On Waco, Twin Peaks, and Media Perception

When the Baltimore Riots happened after the death of Freddie Gray, I (like many) sat behind a keyboard observing whatever was coming out of the situation, trying to understand it all. I was even invited onto a podcast to speak about it because, for some reason, my opinion on the matter was valued about the subject. I don't understand why, but I said what I wanted to say: the media will eat up every inch of whatever they can get, and it's pretty sickening.

It's one thing to say those words when looking in from the outside. It's another when you are on the inside.

Yesterday, my hometown and current city of residence went through a situation of biker gang violence. The Bandidos and Cossacks (with the Scimitars allied to them) started a shootout with police at the local Twin Peaks (a Hooter's knock-off) on Biker Night. The amount of tension in the city was fairly palpable - we were basically being told to be ready for a war zone by everyone. Over the course of ten hours yesterday, this is what we were hearing:

1. Don't go outside. Stay indoors, as there are bikers coming from all corners of the Earth to retaliate.
2. If you are outside and see a biker of any kind, make sure to report their whereabouts and steer clear of them.
3. Do not allow any bikers into your stores.
4. If you own a firearm, have it available in case of any problems.

These are the types of fear and paranoia being placed upon us. The actual truth of it all? Nowhere near that bad, but many businesses and residents took extra caution. Wal-Mart on New Road closed for the day. That's the biggest thing that possibly happened. Even then, it was a Sunday, so most businesses in town were going to be closed by 6pm or not open at all.

Yes, the scene over at Twin Peaks was violent. It was bloody. Don't let that get twisted.

However, when I hit Facebook and Twitter, the type of shit I was reading was cringe-worthy.

Somehow, our cops were terrible people because of the way they handled the situation? Because they weren't beating someone senseless after arresting them? That this was somehow a form of white privilege? That it was hypocritical of the national dialogue on police brutality and the treatment of suspects?

Well, America, we as a city have news for you: fuck off and shut the door behind ya.

See, here's the thing: our cops did their job, and they did it the best they possibly could. If anything, you'll be hard pressed to find people inside of Waco that are actually mad at the cops about any of this. There were a bunch of dickheads with guns trying to start shit at a local eatery, where innocent civilians were located at the time. The cops talked to management for the last two months, and the eatery ignored it. The D.A. talked to the eatery, and that was ignored. The cops talked to Twin Peaks' HQ, and that was ignored. The cops STILL SHOWED UP on Sunday. Why?

To protect and serve.

It's a thing that the police are SUPPOSED to do, and for the longest time now, we never hear about it. Yesterday, that's exactly what Waco PD did. They shot down nine bikers that wanted to start a gunfight in public. They injured sixteen others. They didn't harm a single civilian in the process. They arrested and detained 192 people in relation to this, including bikers coming from out of town. They didn't discharge any of their weapons until they were fired upon.

What thanks have our police officers gotten?

A national dialogue about how they are hypocritical to the national dialogue. Hashtags like #TwinPeaksShooting and #WacoThugs. Media coverage about white-on-white crime. Commentary on how trashy our city must be for this type of thing to happen again in Waco (remember, we still deal with that Branch Davidian bullshit).

It's one thing when you are on the outside looking in, alright. When you are on the inside and you see what is happening, though... When you know the actual story... When you are living in and around the actual story... Fuck, this shit is sickening, the way our city, our people, and our police are being treated by this nation right now.

Cops did their job. They did it well. The people of Waco commend them. Right now, I'm keeping in close touch with three of my close friends who happen to be members of the Waco PD. They are currently under an Officer Safety Alert because the Cossacks have issued a K.O.S. on anyone in uniform. At some point, I could hear that one of my dear friends was killed, solely because he is wearing a uniform that represents a group who didn't take part in some senseless act of violence that took the life of an innocent man, but rather stopped the murder of other innocents.

Also, it was announced today that the Twin Peaks headquarters have taken away the franchise license for this location. That means that because a fuckhead manager was incapable of doing the right thing, there are going to be 50+ people out of work. I hope those people bounce back quickly and get new jobs fast.

If anyone has questions, I'll field them. Don't be ignorant or stupid in this thread, please. If you don't have questions, that's fine. I just wanted to offer people a perspective of what it's like to be on the inside of the news coverage for once.

Great job, really well written too. Think I can see why you were asked to share your thoughts on that podcast, you've got some good ones.

