Police shoot Marine, Prevent Medical Care, Kill Him.

[Alyrium Denryle]

http://reason.com/blog/2011/05/16/marin ... tours-in-i

Marine Survives Two Tours in Iraq, SWAT Kills Him

Tim Cavanaugh | May 16, 2011

"Please send me an ambulance and you can ask more questions later, please!"

Guerena tells the dispatcher that her husband had returned home about 6:30 a.m. after work and was sleeping.

Prompted by the dispatcher, Guerena says her husband was shot in the stomach and hands.

The dispatcher asks Guerena to put her cheek next to her husband's nose and mouth to see if he's breathing, but she replies in Spanish that her husband is face- down.

The operator tells Guerena to grab a cloth and apply pressure to his wounds, but the wife responds frantically: "I can't! I can't! There's a bunch of people outside of my house. I don't know what the heck is happening!"

A dispatcher asks if the people outside are the SWAT members. "I think it's the SWAT, but they ... Oh my God!" Guerena says.

A dispatcher asks that she open the door for the SWAT, but Guerena replies that the door was already opened by police.

"Is anybody coming? Is anybody coming?" she asks.

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.

This is from Arizona Daily Star reporter Fernanda Echavarri's effort to piece together the death of Jose Guerena, 26, at the hands of a Pima County, Arizona SWAT team. Guerena, who joined the Marines in 2002 and served two tours in Iraq, was killed just after 9 a.m. May 5. Guerera had just gone to bed after working a 12-hour shift at a local mine when his home was invaded as part of a multi-house crackdown by sheriff's deputies.

Like enemy of the state Osama bin Laden, Guerena died with his wife close by. Widow Vanessa Guerena, who hid with her four-year-old son when sheriff's deputies raided the home, fills in detail that has been slow to come from Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik’s office:

"When I came out the officers dragged me through the kitchen and took me outside, and that's when I saw him laying there gasping for air," Vanessa Guerena said. "I kept begging the officers to call an ambulance that maybe he could make it and that my baby was still inside."

The little boy soon after walked out of the closet on his own. SWAT members took him outside to be with his mother.

"I never imagined I would lose him like that, he was badly injured but I never thought he could be killed by police after he served his country," Vanessa Guerena said.

The family's 5-year-old son was at school that morning and deputies say they thought Guerena's wife and his other child would also be gone when they entered the home.

Guerena says there were no drugs in their house.

Deputies said they seized a "large sum of money from another house" that morning. But they refused to say from which of the homes searched that morning they found narcotics, drug ledgers or drug paraphernalia. Court documents showing what was being sought and was found have not been made public. A computer check on Guerena revealed a couple of traffic tickets and no criminal history.

Tucson KGUN’s Joel Waldman says the SWAT team prevented paramedics from going to work on Guerena for one hour and fourteen minutes.

The sheriff’s department maintains that Guerena was holding an AR-15 when the paramilitary force fired 71 bullets in his home, but other key parts of the government story have collapsed. While PCSD initially claimed Guerena fired the weapon he was alleged to have been holding, the department now says it was a misfire by one of the deputies that caused this deadly group panic inside a home containing a woman and a toddler:

A deputy's bullet struck the side of the doorway, causing chips of wood to fall on his shield. That prompted some members of the team to think the deputy had been shot, [PCSD spokesman Michael] O'Connor said.

Is it standard practice to prevent EMS from trying to save someone the police shoot?

[Zaune]

It's normal procedure to keep medical personnel away until the police have completely secured the scene; shooting someone so they don't die immediately and then picking off whoever runs over to help is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
I'm going to keep an open mind about this one until we know whether the victim really was holding an AR-15, as mentioned near the end of the article, because it's possible his reflexes outran his brain a bit and the police got the wrong end of the stick.

[CaptJodan]

There's all kinds of confusion with this story. Are they really able to get a warrant for a string of houses like that without having some kind of link or evidence that the houses in question might have what they're looking for? It doesn't seem, at first glance, like this is a house that would qualify for such a search. Or is this just something that happens a lot?

Sounds like a major clusterfuck to me.

[Mr. Coffee]

Queue Kamakazi Sith doing apologetic back flips in 5..... 4.... 3... 2.. 1.

Seriously, this is why I do not trust police officers at all. I respect their authority, I am polite and respectful to them when forced to interact with them, but I don't trust them any more than I'd trust any other gun toting asshole I didn't personally know.

