More on law-enforcement and the Nashvile Christmas Day not-a-suicide-bomber who deliberately killed himself during a bombing

The story of the guy who blew himself up in his RV in downtown Nashvile in from of an AT&T building with bombs he'd been building in his back yard for apparently at least a year is emerging in more detail. We're not even a week out from the Christmas Day explosion in which the bomber killed himself that the press is so reluctant to call either a suicide bombing or a terrorist act.

The Nashville police are scrambling to explain why nobody made any mistakes when the guy's girlfriend and former lawyer gave them what turned out to be an accurate report about Mr. Not-A-Suicide-Bomber building a bunch of bombs in his RV. If they get enough heat, they'll probably find some civilian in their communications department whose boss doesn't especially like them anyway, fire him or her, then tell the public they fired someone responsible but can't say anything about it because it's a personnel matter. (Natalie Allison and Mariah Timms, Did Nashville police do enough to try to search bomber's home in 2019? Experts weigh in Nashville Tennessean 12/30/2020)

NBC News is reporting on one aspect of the investigation into the non-terrorism-non-suicide-bombing bombing. (Tom Winter et al, Feds probing whether Nashville bomber believed in lizard people conspiracy 12/30/2020)

It's important to remember it normally takes a while for incidents like this to be clarified, that we may never have explicit documentation of the not-a-suicide-bomber's motives, and the coulda-shoulda questions always involved some judgment. But this story is a reminder of an important point about US law enforcement's general neglect of the real danger of far-right terrorism from white guys:

[I]nvestigators are looking into the suspect’s previous trips to an undisclosed location in Tennessee where he would camp out in his recreational vehicle and, according to the suspect’s statements to others, hunt possible aliens, the officials said.

In addition, investigators are aware of statements the suspect made about an internet conspiracy that powerful politicians and Hollywood figures are actually lizards or other reptiles who have extraterrestrial origins and are taking over society, the officials said.

Which makes this story is a reminder of what "hate crimes" laws are actually designed to do, a large part of which is to educate local law enforcement to know what it is they are seeing and hearing.

The lizard-people-from-outer-space thing is something that has been promoted by Alex Jones, a popular broadcaster among the lunatic right. (Bob Cesca, Alex Jones Pretends to Be a Lizard Man from Space In Epic Display of Insanity Daily Banter 02/17/2016)

If the Nashville cops had taken the bomb report in 2019 seriously enough to actually find a way to talk to the guy - cops can usually do that if they want to - he might have told them he was worried because the world is being taken over by Demucrat lizard-people space-alien commonists. And if they had known that such talk particularly appeals to people in the violent white supremacist scene, they *might* have done a bit more checking. But he was some white guy with an Amurcan-sounding name, so maybe not.

Allison and Timms also report this statement by Memphis FBI spokesperson Joel Siskovic:

"The FBI does not make a practice of investigating and looking into individuals absent criminal charges, criminal allegations," Siskovic said. "So, I can't get too far into how our system works, but basically if there had been any reason to believe that there was a crime, specifically a federal crime, then we would have taken further steps."

So, is the FBI saying it's not a federal crime to build bombs in your RV in your back yard? Or that it's not a crime for white guys to do it? The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) seems to think it is, according to their official Fact Sheet-Illegal Explosive Devices dated May 2019: "Under federal explosives law, it is illegal to engage in the business of manufacturing explosives without a license; to improperly store explosives; to sell or distribute explosives to any person who does not hold an ATF license or permit."

A final thought on what we call terrorism. The definition does change over time. It does make some sense to take motives into account. But legal and popular understandings may diverge. A gang shooting with multiple casualties or family murder-suicides are horrible and tragic and deadly. But those aren't typically treated as terrorism in the press, nor do I think they should be. In the case of the Nashville bomber, that looks to me like an act of terror, i.e., an act meant to terrorize a lot of people, including the targeting of an important local communications center.

In any case, police and law enforcement should not be "blind in the right eye" when it comes to politically or religiously based terrorism. Including screening out cops who are found to support far-right violence-oriented groups.

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.