The FBI Watchlist doesn’t seem to be a very useful tool of prevention if all that ever happens is that AFTER an incident takes place, we find out that the criminal or criminals were on it.
And it’s not that I agree with any kind of unconstitutional “watchlist” where the government keeps track of people who haven’t committed any crimes and are just added at their own discretion or because someone doesn’t like you and reports you to them. But if they’re going to throw the Constitution in the trash, they should at least use their information to keep us safe.
It certainly didn’t stop the police officers in NYC from getting attacked over the weekend. On New Years Eve, while we were all celebrating the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, at Time Square an alleged “jihadist” named Trevor Bickford was busy trying to kill a few of our NYC police officers. He went after three police officers with a machet-like knife and stashed two of them.
Bickford is being called an “alleged Islamic extremist” after he reportedly made statements to his aunt about wanting to go fight in the Middle East, which she reported to authorities.
But the machete isn’t “alleged” though. It exists. The knife didn’t decide to go after the police officers on its own. And the police officers aren’t “allegedly” injured they have real injuries. One of them has a REAL skull fracture – a rookie NYPD police officer named Paul on his first day on the job. The other injured officer, an eight-year-veteran, suffered a laceration.
Luckily, the police officers are expected to survive. And so is Bickford, after being shot in the shoulder by the third police officer on the scene.
According to the Daily Mail [1], the “alleged” machete wielder was on an “FBI ‘watchlist’ after being radicalized and vowing to fight in Afghanistan.”
The New York Post [2] reported that “Bickford traveled to New York alone on an Amtrak train and packed camping gear, a diary and a last will and testament.”
Bickford if a 19-year-old from Maine and is reported to be on the FBI’s “terrorism Guardian Watchlist” according to the New York Post with the FBI in Boston having an open case on him.
Not much is known about what the Guardian Watchlist is or what it’s good for. You can’t find it described on the FBI’s website.
All we know is the Post’s explanation of it being something that monitors radicalization. Whatever monitoring means.
It probably means, the FBI put information in a database and that’s about it as far as the monitoring goes. That’s really all our government is good for these days. Documenting things. Databases. By having a database, they can go after who they need to go after. But it doesn’t seem like REAL threats to our country are who whey WANT to go after. They’re too busy chasing down Trump supporters.