Police Warned About Nashville Bomber 16 Months Ago
In hindsight, there were more than a few clues.
Two stories out overnight demonstrate that the perpetrator of the Christmas morning suicide bombing in the home of country music demonstrated plenty of signs of being less than a model citizen.
Daily Beast (“Nashville Suicide Bomber Anthony Quinn Warner’s Cop-Hating ‘Hippie’ Past“):
Tom Lundborg was a teenager in the late 1970s when he worked under accused Nashville bomber Anthony Quinn Warner, who was a technician for an alarm company.
[…]
Lundborg said Warner disliked authority, loved smoking weed, and claimed he’d just gotten out of the Navy. (It’s unclear whether Warner was ever in the U.S. Armed Forces, but records show he was arrested for marijuana possession in 1978.)
They drove around listening to 103 KDF, previously Nashville’s main rock station, and if Warner spotted a police officer, he’d break his silence to lecture the teenage Lundborg.
“I hate cops. They’re all corrupt,” Warner would say. “Never trust a cop.”
The pool of Americans who dislike authority, enjoy marijuana, and think police are corrupt is rather large, I’d wager.
The Nashville Tennessean (“Girlfriend warned Nashville police Anthony Warner was building bomb a year ago, report shows“):
Sixteen months before Anthony Quinn Warner’s RV exploded in downtown Nashville on Christmas morning, officers visited his home in Antioch after his girlfriend reported that he was making bombs in the vehicle, according to documents obtained by The Tennessean.
On Friday, 63-year-old Warner blew up a city block, police say, about 6:30 a.m. on Second Avenue outside an AT&T switch facility. The bomb caused massive destruction to 41 downtown buildings and crippled telecommunication systems throughout the Southeast over the weekend.
In the aftermath, The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said Warner was “not on our radar” prior to the bombing. But a Metro Nashville Police Department report from August 2019 shows that local and federal authorities were aware of alleged threats he had made.
No actions appear to have been taken to stop Warner, a slender 5-foot-8, 135-pound man who died in the explosion, which injured three others.
On Aug. 21, 2019, the girlfriend told Nashville police that Warner “was building bombs in the RV trailer at his residence,” the MNPD report states. Nashville police then forwarded the information to the FBI.
Officers were called to the home of Warner’s girlfriend, roughly a mile and a half from Warner, who lived at 115 Bakertown Road.
Police were called by the woman’s attorney, Raymond Throckmorton III, who was concerned about comments she had made. When they arrived, they found her sitting on the porch with two unloaded guns nearby.
“She related that the guns belonged to a ‘Tony Warner’ and that she did not want them in the house any longer,” MNPD spokesman Don Aaron said in a statement to The Tennessean.
While at the house, the woman told police about the bomb comments Warner had made.
Throckmorton, who served as the woman’s attorney, told officers Warner “frequently talks about the military and bomb making,” the document said.
Warner “knows what he is doing and is capable of making a bomb,” the attorney said to the officers, according to the report.
In an interview Tuesday night, Throckmorton told The Tennessean he urged police at the time to look into the woman’s claim. He said she feared for her safety, believing Warner may harm her.
According to the police report and Throckmorton, the woman was experiencing a mental health crisis at the time. Officers called their mobile crisis division, and after talking with the woman, she agreed to be transported by ambulance for a psychological evaluation, Aaron said.
Police then went to Warner’s home, but he didn’t answer the door after they knocked several times.
Officers saw his RV behind the house, but the vehicle was fenced off and police were unable to see inside of it, the report said. While there, police noted that there were “several security cameras and wires attached to a alarm sign on the front door.”
The officers notified supervisors and detectives about the incident.
“They saw no evidence of a crime and had no authority to enter his home or fenced property,” Aaron said of officers’ unsuccessful attempt to make contact with Warner or look inside the RV.
The department’s hazardous devices unit was given a copy of the report.
The next day, Nashville police sent the report and identifying information about Warner to the FBI to check their databases, Aaron said in a statement to The Tennessean.
Later that day, Aaron said, “the FBI reported back that they checked their holdings and found no records on Warner at all.”
Darrell DeBusk, a spokesperson for the FBI, told The Tennessean Tuesday night the inquiry was a standard agency-to-agency record check.
Then on Aug. 28, 2019, the Department of Defense reported back that “checks on Warner were all negative,” Aaron said.
