In 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.
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