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The Waco Twin Peaks Shooting and racist police

PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2015 4:26 pm
by Luther Blissett
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WACO: (May 17, 2015) Rival motorcycle gangs turned a local restaurant into a shooting gallery Sunday afternoon and when the gunfire was over, 9 people were dead and 18 were injured. Police initially said three gangs were involved, but later said factions from at least five gangs took part in the shootout. Police and troopers said the fight quickly escalated from fists and feet to chains, clubs and knives, then to gunfire. Gang members were shooting at each other and officers at the scene fired their weapons, as well. “It is one of the most violent scene I’ve seen in my 34 years as a police officer in Waco,” a officer said.

#TwinPeaksShooting #WacoThugs

via youngbadmanbrown.tumblr.com

Re: The Waco Twin Peaks Shooting and racist police

PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2015 4:54 pm
by stillrobertpaulsen
Wow, Waco and Twin Peaks? Must be 90s nostalgia.

Re: The Waco Twin Peaks Shooting and racist police

PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2015 6:00 pm
by elfismiles
stillrobertpaulsen » 18 May 2015 20:54 wrote:Wow, Waco and Twin Peaks? Must be 90s nostalgia.


Twin Peaks Twilight Language ...

Twin Peaks to Resume Shooting! Shooting Resumes at Twin Peaks! :starz:

Re: The Waco Twin Peaks Shooting and racist police

PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2015 6:21 pm
by Nordic
Sometimes I actually wonder what HMW would say about something.

Then I don't.

Re: The Waco Twin Peaks Shooting and racist police

PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2015 6:24 pm
by 82_28
Damn. I just got done writing this exact question only to find this here. Oh well, I'm sure we'll mull it over. Twin Peaks twice in a day but from "differing" origins was like: :shock2:

Like I was saying yesterday, I don't know what I would have done as a bartender.

Re: The Waco Twin Peaks Shooting and racist police

PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2015 6:30 pm
by stillrobertpaulsen
Nordic wrote:Sometimes I actually wonder what HMW would say about something.

Then I don't.


Well, I think the difference between HMW and most RI posters is that most of us approach keyword hijacking with either curiosity or wonder. HMW approached it with certainty, that his findings were fact rather than hypothesis. To suggest otherwise is disinfo.

That's my take on him anyway. And I say "most" RI posters expressing my own opinion, I know there may be some here who believe keyword hijacking is total bunk. I don't judge. I just notice the synchroncities and point 'em out.

Re: The Waco Twin Peaks Shooting and racist police

PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2015 7:57 pm
by Iamwhomiam
Police were aware of the meeting in advance, Swanton said, and at least 12 Waco officers in addition to state troopers were outside the restaurant, part of a national chain that features scantily clad waitresses, when the fight began. "We've been made aware in the past few months of rival biker gangs ... being here and causing issues," Swanton said.

Officers shot armed bikers, Swanton said, adding that the actions of law enforcement prevented further deaths. It was not known if any of the nine dead were killed by police officers.

http://www.timesunion.com/news/texas/article/Multiple-injuries-reported-from-Texas-biker-gang-6269297.php#photo-8000010

Re: The Waco Twin Peaks Shooting and racist police

PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2015 8:36 pm
by Nordic
Click on the link to see more GREAT twitter comments from the people mentioned in the article:

http://www.texasmonthly.com/daily-post/ ... hite-crime

The scene in Waco on Sunday was like something off a TV show. Broad daylight shoot-outs between rival gangs that leave nine dead and eighteen others hospitalized rarely happen in Texas strip malls, but the biker-themed event at the Twin Peaks restaurant turned out to be every bit as horrifying as an episode of Sons of Anarchy.

There’s plenty of blame being cast, and plenty to go around—from the bikers whose fight turned deadly to the restaurant that refused calls from police to cancel the event, which reports say was being used by several rival gangs to recruit new members—and in the days to come, we’ll presumably learn more.