During the week of August 26, 2019, police called Throckmorton, who declined to allow police to interview Warner or go on Warner’s property, the FBI told The Tennessean.
In a statement Tuesday night from Aaron, he said officers recalled Throckmorton saying Warner “did not care for the police,” and that Throckmorton would not allow Warner to give consent to officers to conduct a visual inspection of the RV.
Throckmorton told The Tennessean while he represented Warner in a civil matter several years ago, Warner was no longer a client of his in August 2019. He disputes that he told police they couldn’t search the RV.
“I have no memory of that whatsoever,” Throckmorton said of MNPD’s claim that said they could not inspect the RV. “I didn’t represent him anymore. He wasn’t an active client. I’m not a criminal defense attorney.”
He believes law enforcement could have done more to prevent the bombing.
“Somebody, somewhere dropped the ball,” Throckmorton said.
Aaron said police at the time had no proof of wrongdoing by Warner.
“At no time was there any evidence of a crime detected and no additional action was taken,” he said. “No additional information about Warner came to the department’s or the FBI’s attention after August 2019.”
So . . . an individual “experiencing a mental health crisis” calls the police, told them that Warner talked about bombs and knew how to make a bomb. Police went to investigate and Warner, who doesn’t like police, denied them permission to search his premises without a warrant. Lacking any evidence aside from a crazy woman’s vague testimony about something that’s not criminal, they declined to pursue a warrant that they would have been denied.
Further, they checked with federal authorities and were told that his record was clean. Which, until Christmas morning, it was, save for a marijuana possession arrest 42 years ago.
It’s not at all obvious that a ball was dropped here. In hindsight, knowing that Warner set off a bomb, we would like police to have done more with a tip that he might, you know, set off a bomb. But, based on what they knew at the time of the tip—that a crazy woman said he talked about bombs a lot—it’s not at all obvious what more they should have done.
In hindsight, there almost always are. Paraphrasing somebody’s remark about recessions, tips and clues of this level have probably predicted 10,000 of the last half dozen bombings.
It seems if you want american police to take a threat seriously, you should tell them you saw drugs rather than bombs.
They could have followed up with the girlfriend after her mental health crisis passed.
Just a thought.
Would probably have done more good than serving another no-knock drug warrant in a black neighborhood (or busting a bunch of corner boys – or whatever they do in Nashville),
But it’s all about priorities, I guess.
So if I’m reading the quoted article correctly, both the woman and her attorney (who represented Warner previously) mentioned Warner talking about “military and bomb making”, with the woman specifically mentioning Warner was making bombs in his “RV trailer”. I would argue that is more than just crazed rambling by an unhappy “girlfriend”.
And who is “Walker”?
As I told somebody else this AM: This shit happens all the time and 99,99% of the time it never makes the news. Cops are part of a bureaucracy. They were handled a bureaucratic problem and gave it a bureaucratic answer: Fill the boxes, file it, kick it up the COC. And then forget about it. They had very little reason to push for more at that point in time. Maybe if Warner had crossed their radar again, this report would have surfaced and they’d have pushed a little harder. Maybe not.
Besides, “disgruntled girlfriend shit talks disgruntled boyfriend” is just SSDD.
Also, hindsight is 20/20.
@Owen:
Does it really matter if they’re not called Farouq or Nazif, or something like that?
Anything with the words “bomb” in it requires a little more effort than “Can we check your property? No kthanxbye”. I don’t care how “crazy” the person making the accusation is. This is one of those things we as a society need to actually follow up on, especially in an age of militia nuts and conspiracy theorists gone wild.
A search of his recent purchases would have yielded the same info we have know – purchases of chemicals and bomb making materials. That’s probable cause for a warrant for property search right there. Asking around would have gotten the same collaborating answers we’re getting now – the guy fell into QAnon and the conspiracy hole and it wasn’t a secret. The police seem to have done the bare minimum because he was a seemingly innocent older white guy aka not a “terrorist”. Had this guy been a member of a minority or from the ME, a girlfriend warning about bombs (even if she was “crazy” at the time) would have gotten a *lot* bigger response.
It really feels like they wrote this off as two crazies being crazy and him being white meant he wasn’t going to blow up a city block even if he was building explosives in his backyard.
