Free Republic

A sensitive and peace-loving 16-year-old boy from an affluent Georgia suburb was fatally gunned down by a police sniper in his own house after he threatened to kill himself following a bad day at school. Young Andrew Messina cracked after receiving a bad grade and upon returning home he grabbed his parents .357 Magnum and told his mother he wanted to end his life. Panicked, she called the police to come and talk him down, but instead, an army of deputies, an armoured tank and a sniper arrived at their Towne Lake home.... ***** However, the Messina's attorney Chuck Pekor...

Paul Brown was working on his computer in his north suburban home when police smashed in the front door, pointed guns at and handcuffed him and other family members, and ransacked the house in a search for drugs. The authorities had burst in immediately after a postal worker delivered a package to the home that they said contained marijuana. But a search of the house found no further contraband, and officers left without making an arrest. Brown, outraged, said he was sure the cops had the wrong house. Police maintained they had the right place, but the target of their...

There are few people less likely to sell drugs than Fred Skinner. The 76-year-old lives alone on Mc Neeley Road in Victory, getting by with help from neighbors. Much of his home has been quietly abandoned because he can’t get up and down the stairs; his son, also named Fred Skinner, said his mind “goes in and out.” Since suffering a stroke last July, he speaks haltingly, sleeps with an oxygen tank and has a pacemaker in his chest. Skinner doesn’t hear as well as he used to, but there was no missing the pair of crashes he heard late...

DURHAM (WTVD) -- Did a member of a Durham police SWAT team go too far when he shot and killed a dog during a raid in April? Some say it was unnecessary force. ABC11 cameras captured the incident at a home on Dunstan Avenue April 12. Officers were looking for Pete Moses and Vania Sisk. According to search warrants, Moses is a suspect in the disappearance of a woman and a 5-year-old boy. Sisk is the boy's mother.

“He [a federal agent] had his knee on my back and I had no idea why they were there.”--Anthony Wright, victim of a Dept. of Education SWAT team raid The militarization of American police--no doubt a blowback effect of the military empire--has become an unfortunate part of American life. In fact, it says something about our reliance on the military that federal agencies having nothing whatsoever to do with national defense now see the need for their own paramilitary units. Among those federal agencies laying claim to their own law enforcement divisions are the State Department, Department of Education, Department...

"Kenneth Wright does not have a criminal record and he had no reason to believe a S.W.A.T team would be breaking down his door at 6 a.m. on Tuesday."

Via JWF and Reason, we now present this instructional video from the Department of Education. Now that the government has for all practical pruposes nationalized the student-loan industry, the DoE would like to educate recipients on new loan-collection processes. The banks used to send bill collectors and file claims in court, but the Obama administration doesn’t like those kind of harsh private-sector measures to retrieve lost capital. Instead, they’ll send a SWAT team to kick in your door and frighten your children — even if you don’t live with them anymore: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Kenneth Wright does...

Gannett. Link only per FR posting rules. Link here.

Helmet camera footage of the SWAT team raid on the home of Jose Guerena has been released. Bob Owen noticed the same thing I did. One of the team members fell in the doorway upon breaching and entering the home. The video speaks for itself, but by way of summary, let’s observe the following. First, Mr. Guerena’s weapon, contrary to initial accounts by the SWAT team, was never taken off of safety. The team took no shots from him. Second, the team mills around for a while before breaching the home. Third, they don’t form into a stack. Fourth, absurdly,...

This is video of the SWAT raid on Jose Guerena.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department released video, audio, and more than 500 pages of incident reports and interview transcripts related to the May 5 shooting death of a former Marine. The shooting took place while officers were serving a warrant in a drug conspiracy case at Jose Guerena's home, on Redwater Street. The SWAT team arrived at the home just before 9:30 a.m., hoping that children would be out of the house and at school at that time. The video of the whole incident times out at 1 minute and 17 seconds. It starts with a team of SWAT officers...

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...

...no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution (emphasis added) The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land…. No person shall be disturbed in his private affairs, or his home invaded, without authority of law. Sections 3 and 8 of the “Declaration of Rights” from the Arizona State Constitution’s “Declaration of Rights” People seeking to defend the manifestly indefensible often sabotage themselves by disclosing critical details...

A Tucson, Ariz., SWAT team defends shooting an Iraq War veteran 60 times during a drug raid, although it declines to say whether it found any drugs in the house and has had to retract its claim that the veteran shot first. And the Pima County sheriff scolded the media for "questioning the legality" of the shooting. Jose Guerena, 26, died the morning of May 5. He was asleep in his Tucson home after working a night shift at the Asarco copper mine when his wife, Vanessa, saw the armed SWAT team outside her youngest son's bedroom window. "She saw...