Via California Tree of Liberty
Profiling The PolicyIn Part One of “An Empire Strikes Home” we focused on a sad shooting death involving the Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff’s Department regional multi-jurisdictional S.W.A.T. team. We also spotlighted several Arizona news articles in which the Sheriff’s Department issued conflicting stories regarding the S.W.A.T. raid. The published statements began by claiming that the suspect initiated and conducted a “standoff” and started a “gun battle” with deputies who had come to his home to serve a warrant.
I think that everyone knows that for any government action involving shooting of a citizen those kind of reports is the proper (meaning, from LE’s perspective) way this sort of operation should be presented to the press and to the public – the cops are the good guys and the dopers are the bad guys.
When SWAT showed up to enforce the law one of the bad guys had the audacity to draw down on the good guys as they were busting in his front door. As the acceptable, just, and lawful scenario was presented to the press, the good guys prevailed and the bad guy failed.
Message done, cut and dried, clean and closed, nothing more to see here, now move along to the next five-second news sound bite and have a nice day.
The public will take that kind of story and say, “Oh well, that ‘bad guy’ should have thought twice before choosing a life of crime, and it’s no loss to society that he’s gone. Too bad about the widow and fatherless children she’ll raise alone now – she married the wrong dude. The man was associated with marijuana, so he must be a ‘bad guy’. Live by the gun, die by the gun.”
That is, generally speaking, how a significant part of the public would see this event by reading the first Sheriff’s Department accounting of the death of Jose Guerena. And that is the desired perception which the Sheriff’s Department and higher-ups wished to present for public consumption, for that is the perception which will spare the County the trouble of more extensive damage control. If it works.
Days later, however, the Pima County Arizona Sheriff’s Department confessed that Jose Guerena did not shoot at the officers. Tough luck for Sheriff Dupnik, drat.
In early June, 2011, the cheerleaders for militarized law enforcement are saying “But hey – wait a minute here! We’re telling you the facts as we get them. There are new discoveries coming out of the investigation and we now know that earlier reports were less than factual. It is true that we said Jose fired on the officers first, and that bullets were bouncing off the SWAT shield at the doorway, bullets fired by Guerena. Yeah we said that, but now we are saying that he did not fire his rifle at the SWAT team, and besides, we now believe that the man was associated with a grouping of family members who constituted a threat to society They are under suspicion of marijuana-related crimes. So he really was a bad guy and we really were justified in sending a SWAT urban-warfare combat team into his home and shooting him dead. After all, he did have a rifle in his hand.”
They’re saying stuff like that already, not quite a month into this. Jose was shot on Cinco de Mayo, May 05, 2011.
But shouldn’t we ask: Who gave that story to the Sheriff’s Department’s official spokespersons?
Who told the two spokespersons to tell the press and media that Jose fired first, and that his bullets were bouncing off the SWAT team’s shield as they came through the doorway?
It’s a good question, because just asking that question leads to something very sinister, a psychological anomaly which is subtle and very much out-of-sight, very much hidden from the public awareness. We must ask – Is there a purpose in the perception generated by the Sheriff’s Department?
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