Those who are interested in the history—recent and otherwise—of outlaw biker gangs in Texas would do well to read Skip Hollandsworth’s 2007 profile of the Bandidos, one of the two gangs identified by law enforcement as being involved in the gunfight in Waco. But when it comes to discussing the events that occurred outside Twin Peaks, there’s another entity that isn’t getting off the hook: namely, the media and police culture, which, it’s being argued, treat incidents of violent crime committed by white people very differently than they do incidents of violence involving black people.

On Twitter, much of this was explored using the hashtag #WacoThugs, where cultural commentators and critics including some of the sharpest working today, like Ta-Nehisi Coates, saw an opportunity to consider how the playbook for a violent incident involving white bikers diverges from the one that the media and police use when the violence involves people whose skin tones are darker.


The frustration of people who see unfair treatment in how police and media are reacting to Waco is palpable. It’s also probably not an apples-to-apples situation: a small Texas city whose metro area is roughly one tenth the size of St. Louis’s or Baltimore’s is probably likely to have different reactions from law enforcement, while gang fights are a generally unusual circumstance. But the very fact that we’re inclined to talk in terms of nuance, when discussing violent crime that involves white people, is part of the point that Coates and others on Twitter were making.

The idea that it’s “special treatment” to “not be shot by police for looking violent” is something one could argue with—the police are supposed to use great restraint in those situations—but making that argument misses the point. In a country where, among black citizens, having potentially stolen cigars from a corner store can leave a person dead on the sidewalk, or where playing with a toy gun can result in the immediate shooting of a twelve-year-old boy, or where a person who was able to walk when taken into police custody can be dead of a severed spinal cord by the time the ride in the van is finished, the mere fact that a massive shoot-out in a strip mall could end with police and bikers on peaceful terms does look like special treatment.

The tweets on the #WacoThugs hashtag may flatten the details of the situation that occurred, but the larger point is that the details in many violent encounters that involve police get flattened and twisted to serve an agenda. Whether the details are flattened to justify a week-long curfew, mass arrests, and the presence of riot police or to make a point about how a calm police presence is notable when the perpetrators of violence are white, the result is that we’re not really talking about the specific situation at all—we’re using it to make a point about how the facts get distorted.

That’s something else that’s in sharp relief in Waco right now. When, for example, the shooting in Garland occurred earlier this month, CNN interviewed leaders at mosques for reactions; after the funeral for Freddie Gray in Baltimore, the media sought statements from Martin Luther King’s surviving family to assess what his reaction might be to the protests. When violence is committed by people who aren’t white, their actions are treated as representative of their entire communities. That’s something that anybody with a 101-level understanding of race and media in America understands, but it’s also something that the shoot-out at the Twin Peaks in Waco perfectly encapsulates. There is no question about what the incident in Waco says about white people, or whether white leaders need to be more vocal in urging white people away from violence. No one questions whether white culture is partly to blame, or whether white leaders of the past would be disappointed in the situation.

Those sentiments are fairly absurd to express, in fact. Nothing ever says anything about “white people,” and “white culture” is a ridiculous concept to attempt to articulate; how Ronald Reagan or John Lennon might feel about the shoot-out in Waco is an utter non-sequitur.

All of which makes the media reaction to Waco a fascinating mirror to hold up to the media reactions in other situations. Positing hypotheticals is rarely particularly useful, but it’s nonetheless difficult to imagine that if a shoot-out involving dozens of young black men that ended with nearly thirty casualties had happened in a strip mall in Waco, it would be perceived as an isolated incident involving only the people who drew their guns—or that police would be chatting and friendly with people in the area in gang attire afterward.

In other words, the details captured in the tweets about the #WacoThugs or about the need to #StopWhiteOnWhiteCrime may miss the nuance of the situation—indeed, they may not be all that pertinent to the situation in Waco at all—but that’s far from a flaw. It’s kind of the whole point.

