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Killer in Moncton
June 5, 2014 - 6:47am
Yet another guy with a long gun. And more details? Caissa?
Five RCMP officers shot, 3 of whom are dead. The schools have been closed for the day, local transit hauled off the road. Pictures and video are on the CBC website. I hear that his Facebook page has a fair bit of anti-police material. Alleged to have two rifles, a bow and a knife. They believe he is holed up in a wooded area. Citizens are being told to stay in their homes away from windows. we are about 60 miles down the road from Moncton. My NB friends are talking about almost nothing else on Facebook. I have to spend the afternoon in a trade fair so I'll probably have limited news for four hours.
ETA:http://www.businessinsider.com/justin-bourque-cop-killer-shooter-2014-6
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/moncton-shooting-manhunt-on-for-killer-of-3-rcmp-officers-1.2665707
What an awful situation. My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Moncton and everyone affected by this tragedy
From the pictures I've seen of him on the internet, looks like he is armed with a Norinco M305 semiautomatic rifle in .308 (Chinese copy of the M14 style rifle), and a pump action 12 gauge shotgun, don't know the type myself but others on the internet are identifying it as a Mossberg 500 or 590.
Doesn't appear to have a scope or other optics mounted on his rifle from what I can see.
Have heard unconfirmed internet rumours that he was not targetting anyone other than police officers. Supposedly while he was wandering around Moncton, people were taking pictures of him (this is how I'm ID'ing his weapons) and uploading them to social media websites. He would swupposedly warn them away instead of shooting at anyone he came across.
More details than any of us will ever want to know will come out sooner or later, I just hope it ends soon and no one else gets hurt.
Canadian NRA wannabees criticising Canadian gun laws as "too strict". And talking about "evil individuals".
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/moncton-shooting-national-firearms-associa...
Now, I know that term can be used to describe mafiosi, human traffickers, some "terrorists" and the like, but however this guy is judged, while he did cause harm that can not be repaired, I tend to think that he is more profoundly screwed-up than "evil". Just as Marc Lépine was deeply screwed up but entitled by machismo, and some lone wolf racist killers are screwed up but entitled by racism.
Not going to comment on the NFA in this topic.
What is your picture from kropotkin? Isn't that from the fracking protests?
Anyways, I've found some interesting internet speculation about Bourque's motives, but nothing on any mainstream sites so I'm not entirely sure how accurate any of it is.
So if the internet is to be believed, Bourque was a friend of Daniel Levesque, who was shot and killed about a year ago by the RCMP.
Recently the RCMP was cleared of any wrongdoing in the shooting as somehow the cause of death of Mr. Levesque was found to be stab wounds which occurred sometime before he was shot by police.
The internet speculation is that Bourque disagrees with this finding and believes the RCMP is indeed responsible for the death of his friend, or some such. Guess you can connect the dots from there. As I said before I'm not entirely sure how accurate any of this is.
For some reason I don't seem able to copy and paste the links but they both can be found pretty easy by a google search for Daniel Levesque Moncton. I'll see if I can use a different computer tomorrow to post those links to the news articles about the Levesque shooting. Likewise if I can find anything that actually links Bourque to Levesque other than speculation.
Okay, hang on a minute. Though I disagree with them, I can at least comprehend the facile logic used by the NRA after every mass shooting. But this guy didn't hold up a little old lady at a dépanneur. He shot five armed on-duty police officers.
If only the police had been armed, they could've prevented this!...oh, wait.
Maybe the argument is that adrenaline-soaked armed bystanders, suddenly thrust into a confrontation, could've accurately targeted this guy from 50 meters in the midst of a melée with police?
Just a picture of the NB RCMP acting in the line of duty. Likely some if not all of the Officers are from the Moncton area. These Officers were killed in the line of duty so I thought it important to honour them by highlighting that duty.
So it is a picture of the fracking protest? Or is it from some other protest? Or something else?
Thought it looked familiar but I'm not sure.
*editted to add:
Yep it's the fracking protest. I KNEW it looked familiar.
Justin Bourque has been arrested (no shoot-out, which is good news).
kropotkin, I am every bit as aware as you are about the repressive role of the police, have been a victim of it (as a union organizer) and have taken part in several protests against police brutality and torture here and elsewhere. But I can also feel how frightened and upset citizens of Moncton, a quiet small city, must have felt under the circumstances.
In talking to people of different backgrounds and professions at various times and locations yesterday, there was concern expressed for the loss of life and the fearful situation with residents being under lockdown in their own homes, etc, but people also talked of knowing someone, either acquaintances or family members, who had been beaten up by the police. One lady recounted how she had taken the local police department to task for beating up her teenage son, and managed to extract an apology while threatening unspecified actions against them if a further incident were to occur. So there was a general understanding of the nature of the police, but at the same time no one wants to see violent individuals with assault rifles on the loose in their neighborhoods, whether it be the police or otherwise.
In a statement Friday, the officers were identified as:
As expected, the media are doing their part to further the cause of a generalized subjectivity in trying to associate people who take issue with the authoritarianism we live by as being synonymous with events of this nature. But in doing so the media is not so far off the mark are they? Society breeds this sort of thing in the type of vicious rogues who are elevated into positions of power. This is part of the successful model that even the youngest schoolchildren are summoned to emulate by way of their studies, their sense of ethics, and by mimicry and practice in general as they grow into adulthood. The social strata is thus unavoidably re-populated; generation after generation; with resentment and other unwholesome sensitivities comprised from a failure to measure up to expectations, across all of the circumstances that society refers to as everyday life. This produces the well documented nihilistic impulses, primarily within men, as a way of countering an internalized sense of uselessness according to the measure of this society.