Yeah, this isn’t the defense most people think it is. Every single criminal in the history of ever had a clean record till the second they didn’t. It doesn’t mean “innocent” but rather “we didn’t get anything to stick”. A killer can commit multiple homicides before being caught or even being under suspicion; the police returned an escaped victim to Dahmer for god’s sake, a naked and bleeding young person was sent back to their death because Dahmer didn’t raise any flags with the officers.
Presumption of innocent doesn’t mean don’t do your homework when serious charges are leveled. It also doesn’t mean the police shouldn’t investigate but rather is starting from the position you aren’t guilty so let’s find evidence that you could be. No record could mean they haven’t been caught yet – god only knows my lack of speeding tickets doesn’t make me a safe driver, just one who keeps an eye out for cops. Getting accused of making bombs isn’t a normal accusation so maybe we should treat it as more than the ramblings of someone having a rough time right now.
@Owen: Girlfriends shit talk their boyfriends all the time. Boyfriends shit talk their girlfriends all the time. Same for husbands and wives. 24 hrs later they have kissed and made up and it was all a big mistake, they were just mad at each other. Cops hear this story at least 3 times every day (ok ok, I’m exaggerating, sue me 😉 )
The lawyer is a slightly different situation, but his memory is a little foggy on some of the details so I’m not sure what to make of his statements.
@Kathy: compare to this story from Chicago, where police wrongly raided the home of a hospital social worker, based on a bad tip:
link
@KM: speaking of Dahmer, the bleeding victim was Cambodian, and the people who reported Dahmer to the police were black. So who’d you expect them to believe: black people or some foreigner? Or the white guy who says he’s innocent?
This whole thing is really triggering for me, because I almost lost my life last month. But the suspected assailant, about whom numerous complaints had been ignored for months, is white, and the victims are all black. So now police are saying nothing happened, just move along.
So what do I do? Just count my blessings that my daughter and I are still alive, and the community has been generous in helping us?
@drj: I should have included “;)”, “Walker” was clearly a mistyping of “Warner” in the body of James’ article. And I shouldn’t criticize as I typed “preciously” instead of “previously” in my first draft.
@Monala:
That sounds genuinely bad. I hope you’re OK! (In so far as that’s possible after such an experience.)
@OzarkHillbilly: Concur with the Girlfriend/Boyfriend part, but the article states the lawyer made comments in conjunction with the original police report:
“Police were called by the woman’s attorney, Raymond Throckmorton III, who was concerned about comments she had made. When they arrived, they found her sitting on the porch with two unloaded guns nearby.”
It’s quite easy to establish probable cause in hindsight. In action at the time, not always so much. Not nearly enough credible information that I’m seeing here to sustain a warrant IMO, and they did reach out to look into the allegations. Not much more they could have done.
@KM:
What information do you propose to utilize to establish probable cause to obtain a warrant to gain access to these records? If her information and credibility are not sufficient to support a warrant for his premises, they’re equally insufficient to support a subpoena for access to records, and as far as I can tell the word of one crazy lady is all they had to work with.
I get the tendency to go Perry Mason after the fact, but speaking honestly, what you’re proposing is the exact sort of gross 4th Amendment violation that I’d think would typically have progressives ready to burn the building down. It’s unfortunate that they didn’t have sufficient information, but even crazy bombers have constitutional rights.
It appears to me that this situation worked out exactly as The Founders [TM] imagined it should–right up to the explosion part. And stand by for the suggestion from supporters of The War on [some] Drugs to note that if drug possession were treated as a more serious crime, things like this wouldn’t happen because guys like Warner would be in jail instead of roaming free and blowing stuff up. It’s nonsense, of course, but you make whatever hay you can while the sun shines.
@HarvardLaw92:
Agree.
If the last 4 years have taught us anything it’s that we need more obedience to more laws by more cops, not the opposite.
@HarvardLaw92:
Did the Nashville PD even try to get a follow-up statement from Warner’s girlfriend? That alone could have been enough.
We’re not asking for Sherlock Holmes-level detective work here.
@Monala:
I knew about the apartment fire, but I had just assumed that someone in one of the other units had been smoking in bed or something. Was it arson or was this something else?
I don’t know what you do, but counting the blessings probably should be part of it. A reminder that while there are some genuinely awful people there are also a lot of genuinely good people or good enough people who will help out.
You take the kid to a therapist, and probably yourself as well, just to get a second opinion when you think you’re all handling it “fine.” You weigh the continuing risk, and consider getting a gun even though you probably don’t want to. You try to do something, anything, to try to gain control of a situation that you may not have a sense of control over.