[Alyeska]

Queue Kamakazi Sith doing apologetic back flips in 5..... 4.... 3... 2.. 1.

Lets let people actually post their material before mocking them shall we?

[PainRack]

Queue Kamakazi Sith doing apologetic back flips in 5..... 4.... 3... 2.. 1.

Seriously, this is why I do not trust police officers at all. I respect their authority, I am polite and respectful to them when forced to interact with them, but I don't trust them any more than I'd trust any other gun toting asshole I didn't personally know.

Or this could be sensationalism in the news.

There's lots of way to reconstruct the story that doesn't make this an outright story of police brutality. Panic, incompetence and usual bureaucratic thinking sure, but police brutality?


The initial part of the article regarding the dispatch? Ignore it. Its sounds damming, but a closer look just reveals that its the dispatch trying to get basic information and then send an ambulance crew out.

The only part that was really damming is the news reporter claiming that the police prevented paramedics from working on him for over an hour.

Except that news reporters may or may not have gotten it wrong. Or exaggerated.

It is something to probe over but there isn't a need to start making internet tough guy statements yet.

[SpaceMarine93]

Just what in the name of law is wrong with those coppers?!

[Feil]

I hope the Marine Corps decides to care. Otherwise, as usual, there's not a chance in hell of anything coming back on the parties responsible.

[TheHammer]

Just what in the name of law is wrong with those coppers?!

If you will note the following two items:

1)Hispanic surname of the victim, wife speaking Spanish.
2)An Arizona Sherrif's Dept

[Themightytom]

Just what in the name of law is wrong with those coppers?!

If you will note the following two items:

1)Hispanic surname of the victim, wife speaking Spanish.
2)An Arizona Sherrif's Dept

and

but she replies in Spanish that her husband is face- down.

My guess is more profiled drug busts and they had no idea what she was saying.

[Themightytom]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/family-demands ... d=13640112

...or I could just find a more complete story before speculating the obvious.

by ELLEN TUMPOSKY
May 19, 2011

The family of an ex-Marine who was gunned down in his home by a Pima County, Ariz., SWAT team firing 71 shots is demanding some answers.

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 a man pointing at her with a gun," said Reyna Ortiz, 29, a relative who is caring for Vanessa and her children. Ortiz said Vanessa Guerena yelled, "Don't shoot! I have a baby!"

Vanessa Guerena thought the gunman might be part of a home invasion -- a frequent occurrence in Tucson -- Ortiz said. She shouted for her husband in the next room, and he woke up and told his wife to hide in the closet with the child, Joel, 4.

Guerena grabbed his assault rifle and was pointing it at the SWAT team, which was trying to serve a narcotics search warrant as part of a multihouse drug crackdown, when the team broke down the door. At first the Pima County Sheriff's Office said that Guerena fired first, but on Wednesday officials backtracked and said he had not. "The safety was on and he could not fire," according to the sheriff's statement.
PHOTO: SWAT officers fired at least 71 shots at suspect Jose Guerena, a former U.S. Marine.
ABC News
SWAT officers fired at least 71 shots at... View Full Size
PHOTO: SWAT officers fired at least 71 shots at suspect Jose Guerena, a former U.S. Marine.
ABC News
SWAT officers fired at least 71 shots at suspect Jose Guerena, a former U.S. Marine, and a family struggles to put the pieces together.
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SWAT team members fired 71 times and hit Guerena -- an Iraq War veteran -- 60 times, police said.

In a frantic 911 call, Vanessa Guerena begged for medical help for her husband. "He's on the floor!" she said, crying, to the 911 operator. "Can you please hurry up?"

Asked if law enforcement was inside or outside the house, she told the operator, according to a transcript of the call, that they were inside. "They were ... going to shoot me. And I put my kid in front of me."

A report by ABC affiliate KGUN9 found that more than an hour had passed before the SWAT team let the paramedics work on Guerena. By then he was dead.

A spokesman for the sheriff's office said he could not discuss whether any drugs had been found at the home or make any other comment. "We're waiting for the investigation to be complete," he said.

Guerena served two tours of duty in Iraq until he left the Marines in 2006.

"Every time he was under my command, he definitely pulled his weight," said Leo Verdugo, his master sergeant in Iraq, who helped arrange for Guerena to be buried in his Marine dress blue uniform. "I have a hard time grasping how something so tragic could happen."