Just get rid of the guns idiots.

@rebel_scum: Nowhere close to the point of all this, hence my hesitation to actually make a topic about this at all. However, I needed an outlet.

^ same here. I get sick of hearing Americans complain about gun violence when they have a government that does nothing about it. Sorry if I didn't have much interest in discussing media perception.

Baltimore is demographically different from Waco, Texas. To compare the two is naivete at its most dangerous. Our police force has a long LONG legacy of brutality against the majority African American population (with the police force being exclusively white until the late 30s) and racial tension between poor black communities and majority white police force has been, to say the least, a growing problem. Police are treated with distrust and they return the distrust in kind. A Biker gangs in Waco do not outnumber the police, but here in Baltimore the entire black community hates the police force or at the very least does not trust them and they are outnumbered by a conceivable amount.

It's not about who's right; these are just the facts. Fergusson put people on edge even more than they already were. Shit was bound to hit the fan sooner or later. The media is of course playing it's part in trying to spin the Waco violence in to some kind of linked event but to my eyes they're not even comparable.

People want a dragon to slay. And for many, police fit that mold perfectly.

As a small government minded person, I've been working for years (far before any of the recent publicized tragedies) to spread the word about the dangers of police militarization and lack of accountability. Those pleas have always fallen on deaf ears. Now, especially now that people have all too clear examples of those specific problems surfacing, the issues themselves are still not part of the discussion. Fixing systemic problems with how police organizations function isn't sexy. Triumphing over evil (bigoted, sexist, etc.) people is, and that's exactly how this "dialog" has unfolded.

There was some kind of dumb march here in Philly related somehow to Freddy Gray. There was a person I saw there proudly waving a sign saying, "Abolish the Police". Aside from how ludicrously abstract that point is, it kind of sums this all up. "Cops are bad" is an easy banner to fly. Doubly so when you can pepper it with a pinch of racism. But it does absolutely nothing to actually help anyone or change anything.

There are a lot of things I don't like about the structure that police in the US work under, but that is entirely separate from the humans doing that incredibly difficult job. And when the power police have is abused, I guarantee that the people who feel most afraid and disappointed are other cops themselves.

Exactly my point, Getz. Don't get me wrong - we have gang issues here, just like you'll find in any city with 300k+ people. Sureno, Norteno, AB, and Bloods/Crips all have stakes somewhere in this town, and projects exist here. However, on the scale of something as large as Baltimore? Not even close by comparison. So you are right: this is not even comparable to something like Baltimore, Ferguson, etc.

What I'm saying is that media perception is something I've only ever really witnessed and not experienced. Sure, I'm from the city that dealt with the Branch Davidian compound. I was 11 at the time, and the internet wasn't really a thing that everyone had in their pocket. Shit, we still had to get film processed if we wanted pictures, ya know? Therefore, this is something new to deal with. When looking on the outside and going "that's a fucked-up situation they are dealing with there, etc, etc," it's one thing. When you are in a city where the fucked-up situation is happening, it's drastically different. It puts a new perspective on the idea of making any kind of comment on shit that happens elsewhere. You always know in the back of your head that you don't know everything about it, but you never genuinely realize it until it happens to your city. That's what I've taken away from it at least.

However, I will say that just looking at the commentary that PEOPLE have given over Twitter is beyond ridiculous, trying to throw our police under the bus because...they did their jobs properly? They want to say it's because "the criminals were white," buuuut that's not it at all. It's just...they did their jobs properly. End of story. That's it. Nothing else, ya know?

Also, to give an idea, Waco is about 54% Causcasian, then about 25% Latino and 25% Black. Our projects and ghetto still have distrust with the cops as well. That's a common thread among cities in general. We just don't have that kind of police brutality...at least, not that I know of.

I get sick of non-Americans speaking about these issues from complete ignorance, like "Oh it's so easy just take away their guns!" There is more than one gun per person in America right now. Our Constitution, which is a very important document to many people here, gives us the right to arm ourselves. Its right up there with the freedom to hold democratic elections and the right to express our opinions. Many right wing groups (not just the radical ones either) see this right as insurance against tyranny by the government. If this right were to be taken away, how do you think they would react?

Over 300 million guns, many of them unregistered and therefore impossible to track down... What exactly do you suggest we do about that?

