75 cops, 6½ hours of gunfire, for an eviction in Pittsburgh
75 cops, 6½ hours of gunfire, for an eviction in Pittsburgh
The suspect, William Hardison Sr., shot at deputies trying to serve an eviction notice, resulting in a standoff that lasted about 6½ hours.
Details are still scant, but...
“I mean, he had a lot of ammunition in that house, and certainly ... all of us were strapped, you know, with ammunition, and we were calling for additional ammunition,” Kraus said. “Like I said, we tried to give him every opportunity to come out.”
...I'll go way out on a limb and suggest that this could've been handled better.
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Does anyone else see that people having enough ammunition at home to keep up over six hours of gun fire is the real problem here?
You're right; the cops should have less ammo.
Cops shouldn't require any ammo for 99.9% of their jobs.
Who else is gonna shoot your dog?
German cops use so few bullets, that sometimes Americans can shoot more in one incident then an entire year's worth of shots in Germany.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/german-police-fired-just-85-bullets-total-2011-flna767298
I feel like "shots fired" is one of the times where it probably would be called for... But totally agreed. This is how things are in quite a few non-US countries, and literally every one of them (I think?) have a lot less of their residents being murdered by police.
But look at how absurd this became just because the police were justified in using lethal force. Officers drove to the scene to fire their weapons so they could get some paid time off. It was one guy with no hostages who hadn't committed a crime before firing at the police. It took 75 officers 6 hours to kill him.
The Second Amendment exists precisely so you can get in six hour stand offs with cops- James Madison
James Madison? Who the fuck is that? The second amendment is a God given right.
Don't be ridiculous, General Grant sniped God with a M1 Garand at the landing on Lexington Beach.
Human rights are demanded and earned by humans, with guns.
No. I see a man being forced out of his home at gunpoint as the problem here.
My problem is that some greedy guy told cops to solve his dangerous problem for him at their own risk
I mean, cops get paid with his money through taxation. What's the problem of asking them to do what they're paid for?
we've established multiple times that the police have no obligation to do what they're paid for. it therefore follows that when they do choose to enforce the law it's because they like that particular law or dislike the person they're enforcing it against.
Guy doesn't have enough money for rent
Guy owns enough guns and ammunition to keep the police in standoff for 6½ hours
...
But housing price was the issue? 🤔
How long was he collecting ammunition? Did he buy a box on payday once in a while for a few years, or did he go out to Walmart and buy everything he used?
Everyone seems to assume that this guy found out he'd be evicted and he immediately went and bought a rifle and 20,000 rounds of ammunition that evening. Bullets don't go bad, he probably bought them over a few years.
Not sure that's much better. I've accumulated 15,000 rounds of ammo that I've not used but I need more... how about 20,000 rounds??
Someone accumulating that amount of ammo "just in case" has probably got some other issues.
Lots of people have lots of bullets. Not saying they aren't crazy, but if they are then there's a fuck ton of heavily armed crazy people... Ok yeah actually that checks out.
They're a sensitive group too. Very trigger happy with the downvotes.
If instead of buying guns with your paycheck for years, you plopped it in an index fund, perhaps rent wouldn't seem so out of reach.
Edit: if you click the links within the articles and keep going, you find out he got evicted because he's a SovCit who refused payments and wanted to fight the gov
Sources said Hardison believed he was a sovereign citizen, meaning he thought he was exempt from the law.
A Channel 11 News photographer discovered a video of Hardison during a prior interaction with police in 2019. In the video, you can see a Moorish flag, which is flown by Moorish sovereign citizens.
Hardison had a criminal history dating back to at least 2000.
You apparently have more time than I to research every random weirdo in the news. Good job.
Yeah I travel a lot for work and 3 news articles is not what I would call "heavy reading"
Perhaps you'd be less busy if you weren't working retail at a gun store.
Lol, insult a job I don't even have, want to try again?
Sure I'll insult lots of jobs! People who work in CAD are cads!
So? If you can't pay your rent and face eviction you sell that shit, you don't start shooting people doing their fucking job.
Gun nuts are the first to speak about individual responsibility but when it's their turn to face their responsibilities you can be sure of one thing, they ain't facing them without a fight!
