Ace of Spades HQ

December 31, 2005

Update on Stolen Explosives: Just Some Good Old Boys, Never Meanin' No Harm
— Ace

Makin' their way the only way they know how, that's just a little bit more than the law will allow:

Profit and drug addiction - not terrorism - probably drove the recent theft of hundreds of pounds of powerful explosives from rural Bernalillo County, according to people who know the main suspects.
Federal authorities Friday afternoon arrested brothers David Kendrick Brown, 49, and Leslie F. Brown, 44, both from the northwestern New Mexico town of Bloomfield. Two other men were being held for questioning Friday night.
Bloomfield residents who know the Brown family but asked not to be identified say the brothers were not anti-government and did not have a terrorist agenda - only a drug problem that would benefit from the sale of the explosives.
Weary-eyed federal and local authorities looked relieved at FBI headquarters in Albuquerque when they announced Friday night that all of the stolen items - enough to level a large building, they say - were recovered safely from a barn 12 miles south of Bloomfield in rural San Juan County.

No moonshine was found on the premises, and none of the explosives had yet been attached to arrows.

Thanks to Scott.

Oh... Before the typical trolls scream "You don't care about criminals unless they have swarthy skin!" no, dude, I think these guys should be locked up for a long, long time.

I wrote a jokey headline and link because there was a great deal of suspicion that this was terrorist-related, which I never figured it was.

I do not, in fact, imagine they're just "a two modern-day Robin Hoods," with a hot cousin in short-short cut-offs that lets all her fine junk hang out.

My point is just they're typical crimial lowlifes, not Al Qaedaists. They're just the sort of dudes you see on Cops all the time, congenitally incapable of wearing shirts, usually trying to hide underneath the overturned and rusty dinghy in the back yard when Johnny Law comes a-knockin'.

Posted by: Ace at 08:36 AM | Comments (14)
Post contains 354 words, total size 2 kb.

1 Lock 'em up for a long time is right. Who are they gonna sell stolen explosives to, anyway? They would've sold them to the first terrorists that ponied up $500.

Posted by: Joan of Argghh! at December 31, 2005 08:52 AM (wBmK0)

2 They may have, but then, it's not like general criminals don't need explosives. Criminals need to blow safes and stuff, and there is of course a black market for good explosives.

Posted by: ace at December 31, 2005 08:54 AM (UxtY9)

3 We are lucky that these guys were idiots, and that the materials didnt go anywhere. Also glad to see the Feds buck up and get after it, but truth is, it was the $50k reward that rounded them up. These clowns were loose enough that several people knew about what they were doing and one of them dropped a dime.

The other thing I find disturbing is tha absolute silence about it in the press. It was all over CNN, Fox, etc, but now that it is recovered and the creeps busted, not a peep. I first got wind of it off the ATF website, which I started watching after the theft was all over the news.

Posted by: Scott at December 31, 2005 09:11 AM (/93R6)

4 I notice the FBI seems to be grabbing the lion's share of the credit on this. Which is typical, because I'm willing to bet the ATF and locals did all the actual cop work here. The FBI shows when cameras arrive.

Posted by: UGAdawg at December 31, 2005 09:23 AM (alGm/)

5 I've been googlin' around, Ace, to see when was the last time some criminals blew up a safe, or the last time anything was blown up, domestically, for any purpose besides terrorism. I'm not having much luck, but then I'm not Allah, who is a better traffic-santa to you than GR could ever be.

I don't have any stats on my side, but my guess is that amount of stolen explosives wouldn't be sold for any serious money to anyone with fun-hearted mischief and thievery in mind. Drug-addicts don't have the best judgement, but I can imagine them thinking about who they would sell their explosives to for the quickest and easiest money.

I don't question their motives, the article says "profit and drug addiction", but I do worry as to where the end of their motives could have led.

Posted by: Joan of Argghh! at December 31, 2005 09:44 AM (wBmK0)

6 A few years ago in either New Mexico or Utah, a couple of guys used dynamite in an attempt to dispose of their murder victims. It doesn't work well. You just end up with body parts all over the place.

Criminals are always playing around with explosives. It just didn't make the news until recently.

Posted by: at December 31, 2005 10:14 AM (+YJU9)

7 I don't have any stats on my side, but my guess is that amount of stolen explosives wouldn't be sold for any serious money to anyone with fun-hearted mischief and thievery in mind.

Why in the world do you assume that they would only move it in bulk? Why does the entire amount have to be sold to only one person, and only at one time?

Take it from me, explosives are stolen all the time from construction sites. 9/11 certainly didn't change that, it just made the media more sensitive to the thefts if a threshold limit was reached.

A few pounds here and there don't set off any warning bells, but if the amount is over about 35 pounds then the local media comes calling to see if they can get their footage on the national networks.

Like I've said before, people are screaming "Terrorist!" an awful lot these days. Crime still happens that has nothing to do with terrorism.

James

Posted by: James R. Rummel at December 31, 2005 11:37 AM (t9tLW)

8 After posting the above comment, I see that a no-name reader right above my own remarks essentially said the same thing about stolen explosives and media sensitivity to same. He nailed it perfectly, and much more succinctly than I could.

James

Posted by: James R. Rummel at December 31, 2005 11:39 AM (t9tLW)

9 If criminals were half as smart as they like to think (thank whatever diety you like they are not), they would realize that explosives leave a huge amount of physical evidence. Nothing is destroyed, only spread around. LE agencies and military entities worldwide have developed methods by which they can nail down not only the compound, but likely the origin, even if home made or "improvised".

Sh**, they found the bridge wires in the EBC (electric blasting cap) that took down the flight over Lockerbie.

To be honest, it is all brutally simple organic chemistry. Someone who knows what they are doing can go to WalMart with $15 and get what they need, there simply is no reason to steal anything, unless you are an idiot.

Lets not forget that a handful of mildly creative Islamic nutbars, combined with apathetic passengers and a little help from Mother Nature and Sir Isaac Newton, used box knives and a bunch of AVGAS to level the WTC and put a big hole in the Pentagon.

People seem to forget the violence of a grain silo explosion. Flour is a *very* powerful explosive if used properly.

Materials are not the problem, criminals are.

I cant find the cite, but I remember reading an IDF type being quoted saying that the reason the USA and the TSA are screwing up is because we are looking for weapons, and not terrorists.

Posted by: Scott at December 31, 2005 12:18 PM (/93R6)

10 Give both of them 80 years in proson for this its no luaghing matter

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