In case you missed it (and you probably did), there has been another attack on law enforcement officers by an extreme-right ideologue.
Fortunately– unlike in Las Vegas last week– nobody was killed.
Talking Points Memo reports:
The man accused of shooting two law enforcement members in California, including a Bureau of Land Management ranger, has had at least one previous run-in with law enforcement and has described himself as the target of a massive government conspiracy.
Brent Douglas Cole, 60, was named by the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office on Monday as the suspect in Saturday’s shooting that also left him wounded.
Anna Ferguson, assistant district attorney for Nevada County, confirmed to TPM that Cole was also facing misdemeanor charges in Nevada County Superior Court for allegedly carrying a loaded firearm. He was charged on Jan. 26.
On Tuesday, the Union newspaper in Grass Valley, Calif., published an article that quoted from court documents in the case. The documents showed Cole believed he was the target of a massive conspiracy:
Officers acted without warrant or any probable cause to seize my person using a swat team style assault, and then started looking for something to charge me with. I was attacked and molested, unconstitutionally arrested, unlawfully incarcerated, repeatedly intimidated and coerced to plead guilty to having committed a crime, held in secret for five days, and my property and liberty taken from me since January 26, 2014. I am being persecuted for being a gun owner, and for exercising my inherent Right by unwitting or unknowing accomplices of a seditious conspiracy against rights instituted by foreign powers inimical to the United States of America.
That’s in line with online profiles, reviewed by TPM, that appear to belong to Cole and suggest someone obsessed with multiple conspiracy theories, including 9/11 trutherism, fluoridated water and anti-semitic beliefs.The Southern Poverty Law Center, in research shared with TPM on Tuesday afternoon, linked Cole to an online profile in which he described himself as “a sovereign American Citizen attempting to thwart the obvious conspiracy and subterfuges of powers inimical to the United States.”
…..
According to the Union newspaper, the BLM ranger had contacted the California Highway Patrol for assistance in its investigation of vehicles at the Tahoe National Forest. It was during that investigation that the two officers were confronted by Cole and exchanged gunfire. The shooting took place near the South Yuba River campground, according to the sheriff’s office.The two law enforcement agents suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the incident. Cole suffered multiple gunshot wounds, according to the Union, and was hospitalized as of Monday.
I realize that the lack of fatalities makes this less newsworthy than it otherwise would be, but coverage of the incident has been remarkably thin: no mention on the websites of CNN, Fox News, The Washington Post or The New York Times.
If Brent Douglas Cole had a Muslim-sounding name, would it have attracted more attention?
