Anti-terrorism complaint filed with FBI over homemade bomb tossed at pro-lifer
The police response is infuriating. Imagine if the tables were turned. I hope the victim sues the police. Excerpts from a press release by The Thomas More Society:
The Thomas More Society, acting on behalf of 40 Days for Life, a national campaign that sponsors peaceable pro-life prayer vigils outside abortion provider sites worldwide, has filed a formal complaint with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Helena, Montana. TMS is calling for an immediate, intensive investigation of a vicious fire-bombing attack on a pro-lifer that occurred March 17 around 6:15 p.m. near the All Family Health Care abortion center in Kalispell, MT.
Karen Crierweiler, coordinator of the 40 Days prayer vigils in Kalispell, said a homemade incendiary device was thrown at one of the vigil participants, an elderly retired woman, by an assailant – as yet unidentified – as she walked on the public sidewalk near the abortion provider’s premises. The victim did not see the bomb thrower, nor did she see the bomb – akin to a “Molotov cocktail” – before it exploded on the sidewalk behind her, making a loud popping noise like a big firecracker as it burst into flame. Apparently the victim was unhurt.
The victim called the police. After a lengthy delay, a Kalispell police officer arrived. But instead of inspecting the bomb debris or calling evidence technicians to the scene, the officer remarked that police could never get prints or other evidence from the bomb’s remains, and that he would call the city’s garbage service to dispose of all the debris.
Then he said that the 40 Days prayer vigil participants should expect this kind of reaction if they’re out there protesting. Questioning Officer Hoover’s assessment of the attack, Ms. Crierweiler called the Kalispell desk sergeant to complain, where she was unable to get further assistance.
Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the TMS, said, “… [T]he reaction of Kalispell police officers after Ms. Crierweiler called them to the scene was equally appalling, indeed outrageous. We intend to file disciplinary complaints against both the officer who came to the crime scene and the desk sergeant whose tepid, indifferent, and grossly unprofessional response to this blatant act of domestic terrorism shows them both unfit to wear a police uniform and at best deserving of severe disciplinary action. We expect much better from the FBI and we will pursue the matter to the very highest levels of the US Department of Justice if this case is not investigated promptly and vigorously and – once the assailant is identified and apprehended – prosecuted to the hilt,” Brejcha concluded.
Ms. Crierweiler also reported that an eyewitness has stepped forward, who was not part of the 40 Days campaign but rather a passerby, who saw the incident occur and who may be able to help the FBI track down the bomb thrower.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
I guess the stories of the nearby Flathead Lake Monster are true. Only he’s walking around on two legs.
The police non-reaction is a disgrace.
Contact the Kalispell police department. Roger Nasset at
kpd@kalispell.com
I should expect a bomb to be thrown at me for praying with 40 Days for Life?
Why Carla, if you go out alone at night you should expect to be raped! If you drive past 11 p.m. you should expect to be hit by a drunk driver! If you are pro-life you should EXPECT this. Its not the perp’s fault! Its YOUR fault!
As Jill said, can you imagine if the tables were turned and a pro-lifer had done this? I mean pro-lifers wrote in frost in front of an abortuary and 5 squad cars came flying!
What do they mean they can never get prints off of bombs? Bomb specialists take the bomb pieces, rebuild it, and get prints off of that. I’ve seen it. It was on a show on the Discovery Channel, Investigation Discovery, truTV, or one of those channels.
As for the police’s comment that we should expect this kind of reaction to prayer, even if it is outside of an abortion clinic, that’s disgraceful. It’s a violation of our First Amendment rights, the right to freely exercise our religion, speak, and peaceably assemble. We should not expect this kind of treatment for exercising our Constitutional rights. They need to address this, put in protections for us, and investigate the crimes against us.
My son was ahgast at at hearing of this reaction by the police.
“Police in the United States investigate any bomb thrown at any person! There are no exceptions!”
It always amazes me that the police support the abortion zealots all the time…Who do they think would support the police-prolifers or pro aborts?
LD @ http://heartheircries.blogspot.com/
Nothing gives any of us the right to throw bombs at a person, period. This level of violence may be rare- neither pro-lifers nor pro-choicers regularly try to kill one another- but it does not make it okay. I hope that the person who threw the bomb in found and charged, and, without doubt, the police officer at the scene handled the situation poorly.
I’m glad to hear that the woman was uninjured. Events like this should wake us up about the entire abortion debate- what’s going on, and what needs to be done to ensure peace and safety for all people.
I can’t believe that people still don’t understand why we need to talk to one another as opposed to screaming at one another.
This was clearly a criminal act.
I believe there is insufficient data to classify it as ‘domestic terrorism’.
[The perp could easily be just another Jered Lee Loughner.]
I really don’t want to provide missy Napolitano with an excuse to go an rampage and begin rounding up the ‘ususal suspects’. [Angry white men clinging to their God and their guns, people opposed to same sex marriage, combat veterans, pro-lifers, ‘birthers’, people who advocate limited federal government, etc.]
But it is consistent with the thuggery exhibited by the ‘dead babies r us’ mob and their collaborateurs in the justice system.
They should begin their investigation by asking Corrupt Cortesan if she has an alibi for the date and time in question.
CC has manifested an intense animus towards anyone who challenges her bigotry.
Isn’t that what brought SMG to the attention of the feds?
Del, is your son a police officer?
