AKA: Federal Goons with Guns
Author’s Note: For future reference, I will be referring to any and all federal agencies that I feel have no business being armed with anything beyond a radio as being federal goons with guns. If that offends you, tough grits.
-And before you start telling me about the dangers of bears and snakes, you should know I spent half of my 30 years in the land surveying bizz all over the eastern half of the country – most of it in the woods, and the only two times I felt threatened was when I was shot at by a couple of irate (human) property owners.
That’s when it is time to call for-real local law-enforcement officers, not glorified feds who are probably ex-Peace Corps types, or worse - PETA rejects, who are poorly trained and have no business being armed in the first place.
Via spokesman.com:
Lake Roosevelt park ranger shot man near son, family says
Kip Hill The Spokesman-Review
The Kettle Falls man shot by park rangers at a campground over the weekend had been standing alongside his 9-year-old son when the bullet tore into his torso, family members say.
Few details of the shooting have been disclosed by the National Park Service or investigators with the Washington State Patrol.
The shooting injured Casey Hartinger, 43. It happened after a Saturday night confrontation between rangers and another man who owns a houseboat that was moored at the Kettle River Campground within the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area.
At least one park ranger boarded the houseboat in response to a noise complaint.
It’s unclear what prompted a ranger to open fire on Hartinger, 43, who was released Monday from Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center, apparently without being arrested.
However, the owner of the houseboat, 41-year-old Michael J. Sublie, faces possible federal charges of interfering with law enforcement.
Court documents describe a scuffle that included Sublie shoving a park ranger off the gangplank that stretched from the houseboat to the shore.
Hartinger and Sublie both live in Kettle Falls and are friends. Family members of both men said Monday that neither of the men was armed at the time.
Court documents include allegations that Sublie was uncooperative when rangers approached him. He refused to turn down the music blaring from his boat at about 10:30 p.m. – some 30 minutes after quiet hours had begun. And he refused to identify himself or remove his hands from his pockets as a ranger requested. Sublie was described by rangers as having “a heavy odor of alcoholic beverage” on his breath and at one point yelled obscenities at the rangers as he demanded they leave his boat.
A ranger tried several times to detain Sublie, but each time Sublie is accused of violently raising his arms to resist.
After several failed attempts to detain Sublie, the ranger was pushed backward off the gangplank, according to records.
Court filings do not mention when shots were fired or by whom. The two rangers who responded to the call were identified only by their initials.
Bob Hartinger, the father of the man who was shot, said he’d received word in a phone call from his 13-year-old granddaughter who was on the boat with her 9-year-old brother that Casey Hartinger had been wounded. The 9-year-old stood near his dad when the shots were fired, Bob Hartinger said.
“If the bullet hadn’t hit my son, it would have hit (my grandson) in the head,” he said.
You will find the rest at this link.
This time around, I think it will be stopping at Tyranny
I guess we should be thankful that no one’s dog was shot, nor that their 98 year-old wheelchair-bound grandmother was tasered – at least not this time.
Scuffle or not, there was no reason to shoot an unarmed man, no matter how drunk and belligerent he was at the time.
There are ways to subdue such people that do not involve attempted deadly force that can be employed by law enforcement officers that are properly trained and thus qualified.
And I have the same question Doc E had (even though she did not quite put it this way): WTF is up with this?
We are currently very late 1930s Germany – and very close to becoming something just as bad – if not ultimately worse.
Americans better pull their heads out of their rectums and start paying attention – and that right soon, because we are staring nose-to-nose eyeball-to-eyeball at our demise.
-Dave
(h/t: My buddy Earl)