A SWAT raid in Arizona may suggest that homes are becoming No Rights Zones.
There are lots of questions about what happened during a SWAT raid apparently gone very wrong in Pima County, Arizona; after more than a week most of them have not been answered. However, combine the news as reported with Thursday’s decision by the Indiana Supreme Court that “that there is no right to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police officers. (emphasis added)” and it gets a bit frightening.
According to a report,
Jose Guerena, 26, a [twenty-six year old] former Marine [with two overseas tours of duty], was sleeping after the graveyard shift at Asarco Mission mine about 9:30 a.m. when his wife woke him saying she heard noises outside and a man was at their window. Guerena told his wife to hide in a closet with their 4-year-old son, his wife has said. He grabbed an AR-15 rifle and moments later was slumped in the kitchen, mortally wounded from a hail of gunfire.
For about five minutes after Guerena was shot, his wife stays on the phone trying to explain what happened and asking for an ambulance.
More than a week later, few details about the investigation that brought the SWAT team to the home Guerena shared with his wife and their two young sons are known. Details of the search warrant have not been made public and deputies would not comment on what was seized from the home.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department has provided no details about the investigation that prompted the raid and little information about the moments leading up to 71 gunshots being fired at Guerena, whose gun had the safety on. He was shot 60 times, doctors told the family. Initially the Sheriff’s Department said Guerena fired at officers, but they retracted that this week. Drexel Heights provided audio of the 911 calls after the Star filed a public records request.
Vanessa Guerena, 27, continuously asks the operator to “please, please” send somebody to help her husband in a call in which she seems desperate, frustrated and panicked and says she could hear people talking outside.
There seems to have been delay in sending medical help, apparently because the deputies on the scene asked that it be delayed.
The operator tells Guerena help is on the way, but they’re still trying to figure out what happened.
“I don’t know, that’s it, whatever I told you, that’s it,” Guerena says.
Just after the five-minute mark, Guerena’s end of the line goes silent.
The two dispatchers spend about four minutes talking to each other and calling out for Guerena while trying to figure out if the call is coming from the same residence where the warrant was served. At the end of the 10-minute 911 call, a dispatcher says she has confirmation that Guerena is outside with deputies on the scene.
Other audio records Drexel Heights released to the Star Friday indicate the agency dispatched a medical unit at 9:43 a.m. but was told by the Sheriff’s Department to hold off.
Dispatchers said there were several addresses where the SWAT team was going that morning and they were not sure if this house was one of them, the audio shows.
The Sheriff’s Department dispatcher said she had not received any requests for medical help from deputies on scene. Drexel Heights fire dispatcher asked: “You don’t want us going in, right?” The sheriff’s operator then said: “I don’t know what is going on. You guys go ahead and hold off until we know what it’s going to be.”
The Sheriff’s Department operator said people at the scene wanted the medical help to stay back because they might be dealing with a “barricaded subject.”
It is often reasonable to employ a presumption that the police are in the right and that those who resist them are in the wrong. Still, there are sufficient circumstances here, including “a hail of” seventy-one shots fired by the SWAT team and sixty bullet holes in the deceased, whose rifle still had the safety on, at least to question that presumption. One wonders what additional details will be released when by the Sheriff’s Department; unless and until satisfactory explanations are provided, those questions will persist. That, obviously, is not conducive to confidence in authority. There are also sufficient circumstances to raise further questions about the thinking behind the Indiana Supreme Court ruling. Home = Castle or Home = No Rights Zone?
Fact is, this sort of thing is going on all the time, and here’s why. About 20 years ago, federal funds became available for every dinky town to get a SWAT unit, or comparable type of force. This led, naturally, to lots of towns getting this sort of force, and an expansion of this force in towns that already had them. Because prudent, competent people who can make split second decisions with heavy arms and equipment are in limited supply, the powers that be just started to hire anyone who applied and who fit a really basic physical and psychological profile. Then, once the force exists, it has to be used to justify federally subsidized payrolls, etc. So, the forces, SWAT or equivalent, started to be used for things like serving warrants for failure to appear. So, SWAT rolls up silently on a nonviolent guy in a situation of almost no danger, and the guy gets killed because 12 badly trained dufusses see him fumbling around his own home. That, or they serve the warrant on the wrong home-another classic which happens daily in our world of superfluous SWAT units. Convenient to say that they aren’t answerable isn’t it?
At least the actually HIT him with all those shots fired.
The Swat team in Warminster (Warington?)PA fired over 90 shots at a kid with a BB gun, lit up every house in the neighborhood, stray rounds into second and third story windows in a dozen homes.
