Posted on 05/25/2011 10:50:46 AM PDT by Kaslin
Jose Guereña survived two tours in Iraq, but he couldn't survive his own government.
Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik infamously railed in January of this year that Arizona is a “Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”
One must wonder if the “prejudice and bigotry” he considers endemic to Arizona is to blame for the death of U.S. Marine veteran Jose Guereña, killed when Dupnik’s deputies gunned him down in his home. They fired 71 shots. They hit him 60 times. And then, as if this wasn’t enough, Dupnik’s deputies blocked paramedics for an hour and 14 minutes from approaching the scene, denying Guereña treatment until he was assuredly dead.
Dupnik’s SWAT team initially claimed that Guereña fired at them while they were serving a warrant — as he slept. They claimed that his bullets hit the bulletproof shield that the entry team hid behind, and that the barrage of bullets they fired back was in self-defense.
Only, Guereña never fired his weapon. Awoken by his wife with screams that men with guns were invading his home and threatening his family, Jose Guereña armed himself with a AR-15 rifle and crouched in the hallway. The SWAT team unloaded upon Guereña on sight. He apparently recognized the home invaders as police. He took 60 rounds, but never — as the Pima County Sheriff’s Department was forced to admit — took off his weapon’s safety as he was being killed.
Prejudice and bigotry?
It was, you’ll recall, a claim Dupnik made in the wake of Jared Loughner’s bloodly rampage at a “Congress in your Corner” event at a Safeway supermarket in Tucson, where six were killed and 14 others were injured — including, gravely, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Dupnik was attempting to blame the conservative Tea Party movement for the shooting when he made the comment. And even after it was revealed that Loughner’s few known political views had been described as “quite liberal,” and were in fact muddled at best, he refused to retract his slur.
So when Dupnik’s teams attempted a complicated four-house raid of minority families looking for drugs, perhaps bigotry and prejudice really was in play.
Perhaps Dupnik’s officers assumed every Hispanic accused of being a drug dealer really was one, and perhaps they assumed that the tenant of a home protecting his loved ones must be a bloodthirsty cartel member waiting in ambush. Is that why they gunned down a tired, hard-working father sleeping off a night shift at the local copper mine? A Marine veteran of Iraq that had the discipline not to fire — a discipline that a trigger-happy SWAT team which has now killed three men in less than a year cannot itself exercise?
Not only has the Pima Sheriff’s Department tried to justify firing 71 shots at one man in a small hallway, hitting him (thankfully, just him) 60 times in a home where his wife and child were present. They’ve attempted to justify their refusal to let a team of paramedics treat Guereña, who was still miraculously alive after being sprayed mercilessly with bullets. It takes a competent SWAT team just a handful of minutes to “clear” a residential home during a raid. Dupnik’s SWAT team refused to declare the scene “clear” for an agonizing one hour and 14 minutes, and not until Jose Guereña had already died.
A cynic might be tempted to suggest Dupnik’s SWAT team was waiting for the only witness to their assault to die. Considering how the Sheriff’s Department has acted since they stormed the home, a rational person might be tempted to agree.
Not content to blame the victim for his own death, they attempted to insinuate he was a drug dealer, even though they were forced to admit under direct questioning that no drugs were found in his home, and that a clumsy cop falling down may have triggered the bloodbath.
Vanessa Guereña claims that neither she nor her husband heard the officers announce themselves as police. As anyone who has ever seen an episode of any popular police reality show knows, no entry team waits 15 seconds after announcing themselves to batter down a door and rush the inhabitants — as Pima County Lt. Michael O’Connor claims his SWAT team did. Identical scenes of immediate entry upon announcement (or after breaching), without giving those inside a chance to react, is a standard tactic captured again and again.
Why Lt. Michael O’Connor decided to tell a mistruth about a well-known, heavily documented, and highly standardized technique isn’t immediately clear. Perhaps it is because of the inevitable wrongful death lawsuit to be filed against the Pima County Sheriff’s Department on behalf of Vanessa Guereña and her two children. Or perhaps it is because of the possible DOJ civil rights investigation. Perhaps Dupnik’s employees simply are unable to act any more professionally after a raid than they do during one.
No-knock warrants are typically used to surprise the target of raids and keep them from disposing of evidence, with possible violence from the offender cited as justification for the military-style use of heavy armor and machine guns.
Jose Guereña’s death was entirely preventable. Over-armed, over-amped law enforcement is causing far more harm to the public than other tactics and techniques possibly could.
The over-militarization of law enforcement agencies and over-use of SWAT teams is an idea that needs to be revisited in a sane society. Too many good people have been traumatized, and too many killed, under the flimsiest of circumstances.
After surviving two tours of duty in Iraq, only to lose his life in an encounter with Clarence Dupnik’s keystone cops, Jose Guereña was buried with full military honors.
>That works for me. In fact my first instinct was far less...restrained.
How much less-so?