Re: The Waco Twin Peaks Shooting and racist police

PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2015 9:38 pm
by Lord Balto
elfismiles » Mon May 18, 2015 6:00 pm wrote:
stillrobertpaulsen » 18 May 2015 20:54 wrote:Wow, Waco and Twin Peaks? Must be 90s nostalgia.


Twin Peaks Twilight Language ...

Twin Peaks to Resume Shooting! Shooting Resumes at Twin Peaks! :starz:


The Cosmic Switchboard misinterpreted someone's request for shooting to resume on Twin Peaks. This is as clear an indication as you will find as to how reality really works.

Re: The Waco Twin Peaks Shooting and racist police

PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2015 10:50 pm
by slomo
Weirdly, just before I checked RI, my partner showed me the copy of the 1st season of Twin Peaks he just picked up at Goodwill (where he frequently treasure hunts). "I can't remember if you said you liked Twin Peaks or you hated it." I replied that I had never watched it from start to finish.but a blogger I used to read (Jeff) wrote extensively about it. Then I turned on my computer, checked RI, and was rewarded with *two* Twin Peaks posts!

Re: The Waco Twin Peaks Shooting and racist police

PostPosted: Tue May 19, 2015 7:42 am
by 82_28
How and why did all those idiots join up there in the first place? Several gangs at a franchise restaurant all rolling up on their bikes. How did they decide to meet? This is actually quite the mystery. What were they meeting for?

Re: The Waco Twin Peaks Shooting and racist police

PostPosted: Tue May 19, 2015 9:10 am
by Lord Balto
82_28 » Tue May 19, 2015 7:42 am wrote:How and why did all those idiots join up there in the first place? Several gangs at a franchise restaurant all rolling up on their bikes. How did they decide to meet? This is actually quite the mystery. What were they meeting for?


The official story so far seems to be that this was some kind of recruitment event, like one might find on a college campus, and it is described as an event in the media. The police are supposed to have attempted to have it cancelled, knowing the potential for just this kind of mayhem. This is why the chief of police basically said the owner was talking out of his ass when he claimed he has always been cooperative with the police.

Re: The Waco Twin Peaks Shooting and racist police

PostPosted: Tue May 19, 2015 9:10 am
by elfismiles
"Authorities" are saying there were at least 5 different gangs. It was a negotiating meeting apparently - to determine turf in Texas. "They" are saying that the Cossacks biker gang had begun wearing a certain badge/patch on a certain place that denotes territorial rights and that they were taking Texas from the Banditos biker gang. So it would seem a big hubbub was about and it turned ugly and the cops were already ready for a shooting gallery ... and they got one.

EDIT to add: it was NPR this morning where I heard a guy who infiltrated biker gangs who gave the "patch" angle.

82_28 » 19 May 2015 11:42 wrote:How and why did all those idiots join up there in the first place? Several gangs at a franchise restaurant all rolling up on their bikes. How did they decide to meet? This is actually quite the mystery. What were they meeting for?

Re: The Waco Twin Peaks Shooting and racist police

PostPosted: Tue May 19, 2015 9:40 pm
by Twyla LaSarc
82_28 » Mon May 18, 2015 3:24 pm wrote:Damn. I just got done writing this exact question only to find this here. Oh well, I'm sure we'll mull it over. Twin Peaks twice in a day but from "differing" origins was like: :shock2:

Like I was saying yesterday, I don't know what I would have done as a bartender.


As a cook, I would have dragged the bartender behind the ice machine an we would have held our breaths allowing the dark angel to pass us by in it's search for blood... :wink

Re: The Waco Twin Peaks Shooting and racist police

PostPosted: Thu May 21, 2015 1:58 pm
by American Dream
http://thisisfusion.tumblr.com/post/119 ... spoke-with

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Graphic journalist Dan Archer recently spoke with several community members in Baltimore about the unrest there since Freddie Gray’s death. All drawings were done live while people told their stories and shared their thoughts. Archer visited Gray’s neighborhood of Sandtown and nearby areas, retracing Gray’s final steps before being taken into custody.

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