2y ago

75 cops, 6½ hours of gunfire, for an eviction in Pittsburgh

www.nbcnews.com

75 Pittsburgh officers on leave after hourslong shootout and standoff during eviction attempt

    Details are still scant, but...

“I mean, he had a lot of ammunition in that house, and certainly ... all of us were strapped, you know, with ammunition, and we were calling for additional ammunition,” Kraus said. “Like I said, we tried to give him every opportunity to come out.”

    ...I'll go way out on a limb and suggest that this could've been handled better.

U.S. News @beehaw.org

BitOneZero @beehaw.org

2y ago

75 Pittsburgh officers on leave after firing their weapons during hourslong standoff at eviction attempt

www.nbcnews.com /news/us-news/75-pittsburgh-officers-leave-hourslong-shootout-standoff-suspect-rcna101668

142 comments

Does anyone else see that people having enough ammunition at home to keep up over six hours of gun fire is the real problem here?
- You're right; the cops should have less ammo.
  
  Cops shouldn't require any ammo for 99.9% of their jobs.
- The Second Amendment exists precisely so you can get in six hour stand offs with cops- James Madison
  
  James Madison? Who the fuck is that? The second amendment is a God given right.
- No. I see a man being forced out of his home at gunpoint as the problem here.
  
  My problem is that some greedy guy told cops to solve his dangerous problem for him at their own risk
- Guy doesn't have enough money for rent
  Guy owns enough guns and ammunition to keep the police in standoff for 6½ hours
  ...
  But housing price was the issue? 🤔
  
  How long was he collecting ammunition? Did he buy a box on payday once in a while for a few years, or did he go out to Walmart and buy everything he used?
  Everyone seems to assume that this guy found out he'd be evicted and he immediately went and bought a rifle and 20,000 rounds of ammunition that evening. Bullets don't go bad, he probably bought them over a few years.
  
  Hosting pricing is an issue, but you've got a point. Maybe not in this case.
  There's a whole cavalcade of other issues here.
  
  Here's what I read - I do not have the source but it was on a local Pittsburgh news site IIRC. He wasn't paying rent. House was his deceased brother's house which he bought in 1998 - not sure if shooter had inherited it or not, but there was something in excess of 15K owed for back taxes on it. An LLC paid the taxes on it and BOOM its their house - he filed paperwork with the state that they were scammers and he was contesting what he saw as an someone stealing his house. The LLC filed to have him evicted. Ultimately he made a bad decision to use a weapon and not a lawyer but he was ex-military and may have seen this as the last straw.
  
  Quick google search: Average rent in Pittsburgh: $1,531. Cost per bullet: $0.08 to $3 per shot depending on size. Number of bullets shot: Well, lets assume 30/minute, as that is what I found on google as the fastest you can shoot an non-automatic (I don't know what kind of gun he used or if he was perpetually shooting, this is just for math). So the cost of doing 30 shot/minute for 6.5 hours would be from $936 to $35,100. More for semi-automatic, less for shooting less.
  So... probably shot a month's rent worth of bullets in those 6.5 hours. Others could get you closer, google isn't what it use to be.
  
  I read it wasn't a rent dispute but that someone bought the property because he wasn't paying taxes. Searchig this thread for a source, though.
- No, it isn’t a problem. Just because a car collector has 100 cars and commits a crime with one of them doesn’t make everyone else who enjoys collecting cars a criminal.
- Can you get that boot any further down your throat?
- Also the eviction, and the cop response.
- MUUUURICA FUCK YEAH!!!
- How can you be so dense that you're take away is arm up!
  Didn't help this guy, didn't help the guy in Utah, won't help you.
I get that he fired first ( the eviction situation is a whole other bag of nuts) but couldn't 5 police officers with some tear gas have fixed this in 30 minutes with a lot less gunfire?
The guy was losing his home and he was scared. We don't know what his mental state was and we don't know how he came in to possession of so much fire power so I'm not going to assume he bought guns instead of paying his rent- I'm just going to assume that 75 officers and 6.5 hours of gunfire was obviously not the best way out of this situation.
- Only if they were trained worth a damn and didn't have the biggest chip on their shoulders imaginable outside of an evangelical church.
- couldn’t 5 police officers with some tear gas have fixed this in 30 minutes with a lot less gunfire?
  I've got a theory that we'll never see investigated, and that's that dude is responsible for probably about the first ten shots and the rest of this "standoff" was police shooting in response to hearing their own gunfire.
- Nope, we hate lil' wussies with feelings and we love shooting people in the fucking face multiple times.
  
