Updated 5:35: According to KETK in East Texas, the incident occurred as the constable was attempting to serve an eviction notice.
Updated 4:00 p.m.: KBTX in Bryan / College Station, Texas is reporting that the suspect in the shooting has died.
Updated at 3:35 p.m.: Via KBTX in Bryan / College Station, Texas: Brazos County Constable Brian Bachmann of the College Station Police Department has died as a result of injuries sustained in the shooting. A civilian has also been confirmed dead.
College Station Assistant Police Chief Scott McCollum confirmed the casualties in a statement this afternoon. Another member of the police department was shot in the leg and is in stable condition, and a female civilian was also shot and is in surgery, according to McCollum. McCollum said members of the department are still trying to piece together details and a motive for the incident.
While most of our attention is focused on the use of armed drones attacking suspected militants in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, unarmed surveillance drones are taking to the skies across America, as the Toronto Star recently reported. The first known case of a drone assisting in an arrest occurred last year in North Dakota.
“Amid hundreds of hectares of corn and soybeans, far from the closest town, a Predator drone led to the arrests last year of farmer Rodney Brossart and five members of his family. The drone was called in after a dispute over a neighbour’s six lost cows escalated into a 16-hour standoff with police. It is one of the first reported cases where an unmanned drone assisted in the arrest of a U.S. citizen on his own property. It was also a controversial sign of how drones — in all shapes and sizes — are beginning to hover over American skies.”
And, far from being an aberration, drones at home are proliferating.
“But the federal government has been quietly expanding their use. Even as the wars abroad wind to an end, the military has been pleading for funding for more pilots. Drones cannot be flown now in the United States without FAA approval. But with little public scrutiny, the FAA already has issued at least 266 active testing permits for domestic drone operations, amid safety concerns. … While drone use in the rest of the United States has been largely theoretical, in eastern North Dakota it is becoming a way of life.”
Minnesota Public Radio also takes a look at the North Dakota scene, reporting on a drone research project at the University of North Dakota that is about to launch a program that would give sheriffs in 16 North Dakota counties access to two, and perhaps four, drones.
“With law enforcement budgets shrinking, technology is playing a greater role in policing. And for agencies that want air coverage, a camera-equipped drone, at a cost of around $50,000, can be a cheaper alternative to owning and operating a piloted airplane or helicopter. Minnesota law enforcement officials have expressed some interest, but without question, North Dakota is where the action is.”
David Axe, in Wired, examines America’s secret drone war in Africa.
“More secret bases. More and better unmanned warplanes. More frequent and deadly robotic attacks. Some five years after a U.S. Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle flew the type’s first mission over lawless Somalia, the shadowy American-led drone campaign in the Horn of Africa is targeting Islamic militants more ruthlessly than ever. … It’s part of a broader campaign of jet bombing runs, naval gun bombardment, cruise-missile attacks, raids by Special Operations Forces and assistance to regional armies such as Uganda’s.”
God, help me to speak through my life: "I have come to do your will, O God." Amen.
From Hebrews 10:9
"For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, says the Lord, because they have called you an outcast: 'It is Zion; no one cares for her!'" - Jeremiah 30:17
“Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
We Are One
8-5-2012
These are words posted below the one bullet mark left to remember the senseless loss of so many lives.
This is what it took for a nation to pay attention to a little known religious minority in its midst. It is a minority that believes to its core that they are American, but their faith makes them stand out, and political rhetoric has cast them as “Other.”
I know deep in the recesses of my heart that the Sikh community has been preparing for something horrific since 9/11. It was just a matter of time.
On Sunday I was at the Oak Creek, Wis., gurudwara (Sikh place of worship). I was there with my family to show support and to pray with my community. I brought my daughters, Jind Kaur (4), and Sahib Kaur (7). Sahib was afraid to be here. She couldn’t grasp how it could happen at Gurudwara, a place she goes to every Sunday. She said before we left, “Will we see the bodies?” My husband and I reassured her that she need not be afraid. We were going to Gurudwara — a place that she should never be afraid to go.
The Gurudwara had its first Sunday services exactly a week after a gunman opened fire killing six innocent people before killing himself. Three others are still in the hospital in critical condition. Sunday’s prayer was a testament to my community’s resilience and its collective will to carry on. The Sikhs are used to adversity.
In the aftermath of 9/11 so many South Asian and Middle Eastern community groups reached out to law enforcement and local governments to tell them who they are. The message was simple. We are not the terrorists. We are here and believe in the American dream. It was a plea on their part to make sure their families were safe and not targeted or profiled in an atmosphere of severe anger, mistrust, and a political scenario that demanded action and in its midst created an “other” that matched the look of all of those groups. It was a time when the American flag was used by so many as a sign saying, “I’m American; I am one of you.”
Jesus said to them, Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. - John 6:47-48
When I was in my 20s and totally out of control and pretty much estranged from my conservative Christian parents I used to joke about how my mom would try and guilt me into connecting with them more often by saying in her Kentucky accent “Nadia, the least you could do is come visit us more often … since we won’t be spending eternity together." Which made me wonder if the church she went to realized that the promise of spending eternity with my mom and her friends wasn’t exactly the best-selling point. At least not for a 21 year old.*
But that’s kind of what I was taught: that being a Christian was all about where you will spend eternity after you die – kind of like purchasing a life-insurance plan for the hereafter. And if you manage to be good enough here on earth then when you die you get to go to heaven and be like the spiritual 1 percent for eternity and live in big mansions with Jesus and wear awesome jewels and walk streets of gold.
Which made it sound like eternal life is basically about getting to live like Liberace Forever.
American nuns facing a Vatican takeover of their leadership organization on Aug. 10 rejected Rome’s plans to recast the group in a more conservative mold, but declined — for now — to respond with an ultimatum that could have created an unprecedented schism between the sisters and the hierarchy.
Instead, the nuns said they wanted to pursue a negotiated solution to the showdown that has galvanized American Catholics in recent months and prompted an outpouring of support for the sisters that left the Vatican with a black eye.
The statement from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious came at the end of the LCWR’s annual assembly here and was the first formal response to the Vatican from the entire organization, which represents most of the 56,000 nuns in the U.S.
The Vatican announced in April that it was assigning a team of bishops to take control of the LCWR in order to make the organization — and by extension, most U.S. nuns — hew more closely and publicly to orthodox teachings on sexuality and theology.
Sister Pat Farrell, the outgoing president of the LCWR, on Friday read the official response that expressed the organization’s “deep disappointment” with Rome’s verdict. But the statement also said the nuns wanted to keep talking with the hierarchy in hopes of “creating more possibilities for the laity and, particularly for women, to have a voice in the church.”
There is a wonderful scene in Harper Lee's novel To Kill A Mockingbird where the all-white jury has returned an unjust verdict against Tom Robinson. Atticus Finch begins to wearily walk out of the courthouse. His children, Jem and Scout, are in the balcony with the black folks of the county. They all rise as Atticus walks out — except the children — so the Rev. Sykes says to Scout, “Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’.”
During the first weeks of school, Scout's story came back to me as I was benchmarking the reading levels of our first- and second-grade students. Before I took the students through the benchmark test, I asked them open-ended questions and listened to their answers. At first they were shy, as children often are when they meet a new teacher. But soon they were telling me their stories with confident voices and dimpled smiles.