Just saw the video of the incident on the news here - I must say it was clear they had sirens and did announce who they were. Doesn’t excuse the 71 bullets or their reaction to seeing him with a gun.
http://www.kold.com/story/14737032/sheriff-releases-video-of-swat-shooting-into-house-of-ex-marine
Notice how they all clump into the doorway in order to fire shots: totally undisciplined.
Yes, lets take this even further. The LEOs in that case are actually brave men. There is always a remote possibility that when a uniformed officer, in full daylight, comes to serve a warrent some creepazoid takes a cheap shot at him. Unlikely, but possible. So the officers are choosing to take a risk to maintain a civil society. If an officer performing his duty in this lawful way is shot it is a real tragedy.
What we have now are chicken cops who are too scared of what might happen to brave knocking on a door. The entire Branch Dividian massacre was caused by this same failure of bravery among law enforcement. The idea now seems to be that LE should be a 'risk-free' profession, much like being a tax accountant or something. Every small potential risk is therefore met with overwhelming force.
I grew up in Detroit in the 1960s. The cops there were bad mothers. They didn't need sixteen guys to arrest someone. Of course the political correctness has ended that.
About the CWII Ping List
The CWII Ping List is short for Civil War II. It is NOT a list of people advocating another Civil War in America. It is a list of people who are interested in the parallels between the Civil War (or War Between the States, if you prefer) and our current situation, or more generally are noting the references to a 'coming Civil War' that are made in the press.
Of course sometimes this is merely a figure of speech, such as "The Tea Parties are fighting a civil war for the heart of the GOP". This would not merit a CWII ping.
On the other hand someone saying something like "The events in California are reminiscent of what happened in Yugoslavia in the period proceeding the Civil War" would merit a ping.
FR rules do not permit advocating for the overthrow of the Republic, and I am not aware of anyone doing so on the list. Still many do see that as the political climate worsens we may be heading in a direction that makes such a conflict all but inevitable, particularly if other avenues for resolving our differences are taken away. Such as widespread vote fraud by leftists making elections meaningless, or a small cadre of judges over-ruling all attempts to end destructive policies over the clear will of the people.
The correct keyword tag for the Civil War II ping list is "CWII".
Please Freep Mail me to get on the list
>>advocating for the overthrow of the Republic<<
WHAT IS A PATRIOT?
PATRIOTS are not “Revolutionaries” trying to overthrow the government of the United States.
PATRIOTS are “Counter-Revolutionaries” trying to prevent the government of the United States from overthrowing the Constitution of the United States. - Unknown Author
Excellent point. Thus the wording of my long time tag-line. I like your tag-line too!
Sounds more like a car alarm than a police siren to me. As for the lights, how can they be seen from inside the house?
Ah... that would be RE-legalization. And since drugs were NOT outlawed for any MEDICAL reason (the AMA was utterly OPPOSED to the original drug laws AND the original anti-pot laws, which were explicitly enacted to control the actions of minorities who might ingest a drug, then want to have sex with a white woman), can you even begin to propose a means of dealing with drug users that will NOT violate virtually every article of the Bill of Rights AND the rest of the Constitution? If not, how do you propose we react, KNOWING that many more innocents, like this young Marine, will be KILLED by cops busting down doors or by home invaders POSING AS cops? What do YOU have to say to this young widow and her kids? “Tough. Sh!t happens”?
Amen, brother.
when ask why it took 71 shots, the chief said: Cause they still weren't sure he was dead after the first 50 shots...
I do hope the wife files a Billion Dollar lawsuit against Pima County and especially Dupnik
absolutely... murder, plain and simple
Unfortunately, all the money will never bring her husband and the father to her children back :-(
Thanks for the ping.
The thing that scares the day lights out of me is this:
When you back people into a corner. When you remove from them all conventional procedural means of redress. When the government is feared more than nature it means real trouble. When the 1st amendment is gone, whats left? When the 2nd is challenged and the 4th is crushed, whats left?
The murrah building bombing in Okc, was a violent response by a single guy with no prospects for a job, no family and nothing to lose. Mcveigh was a nut job. So were all the people who helped him (that’s a can of worms). But the Waco Tx raid, Ruby Ridge, all the things going on back then perpetrated the belief that the government was removing traditional restraints on it’s power. Ruby Ridge and Waco were all about the 2nd and 4th amendment.
The government, the courts, your neighbors that vote are creating a very very dangerous situation. We have rampant unemployment and a destruction of rights. That is volitile. Nobody wants what could happen to happen. Nobody can predict where violence leads.
Mexico is a dangerous place. The government is corrupt. Lawless. So gangs of armed thugs and drug dealers have organized. They had nothing to lose. The government and it’s institutions garner no respect.
Here, our government, our cherished constitution and the “by the people” part have worked since the civil war to keep things on an even keel. I am scared where this is going.
You LE people? I know you are here. You need us! You need our respect. It is up to YOU individual cops to make up for the lack of respect that your institution, your leadership and the courts have for the clear intent of the Constitution. If you lose us, the common man. I am terrified where society will go.
That means no more “us versus them”. That means no more heavy handed swaggering behavior. That means humility and team work. It means less of you. That’s right. Less head count. Sorry. Give up your Unions. Live where you work.
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