The Los Angeles Times
September 9 2001

Yet Another Sorry Lesson for the Hapless Feds
By STEPHEN YAGMAN

http://latimes.com/news/opinion/la-000072814sep09.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcom
ment%2Dopinions


The fearsome feds are at it again, this time endangering an entire
neighborhood in Los Angeles County. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms' foray last week into the Stevenson Ranch subdivision bears
alarming resemblance to both the agency's 1992 assault on separatists at
Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and its 1993 attack on the Branch Davidian's Mount Carmel
compound near Waco, Texas.

In all three cases, armed with fuzzy and incomplete information that
suspicious dwellers had illegal weapons that potentially violated federal
gun laws, ATF troops got secretive federal warrants and ventured
out--ill-trained, ill-prepared, looking for trouble. All three times, they
found it in spades, with deaths and conflagrations that could have been
avoided had a drop of un-macho common sense prevailed.

At Ruby Ridge, the ATF suspected that the targets of its warrants had
illegal guns. Notwithstanding that agents knew that the man they wanted,
Randall Weaver, came down from his cabin on Ruby Ridge nearly every day to
have breakfast and to pick up his mail, still they stormed his cabin. The
result: the deaths of Weaver's 14-year-old son and his wife. At Waco, ATF
target David Koresh, like Weaver, was known to go into town to shop several
times a week, but agents convoyed out to Mount Carmel, unsuccessfully
stormed the compound, got four ATF agents killed, caused a two-month
standoff and then came in and immolated the entire compound, killing more
than 80 men, women and children. Though the feds dispute it, it is likely
that their introduction of tear gas canisters into the compound ignited the
fire.

Sensible people in law enforcement would have learned many things from Ruby
Ridge and Waco, but not the ATF. The latest ATF target of opportunity, James
Beck, was known to walk his dog each morning. Yet the ATF decided to
confront him at his home, aggressively approaching the front door of a man
who they now claim had a stash of automatic weapons and a cache of
ammunition.

Donald Kincaid, ATF's Southern California regional director, says that the
agency had reason to believe that Beck would be cooperative because he had
acquiesced to a similar search a year earlier. That search did not result in
Beck's arrest, and Kincaid did not say what, if anything, was found then.

Rather than waiting for Beck to go out on his morning walk, these macho feds
decided to do a Matt Dillon and got one L.A. County sheriff's deputy killed
in addition to their target and his dog. In the process, they nearly burned
down a neighborhood. Sound like Waco?

There are better ways to execute warrants than starting bonfires.
Intelligent, well-trained, disciplined law enforcement officers perform
their planned tasks so as to avoid confrontation, unnecessary violence and,
yes, fires. Sensible cops do reconnaissance. At Ruby Ridge, Waco and
Stevenson Ranch, reconnaissance indicated that the wanted men regularly came
out of their homes. In each case, the ATF easily could have waited for its
quarry to emerge. No shooting, no fires, no deaths.

A little patience would have saved a lot of lives. After Waco, ATF heads
rolled, its director retired in disgrace and reforms were promised. More
than eight years later, it seems no lessons were learned and no reforms were
made. Maybe we should call it the Bureau of Anarchy, Tumult and Fire.

Stephen Yagman, a Venice Beach federal civil rights lawyer, was special
prosecutor for the state of Idaho in the Ruby Ridge case against an FBI
sniper.

Welcome to the United Police States of Amerika.

Papers Please!!

Every week this looks more and more like 1930's Germany.

Well said.  And people actually believe this country has a future.