After reviewing the footage of the recent Foothills police involved shooting which lead to the death of Mr. Boyd, the Eye has consulted with a technical expert on the equipment used, specifically the rifle wielded by the helmet camera equipped shooter.
Did anyone notice the level of noise from the flash bang, then the Taser shotgun? How about the bean bag gun at the end? Did you notice the extremely suppressed level of muzzle signature emitted from the AR-15 rifle used by the shooter, compared to the rest of these weapons?
If so, continue reading.
An AR-15 is extremely loud, and would have
been obnoxious had it been fired close to the camera that was filming
it, but this one wasn't. Being close to the recording equipment, the AR
should have been louder than the shotgun,
but less louder than the flash bang grenade. This one sounded like a
.22. Why you ask?
Because, if you look closely at the stills in the provided photos,
you will see that attached to the end of the muzzle of this officer's
weapon is a long fat cylindrical item. That folks, is a sound suppressor
aka silencer. Why do you ask would an officer
need a suppressed rifle for a situation like this? That's what we would
like to know too.
Chief Eden and the rest of the tactical cool guys will
say these pieces of equipment are used by swat teams for sound and
flash suppression in volatile environments like
in the clearing of meth labs and to preserve hearing in close quarter
situations indoors. They can say that, but how many documented cases do
we have nationwide of civilians being shot with suppressed weapons, the
same weapons that SEAL and SF teams use in
warfare. This was not a meth lab situation, and the incident occurred
outdoors, so why the silencer? Is this an approved piece of equipment?
Was it personally owned? If not, when did the city issue silencers? Is
this equipment on the officers range weapon's
card? Is this why there was a discrepancy and some confusion on how many
shots were fired? Is this why Eden looked so scared?
For our doubters out there, we were advised that this was an
Advanced Armament model M4-2000. It is a quick detach suppressor that
mounts over the flash hider with a ratchet mechanism to lock it in
place. This means that it is easily removed in a few seconds,
so the excuse of it being permanent, or labor involving to remove is out
the window. Also, something like this makes your rifle front heavy and
increases it's length, which is not conducive to operating in rocky
vertical terrain. See the provided photos for
comparison.
After comparing, if you still have any doubt, this rifle was
also equipped with an Aimpoint Micro T1 red dot sight mounted on a
riser to co-witness with the Troy back up flip sights, and Aimpoint 3x
magnifier, and a Badger Tac Latch charging handle.
Thems some good Eyes!
Some serious questions and soul searching needs to be done into the
culture and militaristic mentality of APD. This has to be a first. An Albuquerque
citizen shot by police armed with a suppressed automatic weapon.
