driver claimed a package "broke open" and he found grenade casings. "Postal Workers" also began reporting on deliveries to the gun dealer/gun shop affiliated with Koresh. All this somehow led to a complaint getting to the ATF. But rather than approach anyone directly or overtly or just serving search warrants, the ATF went in the direction of a covert investigation.

The ATF launched a big investigation, but was able to find no particular evidence of actual crimes. In the absence of evidence, they filled their warrants with unsupported claims that Koresh was running a drug lab on the property. The drug connection is what supposedly enabled the ATF to launch the big initial no-knock no-notice raid.

At the same time all the gun stuff was going on, the local newspaper was working on a multi-part story that depended on Marc Breault as its source about the "sex cult" stuff. The usual rules of media "integreity" were in play and the law enforcement and the newspaper both knew about what the other was doing. They had joint meetings to discuss the situation. The careful journalism allowed the newspaper to turn George Roden into a victim and I believe omitted entirely the fact that he was at the time an ax murderer committed to a mental hospital.

The intention was that the Newspaper was supposed to start publishing the "sex cult" articles right after the ATF raided the compound and arrested everyone. They quite literally had meetings coordinating the timing of the raid and when the newspaper would start publishing the stories. But the timing of the raid changed a few times and the newspaper eventually published their first story the day before the raid rather than the day after.

In the aftermath, there still wasn't alot of good evidence for most of the child abuse or sex cult stuff. Besides which the ATF has no law enforcement role in such things. If they believed all the child abuse was going on, the state had all the power in the world to take away all the children and investigate as much as they liked.

 

[duckbutter&toejamsandwich]

The Davidians were a group that was fighting multiple internal civil wars at the time and had been fighting with itself since the 1950s.

Some of this is new info to me. Is there a book or documentary you recommend?

 

[Stoicism Is For Losers]

If they hadn't started an insane cult they wouldn't have ended up in this situation, moral of the story dont start cults, dont join cults. Cult behaviour should be prohibited by law. The only ones we should grieve are the children who got pulled into this by their insane parents. Joining a cult should be immediate reason for losing custody of your children. Call me a glownigger if you want, but cults make me sick