Former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi appeared on MSNBC with Katy Tur and called out the mislabeling of young white gun touters.
The former FBI leader gets it right
It was a pleasant surprise as I listened to former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi. The difference in characterization of crime and who commits it skews what criminality looks like demographically.
“What we’re seeing so far is very similar to the process that we see with Islamic violent Jihad radicalization,” said former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi, “This wanting to belong to a cause greater than yourself, wanting to get affirmation from a group who may not even know who you are or ever met you. And then feeling like you’re part of this deployment, this cause. You heard him on the clip you played say, ‘It’s my job to protect this.’ No, it’s not your job. But you think it is. And video last night shows him walking around roaming around with the assault rifle not really doing much of protecting anything.”
Figliuzzi made it clear that calling these characters “troubled” is a misnomer.
“I would assert Katy,” Figliuzzi continued. “That it’s time we stopped using the word troubled with regard to white young people who act out like this and start thinking about the radicalized term that we used when people of color or people of Islamic faith act out like this. This is a radicalization process that’s happening. It happened with the El Paso shooter in Texas. We kept hearing he was troubled. No, he was radicalized. And it’s happening online.”
Imagine if law enforcement in this country reflected what we claim it to be. Imagine if justice was really blind.
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I’ve been saying that since the tragedy occurred that’s now ripped three families apart.
Primary reporting stated he was driven to the protest from his rather distant home, with his firearm, by his mother.
I’m a retired SF medic, not the city, but a specific command in the US Army. If I were to attend that kind of mess, I’d have either my medical kit or a firearm, due to risk of boogaloo and “militia” activity. The most probable being, my medical kit that I’ve literally carried in actual war.
If I needed a firearm, there’d be plenty available from “militiamen” and boogaloo bozos, which frankly, it’s exceptionally likely outside of a major organized offensive by the maniacs.
So, I’d be busy irrigating, bandaging, applying an occasional tourniquet or giving one of my rare remaining IV bags of NS or Ringer’s, as is appropriate and supply dependent. Early in the wars, it was NS galore, a few Ringer’s and tourniquets galore, a tourniquet actually can remain in place, if properly supervised for up to 16 hours – orthopedic surgeons do that on a very regular basis.
Keep the red shit inside from leaking out, stabilize as one has to, evacuate ASAP for definitive care. Surgery, while I do have some qualifications in some advanced types, is an exception, not a rule. Outside of an OR, one isn’t performing surgery, one is committing acts of surgery in an environment that’s not only sterile, but not even clean. Stateside evacuation is quite rapid, even in distant rural areas, where it takes a couple of hours, if the emergent condition is properly addressed and stabilized.
But, instead, Mom drove him to the location with his weapon and medical kit, not anticipating the utterly predictable for a 17 year old privileged white youth.
Hell, there’s a reason that senior and junior NCO’s tend to be of a certain age, they’re mature, their brains have overall completed maturing and there’s an experience base where one doesn’t go marching into a shitstorm in a provocative manner without a plan of action, milestones of advancement and mitigation of risk.
Not being a Rambo wannabe, because a real version of Rambo wasn’t what the movie portrayed, nor was his fate, when Colonel Troutman used the Sheriff’s shotgun to shoot Rambo in the head.
Going in armed, even with nearly three decades of experience in such a situation would be extremely problematic, resulting in far too many explanations to accomplish any goal of protecting protestors.
A medical kit, most don’t recognize my type of medical bag, it’s a model somewhat common in Vietnam, but has since fallen out of favor, but did the job for me and well, the fancier compartmented bag had to be turned in clean when I retired.
Because, my primary weapon has always been my brain, my mind and figuring out both what the bastards want to do, what everyone else wants to happen and how to succeed in a mission and everyone on the protected side get to go home.
I’ve a good idea what the kid was indoctrinated with, given his position of protecting an already burned out business, rather than checking with protestors with the weapon at least, where it’d not be in the damned way, behind him.
As a rifle in front is nothing more than something in the way of treating an injured patient. I typically handed off my rifle to my security while treating, the casualty, of conscious and oriented times three could pull additional security until loss of orientation and I’d eject the magazine and unlock the slide enough to engage the disconnector long enough to gain control of the weapon, then my security is saddled with three rifles.
So, the kid is getting charged, his mother, if she had driven him there with a firearm he’s not allowed to legally own, also needs to be charged and frankly, is the engineer of the entire disaster.
He’s only obeying his early programming by mom and possibly dad (no information on the father, but I also admittedly have not looked).
The laugh is, I’ve engaged in vigilante behavior, in our case, out of dire necessity, as the Philadelphia PD’s 12th police district is the department’s garbage dump. Anyone on the way out to be outright fired, charged, is a fuck up, or otherwise undesirable was assigned there and it showed.
Rarely did I carry a firearm, when discouraging drug dealers or a few other sorts of harmful miscreants. A few times I did and never had to bother actually applying the slightest pressure on the trigger and once, our dog came along, loathing those who smelled of smokeless powder possession and had a singular fixation for biting hands (we rescued him from a local drug dealer who couldn’t handle a Dutch Shepherd).
Wasn’t pretty, things got better, the cops got trashbags of guns and drugs dropped off at the station by brightman (I had some IR emitters, which blinded the security camera, to avoid unnecessary entanglement).
Note how I never tried to kill anyone, it was actually a goal to not do such a thing, as that would attract unnecessary attention to remedial activities that protected my utterly non-bullet proof home, which housed our children and my disabled wife.
When people got the nerve up enough to form a town watch, I was supremely pleased!
Alas, it all turned to shit a couple of years later, when I was called away for a pair of wars.
As soon as things got slightly interesting, the town watch decided that children happily and safely playing on the streets, block parties and no gunfire wasn’t worth the effort.
The indoctrination is far too strong, dammit! My plan was originally for a decade of support, it’d likely stick by then.
But then, there is an old joke.
How do you make God laugh?
Tell him your plans.
Laughably, we’re now in a rather small community, who insist upon community based policing. Right across the river from our Harrisburg.
Did a TDY here, way back when both of our kids were toddlers. Pity that they couldn’t have grown up here.
Then again, they’d not have been long “woke”.
Humanity has one color – red, the color of oxygenated hemoglobin. If we were so weirdly different as idiots proclaim, the absolute best “interbreeding
” could achieve is what happens with a horse and donkey, a mule.
That doesn’t happen, same fucking species, idjiots.
That’s basic science.
Oh, any wanting to, which, given the environment is unlikely, want to issue death threat, I’m less than two miles from a major military depot that I know intimately, a half hour away from the region’s largest ammunition supply point, know alternative ammunition and equipment storage points along the way to the largest ASP and have been quoted as being capable of, if not delivering the wrath of an angry God, I’m a close second and God got to take the day off – from enemies and my own commanding generals, consider my primary weapon. My mind, my knowledge, my experience. In that case, I’d go back to a blade, quietly moving in.
I don’t need a cane to crawl in, like a sniper does, close in to pay extra special attention to your attempted incursion. The only first would be, I’d have a few less armed support, largely due to travel time.
We veterans stick together.
Our enlistments ended, some commissions have effectively ended, but remain indefinite. Our oath to the Constitution and laws has no expiration date, beyond our own expiration.
And we’re so hard to kill, inner city cockroaches are taking notes from us.
Sorry for a manifestoish wall of text, but I’ve refused to turn on my Facebook account until they actually, for a change, do the right fucking thing.