This guy was a sovereign citizen, so the worst of the worst kind of crazy.
Didn't see that mentioned elsewhere in the thread, and it's a big fucking detail to leave out.
Here's what I read - I do not have the source but it was on a local Pittsburgh news site IIRC. He wasn't paying rent. House was his deceased brother's house which he bought in 1998 - not sure if shooter had inherited it or not, but there was something in excess of 15K owed for back taxes on it. An LLC paid the taxes on it and BOOM its their house - he filed paperwork with the state that they were scammers and he was contesting what he saw as an someone stealing his house. The LLC filed to have him evicted. Ultimately he made a bad decision to use a weapon and not a lawyer but he was ex-military and may have seen this as the last straw.
He was a SovCit.
Court records show the house was owned by Hardison's brother Joseph, who died in March 2021. It was deeded to their father, William Hardison Sr., who neglected to make mortgage payments. The house was foreclosed upon and sold in March to a limited liability corporation called 907 East Street.
William Hardison Jr. was evicted from an apartment on the Northside last year for non-payment of rent. The attorney for 907 East Street says he began squatting in the Board Street home in April, and the LLC petitioned for his eviction in May. William Jr. then filed papers in federal court accusing the new owners of fraud and trespassing, maintaining the house was his and refusing to leave -- despite a judge's order to do so.
Wtf
Someone else pays your taxes and they own you?
In some US states, yes. If a property does not have it's taxes paid, the state/county takes possession. Often they will auction it off or sell it for the amount of taxes owed.
What's preventing the state from just raising taxes on all the properties that a business wants to absurd levels, seize it and sell it if to that business for cheap?
This sounds very undemocratic.
If what I read was real, imagine what this might mean. It would be a form a swatting where a scammer could not only steal your property but if they're lucky get you shot and killed in the process. Some more about this kind of thing: https://www.abc27.com/investigators/could-a-scammer-have-the-deed-to-your-home-without-you-knowing/
I'm going through this process with a property (although it's just an empty lot in a remote location in my case) and you don't get kicked out without notice. People can bid to pay the taxes you owe and whatever extra the person bids goes to you.
In my case the person owed 1.7k, I paid 5.3k, they get a check of 3.4k and have a year to pay me back 5.3k + 7.5%, if they don't the property can be transferred to my name. They still got a whole lot of time to do something about it and received money in exchange for a property for which they didn't pay their taxes.
Or you could just pay your taxes.
You get a year to pay back the person who paid your taxes + a fee, it's not something that happens all of the sudden.
I had some details wrong here's where I got that from https://www.wpxi.com/news/local/pittsburgh-active-shooter-what-we-know-about-suspect-william-hardison-sr/YBYESACWBJAZDNWKC5RRHSSGY4/
Hosting pricing is an issue, but you've got a point. Maybe not in this case.
There's a whole cavalcade of other issues here.
I think guns and bullets are a lot cheaper than you think they are. You can get a gun and a thousand bullets for under $500 last I checked.
Quick google search: Average rent in Pittsburgh: $1,531. Cost per bullet: $0.08 to $3 per shot depending on size. Number of bullets shot: Well, lets assume 30/minute, as that is what I found on google as the fastest you can shoot an non-automatic (I don't know what kind of gun he used or if he was perpetually shooting, this is just for math). So the cost of doing 30 shot/minute for 6.5 hours would be from $936 to $35,100. More for semi-automatic, less for shooting less.
So... probably shot a month's rent worth of bullets in those 6.5 hours. Others could get you closer, google isn't what it use to be.
I read it wasn't a rent dispute but that someone bought the property because he wasn't paying taxes. Searchig this thread for a source, though.
Also the eviction, and the cop response.
MUUUURICA FUCK YEAH!!!
No, it isn’t a problem. Just because a car collector has 100 cars and commits a crime with one of them doesn’t make everyone else who enjoys collecting cars a criminal.
It's a symptom
But guns could never be used to screw up an oppressive government, they to big and powerful!
Can you get that boot any further down your throat?
He was being sarcastic, fam.