@jakob187: You're a better man than most for coming to that realization. Everyone wants to run their mouth like they know all the answers because they don't have to live through the bullshit. It's always good to step back and say to yourself "I actually don't know shit, and I could stand to learn more" but instead people choose the easy route of ignorant pedagogy.

Still not the point of this thread. That's something for another place and time, gentlemen. This thread is about the idea of media perception, the way that social media can bend the truth, and the experience of dealing with that.

Maybe let people have those guns, while we make strides to improve education, decriminalize drugs and prostitution, and try to increase the standard of living for the poorest in the country? And, you know, watch gun crime steadily decrease like it has already been for decades (just like it was already decreasing in Australia before 1996).

Might be interesting to know how other countries news covered it. Speaking as an extreme outsider who's only seen BBC news coverage of this event (as well as reading this blog), I'm glad to say that none of those anti-police sentiments made it into mainline British news reporting (as far as I know).

Interstingly, there is a feature the BBC website does called "BBC trending" which reports on social media chatter (for reasons I can't understand - social media chatter seems to be the worst place to turn if you want informed opinions). There is a story there talking about "some civil rights activists" comparing the situation in Waco to that in Ferguson. It doesn't pass any judgement on the tweets, just reports them - though it doesn't mention any social media users who disagree (unusual for the BBC, which is normally very much about balance and bending-over-backwards to show both sides of an argument).

But yeah - as @jakob187 pointed out, criticism almost complaining that the policing wasn't brutal doesn't seem to make any sense at all. Also, I would assume riot police watching a large protest will be using very different "tactics", for want of a better word, to firearms police being called to a gunfight. Are the situations really that comparable?

America isn't Australia.

Sorry, I think your thread was just interneted. I'm guessing a Hitler reference pops up in the next 5 comments.

But I do like your take on things. I think Twitter should be destroyed myself. The sad thing is many people agree with me but just can't find it in themselves to delete their own accounts.

Yeah, I'm not American and even I get a little annoyed at the overly simplistic cries of "Just get rid of the guns! How hard can that be??" from a lot of people (and I've been guilty of it in the past myself). When my country banned handguns in 97 no one bat an eyelid, because guns aren't as deeply ingrained in UK culture as they are in American culture for a start. That and Americas problem with violence seems to be waaaay more complicated than the amount of guns in the country, and you couldn't get rid of all the guns even if you tried. People tend to look at the superficial reasons behind things with out looking at the roots. I think gun control is a positive thing, but it's not some magic solution to a problem that is certainly bigger than guns.

Wait..so all the bikers were killed by police? None of the bikers killed each other? That's very different to all the news reports i've read in the UK. Were any police shot?

OP i'm not sure what it is you are saying that the media are doing wrong apart from being sensationalist...and that doesn't seem to be a new criticism when it comes to the media, especially in the US. Are people saying that the cops only did anything because it was white criminals? Or that the cops are racist because they didn't stomp all the suspects the way they would have done if they were black (killing 9 and wounding 16 seems to be quite severe enough, especially if there were no casualities anywhere else)....

...can you elaborate on exactly what the conversation seems to be over there?

To an outside it just seems like something out of a crazy movie....it just seems insane that a situation was ever allowed to get a point where a small war errupts in a city centre?

Why are criminal gangs allowed to have regular meet-ups in bars? I get the it's the consitution and free assembly etc, but if the Crips and the Bloods wanted to have a regular get together and sort out at a bar in Hollywood you feel they wouldn't even be able to park their cars, let alone get out and start knocking heads...

...like I say it seems bizzare beyond words that a situation like this was allowed to happen, whose fault that is, I don't know. OP I hope your friends are OK though..

The media, and similar outlets, (like Social media,) just serves to reinforce bias in these situations. the very nature of the coverage being presented is already polarizing, but then inserting a political stance on the subject, (white privlage, police brutality, ect.) detracts from the actual story, at least in the case of Waco because that's obviously not really what happened. Other situations are of course different but this sort of debate is what's popular right now; so of course when the media smells some shit like this they'll jump on it. Then people will use that as a justification to restart they're arguments and assert they're point.

I've never been personally involved in a community wide violent crisis like any of the examples given but I have seen assumption and bias inform perception on a situation.