Kid was hit 3-4 times.
Union Bums with guns…no good comes from them.
Most police officers are decent people doing their job, but the Indiana ruling is a very dangerous precendent that WILL be abused and expanded of people don’t stand up and demand that the Constitution and the precendents leading to the 4th ammendment be respected. The “Castle Doctrine” has stood since 1215 and there is no reason to change it. To say that law enforcement and the courts provide adequete protection and remedy is just insane. Next, we will be asked to forfeit the right to defend our homes against ANY unlawful intrustion under the same theory. NO THANKS!
I prefer the older idea:
“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter, but the King of England cannot enter.”
Do you readers really think America is still a free country? If you do, open your eyes. You’re being foolish. If I were a veteran, I would be steaming mad that I risked my life to defend a government that is becoming a tyranny.
To the person who wrote, “If I were a veteran…”
Well, count on it – I AM pissed off about this country being turned into a corporate/theocratic dictatorship, which is where it’s going. So is every other vet and every patriot to whom the Constitution has meaning. The long and short of the problem is that the RadRight is the Republican Party almost exclusively, with the addition of “Blue Dog Democrats” who are infiltrators and not Democrats at all -are entirely corporation-oriented and to Hell with the people. They are unresponsive, period. We the People have been almost entirely cut off from what was our own government. At best we get lies, at worst we get what Jose Guerna got – murdered by people supposedly hired “To protect and to serve.”
Ian
We went to Over There during the First World War. We went over there again in the second. Now, we are deeply involved in different “over theres.” When I see this sort of stuff, I wonder why.
There may or may not be indictments and maybe even convictions. That’s important. However, it’s even more important that we think about what has happened, what continues to happen and consider what we can do about it. I don’t mean fighting off SWAT teams. If a 26 year old ex-Marine can’t do it, neither can I and neither can most others. We can, however, take back control of our government and get the country moving, again, in the right direction.
We must insist that the laws are changed to prohibit this sort of incident until cops are able to show to a judge, in person, why they must violate the sanctity of a private citizens residence. Exceptions only when a reasonable and prudent person would believe that lives were in danger should that not be the case.
And when the smoke clears all cards on the table. Every radio call. Every video tape made public. Totally public to everyone to see.
No secret panels investigating. No one excusing bad actors for bad actions in the name of “greater justice”.
When the police become fully militarized, it will only get better.
We are talking about people who can’t even read a street address, right?
And police forces today routinely try not to hire people who’re “too smart” because they’d quit… reasssuring, no?
This is the result of police unions. They are not held accountable. Their safety is considered more important than the citizens’. “They risk their lives every day.” No, they don’t. They risk our lives every day.
They used to have to try to shoot to wound, to stop firing when you went down. Now they shoot to kill and keep on shooting until you stop twitching. “He made a threatening move.” He was spasm-ing because he was dying, idiot.
Guerena had 60 bullets in him? That tells you all you need to know, really.
I’ll add this, though: Don’t these SWAT clowns have an ambulance standing by when they go in? Of course not. The Citizen is going to die, and since he is vastly outnumbered and outgunned, the SWAT guys are not going to be hurt. Ambulance? We don’t need no stinkin’ ambulance! Besides, we wouldn’t want him surviving and maybe testifying, would we?
Swat teams think they are playing a game called Seal Team 6. I hope they all rot in jail.
This sounds like China. Does that mean that any state employee has the right to enter illegally? Where did they get these judges, off of skid row! The people of Indiana, as well as the whole US, need to stop this crap today. People who do nothing more than wake up are getting shot by gutless government freaks that cry ‘I was scared’ while standing in a group of many holding automatic weapons on one individual or even children as in Detroit recently. These judges need to be arrested and tried for trying to overthrow the government. Domestic terrorism would be a good charge to start with! Arrest all the officers that already started telling lies and changing their stories. Send them to Gitmo. They are much more dangerous to the country than some of the ‘terrorist’ we released.
Take note that very few stories about this are available from the ‘mainstream’ media. Why?
Why did the SWAT (Special Wardrobe & TOYS) team hold back medical care? Ask Erik Scott. Heck, ask dozens upon dozens of dead people, perforated by our protectors. The answer is simple: One Story, man. One Story. This is exactly the same reason these blood-soaked thugs start foaming when they see a “mundane” with a camera. They are not quite ready to rip off the mask and admit that they fully intend to maim and kill, at their sole whim, simply BECAUSE THEY CAN. Almost ready (see the Indiana Case), but not quite, yet.
Police are mostly corrupt , liars, and misfits. They need NO rights. The public should be Required to shoot one a day!