Marines take their toys to Redondo Beach
Country Singer sends us a link from the LA Times about two Marines who took 10 “explosive devices” to Redondo Beach for whatever reason was passing through their pointy little heads and caused a stir;
“We knew they were explosives, and they should not have been in their possession and could be dangerous if improperly used,” said Hink.
The Los Angeles County sheriff’s bomb squad was called to the scene and employed a robot to investigate the devices.
Makes you think they had TNT or grenades or something, right? Actually they were just artillery simulators. For the uninitiated, artillery simulators are just that – very loud flash bang devices that safely give you the feeling that you’re under attack by artillery. Dangerous? Hardly, unless you’re not bright enough to toss it after you pull the cord, or if there’s a measure of debris that could be propelled by the explosion. They certainly don’t warrant evacuating 200 shoppers at a nearby Target store, or robots.
“[Lance Cpl. Devin Gajewski, 24, and Pvt. Thomas Bazer, 20] were shocked at the attention they had received,” said Capt. Jeff Hink, who arrived on scene at the South Bay Galleria at 10:45 p.m. Thursday. “They were young guys. They shouldn’t have had those devices and didn’t realize the gravity of the situation until they were knee-deep in it.”
While I agree the young Marines shouldn’t have had the devices, it seems to me that the police were just justifying their budgets for robots and their EOD teams. Simply an over-reaction. And the LA Times doesn’t help by describing the devices as if they were pipebombs of something. Artillery simulators are just that – simulators.
Category: Dumbass Bullshit
Well, beyond the stupidity of these two WTF is with the chain of command that let the pyro go unaccounted for? Just like real ones, you either turn the simulator or the pin back in or nobody goes home.
Had a couple of these go unaccounted for at Camp Shelby a few years back. Some civilian youths found them and decided to go McGyver and build a bigger, better “bomb”. They ended up terribly burnt and scarred for life. They are lucky to be alive.
So while I’m sure these two characters will get theirs, the chain of command has some explaining to do.
Man, this HAS been a rough week for the Marines….
Michael Moore at Taco Bell is more dangerously explosive than these devices, but I don’t see any robots investigating that. 😛
My experience with cops is that 10% are honest hard working guys, doing a tough job. The rest spend their time covering their ass and defending their toys. Consider what would happen to their budgets and toys is the world realized a majority of Drug Busts are kids or others who should be charged with weed, possession, not possession with intent to sell.
“and could be dangerous if improperly used” Sounds like a warning label on just about anything you buy these days, like skateboards, cars, motorcycles, hair dryers, etc. I have noticed that cops have become bed wetting drama queens, just like most others in society these days. When I was a kid, if someone would have brought some of those types of things out, the cops would have walked over, looked at them, asked what they were, and said “just be careful where you fire those things off” and probably told them to keep away from the other people when they do. When I was in 5-6 grade and even in to junior high, it was kind of a tradition for a bunch of us to get together the morning following the last day of school at the elementary school, where there was an open section a city block long, where we would all bring our Polish cannons (several soda cans taped together and would fire tennis balls when you added lighter fluid and light it off) and we would spend the morning launching tennis balls from one end while kids on the other end would catch and retrieve the launched balls. The neighbors across the street would sit on their front step and watch us and even the cops would park and get out and watch us for a while. Here were 10-14 year old kids with lighter fluid and lighters shooting a homemade cannon and the cops would sit there and smile and laugh at us and especially the kids that would be running trying to catch the balls. Today, you would be hauled away in handcuffs by a SWAT team and EOD would have to show up to take care of the cannons and there would be investigations into how these kids got these devices and the lighter fluid (in many states you have to be 18 in order to purchase lighter fluid these days) and the parents that knew what their kids were doing would be investigated by child services for allowing their kid to do this.… Read more »
Elric: agreed. It’s been a long time, but as I recall pyrotechnics like grenade and arty simulators used to be are pretty tightly controlled. Whenever they’re issued, I’m pretty sure that someone still signs paperwork afterwards certifying that all of the pyrotechnics issued have been properly accounted for – e.g., either were used or turned in – and that any missing items have to be investigated at some level. Given these guys’ units and the lot numbers of the pyrotechnics involved, auditing records of issue/turn-in/disposition should ID one or more folks that have some serious ‘splaining to do here. And the number of devices involved here – ten (!) – convinces me that it wasn’t just one that “slipped through the cracks”.
Yeah, given what they found the PD probably overreacted a bit. But I also can’t really blame them too much, given the number of crazies and fools out there.
Granted, this is a pretty big mall (lived in Hermosa Beach, and grandparents owned a few townhomes a couple of blocks from there before they retired) but it’s not like they took the damn things INTO the mall or any of the outlying stores.
About the most damage that would have been done had these things gone off in the back of the truck would have been a bunch of dry cleaning bills from all the pissing on pants when they went off.
But this to me is like taking any other weapon/ordnance off base without permission. Dicks hammered flat. End of story.
Ah… I remember back in the good old instructor days when I’d get to throw arty sims at Privates, yell incoming, and watch them scramble. What a life.
Concur on the unit accountability issues.
On the other hand, they would have been fun at a Cinco de Mayo party.
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What is the word coming to when “teh bom squad” gets called out for everything. It is actually quite insulting that these schmucks get to call themselves that. The do controlled dets on pipe bombs I’m skerred. It is just justification for huge budgets. Some outraged parent and community hears about a kid in some town stupid enough to set himself on fire then they have to protect your kid. Hey I blew myself up a few times as a kid…and as an adult. I just got better at doing it.
Idiot proof the world the world will just invent a better idiot.
-Mark Twain
When I went to Recondo School I was standing guard at midnight when they set some off to wake everyone up for the 3 day patrol at the end of the course. Man, was it funny to watch guys come out of the top of the tents. hahahahaha
@old trooper: we used to make those canons out of the old steel beer cans. I’d forgotten that. Tons of fun..Guess we and our parents had no idea how dangerous it was.
We used to bury expended LAW tubes on end, drop a simulator down the tube followed by a smoke grenade and launch smoke grenades about 75 meters.
And this is why the military has a million stupid safety briefs. I am soooo glad I got out of that god awful disorganization.
I’ve read that the Lance Coolie was six months from EAS. He’s fucked now.