  Touché. Can't have none of those feelings making the country weak.
- Saying the guy was "losing his home and scared" is giving him far too much credit. He's a sovereign citizen wackjob with an extensive criminal record, he's not a poor downtrodden guy who snapped when he got kicked out.
  
  Being poor and downtrodden is likely what lead him to be in that state in the first place. Someone can be a "whackjob" and still get the benefit of the doubt- especially when it comes to police brutality. We all know they'll look for any excuse to kill. That's why they're police.
- Yes, they are getting cop vacation because this was the worst possible wsh to deal with the situation.
- SWAT was on scene not long into the shootout
Another responsible gun owner.
This is why I laugh when the ammmosexuals claims their arsenal protects them.
- The insane number of cops here is due to the offices wanting to get in on shooting at someone, not any meaningful need to have 75 officers respond.
  
  75 police for 6 hours and still lost. Wasted all his money, all his ammo, threw away his life and for what?
  We don't live in an anarchist state. There are rules and norms we need to follow if we're going to live in a peaceful society and your takeover fantasy is dangerous and unrealistic.
  
  Able to hold off the cops for 6 hours, but worse than that, everyone in the country saw someone hold off the cops for 6 hours. And this is after everyone watched the cops stand around afraid to save children from a shooter. Maybe the pigs should work on some training, so they aren't scared, or unable to get one person out of a house.
  
  He's dead now. He injured 0 police.
  
  Try that and see how it goes. See if the military doesn't get involved quickly.
- Thank you for the word "Ammosexuals". I LOVE it. It perfectly describes this kind of "people".
- The cops happily escalated this situation.
...I'll go way out on a limb and suggest that this could've been handled better.
Yeah, I mean, they could stop evicting people and sentencing them to homelessness.
That would be a start and would have avoided this entire thing.
- I mean the guy could have not spent all his money on guns and ammo and pay rent?
  Where are guns on Maslow's hierarchy of needs do you reckon?
  
  Ammo costs far less than rent and lasts far longer then just a month when purchased.
  
  Apparently if you're sufficiently against property rights, they're vital.
  
  Buying guns is better praxis than paying rent.
- People should be allowed to occupy and damage any property they've set foot on once, not matter how expensive
  
  People should have a home if the action here were to provide another housing option, then this wouldn't have happened. Also seems the person likely had a traumatic reason for being evicted and needed help.
  
  Dude, shut the fuck up.
  I hope you get to be in this dude's situation one day and you have to take your homelessness with a please and thank you, sir, may I have another.
  
  We need to throw people on the streets otherwise we risk damage to private property!
- Agreed, but this is probably not the case to make the argument with. If someone has the guns and ammo to fight off police enforcing property owner rights (something they would be way more gung ho about than stopping a school shooter it seems) for six hours, they have the money to pay for rent.
  
