Drone finally used to prosecute dangerous criminal
Pinto Nag sends us a link to Forbes which reports that with all of the talk about law enforcement in the US getting drones, one had finally been used successfully to prosecute probably the most dangerous criminal who ever walked the surface of our planet; Rodney Brossart of North Dakota who apparently broke the law when three of his neighbor’s cows strayed onto his property and Brossart didn’t return them;
After Brossart was arrested, an armed standoff ensued between his three sons and a SWAT team. His sons were located by a border-surveillance Predator borrowed from Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), which enabled local police to safely apprehend them, according to local newspapers.
From that link in the quote;
Brossart was convicted in November of terrorizing two law enforcement officers who arrested him June 23, 2011, over a neighbor’s three cows and their calves that strayed on to his farm. It’s a felony with a top sentence of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Also Tuesday, Brossart’s three sons — Thomas, Alex and Jacob, all in their 20s — pleaded guilty each to a misdemeanor charge of menacing law enforcement officers, reduced from the felony terrorizing charge, in an agreement with prosecutors.
Well, I’m just happy that cattle rustler Brossart and his sons are off the streets for six months. Spending that money on drones has certainly paid off.
Records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, found that CBP Predator drones flew 700 missions between 2010 and 2012 for other law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and local police departments.
Category: Crime
Terror/terrorizing is, much like WMD, a term used by “journalists” and legal eagles to the point of non-sensicality.
I don’t mean to say or suggest that charges shouldn’t have been brought, but the abuse of scary words just makes me want to break out the STFU bat (standard wooden clue bat but with iron spikes added for effect) for use on the usual suspects.
Felony terrorizing? WTF is that? And it became a menacing misdemeanor? WTF is that? Let me guess. The sons had weapons. The sons were on their own property. The police rolled in, armed to the teeth, called in an airstrike, told the fellas to put down their weapons, they didn’t, and that became felony terrorizing of police officers. Maybe, or maybe it was terrorism by cow farts. We just had a serious incident involving flatulent cows reported here.
This is why there are all those jokes about North Dakota.
Were the cows also jailed for their part in this conspiracy?
@3 Pinto Nag
Did you hear about the N. Dakota rancher driving along checking his fences when he sees a hitchhiker. He gives the guy a lift. They talk little but the rancher asks where he is from and the guy says, San Francisco. All of a sudden the rancher slams on the brakes and there in the barbed wire is one of his sheep with his head caught. The rancher gets out, goes over, yanks his pants down and tears the sheep a new ass hole. He starts to pull up his pants and yells over to the truck, “hey Frisco, you want some of this?”. The guy in the truck yells back, “well…sure I do…but…do I have to put my head on the barbed wire?”.
I crack myself up sometimes. 😀 😀 😀
Owner can herd his own stock if he wants ’em back……after paying feed and board. And rebuild his fence and mine
Sounds like the local five-oh needs to do more community outreach. No damn excuse for a small community LEO to need SWAT to resolve a three cow ‘debt’. Just un-freakin’-believable.
Hey, we got to watch all this cow activity,,, remember how those cows farted and blew up that barn in Germany?
Someone is going to have to help me out here because I think there is something else going on. If someone elses cows cruise onto my land how can I be arrested for rustling since I did not do anything?
Did the local sheriff show up and the guy said “yeah I’ve got the cows. They came through my fence and onto my land and I’m sick of his cows busting my fence so I’m keeping them” and it quickly escalated?
Everyone should be very scared of a government that uses drones to find people because it is a very short step in the modern surveillance state to arming those drones.
Drip Drip Drip..Thats what your right to be a Free American sounds like going down the drain one story at a time. Remember the frog in the hot water?
BTW: Your telling me that Customs has enough drones to hunt down a ranchers sons on his own property but can’t seem to have enough to stop illegals crossing the southern border?
You can always find a way to make the equipment you have do the job you really want to do…. it’s almost impossible to get enough assets to satisfactorily do a task you really don’t want to do. Basic Government 101.