He speculated that perhaps it was a case of mistaken identity. "At the wrong place at the wrong time in his own home," he said.

Vanessa Guerena is "in shock" and seeking justice for her husband and two sons, said Ortiz. The oldest boy, Jose, turns 6 on Tuesday. "He went to school, came back and never saw his daddy again," she said. As for Joel, "He's asking, 'Why did the police kill my daddy?'

"We were so worried when he was over there fighting terrorism, but he gets shot in his own home," Ortiz said. "The government killed one of their own."

[Sidewinder]

The worst thing about this, is I can't think of a way for the police to avoid fucking up like this. If the police knock on the door, and announce themselves to avoid panicking residents, they give a criminal time to flush evidence down the toilet, to grab a gun and start shooting, or to flee out the back door. If the police go charging in without warning, we get this, where two children lose their father, a woman loses her husband, and a nation loses a patriot.

[open_sketchbook]

Um, wouldn't the solution be "stop doing pointless drug raids"?

[Alyeska]

Based on the new information, I am hesitant to lay blame on the cops directly. What we have is a system that is itself broken. Deliberate use of heavy handed tactics over non-violent crime.

The SWAT team in question appears to be owning up to their responsibility. After initial incorrect reports they admitted the facts. I don't see an attempted coverup here.

This just confirms what I've believed for a very long time. SWAT team tactics need review and such situations should be drastically reduced. If it means we loose evidence, so be it. The police should be protecting lives. When a simple knock on the door is sufficient, use it. That would have defused the entire situation. These and No-Knock warrants scare the hell out of me.

[Lonestar]

http://reason.com/blog/2011/05/16/marin ... tours-in-i


Is it standard practice to prevent EMS from trying to save someone the police shoot?

We were talking about this on another board I frequent. It's a mostly military board with a lot of MPs/LEOs and they say no, it isn't.

[Sidewinder]

Um, wouldn't the solution be "stop doing pointless drug raids"?

You're pulling the discussion towards whether drugs should be legalized. What about other situations in which SWAT may be called upon, such as domestic terrorism? Imagine if a right-wing nut builds a bomb and swears to avenge Tim McVeigh, and the SWAT team is sent to arrest this nut. What if they get sent to the wrong address? Or imagine if a woman calls the police, claiming her husband has a "machine gun" and is trying to kill her. Can the police assume there's no such machine gun, and the woman was simply being hysterical? Can they assume the husband will cooperate with the police, instead of opening fire on any "pigs" in sight? What if the woman is mentally ill, and simply assumed the husband is trying to kill her, when the long-suffering man is simply trying to get her to take her medication?

I can think of no easy solution to this.

[Alyeska]

Um, wouldn't the solution be "stop doing pointless drug raids"?

You're pulling the discussion towards whether drugs should be legalized. What about other situations in which SWAT may be called upon, such as domestic terrorism? Imagine if a right-wing nut builds a bomb and swears to avenge Tim McVeigh, and the SWAT team is sent to arrest this nut. What if they get sent to the wrong address? Or imagine if a woman calls the police, claiming her husband has a "machine gun" and is trying to kill her. Can the police assume there's no such machine gun, and the woman was simply being hysterical? Can they assume the husband will cooperate with the police, instead of opening fire on any "pigs" in sight? What if the woman is mentally ill, and simply assumed the husband is trying to kill her, when the long-suffering man is simply trying to get her to take her medication?

I can think of no easy solution to this.

Using SWAT for non-violent crimes is going to increase the risk of people getting killed. The system should error on the side of caution. Entering a premise to prevent evidence destruction when you know such tactics increase the likely hood of innocents being killed is a violation of this standard.

No one is arguing that SWAT shouldn't exist. But their use should be restricted to prevent these catastrophes from happening.

[Uraniun235]

You're pulling the discussion towards whether drugs should be legalized.

This entire problem of violent house raids is largely the result of the "War on Drugs". The two are very closely connected. Nobody in their right mind is going to say "stop raiding houses for drugs = no police brutality ever again", but it would probably sharply reduce the number of such incidents.

You don't even have to fucking legalize it. Just don't place such an intense priority on busting dope dealers that violent raids are considered acceptably risky behavior in order to secure evidence.

It would also probably help to not enable police officers to play at pretending to be a military force and to emphasize their role as being part of the community, not as being above the community (or worse, as being in combat with the community).

