Soldier sold handgun to suspect in triple homicide that took Fort Hood soldier’s life, police say...

I am not sure how you live with yourself...

One nice thing about Southern States including Texas is that most moving violations are a misdemeanor and even though not wearing a seatbelt carries a maximum fine of only $50, one can be arrested and taken into custody for it.

I hate to say however that a free air search of the black bag may be questionable. If it was a narcotics dog there had to have been narcotics in the bag at some point in order to allow the officers to enter the backpack without a warrant. Otherwise the handgun will be found to be inadmissible in court. The news article could be short on details. Let's hope that's the case because if the gun is thrown out it falls under the fruit of the poisonous tree metaphor of evidence obtained illegally. Since the investigators already believed he was the suspect in the murders had I been in the lead investigator I believe I would have obtained a warrant to go into the bag base upon a hit by the dog unless the dog was also trained to detect explosive matters such as gunpowder. All the investigators would need to do is tell the judge that the dog hit on the bag and they didn't know if the hit was related to narcotics, marijuana, or an explosive matter such as gunpowder and then get a signed warrant. They would have covered all their bases. This troubles me.

Please don't think I'm taking sides with a murderer because I'm not. I'm just pointing out what sounds like a weakness that was expressed somewhat in the newspaper article. The reference to the question asked as to whether narcotics were sniffed by the dog drew my attention to the issue.

Fort Hood was a rough place when I was stationed there as an MP. It is so much worse now that I simply can't believe it.

I see that the secretary of the army made a visit there and he and the upper Command Staff or trying to determine why the post has such a high crime rate. As I've said before it is a microcosm of the entire country. Just because you put a uniform honey gang banger flash drug dealer / murderer / fill in the blank does not make them anything less than what I just described. When I was stationed there we really didn't have a lot of restrictions on what we could do. We could make traffic stops it will based upon probable cause such as speeding and the only hindrance we had was it if we asked the subject if we could search the vehicle we had to complete a form and have them sign it. That was usually the point at which the subject with suddenly declined I volunteer research. I hope that the military police assigned there have the latitude necessary to be more assertive as police officers in a manner similar to the city police officers in Killeen or Harker Heights or Copperas Cove. I'd be quite interested to see the crime statistics.