It’s easy to imagine what would happen if the roles were reversed – 40 Days for Life would be shut down, and any pro-lifers praying in front of abortion clinics anywhere in the country would be arrested. Every TV channel and newspaper in America would decry the “anti-abortion violence” committed by “religious extremists”.
No, John, none of that would have happened.
“They should begin their investigation by asking Corrupt Cortesan if she has an alibi for the date and time in question”
I was safely ensconsed in my beautiful, blue, pro-choice state. BTW, you frequently complain about having to pay taxes. When you were engaging in your “freedom fighting” or whatever the thugs in Operation Rescue called it, did you consider the cost to the taxpayer for the subsequent legal action. Was it Yakima or one of the other targeted communities?
And for the record. Violence is totally unacceptable. But so far, the record for abortion violence is from the “pro-life” side. And while the anti-choicers condemned Tiller’s assassination, they qualified it with statements about how many “babies” he “murdered.” Recently, a South Carolina man was convicted for his attempt to blow up an abortion clinic. A California man was recently arrested for attempting to damage an abortion clinic and a mosque. I didn’t see any comments from you pro-lifers here. But again, it’s wrong and anyone caught should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!
Hal, yes, it would have happened.
Pro-aborts win for the most violence. Aside from the violence inherent in every abortion, there’s this:
http://abortionviolence.com/
Human Life International has documented more than 8,519 acts of violence and illegal activities by pro-abortionists. These crimes include:
1,251 homicides and other killings
157 attempted homicides
28 arsons and firebombings
904 assaults
1,908 sex crimes (including 250 rapes)
106 kidnappings
420 cases of vandalism
290 drug crimes
1,616 medical crimes
On the subject of pro-abortion violence vs. pro-life violence, I will only say, CC, that it is appalling that you should go to a thread where a pro-abort has firebombed an elderly pro-lifer who was doing nothing but standing and praying and even distantly imply that pro-abortion violence is somehow less harmful, just because you believe there’s less of it. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
CC says: March 19, 2011 at 6:45 am
1. BTW, you frequently complain about having to pay taxes.
2. When you were engaging in your “freedom fighting” or whatever the thugs in Operation Rescue called it, did you consider the cost to the taxpayer for the subsequent legal action.
3. Was it Yakima or one of the other targeted communities?
===========================================================
Clueless Clown
1. To be precise I complain about my money being confiscated from my paycheck and then transferred to the federal government where it is used for purposes that are not constitionally authorized. [Please note Congress is NOT the constitution.] or spent wastefully on legitimate purposes that are authorized by the constitution [think ACORN, PP, NPR and Dept of Ed, etc.]
2. I do not believe I have ever referred or compared myself to ‘freedom fighters’, but as I understand the term I would take it as a complement even tho it is inaccurate.
Yes, I/we did consider the costs to the government/taxpayers associated with having to deal with our non-violent direct action. Just as the civil rights activists did in the 60’s. [Read Reverend Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter From The Birmingham Jail’ for a fuller explanation/justicication.]. It was part of multipronged strategy to apply pressure to society and government. [Watch ‘Ghandi’].
3. Yes and more.
But more basically, I [Martin Luther King, Jr.] am in Birmingham because injustice is here.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere…Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.
In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham.
You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking.
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.
Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
Now, what is the difference between the two? …Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust…Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I it” relationship for an “I thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things.
There was a time when the church [King is not referring to any or all ‘christian’ denominations, but to the body of Chrsit.] was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed.
In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.
Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? [YES, forever and always YES!]
Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom.
Sydney M. wrote:
Del, is your son a police officer?
No. He is 22 yo ARMY National Guard, college student, and a pro-life prayer warrior.
His remark was not so much a statement of fact. Rather, it was an expression of what every common-sense American naturally expects from our law enforcement service.
Police should investigate any bomb thrown at any person. Even a small firebomb requires pre-meditated intent to violence.
I’m willing to give the cop some benefit of doubt. We warn our 40 Days vigilers to be aware of their surroundings. Some people resent our presence, and they may react violently. This is essentially what the police officer advised.
Still… the cop in Montana should have been more concerned. This little firework might not have fazed a Detroit cop, but I doubt that Kalispell, MT has gang-bangers or firebomb terror to deal with on a regular basis.
John L says:
It’s easy to imagine what would happen if the roles were reversed – 40 Days for Life would be shut down, and any pro-lifers praying in front of abortion clinics anywhere in the country would be arrested. Every TV channel and newspaper in America would decry the “anti-abortion violence” committed by “religious extremists”.
Hal says:
No, John, none of that would have happened.
Bethany replies to Hal:
Hal, yes, it would have happened.
John and Bethany of course are correct. Where have you been the last 38 years, Hal? A recent example of the MSM bias was seen when a lone criminal shot and killed the abortionist Tiller. This incited the MSM libs to indict the pro-life movement, and even the most radical pro-abort president ever chimed in to condemn the killing–not wanting a crisis to go to waste.
The pro-lifer should have written in the frost with her finger. Police would have come out of the woodwork. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slXJFrMhF8c
I’m just wondering, won’t this act also fall under “Hate Crimes” ?
RSD,
“Hate crimes” are only crimes that are committed against select protected groups, as decided at the whim of the ambiguous “authorities.” (basically, minority groups other than Christians, pro-life soccer moms, etc)
:)
It looks like a “works” bomb. Glad she wasn’t hurt.