Some of us are old enough to remember what happened in August 1992 at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. An FBI sniper killed Vicki Weaver while she was holding her baby daughter. If she was holding her daughter, how was she a threat? She was shot because the family refused to surrender to the authorities. The details of the siege and the killing are public information if you are unfamiliar with them. They are easy to find.
On Friday, The Daily Wire reported:
The 75-year-old Utah man who was shot dead by FBI agents on Wednesday morning for making online threats against President Joe Biden and other government officials was a pillar of his local church community and posed no real threat to anyone, a former neighbor and friend told The Daily Wire.
Tim Rich first heard of the incident through a neighborhood Facebook group, where households posted about hearing gunshots, and later that a SWAT team had raided the home of his friend, Craig Robertson. Rich immediately “had an inkling of what the nature” of the raid was — he was Facebook friends with Robertson and saw his political posts, which included one last week in which Robertson said he had to “dust off” his sniper rifle in preparation for Biden’s arrival in Utah for a political fundraiser.
That is a threat, and the man should have been arrested. However, I believe excessive force was used.
The article concludes:
Robertson was largely immobile — standing just about five feet six inches and weighing roughly 300 pounds — the elderly man would hobble around with a cane. He was known to drive to his church, which was only about 200 yards from his home. And law enforcement presumably knew all of these details — as Robertson had been under surveillance for months, and two agents had already interacted with him before the fatal Wednesday morning raid.
Rich believes that “busting in” to the home of a man that they knew had a defensive mindset was reckless.
“It seems like a much lower risk to detain or arrest in the middle of the day as he’s hobbling out of his vehicle or in a parking lot somewhere,” Rich said.
Is this an intimidation tactic? Again, the man should have been arrested, but breaking into his house was using excessive force.