Jerad and Amanda (nee Woodruff) Miller are accused of killing police officers in Las Vegas, Nevada on Sunday. It appears they had moved from Lafayette, Indiana to Las Vegas this past January.
According to this write up, Jerad noted the presence of two police officers eating lunch in a pizza place, left the store then returned shortly thereafter with Amanda. Jerad shot one of the officers in the back of the head. As the other officer started to react, both opened fire on him. They apparently pinned the Gadsden Flag on the corpses of their victims. After that, they went to the Walmart next door. Jerad fired a shot and ordered everybody out saying, “this was the revolution.” One armed patron went to confront Jerad but overlooked Amanda, and she shot him in the ribs. Eventually they were in a gun battle with other police officers when Amanda apparently shot Jerad police officers appear to have shot Jerad and Amanda appears to have shot herself.
Several weeks ago, Jerad also turned up in news coverage of the Bundy Ranch standoff saying that he didn’t want violence but that if federal agents were violent, they’d be violent back. Jerad’s Facebook page is a litany of conspiracy minded, anti-government rhetoric with the last one being, “The dawn of a new day. May all of our coming sacrifices be worth it.” Some of his more recent posts had to do with Benghazi, global warming skepticism, a post that echoes the “redemption” idiocy I posted about a few years ago, and a whole lot about being anti-gun control. On May 2, he posted:
There is no greater cause to die for than liberty. To die for that cause is easy, to live for it is another matter. I will willingly die for liberty. Death, in a sense is freedom from tyranny. Death, is the easy way out. Most notably is the “suicide by cop” routine. Yes, standing before despots is dangerous and most likely does not end well for you. I know this, my wife knows this. Soon they will come for us, because they don’t like what we think, and what we say. They don’t like the fact that we, simply will not submit to fascist rule. We don’t have much, but we are willing to sacrifice everything…….for you, for your freedoms. Even if you wouldn’t let us have ours. We know who we are and what we stand for, do you?
And, on March 25:
I have compromised enough. Either you stand with freedom, or you side with tyranny. There is no middle ground. We have deluded ourselves into such a notion. There is no grey area. Now, I know that some peoples definition of freedom has been compromised. Mine has not and I will not be dismissed and ridiculed because my definition of freedom may seem extreme to those who’s definition has been deluded. I stand firm in my convictions and stand prepared to die for them. Those that have been misled, are you prepared to die for yours? Or will you send hired goons to do your bidding for you? Send those impoverished by your greed to silence me? Giving them table scraps as you have no blood on your hands, yet force them to wash away thiers for the rest of their lives? The day of your judgment will come, not from my hand, for you will make me a martyr. Your judgment will come from those that will bite the hand that feeds them. Grow paranoid, and distrustful of those that protect you. They will wake up to your monarchy, they will rise in our name, those who died fighting the oppression. Those you chose to silence, like me. Come for me, free me from your slavery. Give me the death a hero deserves. Help wake the masses to your corruption and treason. I fucking dare you!
There were also a few posts favoring drug legalization. That stands to reason as he had something of a record for drug offenses in Tippecanoe County. In 79D04-1012-FD-185, he was convicted of dealing marijuana and possession of a controlled substance on April 12, 2011. He was found guilty of violating the terms of his probation on May 23, 2013. That seems to have prompted his Youtube video to Amanda when he was about to serve his time.
He complains about Community Corrections and the financing of house arrest here. (Bonus – he shows the Tippecanoe County Courthouse and calls it a “monument to authoritarianism.”)
Amanda’s Facebook page has a lot less vitriol — in fact it seems to be a more run of the mill Facebook page with a lot of cat pictures and notes about day-to-day life. Though there are a few anti-gun control posts scattered here and there. (As a father, I was especially struck by a post on her father’s Facebook page from June 5 with Amanda as a cute, smiling little girl. On June 6, she protested playfully, “why dad, why, lol?” And her father responded, “Will always think of you around this age. I think most parents try to remember their children at a favorite age.” Then a couple of days later, she’s making the national news because of a horrific murder.)
Also, they seemed to be comic book and video game fans (there were pictures from more than one occasion where he’s dressed up as The Joker and she’s dressed as Harley Quinn). From her Facebook page, we find that they moved from Lafayette to Las Vegas in January or thereabouts. She seems to have worked for Hobby Lobby and to have been a graduate of Lafayette Jefferson high school. Court records suggest that she was 23 years old and he was older, about 31, and that they were married in the fall of 2012. They posted a video outside the Tippecanoe County Courthouse participating in something called the “Million Mask March,” protesting authoritarianism.