@drj:
Generally speaking, no. The problem is that she’s crazy, or was crazy, so how do we establish that her observations stemmed from a lucid moment versus one where she was detached from reality? Did she see something, or did she hallucinate something? How do we establish which it is? It’s doesn’t matter when they speak to her if her information stems from a period of time in which her grip on reality is subject to being impugned. From what I’ve read of this lady, which admittedly isn’t a great deal, it would have been a reach to seek a warrant based on her assertions alone.
Any remotely competent defense attorney would respond by attacking the validity of the warrant premised on her unreliability and the lack of corroboration, and they’d (very) likely prevail. After that, it’s fruit of the poisonous tree territory and the guy walks.
@drj:
Caveat to the above: I wouldn’t have been troubled by the PD taking along bomb sniffing dogs or sensors when they made the visit (preferably the latter), with the understanding that they’d have to remain external to the home / RV but they can sample there as they please during the encounter. If those detection methods alert from the exterior, then you’re golden. Call in for the warrant based on that tangible indication of explosives and tear the place apart. It’s a stretch, but in the end its defensible. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to anything you voluntarily release into the public.
@HarvardLaw92:
Come on – was she the only one with that info? Did they even bother to ask anyone else? You don’t need a warrant to ask around. Most people who trash their estranged loved ones don’t make accusations of bomb making so that seems like it would be a little usual and worth noting. Maybe talk to the neighbors at least? As noted above, cops do far worse with far less at the mere word “drugs” but easily dismissed claims of potential mass destruction. No one’s saying he doesn’t have rights; there’s ways to gather info that don’t require a warrant but the cops were more than happy to write it all off because “crazy”.
Everyone is dismissing her as “crazy” when we don’t even know what the “mental health crisis” was; she could have been having a freak out due to the fact she was living with a nut making bombs. She may have been trying to get his guns and materials away (had them on the porch) and seemed hysterical to them since she was talking about bombs. @drj’s right – did anyone follow up after her crisis to confirm? You know – basic police work. Instead, it’s easier to toss up our hands, go “mental illness, what are you gonna do?” and not do their damn job.
@KM:
Sure, it’s a reasonable basis on which to investigate further (with the caveat that people who act a little nutty, as seems to be the case with this lady generally are not taken seriously to avoid wasting limited resources on wild goose chases). None of that gets you inside the house or the RV or his financial records though. You’re correct – calling her crazy isn’t charitable, but her state of mind – both during the time she made the observations AND the time that she reported them – would be front and center in any trial. She seems to have been, at best, acting irrationally or chaotically, so it doesn’t engender a lot of confidence.
Like I said above, I’d have just taken detectors along on the visit (which they did execute). I can’t say whether they were doing it pro-forma based on mollifying a whacko, or they genuinely believed that there was no “there” there, but I try not to second guess. Hindsight is always 20/20.
@Gustopher: the building – what remains of it – looks like it was bombed. Witnesses say they saw the person, who had been hanging around for weeks and making threats, throw a Molotov cocktail. I heard yelling and glass shattering, and the building was engulfed in flames within minutes. Multiple people, including my daughter and I, had to jump out of upstairs windows in order to escape. I couldn’t find my dog, but brave girl that she is, she somehow managed to escape, but not without burns and wounds. Several families were left homeless, and all of us lost everything we owned.
But now they’re saying someone was smoking in bed and the bedding caught fire, even though the bedrooms are among the only parts of the building still standing.
@Gustopher: I guess what I’m saying is that the official story doesn’t make sense based on what those of us who went through it experienced. And it’s hard not to feel, given that the suspected assailant is white and the victims are all black, that police just don’t feel like wasting resources on it.
However, everyone survived, most with only minor injuries. The community has been generous, so we are all housed again and have received a lot of donations to help us rebuild our lives. So it makes some sense to let it drop, and focus on healing.
But the person is still out there. My daughter, who lost her dad two years ago, lost everything tangible he ever gave her. If he had still been alive, he wouldn’t have been able to escape, since he was disabled. And we could have lost our dog, which would have devastated us.
@HarvardLaw92: In this article, as the lawyer is quoted in the police report as saying (sic) Warner “knows what he is doing and is capable of making a bomb,”, I would think that would mean it’s not just the opinion of the girlfriend in her distressed mental state. My legal training is limited to a Sophomore level Business Law class, but it is my understanding that lawyers tend to not make baseless accusations in statements to sworn officers.
@HarvardLaw92:
“The problem is that she’s crazy, or was crazy, so how do we establish that her observations stemmed from a lucid moment versus one where she was detached from reality?”
If she didn’t appear “crazy” and was composed, I’m curious if her testimony alone would of then been enough probable cause for a search warrant.
@KM: Nice blanket assertions, devoid of any sense of how much effort, time and resources would be wasted on sheer bollocks and on harassment or pranks.
@Owen:
The kicker is the source of his knowledge. If it were direct – i.e. he’d been in the home and directly observed the materials and preparation for himself – then sure. I got the impression that was not what happened, which would make it a case of an attorney repeating hearsay he’d heard from his client. In that instance, no, it has no evidentiary value at all.
@ImProPer:
I’m going to have to go out on the supposition limb here, since I have not reviewed the actual facts, but if she were composed & lucid, based on the assumption that she either lived in the property as well, or was a regular visitor who’d be expected to have directly observed the scenario on multiple occasions, then probably yes. I’d still have used that as the basis for an investigatory visit (i.e. the scenario above with the dogs / detectors), before pursuing the warrant, but in a stretch (exigent circumstances / imminent danger of harm), I wouldn’t have had a problem seeking that warrant on her affidavit alone. It sadly boils down to “is this lady going to be believable on the witness stand? Is the jury – or the judge in the event of an evidentiary hearing – going to be an asset to my case or a hindrance. At basis, I think like the prosecutor that I was, and cops have a (and have to have a) different mindset.
@Lounsbury:
Do police in Nashville regularly getting bomb threats? I’m asking this seriously – you’re complaining about how it’s a waste of time and effort but if it only happens occasionally, how much waste would there be really? An hour to talk to the neighbors or to go back and talk to her in a week. Perhaps do @HL92’s suggestion of the bomb dogs or detectors do a pass from public property nearby. One hour could have saved so much damage and pain. A single hour could have made the difference.
Following up on statements and doing basic police work is *not* a waste of time. It catches things like this that slip through the initial cracks or give false first impressions. Police are not perfect so going back to make sure if how we may sure crap like this doesn’t happen. I’m sure everyone whose business was destroyed or home was wrecked on Christmas would be glad that someone “wasted time” checking up on Mr. Warner.
@HarvardLaw92:
Thanks for answering. I find it terribly ironic that this post is right above the Breonna Taylor one. Two very different 4th amendment takeaways.
@ImProPer:
Yeah, the white folks 4th amendment and black folks 4th amendment.
@Sleeping Dog:
“Yeah, the white folks 4th amendment and black folks 4th amendment”
“Unfortunately true, and I look forward to the day it becomes all the people’s amendment. (I’m rooting for the former btw)”
@HarvardLaw92:
I expect that most people don’t have the foresight to fight a search warrant before the search, and that if a warrant yielded evidence of bomb making that then the “crazy” woman would be described as “distraught” or “terrorized” and all the evidence would come in. Basically, I expect that the checks on police power are rather weak when dealing with poor people. Am I wrong?
But, of course, that requires believing the crazy woman at the time, and not assuming that she is just trying to get back at her boyfriend for something and is making up stories. Something that might only be possible with hindsight.
@Monala: I’m glad the dog survived and is ok, but it really sucks about your daughter losing everything her father gave her.
I don’t know whether it is better or worse to try to replace a few of those things with something just like what was lost — obviously that can’t be done for photos and letters, but a few special stuffed animals (also, I guess that depends on the age of the kid… “here’s a stuffed squirrel just like the one your dad picked out for you” is some connection)
As for the rest, the Seattle police are the Seattle police — not very good, and basically a bunch of thugs in blue who don’t give a shit about the community they are supposed to be serving.
Looking it up… hey that was in Tacoma, not Seattle… no idea if Tacoma police are better or why they went from “it’s a Molotov cocktail” to “smoking in bed.” I thought it was two neighborhoods away from where I live, but it’s much further… and why didn’t I remember Molotov cocktails? I donated to a gofundme for one of the neighbors (I just looked it up through the receipt) and I remembered nothing… I am just losing my mind these days. I’m not saying I should remember everything about people on the internet, but Molotov cocktails should ring a bell.
