A popular bikers website called The Aging Rebel recently published a totally different account of the fatal shootout that occurred near a Texas Twin Peaks restaurant on Sunday than the one that Waco authorities told reporters.

 

The article, titled “The Waco Police Massacre,” mentioned a number of details that were not previously published, and also presented the controversial theory that described the event as a police ambush, according to the Washington Weekly Times.

Originally, Waco authorities didn’t want to name the biker groups  involved, saying that they did not want to “give the gangs publicity.”

Here’s Aging Rebel’s account (Waco police did not agree with the information presented below):

The fight resulted from a long simmering dispute between members of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club and the Cossacks and the Scimitars Motorcycle Clubs. Curtis Jack Lewis, president of the Abilene chapter of the Bandidos, and Wesley Dale Mason, the chapters’ sergeant at arms, were accused of stabbing two Cossacks outside Logan’s Roadhouse in Abilene in November 2013. The two Bandidos were charged with aggravated assault in March 2014. The Scimitars are in the process of patching over to the Cossacks.

Other clubs in attendance at the Sunday brunch included the Blackett Arms MC, Gypsy MC, HonorBound Motorcycle Ministry, Renatus MC, Escondidos MC, Sons of the South MC, Los Pirados MC, Leathernecks MC, Vietnam Vets/Legacy Vets MC, In Country MC and the Tornado Motorcycle Club.

When the restaurant refused to ban the Confederation of Clubs, police stationed at least 22 cops including ten Swat officers from the Waco P.D. and the Texas Department of Public Safety in the parking lot outside the restaurant. They did not station either uniformed or plain clothes officers in the restaurant.

The shove in the bathroom became a scuffle in the restaurant. When about 30 Bandidos, Cossacks, Scimitars and other bikers spilled into the parking between the Twin peaks and the Don Carlos Mexican restaurant next door, the police were waiting for them. The scuffle became a knife fight and several men were stabbed. When one of the combatants produced a gun the Swat team opened fire with automatic weapons. Multiple sources have told The Aging Rebel that all of the dead were killed by police.

A Waco Police Department spokesman said at a press conference yesterday that 18 officers were on scene prior to the event due to the overwhelming presence of bikers in the shopping mall parking lot.

Four of the deaths – not all nine – were reportedly caused by law enforcement, according to CNN.

Of the nine deaths, a law enforcement source says preliminary information indicates that four of the bikers were killed by police gunfire. The investigation continues and the ballistics will be analyzed to determine for certain who was responsible for each shooting.

Officers began engaging the bikers within 30 seconds of the fight starting, which made many believe that there was an undercover informant inside the restaurant.

More of the bikers’ side of the story can be read here.

An armored vehicle ran over a six-year-old boy’s legs: $11,000. A jingle truck was “blown up by mistake”: $15,000. A controlled detonation broke eight windows in a mosque: $106. A boy drowned in an anti-tank ditch: $1,916. A 10-ton truck ran over a cucumber crop: $180. A helicopter “shot bullets hitting and killing seven cows”: $2,253. Destruction of 200 grape vines, 30 mulberry trees and one well: $1,317. A wheelbarrow full of broken mirrors: $4,057.

Some data gather by The Intercept details the price that United States military bureaucrats are willing to pay for killing, maiming and injuring innocent people.

Based on The Foreign Claims Act, passed in 1942, the payment amounts can be confusing.  The act gives foreign citizens the ability to request payment for damages caused by U.S. military activities, but the law only covers incidents that happen outside of combat situations. This means that innocent civilians killed during actual battles are not covered.

In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union obtained documents detailing about 500 claims made under the Foreign Claims Act, mainly in Iraq. These were the original, often hand-written records of incidents, their investigations, and the military’s ultimate decision to pay or deny the claim. Jonathan Tracy, a former judge advocate who handled thousands of claims in Iraq and then devoted years to studying the system, analyzed the entire dataset and found that the decisions often relied on over-broad or arbitrary definitions of combat situations, and that people who were denied claims were only sometimes awarded condolence payment. Yale law professor John Fabian Witt also noted that “relatively minor property awards for damages to automobiles and other personal property often rivaled the death payments in dollar value.”

This interactive graphic goes into detail regarding payments and the nature of the damage: https://theintercept.co/condolences/