Actually Laggata this highlights the problem with the RCMP.
As in most workers death the employer here appears to have not organized its workforce very well. The bosses organized and carried out a miltary style predawn raid against an unarmed protest camp. Then when the RCMP get a report of someone with actual guns they saunter out like they are the leads in a TV cop drama and thus invincible. Where was the planning for a real threat that went into the raid outside Rexton?
Here are those links I said I'd try to post:
http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/fredericton-police-investigate-fatal-shooting-of-moncton-man-by-rcmp-1.1368331
Pretty standard stuff - armed man trying to break into cars, cops respond, presumeably the suspect doesn't drop the knife or whatever he was armed with, shooting is under investigation.
http://globalnews.ca/news/1349567/codiac-rcmp-not-responsible-for-death-of-moncton-man-fredericton-police/
May 23 news story from this year. RCMP not responsible for Levesque's death because he was really killed by stab wounds that happened some time before police showed up. To me at least, this whole story is a big WTF? Lots and lots of unanswered questions and things that don't make a lot of sense.
http://charlesotherpersonality.blogspot.ca/2014/06/was-death-of-danny-levesque-motive-of.html
A blog I found last night that mentions the possible friendship between Levesque and Bourque. It's a little ways down on the site. No idea who this blogger is, or how accurate the connection may be, typical internet stuff but it's about the only website I could find and link to that mentions a friendship or connection between the two men, and the death of Levesque being motive somehow for Bourque's actions.
Anyways surprisingly enough Bourque was taken into custody alive, so no doubt at some point we'll hear a nlot more than we ever wanted to know about what happened and what motivated him to do what he did.
Unless there is another Ian Bush type incident at the jail cells.
http://contrarian.ca/2014/06/05/how-to-make-your-news-organization-irrel...
Reminds me of the shooting in Alberta that left 4 Mounties dead. I've wondered for a long time why those in control of the RCMP sent 4 rookie officers to deal with a man who was known to be violent and had a hatred of cops.
It is about the issue of paywalls. The Boston Globe took theirs down for some days following the Marathon bombings.
No surprise crap is emerging on the net and in traditional media, with ijuts calling for the death penalty for those who kill police officers. Which would seem to be irrelevant here except as a wedge issue, as it is very obvious that the alleged shooter has serious issues that were utterly ignored as usual. Now there will be the usual grandiose "slain officers" funeral.
Anyone charged with murdering a police officer in the line of duty automatically faces a charge in the first degree anyways.
They didn't send 4 rookies out to deal with a violent offender. Other officers had arrived to assist bailiffs on a truck repossession, Roszko fled in it. The premises were searched, a grow op found, and the RCMP were tasked with security on the premises. This was the day before the shootings. Two of the officers were there for the shift and had been for several hours, a third was being dropped off as relief, the fourth driving. Roszko came back and basically stalked them.
Yes, their guards were down - after many hours of nothing happening and a perpetrator who unexpectedly came back armed. Mistakes were made, but they're understadable mistakes.
The officers shot in Moncton had likewise let their guards down because they didn't see the imminent danger.
ETA: I used to work at the RCMP Depot Division as a role-play actor for training purposes - the deaths of Brophy and Lidstone in New Brunswick in the late 1970s was a commonly used case study. The two officers were responding to a domestic dispute where the wife was trying to leave her abusive husband. The dispute seemed to have cooled, the man said he wanted to get something to send to his daughter in the back room... It took less than a minute for Brophy and Lidstone to realize they'd made an error in judgment, both were shot to death, as well as the woman. Had they stuck to the training and not let the man out of their sight while they were there, had one gone with him, they all would likely have survived. Moral of the story was Be Vigilant. But it's human nature to sometimes drop the ball.
I was a member of the NFA until this tragedy happened and they immediately posted an asshole comment about how this is a great time to get rid of gun control. While I'm a huge proponent against the current gun control in our country (black guns are more likely to commit crime, all gun owners are criminals but for a small fee the government will let them off the hook) the timing of this press release showed an absolute disregard for the loss of life.
Everyone enjoys pointing fingers after something like this. What kind of guns did the RCMP have. Did they have body armor in their trunk? What kind of gun did the bad guy have? What would have happened if he used a different gun. What if he had a bolt action instead of a semi-automatic.
Ultimately if someone decides they are going to start killing people the chances are they (which stats seem to back up) are going to manage to hit a half dozen people or so before they are disarmed or a sizeable police force arrive. There isn't much you can do to stop the first few deaths, as mich as I hate to say that. Police take time to respond. In many of these cases (not all) the person seems to have a lot of indicators that they have issues. They get stuck in the revolving door. The name escapes me but one of the cases in BC where a man shot RCMP officers involved a man that had 30+ dealings with the RCMP.
Every day a police check is run on law-abiding firearm owners. Pedophiles, rapists, murderers don't have daily police checks run on them but gun owners do. The time money and effort spent on doing that would be better spent on identifying and treating people with mental illness, who may have access to firearms or who show signs of violent behavior.
I wasn't meaning to suggest that the officers who responded were in any way responsible for how things turn out. My point, moreover, was that this was a man who had a well-known violent history. Somewhere along the line, something went wrong, and 4 officers paid for that with their lives. I am deeply suspicious of it being portrayed as the work of a "madman," because that allows the RCMP bureaucracy to avoid asking itself hard questions about what went wrong and what lessons can be learned.