A few months ago I fucked up my schools bulldog mascot statue with a sledge hammer. I did it because the football team decided to dress it up as a "chief" when our rival school the "Lake Central Indians" faced us in a football playoff I'm half Cherokee on my fathers side and took deep issue with this, so I vandalized it and scralled a message in spray paint. Rash judgment? Absolutely, but I was upset and the school administration basically told me it was tradition when I raised issue. Now what comes next is pretty funny. Firstly, someone from the rival school claimed responsibility over Facebook, posting pictures of himself burning our schools flag and talking mad shit. Next, the media began to cover it as "school rivalry gone bad!" So then everyone and their grandma had an opinion and began talking shit about each other's town and school on social media for about a week. Retaliations happened in the form of spray paint and toilet paper. The original message was completely lost and it just became, school rivalry.

I guess my point is, given even the slightest of evidence people will invariably jump to conclusions and take sides. The media never has all or even any of the information avalible most times and is just trying to capitalize on the hot topic of the day. People want to be right and they want to feel like they're winning so they'll use anything they can to accomplish that. most won't do actual research on something but because of how easy it is to just talk shit on Twitter they'll defiantly do that. Instant gratification.

So step back and take a broad look at things before passing judgement. There's always more to a story than the obvious. That's my advice.

@leebmx: I have no heard either way if the bikers were killed by fire from one another, or from officers. Officers were already on the scene of the gathering in hopes of preventing or stifling any violence that would occur.

No police were hurt and right now it seems those hurt or killed were only bikers.

This is a pretty strange occurrence. Not far from my town there is a huge gathering of motorcycle enthusiasts but almost always it's super peaceful (albeit loud as shit). In this case these were known groups with known rivalries but that doesn't take away their rights to gather and assemble. Often times these events, ones I've heard of, go off without a hitch or with small incidents. This just seems like a very strange occurrence and not indicative of the overall culture on a day to day basis.

This was my takeaway from the whole ordeal too. It comes off as extremely silly to me that a gang can ride single file into a town with everyone knowing full well what's about to happen to zero resistance. Don't think it's much of a coincidence that this gang just happens to made up of middle age white guys.

Other than that, and I say this purely as someone with the liberty of looking from the outside, the whole thing seems just cartoonish in its ridiculousness. I can't help but imagine the whole thing being started by Pee Wee Herman.

Take this with a grain of salt, I saw this one guy on youtube during one of those wonderful riots somewhere, talking how he worked at a big named news TV show(he is now an independent) where he would sit in a room with about 100 monitors(during such an event) and 1 one guy would make the decision on what should be shown. Thats what the whole conversation was about, 1 guy was basically telling you, the american public on what you should be watching and how you should feel. His example at this riot was how Black people hate Jesse Jackson and Al so much they are constantly chanting "Fuck You" to them and throwing things when they are talking, but its never discussed or shown on mainstream TV.

Think about that one person is making that decision, not a democratic, collective, or majority...just one person. Thats scary, just like that guy said and the reason he bolted.

Dont matter to me, its all about money and power and it will never change. Ever.

Are you really going to trust regular news outlets to give you facts and not straight-up propaganda sensationalist crap that incites ethnicities, political groups and all sorts of demographics to attack each other to distract them from the reptilian menace pulling the strings?

Furthermore, while regular media is controllable (TV, radio, news websites), social media is it's own thing entirely. Internet lynch-mobs are virtually unstoppable once the ball gets rolling and everybody is going to find their own convenient truths and settle on them with like-minded people. Attacking the chaos that is social media is like defying human pack instinct itself. Unless some sort of AI comes along to control the flow of information, it's going to be a problem for a while.

@milkman: Yeah it just seems the sort of thing that a reasonably well ordered society should be able to see coming and put a stop to before hundereds of people are pointing weapons at each other in a car park. It doesn't make any sense...

I live in Hewtt, TX and I completely agree with you man.

Way to be as ignorant as some of us Americans are of other countries, dude.

Countries other than America have firearms widely available - modern, industrialized, Western countries. Very few have abolished their ownership and a handful even have more hands-free laws than any of the fifty states. It is not as simple as gun ownership, or restricting who can have what, or making scary black weapons illegal. It's an incredibly complicated socioeconomic and political issue, made in certain instances even more complicated than in other countries by the existence of the Second Amendment.

