Nashville cops on suicide bomber back in 2019: He's got an RV full of bombs? Aw, don't worry about it, it's probably no big deal

This is an amazing story on how the Nashville Metro police handled the white guy who blew himself up in an RV in downtown Nashville in a huge explosion but mainstream news outlets don’t want to call him either a “terrorist” or a “suicide bomber”. Even though he killed himself with explosives in a location designed to take out communications in the area and, uh, terrorize the entire city. (Ben Hall, Anthony Warner's girlfriend warned police he was building bombs in his RV last year News Channel 5 Nashville 12/29/2020) See also: Natalie Allison, Girlfriend warned Nashville police Anthony Warner was building bomb a year ago, report shows Nashville Tennessean 12/30/2020

Here's how the owner of a business in the affected area describes the we-don't-call-it-terrorism attack (Rachel and Mariah Timms, 'It's like war': Residents, business owners get first look at damage in Nashville bombing 12/30/2020):

Segroves Bergeron, a Nashville-based photographer and art curator, runs Studio 208, a gallery and art show room at 208 Third Avenue North in Nashville, just a block away from the site of a Christmas morning bombing that shook the city.

On Tuesday, she was one of dozens of residents and business owners allowed to retrieve needed supplies and assess the damage to their property that's been behind an investigative perimeter since Friday.

“I’ve been fortunate to never have to be in a war zone so I can’t be sure this is what it would be like, but it feels like war, it feels eerie, it feels surreal,” she said. “Everyone’s faces are dazed. The crew, the police, FBI, everyone. Just dazed and tired.”

The Channel 5 report is also a great example of why initial police statements on their own performance should be taken with a lot of skepticism. An event like this is a big PR opportunity for police departments to show off their bravery and heroism and remind people how glad they should be to have them around.

It's worth mentioning here that it's still early, so some of the details may vary. The Channel 5 report may give the impression that the girlfriend and the attorney were at the bomber's house when the cops showed up. But in the Natalie Allison, it sounds like the police spoke to the two of them at a separate house. And in that story, the attorney also says in the Natalie Allison story that he hadn't been the guy's attorney for a while.

We even had a story from one of the cops on the scene Christmas morning that he “literally” (his word) heard God tell him to turn around and walk away from the direction of the RV just before it exploded. Which would be entertaining in a "testimony" in a conservative church. But my first thought was, let me get this straight: the Nashville police department has an officer walking around with a gun and a license to kill who says publicly that he can “literally” hear a voice in his head that he knows is the voice of God?

Except now, a few days later, we find out that in August a year ago, the heroic and vigilant Nashville police were at the we-don’t-call-him-a-suicide-bomber’s house based on a call from the bomber’s girlfriend who was there and told them that the guy was building bombs in the RV setting right there in his yard. Funny, I’m pretty sure the cops were saying just a couple of days ago that, gee, we had no idea there was anything threatening about the guy. "Warner wasn’t on the radar of law enforcement before Friday’s explosion, ["authorities"] said, and officials have declined to deem the bombing an act of terrorism." (Natalie Allison, Anthony Quinn Warner, self-employed computer guru ID'd as lone Nashville bomber, killed in blast Nashville Tennessean 12/27/2020)

The bomber’s OWN ATTORNEY was on the scene and told the cops he thought her story about the bombs was credible. So they knocked on the house door a couple of times and the guy didn’t respond. They looked at the RV from outside the fence it was in and claimed they didn’t see anything suspicious. I guess if it doesn’t have BOMB FACTORY painted on the outside, it’s not worth the trouble.

So, they left to go to the donut shop or wherever. They filed a request for records with the FBI, who responded they had no information on him. (Don’t be surprised if we later hear the FBI had several gigabytes of data on him.)

To understand how problematic this is, we just have to imagine if they were out in a black neighborhood on a call like this. Or if the girlfriend and attorney had told the cops the guy's real name was something “Muslim-sounding” name like Hasan al-Bomba. Would they have even bothered to get a warrant before they sent a SWAT team to bust through the door?

This is a nationwide problem that authorities just don’t take white terrorism seriously enough, even though for years most deaths from terrorist attacks in the US have been due to far-right groups with some more-or-less white supremacist political ideology.

Lots of people (not just conservatives) claim to be upset by the protest slogan “Defund the Police”. But cops who get a credible complaint about a guy who’s going bonkers from the guy’s girlfriend and the man’s own attorney but just say, “Well, the girlfriend sounds kind of hysterical, it's probably her time of the month or something. And this is a white guy, so he’s probably just a good ole boy who ain’t really causing no trouble” – we shouldn’t be paying public money for that kind of cops.

Cops who say publicly that they are following orders from a “literal” voice in their head that they know is God's – nah, “defunding” cops like that sounds like a good idea, too. Police PR departments who put top priority on staging their officers as heroes immediately after a horrible terrorist attack but cheerfully try to avoid accountability for their own fecklessness about the perpetrator? No, that’s probably not the best use of public funds, either.