Down The Middle News: Florida man with ‘hit list’ receives no-jail plea after shooting up a condo while pretending to be a cop

On Tuesday, The Each day Beast reported the saga of Ryan Flanzer, a person from Florida who fancied himself to be a police officer — and the way, regardless of terrorizing a number of individuals, he ended up avoiding jail.

Flanzer, 27, harbored a years-long “obsession” with police, donated over $200,000 to police departments, implied on social media that he labored for a Florida police division, and listed himself on LinkedIn as a “Crime Prevention advisor” for the Longboat Key Police Division. “i [sic] shield and serve me finance and curiosity #LongBoatKeyPolice , volunteer officer,” mentioned considered one of his Instagram posts, which confirmed a Sig Sauer handgun and a hid carry license in a case that resembled a police badge. In one of many extra disturbing facets of his police worship, he generated proceeds for police departments by promoting hoodies on-line depicting the Columbine Excessive College shooters.

However Flanzer was by no means an actual police officer — and his makes an attempt to fake he was one finally proved to be his undoing.

Flanzer, distressed about being disinherited by his philanthropist grandparents and affected by drug habit and psychological sickness, started compiling a “hit checklist” of individuals he believed had financially wronged him, together with “the trustee of Flanzer’s grandparents’ property, the trustee’s lawyer, and Longboat Key Police Chief Peter Cumming, who had lately accepted Flanzer’s $200,000-plus donation.”

He went to the house of one of many targets on his checklist, wearing physique armor, a faux badge, and a holstered pistol, and instructed bystanders he was a police officer. He then repeated the stunt on the apartment of the proprietor of a boating firm he was suing, opened hearth on the door lock, then barricaded himself in a resort — and finally surrendered after a standoff with SWAT officers.

In the end, Flanzer took a plea that allowed him to keep away from jail time — due to the time he spent in a rehab facility in Malibu, California. The individuals on his “hit checklist” stay frightened and lots of have taken out safety particulars, however his lawyer Stephen Romine insists he’s not a menace to the group and is now at UCLA making “straight A’s.”

You’ll be able to learn extra right here.

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