I was angry and disgusted to read that a member of a church security team called in a false report, apparently in an attempt to make himself look like a hero.
According to the Burnet County Sheriff's Office, a thorough investigation revealed that details of the incident were significantly "fabricated."
Court documents say 45-year-old Jacob Wayne Tarver, a safety team member at the Church at the Epicenter, recklessly fired three shots at a home and pond near the church, then lied to law enforcement about the incident.
Tarver allegedly admitted to police that "he made up the story" about someone walking near the church and firing "warning shots" to scare them away. According to the affidavit, Tarver said he made up the story to "embellish" what he did and lied to authorities at the scene, during a walkthrough investigation and during his polygraph interview.
The investigation determined there were no hostile actions taken or directed at the church by anyone, and no weapons were displayed toward the church safety member. The congregation's safety was also never in jeopardy, according to authorities.
Tarver told authorities he was "embarrassed" for not telling the truth. He was then arrested and charged with misdemeanor false report to induce an emergency response, felony tampering or fabricating physical evidence and felony deadly conduct.
There's more at the link.
In today's climate of suspicion and xenophobia, such false claims might have led to "retaliation" against people of Muslim or Arab appearance. We've already seen that happen in this country. Even more tragically, some of the retaliators don't bother to make sure of their targets, such as the Sikh who was murdered on suspicion of being a Muslim (he wasn't).
The perpetrator has, of course, destroyed his own trustworthiness by his false claims. Even worse, that stigma will carry over to his family. If he has kids at school, their classmates will taunt them (at the very least), and that may deteriorate into open bullying and rejection. His church will no longer trust him with any position of authority (and it should not), even though it may forgive him.
Such false claims also "poison the well" for future real incidents of terrorism or vandalism. Investigating or responding officers now have to take into account the possibility that the report(s) is/are false. If they see something suspicious, they can't simply react to it without first confirming that it is suspicious - not without risking subsequent accusations of negligence or carelessness. That may put their lives at risk in a real situation.
All that because one man couldn't resist the temptation to play the hero. Did he never read Aesop's Fables as a kid, particularly the one about the boy who cried "Wolf!"?
Peter
8 comments:
"Felony Deadly Conduct"? I assume that's for discharging a firearm even when nobody is hurt or injured....
The equivalent of Article 15 (or, in the USN, General Article): if they can't find anything else to hammer you with....
--Tennessee Budd
Unless this was the result of a psychotic episode, (which I doubt) I wonder how he made it onto the security team.
Either he was very good at practicing deceit, or the leaders did not vet the team members.
I will go with the latter. Congregations accept people on their word. That is how pedophiles and other deviants slip into the body A lack of discernment.
91.13 in aviation. Careless and reckless. When nothing else sticks, those nebulously defined terms will. Sometimes to cook your goose but good, based on how bad some FAA chucklehead wants your hide.
Some people, in fact, a helluva lot of people should never be allowed anywhere near guns. I say that as someone who owns over a dozen firearms, and I strongly believe in the right to keep and bear arms.
I realise that view may not sit well with a lot of people, but when you have a man who's clearly in the category of "Irresponsible, self aggrandising Munchausen-by-proxy sufferer" do you think he should be allowed to possess a self loading rifle? Or any rifle?
As I underatand things in the US (I'm Australian) felons forego their right to bear arms. This clown should be put in that box after firing three round from a high powered rifle at someone's home while standing outside a church for no damn reason at all other than boosting his ego.
"In today's climate of suspicion and xenophobia, such false claims might have led to "retaliation" against people of Muslim or Arab appearance. We've already seen that happen in this country. "
There is no "climate of xenophobia" and I can't believe you even wrote those words. Given the number of incidents perpetrated by Muslims both in the US and around the world, given the gangs infiltrating our country and terrorizing the American people, given the millions flooding across the borders to commit crimes and drive up the cost of everything, xenophobia, an irrational fear of foreigners, is not even close to being the right word. Not wanting your country to be taken over and your culture destroyed by foreigners is not xenophobia. And the "retaliation" of which you speak? They've been talking this up ever since a bunch of Muslims attacked the United States in 2001 and so far, not much sign of it. A few isolated incidents and that's about it. If there was such a wave of retaliation, why do we have to go back to 2001 to find an example?
I get the uncomfortable feeling about some people having guns. When I got my CCW (Concealed Carry Weapon) license, there were some chuckle heads in the class I took that were total idiots and I wouldn't want to be around them and guns. However, I still would not have restrictive gun laws with tight regulation for purchases. Honestly I think we should scrap pretty much 100% of what we have in restrictions on purchasing, ownership and types of weapons.
Regardless if hey make you feel better being in place, they make no fundamental difference in reality to make you safer. Actually they make people significantly less safe in many situations in reality. Gun free zones such as schools, public places, etc.. just mean that if someone starts shooting people or stabbing them that likely it will be a while before someone can stop them. Pretty much every modern school shooting ends up with the police sitting outside listening to the shooter killing kids while the figure out what to do. On the other hand we have had several instances (more than several) where an armed citizen put a stop to a would be mass shooter in seconds to minutes after they started shooting people because they were right there.
Pretty much every school shooting would have been 90% less severe if there had been armed teachers in the building. I know of at least 2 of them where teachers sheltered their students with their bodies and died with the students, both cases that come to mind they were gun owners and or concealed license carries that if they had been armed there was a high likely hood that shooter would have been killed or wounded right there, derailing their rampage.
Laws don't stop people with bad intentions from killing other people with guns, knives, cars, trucks, poison etc...
35 years ago when in the military I could have gotten all kinds of weapons up to fully automatic of the back of the truck for less than the retail price in the store. One of those know a guy who knows a guy situations. I didn't go there as I had no interest in owning stolen weapons or ones that were very illegal types. My point being that I who was straight as a board about following the law and known for that proclivity and wasn't hanging out with questionable sorts still had easy access to purchasing very questionable guns. That tells me that what I knew about was just the tip of the iceberg and that it's easy to source stuff through back channels without following the law. For the most part people that are not going to break the law buy that stuff lawfully and those that are not, are going to buy it on the black market or steal it. It's the reality.
with well over 300 million citizens and 20 or 30 million illegals in the country, other than high density areas such as cities with gangs, we have remarkably low gun deaths/shootings. I'm not going to say it doesn't happen and that it isn't a tragedy every time but I contrast it with our anti gun governments statistics that citizens using their weapons defend them selves from violence from a minimum of 500,000 times a year to more than 2 million times a year. This is according to our CDC. I was shocked that they had the integrity to actually publish that study. The number of bad incidents vs the number of self defense ones are massively disproportionate in favor of self defense and I would bet that some of the bad incidents counted were actually self defense situations. Reporting from state to state is very different and the federal government has changed how they record stuff several times to make it seem worse in the last 20 years.
Sigh normally I stay silent on this shit as it really makes no never mind what I think and I know I'm not going to convince anyone that isn't already convinced. So just take it for a bit of an old man's dislike of emotion based lawfare.
Yeah, that hit like "Shots fired on church property!...won't someone think of the Muslims and other minorities!?" Or "Shots fired on church grounds... Muslims hardest hit!"
Xenophobia? Bah. As with "homophobia", It's not fear, it's disgust, and rational desire to protect your family and people.
Diversity+proximity=war. -a distillation of millennia of history.
This jackass should've been flogged, but I couldn't be less worried about the "consequences" for minorities. I don't like it, if it had happened, but it didn't, and worrying about the possibility is far, far down my list of priorities.
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