People have been trying to tackle this issue for decades with a variety of approaches, some of which have been heavy-handed, large-government restrictions and policies, some more akin to the policies @joshwent brought up (which, full disclosure, are the methods I prefer). Their efficacy has varied as widely as possible, given the breadth, depth and complexity of the issue at hand.

TL;DR It's complicated. For everyone.

First off I am glad you are safe; that's a fucked up situation. Even if you don't live close to that restaurant, it can fuck with your sense of security.

Also I don't think people are saying the police of Waco are bad or did a bad job. People were reacting over images of police officers detaining groups of gang members it what appears to be a peaceful way. They see a big group of white gang members peacefully grouped up behind armed police officers and contrast that with the hundreds of images from the various riots across the US this year where black men, women, and protesters of all races are being beaten, pepper sprayed or have lots of guns pointed at them. It's just a quick reaction at images that don't tell the whole story. The image doesn't get across that police officers at that scene were shot at and also killed/wounded a number of the gang members who died that day while they(the police) were defending themselves. People are simply over reacting and are drawing a connection that isn't there. With that said though, I do understand where that reaction is coming from. There is a problem in our police system, especially when it comes to handling particular members of our society, but that problem is in no way related to what happened in Waco.

Right, but until an actual crime is you know actually committed one can only assume even if those assumptions are based in great facts. The police can't really act with force until someone breaks the law.

Glad you're safe duder. That sounded like a rough and scary day.

The corporate media is a real bitch sometimes. It's interesting to hear your thoughts on how social media can bend the (or make their own) truth too.

Thanks for the write up Jacob.

.

I kind of get what you are saying but it seems strange to me that two (or three) criminal gangs are allowed to congregate, armed to the teeth, in a public area and everyone is so caught by surprise at what happens next that the only way to solve things is to end the lives of 9 people.

It is literally like something out of the wild west. Not a developed society. It just seems that everyone throws their hands up and says there's nothing they can do cause people got rights, and then as soon as things get out of hand, because that's what happens if you let gangs of armed criminals congregate in public, they just open up till the car park's full of bodies.

There's a failing there somewhere, because this was obviously a situation with potential for problems but the only solution seems to be wait for trouble to start and then shoot everyone...

...just to clarify i'm not having a go at the police that were there, but something has gone wrong...

@finaldasa: Isn't there a large difference between "large groups of bikers" and "biker gangs"?

@brendan: For sure. But often times the large group of bikers are just assumed to be biker gangs, or something equivalent. I was trying to point out that a large group of bikers isn't necessarily a scary or dangerous thing in the US.

You got it backwards. People aren't complaining the police weren't brutal. They're complaining that cops can handle this situation when it's majority white with care and reason while they can't do the same when the parties involved are black. That's not a criticism of the police force in Twin Peaks. It's a criticism of cops across the nation.

Like when people point out cases where white spree killers are taken into custody while armed with assault rifles while unarmed black men are killed because they're "scary". It's not about wanting the cops to kill the spree killer it's about wanting the cops to take the unarmed black men into custody without killing them.

I haven't followed up much on the Waco incident, but it sounds like another case of the media cherry-picking parts of the story to create a narrative which skews the story one way or another to advance an agenda. And all social media does is amplify the two extremes until we're all fighting with each other over the internet. It's nothing new and has been going on since media was invented, but lately the police have been in the forefront with the conflicts in Baltimore, Ferguson, etc. I suspect there's some middle ground between the "fuck the police" narrative and the "fuck the protestors/rioters" narrative where the truth actually lies. And then you add the race card to that and this whole country turns into a confused mess.

The latest report had 9 killed (all bikers), 170 arrested. With the possibliity of more bikers from out-of-state on there way down to Texas.

@leebmx: You basically nailed it all on the head. Just look up #TwinPeaksShooting or #WacoThugs on Twitter and you can put 2 and 2 together. From my PD buddies, all of the bikers were taken out by cops, and no cops or civilians injured in the whole thing. Remember that this is Texas, and we like our guns...so we're pretty damn good at shooting those things.

@b_philip: Howdy to you, good sir! Not that far out. Don't go to Epix Gaming Center. Only come to Lansharx. = D

To be fair: I used to live in Austin so I have a bunch of friends who still live there. A couple were on I-35 (35 North goes from Austin to Waco) yesterday and said (before the news of the shootout had traveled) that "the highway looked like a Sons of Anarchy episode" because there were so many bikers being pulled over.