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Do you, gentle readers, like to see bad guys get what is coming to them?  Do you like to see lying, dangerous government agents exposed for what they are?  Do you like to see them caught in lies with no way out?  Do you like to see justice done, real justice, not social justice?

That’s the subject, and hopefully, the result of, License to Kill: The Murder of Erik Scott.  I recently announced the publication of the book here.  It is the culmination of eight years of work on the Erik Scott case.

Erik Scott, Armor Officer

Erik Scott was a decorated Army officer and successful businessman who made the mistake of living in Las Vegas, where the Metropolitan Police Department is arguably a great danger to honest citizens than to criminals. On July 10, 2010, while shopping with his fiancé, he was the victim of a disastrous chain of deadly mistakes that ended when three undertrained, panicky cops shot him dead in the middle of a large crowd of people.

For Metro, Scott was just another dead citizen, absolutely routine. So common were–and are–bad shoots of innocents, cover-ups are automatic, and so it was in Scott’s murder. Officers kill and are virtually never held accountable in any way.

I took an interest in the case after reading a brief article about Scott’s death by my friend and former co-blogger Bob Owens.  As brief as it was, everything about Scott’s killing sounded wrong.  Any competent, experienced officer would have the same reaction.  Most commonly, the best way to tell if the police made mistakes is to know what should have been done, and compare that to what was done. The Erik Scott case archive, containing all of those articles, is available here.  

Little by little, over the years, relying on media accounts and information gleaned from other sources, including honest Metro officers–yes, they exist–I was able to paint a clearer picture of the case, and Metro looked worse and worse.  It was only after the Las Vegas system was able to do away with the lawsuits filed by the Scott family–that system too is rigged in Vegas–that I was able to obtain the complete Metro case report, including photographs.  That report included all written and recorded witness statements, and the transcripts of the witnesses appearing in the farcically corrupt Coroner’s Inquest.  In addition, I was able to obtain depositions taken during the lawsuit process, and interviews of additional witnesses.  To my knowledge, none of these depositions or interviews were ever released to the media, nor were they given to Metro.

I set to work carefully reading every word of all of those documents, many times.  I always had reason to believe the Metro narrative was a lie, but in many instances, I had no way to absolutely prove that.  With all of those documents, I did.  It was much worse than I thought.

Metro’s usual tactic is to lie about citizen killings from the beginning.  They develop a simple narrative, and everyone is made to stick to it.  In return, officers are seldom, if ever, disciplined.  Because virtually no one ever sees Metro’s reports, the public has no way to conclusively expose Metro’s lies.  The entire Las Vegas system supports Metro, which makes getting to the truth even more difficult.  This makes it easy for officers to lie, blatantly lie, because they know it’s virtually impossible for anyone to prove them wrong, and if they do, they’ll never be prosecuted.  Hell, they’ll never even serve a day off.

One notable, and rare, exception was former Officer Jesus Arevalo, who murdered veteran and PTSD sufferer Stanley Gibson absolutely without justification.  Arevalo shot Gibson in the head–he fired seven rounds–with an AR-15 from a distance. At the time, Gibson was threatening no one, and posed no threat to anyone.  There were too many witnesses, and even video that Metro wasn’t able to disappear.  Despite committing cold-blooded murder, Arevalo was eventually, and reluctantly, fired. Not prosecuted, merely fired.  I addressed that case here.

Gibson’s survivors were eventually paid a total of $2 million dollars.  

Metro’s arrogance in their lies about their deadly mistakes is as sickening as it is stupid, but before the Scott case, the pattern was always the same: lie constantly, demonize the victim, virtue signal, make a big, quiet payout if necessary, public interest would wane, and the case would eventually flow down the memory hole and be forgotten, displaced by the newest Metro outrage.  But when Metro killed Erik Scott, they messed with the wrong family.

Erik Scott

I am honored to know them.  Better people don’t exist, and with their help, and the help of my co-author, I’ve been able to produce the book that makes it impossible for Metro to lie about this case, though they never learn, and keep lying.

Barry Jensen was one of the two detectives in charge of the Scott case.  Honest cops would think his work on the case, by professional standards, incompetent. But it was precisely what Metro required: a complete furtherance of the cover-up.  However, Metro had, by 2010, become so arrogant, they didn’t bother to competently construct cover-ups, at least not on paper.  This, remember, was the agency who retained an officer who one night slit a man’s throat from ear to ear, and then shot him in the head.  The officer in question only left the force years later.  He resigned while under investigation for theft.

