This is a very sad day for the RCMP. It's hard to believe that someone would resort to this as a means of escaping a drug bust, no matter how serious it was.

Four Mounties shot dead

FOUR Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers were shot dead in a raid on a suspected marijuana-growing operation in rural Alberta today, in one of the deadliest days in the history of the national police force, a senior official said.

A suspect in the late-morning shoot-out was also killed when he turned his rifle on himself, Bill Sweeney, commanding officer of the RCMP in Alberta, told reporters.
The incident erupted near the town of Mayerthorpe, about 140km northwest of Edmonton, where the Mounties were investigating the "grow-op" inside a farm building, officials said.

After the shootings, police deployed emergency response teams and its major crimes unit. Edmonton's police department sent its helicopter, and authorities closed the airspace over the area.

Holy shit. I saw this on the news this evening, but at the time of the report, they only knew some officers had been shot but it wasn't known how badly injured they were. That's horrible.

Here's another article with a bit more info:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... p_shooting

"I'm told you have to go back to about 1885 in RCMP history and the Northwest Rebellion to have a loss of this magnitude," said assistant commissioner Bill Sweeney."

All over marijuana.

--PunkDavid

Thats depressing, I gotta smoke a bowl.

Id say its more over violent people breaking the law.

Well, yes. But if marijuana were legal, I'd be saying "All over methamphetamines " or "All over bald eagle feathers " or "All over Eskimo porn ", and I'd feel better abouot that somehow.

--PunkDavid

fair enough.

Does this mean the plan for decriminalization in Canada might fall by the wayside? What are people saying up there?

After reading the second story posted, I think it's a shame that Canadian authorities are trying to make this about marijuana. This man lived a very troubled life. His own father said he wished that the guy wasn't his son, and that he was a "wicked devil." Yes, marijuana was involved, but to say that the guy did this simply because his operation had been discovered is a bit of a stretch. He sounds like the kind of guy that was just looking for an excuse to pull something like this. It's just terrible.

On a side note, I am absolutely amazed that you have to look back over 120 years in Canadian history to find an incident where 4 officers were killed. I wonder how many police officers are killed each day in the US, or in just one large city alone. It sure does say a lot about the Canadian mentality toward violence. I wish my country was more like that.

I wonder when was the last time four police officers were killed in one incident in Iraq?

What time is it?

--PunkDavid

Actually, people one both sides of the debate are trying to use this to their advantage.

People for decriminalization say that if it were decriminalized, the RCMP wouldn't have been there in the first place, which is bullshit because the RCMP were there to investigate stolen property and just happened to stumble on to the pot.

People against decriminalization seem to be of the opinion that this his a hint at the true seriousness of marijuana, that if four officers die for it then it's obviously a just cause. I consider this bullshit for the same reason...

So I don't think this will have much of an effect on decriminalization... though I may be wrong.

As an advocate of marijuana legalization, I would have said that if pot were legal, the Mounties would still be dead, but the guy who killed them wouldn't have been growing marijuana, because there would be no reason for a criminal like him to be in the pot trade.

--PunkDavid

(reads first post)


.That sucks.