Obviously the story is developing, but as I see it now, I don’t know that there was anything particular about Las Vegas that prompted them to start murdering innocent people out there instead of here in Lafayette. Maybe the Bundy Ranch experience elevated them a notch or two above where they were while they were in my back yard. Most people can consume the paranoid rhetoric that Jared in particular was quoting and re-posting without murdering someone. But, I suppose there is a personality type for whom being a martyr against an unmitigated evil — even an imagined one — is a better fate than living in a state of mediocrity, constantly stressed by the more ambiguous sorts of challenges most of us face in our lives.
We need a scale to rate degree of conspiratorial paranoia. Global warming denial, Benghazism, and there’s something weird about the Fed puts these two pretty much in the mainstream of one of the two major political parties in this country. But he also believed in the “chem-trail” conspiracy. So that’s an extra degree of paranoid.
If you can distance yourself from the enormity of the horror, and just look at these people from the standpoint of trying to predict their level of dangerousness, it’s pretty hard. People are saying this kind of crap all of the time, even the whole ball of wax (from above), but somehow we don’t have to deal with this everyday. Marijuana/drug offenses, rants about the “authoritarian” government and “being free”, along with the strange kind of language can be found in almost every blog. Furthermore, from the standpoint of mental health treatment, they didn’t see anything wrong with themselves, so they weren’t about to seek treatment, even if a close relative urged them to do so..Besides they were married people, so there was some level of stability. For them, it was all the “government’s” doing, and they were the victims who bragged about being willing to die heroically in the hands of the oppressors because they somehow viewed themselves a patriots,, but they did what we are always afraid that paranoid people will do: they believed so strongly that people were against them that they took the initiative and killed innocent people instead. It’s hard to pass laws or even make judgments to prevent this sort of awfulness.
Looking through their social media posts, I didn’t see anything that made them stand out as something dramatically different than your garden variety bellyachers.
Loss of life is sad, as all life is a gift.
I wonder, however, if this site, and others, mourned as deeply and publicly for Erik Scott? Did this site, and others, ponder so deeply solutions to violence, then?
http://pjmedia.com/blog/gunned-down-in-vegas-what-really-happened-to-erik-scott/
Police routinely kill people, and nothing happens to them. This country desperately needs to de-escalate violence, and it must be led by police example.
Las Vegas Metro Police Shoot and Kill Handcuffed Teen
http://www.8newsnow.com/story/4909076/las-vegas-metro-police-shoot-and-kill-handcuffed-teen
Fired for killing Gulf War vet, former Metro cop Jesus Arevalo still gets disability pay
http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/fired-killing-gulf-war-vet-former-metro-cop-jesus-arevalo-still-gets-disability-pay
It is entirely possible to have an issue with police overreach and brutality, yet not advocate shooting or go out to shoot cops, or pass laws giving people the right to do so.
“It is entirely possible to have an issue with police overreach and brutality,”
Indeed. A man of conscience should have such “issues,” yet we so rarely see Democrats voice any concerns on this subject.
Interesting how these things go. Democrats were more likely to focus on police brutality (remember, Regan as governor signed open-carry bans because of the Black Panthers) until Republicans (like Reagan!) soft-on-crimed ’em in the 70s and 80s (Willie Horton, anyone)? Now it’s flipped to Democrats being supportive of police while Republicans become more likely to cut funding or equate them with tyrants.
My main recollection of Democrats is their 1968 Convention in which Daley ordered martial law, and every major city around the country, all headed by Democrats, many with famously abusive police departments.
“80s (Willie Horton, anyone)?”
That was an Al Gore campaign attack against Dukakis, both Democrats. What has 8 years of Clinton and 8 years of Obama brought us in civil rights crimes brought against cops? How about lessening police power or the reach of the federal criminal code? G.W. Bush brought civil rights charges against the Rodney King cops, but that incident now pales against what we see on YouTube, about once a week. The Department of Jusitce could do nothing but prosecute cops and still not get to all the bad ones.
“Republicans become more likely to cut funding or equate them with tyrants.”
Nah. Republicans love cops. You should recognize that there really is one party.