World Eater: Fine by me.
Mr. B, I’d just like to say that saying things like “thanks for playing” and “and I get to watch you go all foamy” do nothing except make you look bad.
While I can at least see where some of your arguments are coming from, I would urge you to keep the debate clean.
Is there any evidence that this guy called 911 himself? Any at all?
World Eater, point taken. I was trying to be “fun.” I guess I just have to start using those little {expression here} faces. :dubious:
Besides, I said “foamy” after you told me to “shut the fuck up.” 
Astonishing as it may seem, Mr. B seems to be digging even faster!
Lightingtool, good catch! Changes a lot of things.
Another thing–did he tell anybody or did anybody ask where he was supposed to go with the money after the robbery? I know the poor bastard didn’t have time to get far, but was he headed back to where the bomb had become attached to him? Or someplace completely different?
Have his family and friends been accounted for, are they all safe? It was suggested that if he was indeed forced to do this such a threat would have been the incentive.
The key must be in that letter, which they’re understandably releasing virtually nothing about. I don’t even know if it was handwritten or not, apolitical screed, etc.
Tragic, yes, nobody deserves to die like that, but it’s sure interesting. And the co-worker dying might be a total coincidence, but damn.
I read that as the “he” who pulled the key being the same “someone” who placed the bomb on the victim. It’s not written very clearly, but I think that’s what they were going for.
Oh, right, belladonna, that could be it too. I’ve been looking around and I haven’t seen that statement anywhere else, so it was probably just some bad writing. Never mind…
-I read that as “the guy that put the bomb around the pizza guy’s neck, then pulled the key out and started the timer”.
As in, the bomber stuck it on the dude, then armed it.
'Couple of points:
A) The officers didn’t know how much time was left. Contrary to standard theatrical practice, I somehow doubt the thing had a big red LED readout.
It could have blown in the next ten seconds, or it could have gone off a week from next Tuesday.
Which gets us back to the original binary problem: If it’s fake, no worries. If it’s real, and could go off at any time, then stabilizing the situation was the best they could do. Even having a cop come up and undo the handcuffs does nothing but put more lives at risk.
With the possibility the bomb is real and can go off at any time, if it does go off, it could, depending, either kill the carrier, or any cop/BS officer nearby AND the carrier. The strategy here is to minimize casualties or the possibility of casualties, so that means not sending more (unprepared, unsuited) people back into the blast zone.
B) Allowing the guy to go free, again, just puts more lives at risk.
Say they release him, he says “everybody get back, I’m gonna try to disarm this thing!” and everybody backs up. He then turns tail and runs off into the woods. Oops, we just let the bank robber get away. Sorry.
Or, as most normal people might be, the guy gets increasingly distraught- omigod this thing’s gonna go off!!!- and runs over to a group of cops, begging for help, just about the time it goes off.
Or, he’s running around, looking for help when the bomb squad shows up- so precious time is wasted getting the guy to a clear area, secured and start working on the device.
And finally, C) What if they let him try to tinker with it, and it goes off? Did it go off simply because the timer ran down? Or was it something the carrier did? Maybe he accidentally tripped a booby-trap.
That opens the officers and the department up to charges or at least a civil lawsuit. The family could easily go to court and say if the officers hadn’t let him fool with it, if they’d just waited for the bomb-disarming professionals, he’d still be alive today.
Besides which, the reports say the thing was a collar- can you see your own neck well enough to unwire a bomb, or pick a lock?
Mr. Bs nonsense about the drug OD death is pointless- there’s every liklihood that death is wholly unrelated and only coincidental. Thus discussions of legality of 911 calls and such are subject for a seperate thread.
I’ll agree it’s possible there’s a deeper conspiracy here, that the OD was a partner who offed himself when he saw the plan going wrong, but at this point, that’s not even informed speculation, it’s pure trans-sphincter guessing.
Basically the responding officers did everything they could, just as they should have, and Mr. B’s whine that they didn’t get there fast enough is just that, nothing more than whine. He seems to think that even medium-small cities that have never had problems with bombs before, should still have fully-suited and armored Bomb Squad depots manned 24/7 every six blocks.
Just in case.
“Doesn’t matter. If I call 911 for medical help, then refuse it, I will get a choice: go to jail or go to the hospital. What if the guy were under duress because he got a call from the “mad bomber?” Zoinks!”
I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I used to be an EMT on an ambulance crew. In VA, anyway, an adult has the right to refuse medical treatment regardless of who called 911.
One must consider that Christian Scientists, among others, have religous reasons for not seeking medical attention.
If an adult says no to medical treatment and refuses to listen to reason, all an EMT can do is get a signature on a waiver and wait for the DOA call.
Actually, Tapioca told you to shut the fuck up.
World Eater, sorry sorry sorry. I messed up. I meant to put the…thing on the…thing.
There’s a larger pictures of the collar on cnn - pretty darned complex looking, rather like a handcuff for the neck. I suppose they could have tried to cut it off with a torch - eek.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/09/02/pizza.bomb/index.html
Well hopefully this thread has open your mind a bit.
opened
Mr. B, do you actually believe the nonsense you’re asserting in this thread, or are you playing devil’s advocate for the sake of the argument? From an objective standpoint, your counterpoint nitpicking has caused a lot of details to be brought into the light, but subjectively, you’re coming off as a loon.
Ouch. That’s some hardware.
I have no idea what it is- or was- but it looks a lot like a scaled-up handcuff loop, which makes sense in that whoever the bomber was, they’d want to the thing to be easy and fast to attach. IE, click-snap done, and not a lot of buckles and whatnot.
One can probably assume the bomber was holding a gun on the pizza guy- how else would you convince him to allow this thing to be attached?- so it would have to be something that can be put on one-handed, and quickly. A handcuff-type loop would be one solution. (I’ll refrain from saying clever solution.)
The steel bar construction also means the average bolt-cutter won’t easily work- not without some effort anyway- so that means pneumatics or hydraulics (a cut-off type grinding wheel, with water as a coolant, or something like a Jaws of life.)
A torch, for obvious reasons, probably would not have been employed.
Also note the bottom pic is upside down- turn it over, and it’s easier to recognize that it’s a steel box, held together with screws, covering what looks like a three-dial combination lock.
I couldn’t say what the other four holes are- buttons? Key switches? Maybe there was a four-prong “key” in there that rendered it safe, which is what the guy pulled out to “arm” it.
It seems odd that the bomber would go through that much effort for what’s really a pretty small payoff. Don’t most banks limit what each teller has on hand to only a thou or two? So the crook- no matter what weapon or bomb he has- can only get a couple grand at best?
Subjectively, that’s putting it mildly. Kudos to people like Monty and World Eater who either had the good sense to hang back or take my argument apart rationally.
It’s amazing how angry people can get, even about a subject that’s not yet seen the light of day. I feel our police system is really fouled up, true, but generally the cops I’ve known are good old guys and gals who want nothing but what’s right and fair. That being said, I also did my bid in the United States Marine Corps (the Prequel) and found myself singing right along in cadence with the “raghead this” and “camel jockey that.” Just like the Marines, cops shops take the man right out of the job and often get him to do some pretty uncharacteristic things.
I think this whole readiness idea under the PATRIOT (I and II) Act is just plain hogwash, but the government would have you believe it’s possible. Everyone roundly disputed my ideas of outfitting cop cars for contingencies, but no one claimed to actually be doing anything about these preposterous ideas. Maybe this PATRIOT stuff will die off, right?
Doc, presumably you’re the same fellow who posts over at Home Shop Machinist’s board, with that moniker? I think you’ll agree with me in thinking that’s most likely some kind of off-the-shelf piece of hardware that’s been modified for this nefarious purpose. I’m betting that it’s some kind of quick grab pipe/tubing clamp that’s been worked over, though, come to think of it, it looks very similar to the kinds of clamps one sees holding missiles in their launcher. If that be the case, then this guy should be fairly easy to track down. Can’t be too many people in the area with access to that kind of stuff.
If it is entirely scratch built, then the guy who did it, spent a good deal of time working on it. Way too much time, IMHO, for the small payout he would have gotten.
Doc and Tuckerfan, would it not follow that the bomb-maker likely tried this gadget out before he used it on a man? If I were John Law, I’d be snooping around in the woods to try and find any recently departed dogs. Also, regarding the action of the explosive charge, is it possible this was intended as a decapitation device?
I agree, likely a very small payout for the effort. I’m getting a weird Seven-type vibe here. What’s in the fuckin’ box!?