  No one should need to pay rent.
Why didn't the cops just leave and then surprise arrest him two days later when he leaves for some groceries or something?
Obviously he wasn't a flight risk since he was literally in trouble for not wanting to leave. Did he have a hostage or something? Why was it time sensitive to arrest him that very day?
- Because they wanted to murder him
  
  'hey, why didn't police leave the guy alone during his illegal activities for some more days after letting him know that police is now involved and after noticing the high capability and willingness to use lethal force to sustain said illegal activities?' 'because they are all eeeeevilllll'
  
  "we gave gim every opportunity to come out" (as he looks out the window to 6 dozen fucking police officers)
- The property owner has a right to use their property without that guy being there.
  An eviction is a court order. The sheriff's office is usually required to evict. Each states laws are worded a little different.
Alternate phrasing: Single man takes on 75 cops for 6 straight hours.
End qualified immunity. They likely damaged other people's property and deprived they of their rights while endangering them.
- Actually not really, they are a gang, and act like a gang. Read up on the nonsense the NYPD were doing with NYC mayor deBlasio. Can't fix the corruption - I don't really have a good solution other than to tear out the police department root and stem, and rebuild from nothing.
- It would be better to tether them somewhat than rule over them as a monarch.
Moorish sovereign citizens these days, they think they own the place
"We were aware of the actor's disdain for government when we went to serve the eviction notice which is why we ~~had extra deputies on the detail~~ came prepared to escalate this neighborhood into a warzone for shits and giggles," Manko said in an emailed statement Friday.
I don't know what you all are moaning about, sure, 75 cops is quite a lot, but if you as a cop is there to simply deliver the message and get shot at, do you think the appropriate response is to go: "Oh hell, I'll just go tell the -ACTUAL- owner of the house that it's this guy's house now." And just leave after somebody tried to murder you?
Sure the economy and the socio-economic environment is what's caused this to happen, that's the real disease, but even then you sometimes need to treat the symptoms. This is one of the symptoms. Also a 6.5 hour shootout doesn't nessicarily mean a high rate if fire, he might aswell just be looking out the window and throw a pistol round out once every 10 minutes. That's 39 bullets or just around 2.5 pistol magazines.
Stop moaning about it.
- It was nonstop gunfire, not just a few rounds here and there.
  Source: I work a block away and heard it as I was on lockdown.
  I think that a better way to have handled this was for a social worker to be there with police and say, off the bat, that he hasn't paid on the property since his brother died and he needs to leave but they're there to help him get into a better situation. Maybe he would have been more open minded to that than heavily armed men trying to break down his door to get him out. At that point you're just cornering a dangerous animal (as all humans can be) into a corner and made him do whatever it took to retain his quality of life. It's a tragedy and failure of the system all around.
  
  I'm glad to stand corrected, merely trying to make the point that until we know for certain people shouldn't assume it was like an active warzone.
  That said, we don't know how it started. They were there to evict somebody that at that point don't have the legal rights to be in that property. They might've knocked the door and explained the situation and ended up getting shot at out of nowhere. Bottom line is he hit his lowest and the reaction was to engage the messengers with lethal force.
  Like I said previously, this is a symptom of a socioeconomic disease that needs to get cured, even as such you still sometimes have to treat the symptoms. He didn't do this because he wanted to, but it's not the landlord's problem to handle either and a social worker wouldn't have stopped him from getting evicted. Worst case scenario that social worker would've gotten shot and killed for telling him he needs to find a new home.
- How's about, tear gas tossed through a window, instead of hours of gunshots?
  
  Absolutely, not knowing the situation however, it might've had to be delivered by a launcher if the door or windows themselves could not be reached on foot.
  I don't know anything about their police, but considering the political climate regarding the "militarization" of the police force it's not entirely impossible they don't have said launchers. As such, safely deploying gas canisters might've been deemed impossible.
- I can't believe your takeaway isn't "the cops fucked up"
Never forget
The man died a hero.
- In no sane sense was the man a 'hero'. He was a dipshit and died a dipshit's death, but it was unnecessary and about 75 cops should be fired.
  
  He shot at cops in defence of his home. Hero. Only sad thing is he missed. ACAB.
Normally I would say wait until he is out for groceries - his local grocer doesn't have a lot of ammunition. Though this guy seems to be the kind of guy to have a horde of food, and I don't think anyone would want him laying suppressive fire on the neighborhood until he runs out.

142 comments