Jensen’s inquest testimony was a virtual textbook of perjury, and Metro’s report, quoted in the book, proves it conclusively.  Still, Jensen, a faithful Metro cop, can’t stop spinning the Scott case narrative, as this comment on the License To Kill Facebook page reveals:

Jensen–his comments clearly identify him as the Barry Jensen involved in the case–is merely repeating the Metro narrative, but his memory is faulty, or as is common with Metro, he doesn’t care to be accurate; he doesn’t think he has to.  And he doesn’t give up:

I replied:

The difference between what Jensen has to say, and my replies, is I can back up my assertions with fact, and do just that in the book using Metro’s own reports, Jensen’s own testimony, and other unimpeachable documentation, to do it.  One does have to give Jensen credit for tenacity:

It’s unlikely Jensen has read the book.  His own comments suggest he has not.  That is almost certainly the case with other Metro officers and supporters that have attacked a book they haven’t read, and that will do so in the near future.  That too is a reliable Metro tactic.

It has taken eight years to bring this story to the public because it took about five years to obtain all the information necessary to know the facts.  Another year was spent reading all relevant materials, preparing and writing the book, and about two years were spent finding a publisher.  Writing a book is the easiest part of the process.  Getting a book published–in paper–these days is very difficult.  The days of substantial advances, and publishers fighting for books are long gone–unless of course, one is a disgraced Democrat. There remain vanity publishers, companies that will do the proofing and actual production of a book, but the author has to pay every cost–up front.  Real publishers only issue contracts if they think they can sell books–make money-and they pay the production costs with that in mind.  That is the case with License To Kill.  It’s the real thing.

 No book can possibly include every relevant fact and bit of evidence.  A great deal of evidence that would have been introduced in a criminal or civil trial has been omitted in the service of telling a coherent and engaging story that keeps production costs down so the book won’t be too thick or too expensive for its audience.  That’s what Jensen and Metro don’t understand: there is far, far more evidence that reveals the extent of their cover-up than any single book can possibly contain.  As much evidence as LTK contains, and as damning as it is, there is so much more. There are multiple copies of all of that evidence in safe places.

The book does explain the most important, basic, professional things that should have been done, and weren’t.  It demonstrates how witnesses were manipulated, and how the false narrative was constructed.  It exposes unlawful searches.  It reveals how the entire Las Vegas system works with Metro to further cover-ups, and it absolutely destroys the heart of the Metro narrative: the two gun lie.

I doubt Metro would bother to go back and alter its report. They’re too arrogant, and there will be no lawsuits.  It’s possible there could be criminal prosecution–there is no statute of limitations on murder–but if so, the book would only serve as a guide to help honest prosecutors prepare a case.  It only uses the evidence otherwise available to honest prosecutors–are there any in Vegas? Would the Vegas powers allow such a trial?–to tell the truth about the case.  But if Metro does try to change things, we have their original reports. Any changes will be easy to detect.

I flatter myself, gentle readers, to think the book worth your time and hard-earned money.  We are not selling it in bookstores, most of which are quickly vanishing.  It is available at $17.99 in paperback from Amazon, or directly from North Slope Publications.  It is a full sized paperback, the same dimensions as a hard cover book, and the typeface is large enough, and sufficiently well spaced, to easily read.

The book was written in the sincere hope that Metro wouldn’t get away with it, that Erik Scott’s untimely death will not be in vain.  It was written to see justice done, and in the hope, perhaps vain, that Metro might reform, and kill fewer innocent people.

We know not every Metro officer is corrupt or incompetent. Many have helped us, and told us it is well known in Metro that Erik Scott died in a bad shoot.  We are reliably told that the Costco video that proved it a bad shoot, and supposedly disappeared–Metro claimed it was never recorded–was actually viewed by Metro brass.  It still exists–or did years ago, and Metro and Costco have copies.  We are reliably told that one of the officers that shot Erik Scott in the back as he fell to the pavement on his face, and lay there, mortally wounded, is remorseful. The killer that shot Scott in the heart still worked for Metro until recently.  We’ve received information that suggests he “retired” early, but that’s not confirmed.  The other back shooter was eventually fired after being convicted of giving a known felon a firearm.

So please, gentle readers, if you are as disturbed by police officers like Jensen and the others revealed in the book, read it. Spreading the word, the true story, might help change things.  There’s too little truth in the world.  If you can, leave a review at Amazon.  That would be particularly appreciated it if is a positive review. And as always, my thanks for patronizing this scruffy little blog.

NOTE:  the book is also available in a Kindle edition through Amazon.

UPDATE: 07-26-18, 1130 CST

It appears the people of Las Vegas have been at least a little safer since January of 2017, according to the March/April edition of the Las Vegas Police Protective Association’s Vegas Beat online magazine: