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Two Cops Executed Ambushed And Executed In Iowa
Dont recall hearing about this one.
A man suspected of killing two police officers sitting in their squad cars in central Iowa was taken into custody Wednesday, according to authorities.
In the hours after he was taken into custody, a picture began to emerge of Scott Michael Greene, 46, through court records, police statements and social media postings.
Sgt. Anthony Beminio and Officer Justin Martin were shot and killed early Wednesday morning in a pair of “ambush-style attacks,” the Des Moines Police Department said. Within hours, officials identified Greene as the lone suspect in the deaths of Beminio, a Des Moines officer, and Martin, who worked in Urbandale, a neighboring city.
Police described Greene, an Urbandale resident, as armed and considered dangerous and warned residents to call the authorities if they saw him. Greene was apprehended shortly before 9 a.m. when he was walking down a rural road and flagged a person out working on their tractor, asking them to call 911, according to authorities.
When the Dallas County Sheriff’s office and Iowa State Patrol responded, the man identified himself as Greene and said he had “an existing medical condition that was flaring up,” Sgt. Paul Parizek, a Des Moines police spokesman, said in an interview.
Greene was then brought to a hospital and is in police custody there, Parizek said. He is not under arrest because he has not been charged yet, Parizek added.
Police say they do not believe anyone else was involved, and officials say they are investigating whether the shooting was related to a confrontation involving police at a school last month.
Authorities in Des Moines, Iowa’s largest city, appeared shaken by the double shooting, which came during a year that has seen bloody attacks on officers in cities including Dallas and Baton Rouge, assaults that have fueled a sense of anxiety among law enforcement nationwide. In Des Moines, police were ordered to patrol in pairs Wednesday for safety.
During a news briefing, Parizek said it did not appear there was any interaction between the officers and “the coward … that shot them while they sat in their car.” Parizek then briefly choked back emotion as another officer reached a hand out to show him support.
Parizek said later Wednesday morning that authorities did not know what might have motivated the shooting, and he noted that “we may never know what motivated this act.” He said everyone involved — both officers and the suspected attacker — are white.
One of the officers was fatally shot next to Urbandale High School. A video uploaded to YouTube last month by an account bearing Greene’s name was titled “Police Abuse, Civil Rights Violation at Urbandale High School” and recorded a person arguing with police officers asking him to leave the area.
The man recording the footage is identified by an officer as Greene. In this video, the man can be heard telling the police he was assaulted and almost mugged while “peacefully protesting” at what appears to be a high school. An officer is later seen explaining that the Confederate battle flag he was waving violated the school’s code.
“In the current social climate that we’re in, when you fly a Confederate flag standing in front of several African American people, that’s going to cause a disturbance, whether you intended to or not,” the officer said. As a result, the officer said, this man was no longer allowed on the school’s property.
[‘Vote Trump’ painted on wall of burned-out black church in Mississippi]
The same night that Greene apparently flew the Confederate flag at Urbandale High, a predominantly white school, Urbandale’s football team crushed Hoover High of Des Moines 61-13.
Another video posted by the same account showed a still image of a man holding a Confederate flag in what appears to be the stands outside athletic event.
Denzil Miller, a Hoover High senior, said a “murmur” spread along the Hoover sideline as people noticed Greene’s Confederate flag, the latest in a series of recent incidents involving Iowa schools and that flag.
“It was kind of shocking,” said Miller, 18. “It’s not like everyone was getting into a big uproar about it, but everyone noticed.”
A spokeswoman for the Urbandale school district said the altercation took place at a high school football game and involved a man with Greene’s name, but she was not sure if it was the same person. Parizek said police were aware of this incident but were not going to discuss it further “until we understand if it’s valuable to the investigation.”
The Urbandale Police Department said that they had issued a warning to Greene for the episode. Police also said his daughter attended the school. Court papers say that Greene has a daughter with the same name as a student listed on a roster for the school’s cheerleading squad.
Police said Wednesday that Greene had been “known to law enforcement.” Court records show that a man with Greene’s name had a history of run-ins with police, including charges of assault and harassment, some of which were dismissed.
Another, more recent case involved Greene accusing his mother of domestic abuse while he was living in her home.
According to court documents, police say Greene recorded an altercation with his mother two days after the incident at Urbandale High School. An officer said that Greene produced a video showing his mother yelling at him, grabbing him and hitting him.
Neighbors said that since that altercation, Greene’s mother had moved out and he had begun to act strangely. Last week, he saw Richard “Doc” Nace and Phyllis Nace, who have lived across the street for about a year, and walked over and hugged them without warning.
“From the first time I met him, just sometimes you look at a person and the lights are a little dim,” said Richard Nace, 73. Still, he said he never thought “he would kill a couple of cops.”
The Naces said they saw Scott begin moving things out of the house in recent days, and on Wednesday morning, they saw two of his daughters and one of their mothers arrive with a U-Haul to move things out.
Police arrived and told them to stop, the Naces said.
The killings early Wednesday shuttered schools in the area and launched law enforcement officers from multiple agencies into a sweeping, hours-long hunt for Greene.
President Obama released a statement Wednesday afternoon calling the killings “shameful acts of violence” and calling for Americans
“Sergeant Anthony Beminio and Officer Justin Martin represented our best, most decent instincts as human beings – to serve our neighbors, to put ourselves in harm’s way for someone else,” Obama said. “They knew the dangers of their job. They knew the risks. Yet they chose to dedicate themselves to those values anyway.”
The White House said officials had been in touch with local authorities about the shooting.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign said that due to the shooting, it was canceling an event planned for Wednesday night in Des Moines with Tim Kaine, her vice-presidential running mate, and former president Bill Clinton, her husband.
Clinton wrote on Twitter that she was “heartbroken” for the families of the officers, while Donald Trump, Clinton’s Republican opponent, posted on Twitter that an attack on police “is an attack on us all.”
In a statement, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch decried the shootings, calling them “yet another reminder of the tremendous dangers that law enforcement officers face each and every day.”
She also referred to the tension felt between police and communities of color, unease that has flared up during regular protests in recent years over how police officers use force.
“I know that this is a time of particular tension and mistrust between law enforcement and many communities,” she said. “I know that while we do not yet know what led the perpetrator to commit these awful crimes, many will be nevertheless be tempted to read a message or motive into this assault. But let me be clear: there is no message in murder.”
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Originally Posted by d2bets
