Attorney General John M. Formella has named the officers who fired lethal shots at a troubled Pittsfield man on June 14. During a 10-hour standoff prior to his death, 52-year-old Anthony Hannon texted a friend, “I’m sorry I’m not wanting to live anymore,” according to Tracy Huyck, who worked with him at a convenience store.
Pittsfield police who responded to a “domestic disturbance” at 40A Lyford Hill Road in Pittsfield called in a regional special operations team to deal with the situation when Hannon refused to surrender. The resulting standoff allegedly ended with the exchange of gunfire between Hannon and the police. None of the officers wore body cameras during the incident, and the Attorney General’s Office is investigating to find out exactly what transpired.
“The exact circumstances surrounding this incident remain actively under investigation. No further updates are expected until the investigation is completed,” Formella said. Authorities have released no information about whether anyone else was present at the home.
Formella’s announcement late last week said the members of the Central New Hampshire Special Operations Unit who fired at Hannon were Officer Jesse Colby of the Henniker Police Department, Sergeant Joseph DiGeorge of the Pittsfield Police Department, and Sergeant Craig Levesque and officers Matthew Doyon, Almadin Dzelic, and Nicholas McNutt of the Concord Police Department. Three members of the Central New Hampshire Special Operations Unit who discharged less-than-lethal weapons were Detective Kevin Faria of the Bradford Police Department and Sergeant Christian Lovejoy and Detective Thomas Sheveland of the Concord Police Department. Formella said the less-than-lethal weapons consisted of 40-millimeter direct-impact weapons, which have lightweight, high-speed projectiles consisting of a plastic body and a crushable foam nose; as well as a beanbag shotgun.
During the initial report of the incident, authorities noted that no police officer was injured in the shootout.
Police Support Grows As Violence Increases
Statistics show a surge in homicides across America, undermining popular slogans like “Defund the Police.” Democrats who were looking to transfer money from police departments to social service agencies they said were better equipped to handle many of the calls now going to police officers are now advocating additional funding for law enforcement.
“ ‘Defund police’ is a phrase that I wish had never been uttered,” Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois said. “We’ve got to do a better job of talking about what we do want to do.” Cedric L. Richmond, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, agreed, saying, “I think that Democratic candidates need to talk about what they want to do, and not necessarily in slogan language.”
New Jersey Democrat Josh Gottheimer commented, “You can actually be very much pro-law enforcement and pro-reform. That’s a false choice to claim it’s one or the other.”
Slogans and “sound bites” can be very effective in communicating ideas, but they also can fail to translate into action that corrects situations in need of change and, in fact, get in the way of progress. Using offensive race-based terms like “white privilege” immediately closes the door on dialogue that could lead to a resolution of the problems facing minorities by evoking an “us” and “them” mentality.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said slogans like “defund the police” oversimplify the topic. “Anyone who gets caught up in a hashtag — defund, refund, tough on crime, soft on crime, any of those talking points — doesn’t have the mental capability to talk about this issue with the depth that it deserves,” he said.
Indecision On UAPs
A task force report released by the Pentagon finds “no clear indications that there is any non-terrestrial explanation” for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena — but also has not ruled out extraterrestrial involvement in the widespread sightings of inexplicable objects in the sky.
The Pentagon established the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force last August in response to congressional inquiries about the subject, and it looked into 144 incidents reported during the past two decades, including three videos that the Pentagon declassified last year.
Instead of extraterrestrial origins, the task force offered possible explanations such as “airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, USG or U.S. industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catchall ‘other’ bin,” the committee writes. “Some UAP may be attributable to sensor anomalies.”
The report states, “Safety concerns primarily center on aviators contending with an increasingly cluttered air domain. UAP would also represent a national security challenge if they are foreign adversary collection platforms or provide evidence a potential adversary has developed either a breakthrough or disruptive technology.”
In analyzing the reports, the task force found that “Although there was wide variability in the reports and the dataset is currently too limited to allow for detailed trend or pattern analysis, there was some clustering of UAP observations regarding shape, size, and, particularly, propulsion. UAP sightings also tended to cluster around U.S. training and testing grounds, but we assess that this may result from a collection bias as a result of focused attention, greater numbers of latest-generation sensors operating in those areas, unit expectations, and guidance to report anomalies.”
However, “In 18 incidents, described in 21 reports, observers reported unusual UAP movement patterns or flight characteristics,” which the report went on to describe. “Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings.”
So, as Fox Mulder used to say, “The truth is out there.”
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