It didn't take long for police to tell this wasn't any ordinary probation check. "He had an assault rifle propped inside the doorway, loaded and at his disposal," said probabtion officer John ZIto. So he called for backup. Soon, deputies say they found this array of weapons in 54-year-old james william's home. Assault rifles, three thousand rounds of ammo, 68 pounds of explosives and even an old rocket launcher. All illegal, because williams is on probation for dwi. "As any probationer who has violated a new crime, they now have double trouble," said Bob Burns, the county's probation chief. Not only is williams booked on weapons possession charges, he's hit with violating probation. The big question, is why? Why was he alledgedly keeping an arsenal in his house? "When we see these kinds of weapons, we don't care what those intentions were. Whether they were hobby related or a planned event. It wasn't important to us what his intentions were," Burns said. Police wouldn't say anything about what williams said to them, but did trot out their probation officers, to illustrate how hard their job is, and how unappreciated their work is. "One of the biggest things probation officers do is build a great rapport with the folks that we work with, and usually by using our verbal skills, we were able to confer some calmness on the situation, and that worked out very well," Zito said. And that was why police said they held the press conference, to show that they ended this particular threat to public safety before anyone got hurt. Williams is facing local charges, but could be on the hook for federal charges as well.
