(5-20-10) BREAKING: Shootout in West Memphis, AR -- Two officers killed

[Suzan]

UPDATE: Two West Memphis Cops Killed, Including Officer Brandon Paudert, Chief Bob Paudert's Son

West Memphis, AR - Two West Memphis police officers have been shot and killed after a shootout during a traffic stop.

The fallen officers have been identified as Officer Brandon Paudert, son of Police Chief Bob Paudert, and Officer Bill Evans.

Brandon Paudert died at the scene. Evans was rushed to Crittenden Regional Hospital where he later died.

The shootout started during a traffic stop near the Huddle House on Airport Road.

A second shootout erupted at the Walmart in West Memphis. A white van, possibly used in the first shooting, was seen with shot out windows. Sources tell us the two suspects inside the van were killed.

We have several crews in West Memphis. Stay with Eyewitness News and myeyewitnessnews.com for more information.

http://www.myeyewitnessnews.com/news/local/story/UPDATE-Two-West-Memphis-Cops-Killed-Including/jmDh6WCTukG6g84y5Il7OA.cspxs

[LucyTN]

www.wreg.com

News and a tape will be on in about five minutes.

[foxyladi]

so sad about the officers.prayers for the families

[Suzan]

www.wreg.com

News and a tape will be on in about five minutes.
Thanks, Lucy. I watched the tape. They really don't know anything yet, including the identity of the suspects, who were both shot and killed.

[LucyTN]

Two sheriff's deputies were also shot and are in The Med in Memphis. I heard a while ago that one is serious but stable and the other is critical. I also heard on one tv channel that Officer Evans was Chief Paudert's nephew. Don't know if any of this is true since a lot of false information seems to circulate here.

[Laura Cereta]

2 Arkansas Police Officers Fatally Shot, 2 Suspects Killed (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/05/20/son-arkansas-police-chief-shot-dead-traffic-stop/?test=latestnews)


Two police officers doing anti-drug work were fatally shot by two men with AK-47s along a busy Arkansas interstate on Thursday, and the suspects later died in a shootout that injured the local sheriff and a deputy in a crowded Walmart parking lot, authorities said.

Officers pulled over a white minivan with Ohio license plates while "running drug interdiction" on Interstate 40 in east Arkansas, said West Memphis Police Inspector Bert Shelton. Two men got out of the van with the assault rifles and opened fire on the officers, he said.

Sgt. Brandon Paudert, 39, the son of West Memphis' police chief, died at the scene and Officer Bill Evans, 38, died at a hospital, authorities said. Evans made the initial stop, and Paudert arrived moments later as backup, Assistant Police Chief Mike Allen said late Thursday.

"In what was probably only a few minutes, Officer Evans was shoved to the ground and the men in the minivan started shooting at both officers," Allen said. Investigators believe the van then sped away, he said.

Traffic stopped as authorities searched vehicles on Interstate 40 looking for the suspects, who were spotted about 90 minutes later in the parking lot of a nearby Walmart, officials said.

Sounds like the officers were pulling people over for traffic violations in known drug areas. Was it worth their lives? I think their families would say "no."

[Kbentleyis]

We've heard so many negatives about our police, but very little when they lose their lives for upholding the law. We lost another officer in IL these last few days.

My heart goes out to their families.

[foxyladi]

guess the killers won't be sitting on death row for the next 30 years

[Spang]

Man Who Shot Police Had Anti-government Views

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An antigovernment Ohio man who had had several run-ins with the police around the country was identified Friday as one of two people suspected of gunning down two officers during a traffic stop in Arkansas.

The Arkansas State Police on Friday identified the pair — killed Thursday during an exchange of gunfire with the police — as Jerry R. Kane Jr., 45, of Forest, Ohio, and his son Joseph T. Kane, believed to be 16.

About 90 minutes before the shootout with the police, Sgt. Brandon Paudert, 39, and Officer Bill Evans, 38, were killed with AK-47 assault rifles after stopping a minivan on Interstate 40 in West Memphis, Ark., the authorities said.

Jerry Kane, who used the Internet to question federal and local government authority over him, made money holding debt-elimination seminars around the country. He had a long police record and had recently complained about being arrested at what he called a “Nazi checkpoint” near Carrizozo, N.M., where court records showed he spent three days in jail on charges of driving without a license and concealing his identity before posting a $1,500 bond.

Sheriff Gene Kelly of Clark County, Ohio, told The Associated Press on Friday that he had issued a warning to officers on July 21, 2004, saying that Mr. Kane might be dangerous to law enforcement officers. Sheriff Kelly said he had based his conclusion on a conversation the two men had had about a sentence Mr. Kane had received for some traffic violations.

Sheriff Kelly said that Mr. Kane complained in 2004 about being sentenced to six days of community service for driving with an expired license plate and no seat belt, saying that the judge had tried to “enslave” him. Mr. Kane had added that he was a “free man” and had asked for $100,000 per day in gold or silver.

“I feel that he is expecting and prepared for confrontations with any law enforcement officer that may come in contact with him,” Sheriff Kelly wrote in his warning to officers.