Anyway, tell the dog that he/she/they is a good dog. Probably the kid too.
(Wondering what other things I have forgotten lately… some friends were surprised they hadn’t told me about their car getting totaled, but maybe they did tell me… (they’re fine, they weren’t even in the car, they lent it to a friend who hit a guardrail that was in the middle of the road after a truck scraped the guardrail… everyone was fine). We did just adjust some of my medicines… and 2020 is a dumpster fire)
@KM:
It wasn’t a bomb threat. It was a report that maybe someone might be making a bomb from an estranged crazy acting girlfriend. Angry/crazy people tell cops whoppers every single day.
The number of people with the knowledge to make a bomb numbers in the hundreds of millions. Seriously building a bomb is literally child’s play..
I’m also not a fan of your insistence that we turn this country into a complete police state by tossing the bill of rights. I’m sure your tune on that would change quickly once you’re the target of unfounded accusations…
To me the real question is how he accumulated the explosives. It took more than six months for Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols to accumulate the explosives for the Oklahoma City Building, There is a reason why these terrorist attacks in Europe, Australia and the US generally involves rifles and vehicles, and that there are a lot of failed attacks involving explosives.
But I defer to HarvardLaw92 expertise.
@Matt:
What??
I’m insisting that the police do police work as it exists basically all over the planet. Where are you getting “tossing the bill of rights” from me pointing out nobody took this seriously enough to ask a freaking neighbor to collaborate her story? That’s called a witness statement, something they should have gotten anyways! Or wondering why nobody followed up on a report of someone building a destructive device? Yes, millions of people theoretically could but how many actually are? Anyone with a good chem background can make meth but it doesn’t mean we’re all breaking bad in our free time. Angry people make up crap all the time, true. Angry people alleged bombs being built in the backyard, not so often and usually something to give a damn about. In any functioning country but America, it would be a given that someone would follow up on this just in case. It’s really indicative of the sickness of our nation that we’re dismissing bombing building as something that people just make up to get revenge when almost anywhere else it would be a big honking deal.
I’m not a fan of everyone just going “whoops, crazy lady said it so nothing we can do”. It’s the new “bitches be crazy” apparently. We don’t even know what her “crisis” was but suddenly she’s not qualified to report someone who was clearly dangerous. She told multiple people about this but because she needed help one time for a personal issue, the cops shouldn’t look into her allegation by doing ground-level detective work to build up evidence for a warrant? That’s not a “police state” – that’s them doing their job! This is not a freedom thing – this is people screaming “freedom!” because otherwise they’d have to deal with the fact that an American city got bombed rather than bother a old white guy to determine the truth behind his “crazy” girlfriend’s statements. I’m sure your tune would change quickly had people died due to this; if he had ended up the next McVeigh, everyone would up the cops’ ass wondering why they didn’t do anything.
For the record, I have been on the end of unfounded accusations as anyone in the medical field will tell you. I’m no stranger to wild-eyed and angry people screaming things at me because the court demanded they be there and demanding the police do something about their latest insanity. You know what? The cops come over, ask a few questions and move on. No warrant needed, no “bill of rights” being “tossed out”- just them doing their job of following up. C’est le vie – that’s life when you deal with the public. God forbid we bother the guy or the neighbors though…..
@Gustopher:
You don’t and you can’t. It would defeat the very purpose of a search warrant if you could.
HL92 is talking about the possibility of evidence acquired through the search being tossed during the subsequent criminal trial.
Apart from being unlikely if an actual bomb were to be found, such a course of action would nonetheless have prevented the attack – which, in any case, should have been a bigger priority than to ensure a criminal conviction of the perp.
More fundamentally, the entire discussion about a warrant is a red herring. The problem here isn’t that the NPD couldn’t get a warrant, it’s that it appears they didn’t do a basic follow up prior to – possibly – getting a warrant.
Obviously, there would be no warrant needed to talk to the girlfriend again. Nobody’s civil rights would be violated.
@KM:
Unless we’re talking about a full-blown psychosis or something similar, that “craziness” may not be as disqualifying to her statements as many here appear to assume.
On a final note:
Exactly.
It is simply more comfortable to assume that the police couldn’t do anything and the girlfriend was batshit crazy anyway than try to come to terms with the (likely) fact that the police doesn’t care to protect you if the threat comes from a cerain kind of angry white dude.