The Associated Press has “reviewed more than 8,800 pages of evidence related to the May 11 confrontation [at the Twin Peaks bar in Waco, Texas], including many police reports, and viewed dash-cam video and photos and listened to audio interviews.” That would be some of the evidence protected from public view by a judge’s gag order. Indicating that the Waco Powers-That-Be want to get the cops’ side of the story out before the gag order’s lifted, an “alternative” version of the Waco homicides emerges and the excrement hits the rotating air circulation device. Think I’m a tin-hat wearing anti-cop cynic, and this late Friday info dump is just coincidental timing? Here’s the AP’s take . . .
Back in June, Waco Police Chief Brent Stroman said three officers fired a total of 12 shots, but police have never said whether those bullets struck anyone, fatally or otherwise.
Officer George Vrail was assigned to a special detail to cover the meeting and wrote in the incident report that he saw two officers during the shootout who “had multiple suspects down on the ground.”
The officers told him they had been “engaged” by gunfire as they got out of their marked police car. Both of them returned fire and “struck multiple suspects with their patrol rifles.”
In his portion of the incident report, officer Keith Vaughn wrote that another officer spotted a man shooting into the crowd and told Vaughn that he fired one round “to stop the individual from shooting anyone else.”
While this is the first time the Waco police have admitted that police rifle rounds hit bikers, there’s still no word on how many bikers the cops’ bullets injured or killed – despite the fact that the Waco coroner has had that information for months. As the CBS version of this story says ” it remains unclear whose bullets struck the dead and injured.” What more (or less), the AP’s report says nothing substantive about the dash-cam videos, which seem a little . . . lacking.
The trove of evidence — expected to be presented to a grand jury — includes dashboard video of people fleeing the scene while shots ring out, audio of police threatening to shoot people if they rise from the ground and photos of bodies lying in pools of blood in the restaurant parking lot.
So they’ve seen dash cam video which doesn’t show any police shooting or, for that matter, the run-up to the turkey shoot incident. Does that seem like anything approaching a complete or even independent accounting of the police interaction with the bikers, or the evidence gathered after their deaths? The only thing “new” here: a regurgitation of the official police version and a glimpse at two officer’s reports, which is, after all, their side of the story.
Consider my credibility stretched. If nothing else, when was the last time you heard about a police officer firing a single round – unless it was a head shot and he saw it connect? The Waco biker massacre coverup continues . . .