On an Internet radio show, Mr. Kane expressed outrage about his New Mexico arrest. “I ran into a Nazi checkpoint in the middle of New Mexico where they were demanding papers or jail,” he said. “That was the option. Either produce your papers or go to jail. So I entered into commerce with them under threat, duress and coercion, and spent 47 hours in there.”

Mr. Kane said he planned to file a counterclaim alleging kidnapping and extortion. “I already have done a background check on him,” he said of the arresting officer. “I found out where he lives, his address, his wife’s name.”

Mark Potok, who directs hate-group research at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Mr. Kane had not been in the group’s database before Thursday. But he said that was not surprising, given the “explosive growth” in the antigovernment movement in recent years. With 363 new groups in 2009, there are now 512, Mr. Potok said.

JJ MacNab, who has testified before Congress on tax and financial schemes, said that she had been tracking Mr. Kane for about two years and that his business centered on debt-avoidance swindles.

Mr. Potok said such schemes were common in the movement, whose members consider themselves sovereign citizens.

“He basically promised them they would never have to repay their mortgage or credit card debt,” Ms. MacNab said.

The Source (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/us/22arkansas.html?src=twt&twt=nytimes)

[foxyladi]

more whacko,s showing up every day..

[Foggy]

That DHS report that predicted more right-wing terrorism -- the one that commissioned under the Bush administration but was directly blamed on Janet Napolitano -- is looking eerily prescient today.

[Spang]

Arkansas Cop-Killer Apparently Part of ‘Patriot’ Movement

Jerry Ralph Kane Jr., the man who was killed with his son Thursday after apparently gunning down two West Memphis, Ark., police officers, traveled the country before the encounter giving classes in “redemption foreclosure mortgage fraud” — an apparent variation on a scheme common among antigovernment “Patriots.”

According to a blurb on a website called Pro Blog: Blog for Professionals, that was the title that Kane gave to an all-day class he gave on Aug. 29, 2009, in Fontana, Calif. In several YouTube videos of the Fontana class, Kane can be heard discussing such Patriot theories as the idea that only gold and silver are real money.

(No Nudity)

In addition, another website, My Private Audio, carried a tribute to Kane and his son and also included links to information about “redemption.”

Redemption theory varies across the country but arose in the Patriot movement, which generally sees the federal government as an evil entity involved in various conspiracy theories aimed at ordinary Americans. In its best known version, redemption theory claims that every U.S. citizen has a “straw man,” or secret legal twin, that the government uses to capture the economic value of citizens unknowingly sold into slavery to a banking cabal. Redemptionists often claim that by filing certain documents individuals can reclaim their sovereignty and the money that was deposited into a special account at their birth. Kane appeared to be teaching a variant of the theory that supposedly allowed people who have lost their homes to foreclosure to get them back at a fraction of their value.

In addition, the My Private Audio site, apparently written by a friend of Kane and his son, talks about how Kane was pulled over in New Mexico last month for not having a driver’s license. Many Patriots who call themselves “sovereign citizens” do not believe they are required to carry driver’s licenses, pay taxes, or obey most laws. The site also carried other signs of Patriot beliefs, including discussions of implantable microchips and the Council of Foreign Relations, an object of much Patriot conspiracy theorizing.

According to reports, the minivan driven by Kane during Thursday’s shootout — which also left two other police officers injured — was registered to an address in New Vienna, Ohio, called House of God’s Prayer. The building once housed the Ohio headquarters of the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations, which was sometimes known as the Church of Jesus Christ Christian. The Ohio unit was headed by a violent white supremacist named Ray Redfeairn, who died in 2003. The church is reportedly owned by a man named Hoge Tabor of Middletown, Ohio.

The New Vienna Aryan Nations operation was infiltrated in the late 1990s by an FBI informant named Dave Hall, who wrote a 2008 book — Into the Devil’s Den — with his FBI handler, Tym Burkey. In the book, Hall writes that Tabor had been a Klansman for close to five decades. In an interview today with Hatewatch, Hall reiterated that Tabor was a long-time Klansman who actually had a calming influence on Redfeairn, who once shot and nearly killed a police officer. “I saw Hoge talking a few times with Redfeairn, saying he ought to tone down his sermons a little bit and discuss the positive side of being white,” Hall said. He also recalled that the House of God’s Prayer building was once a Klan meeting hall, long before Tabor acquired it and Redfeairn began using it as an Aryan Nations office.

It’s not yet known what connection Kane and his son, Joseph Taylor Kane, may have had to Tabor or Aryan Nations. What is clear, however, is that the elder Kane was involved in a world of Patriot conspiracy theories and had spent much time traveling the country and teaching them to others.

Conflicts between so-called sovereign citizens and law enforcement are common, probably because such people do not believe they need driver’s licenses or vehicle registrations and so are often pulled over. In June 1995, for instance, a Frazeyburg, Ohio, police officer shot and killed Michael Hill, a sovereign citizen activist. Hill tried to shoot the officer after being pulled over.

The Source (http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2010/05/21/arkansas-cop-killer-apparently-part-of-patriot-movement/)