[Kamakazie Sith]

Is it standard practice to prevent EMS from trying to save someone the police shoot?

No, it's not. In fact, medical should have already been staged in the area prior to the execution of the warrant.

The article seems heavily bias to me so I checked on this story via other sources and it seems that there was concern that the victim had barricaded himself in the house which would delay medical services because we don't want the medics to get shot. Does this justify what happened? I don't know. It sounds like there was a lot of confusion on scene. The accidental discharge caused them to open fire on the victim. If they followed their training they probably retreated, setup containment (which that to should have already been setup prior to), and then tried to communicate with those inside the house.

So, the victim was shot inside his home while the police attempted to start negotiation.

That's my opinion of what might have happened based off my experience. Also, note that murdering someone by delaying medical care would be one of the dumbest methods a group of police officers could come up with because it is easily discoverable, which is why it was discovered.

Queue Kamakazi Sith doing apologetic back flips in 5..... 4.... 3... 2.. 1.

Seriously, this is why I do not trust police officers at all. I respect their authority, I am polite and respectful to them when forced to interact with them, but I don't trust them any more than I'd trust any other gun toting asshole I didn't personally know.

The term apologist has a negative connotation on this board, but really it just means a person who makes a defense and since back flips are a difficult acrobatic feet I can only assume you're trying to compliment me.

[TheHammer]

I suppose my question is, why couldn't you simply use teargas, flashbang grenades and tazers during raids such as this, where you clearly have overwhelming superiority. Obviously, police should be prepared for escalation if neccessary, but when they are entering a person's home one should assume they might first attempt to defend themselves not realizing who it is to begin with and perhaps take other precautions.

[Kamakazie Sith]

This entire problem of violent house raids is largely the result of the "War on Drugs". The two are very closely connected. Nobody in their right mind is going to say "stop raiding houses for drugs = no police brutality ever again", but it would probably sharply reduce the number of such incidents.

You're absolutely correct. I'm a huge proponent of legalization of drugs. However, right now the government expects the police to identify drug houses and take action against those houses.

You don't even have to fucking legalize it. Just don't place such an intense priority on busting dope dealers that violent raids are considered acceptably risky behavior in order to secure evidence.

Not a police decision. It is a civilian government decision.

It would also probably help to not enable police officers to play at pretending to be a military force and to emphasize their role as being part of the community, not as being above the community (or worse, as being in combat with the community).

The criminals have dictated that approach. You don't hear about the drug raids where AK-47s with thousands of rounds of ammunition are seized along with body armor, pistols, etc. You only hear about this stuff.

Also, if the police don't "pretend" to be a military force...wait. What does that even mean, Uranium? Pretend. So, when you carry rifles and have body armor you're pretending to be a military force. Wouldn't a proper modern military force have frag grenades, anti tank weapons, support weapons like a SAW? Yeah, they would. So, I question your definition of what a military force is...

[Kamakazie Sith]

I suppose my question is, why couldn't you simply use teargas, flashbang grenades and tazers during raids such as this, where you clearly have overwhelming superiority. Obviously, police should be prepared for escalation if neccessary, but when they are entering a person's home one should assume they might first attempt to defend themselves not realizing who it is to begin with and perhaps take other precautions.

Because those are ineffective against a subject willing to use deadly force to prevent capture. If you go in a home with taser and your subject greets you with gunfire even if you had your firearm out you're already behind the curve. Now, you need to draw you firearm and engage the person that is currently trying to kill you. The odds are that you're probably going to get hit several times.

[Simon_Jester]

You're pulling the discussion towards whether drugs should be legalized.

This entire problem of violent house raids is largely the result of the "War on Drugs". The two are very closely connected. Nobody in their right mind is going to say "stop raiding houses for drugs = no police brutality ever again", but it would probably sharply reduce the number of such incidents.

You don't even have to fucking legalize it. Just don't place such an intense priority on busting dope dealers that violent raids are considered acceptably risky behavior in order to secure evidence.

Yeah. Forcing police to constantly take on some of the most desperate criminals in the community, literally on those criminals' own doorstep, is a recipe for a lot of violent confrontations- the dealers will predictably get violent some of the time, the police will demand training and equipment that lets them fight back effectively.

This keeps escalating until you get police with standard operating procedures which make it inevitable that they will use extreme force, even lethal force, on innocent people because of a misunderstanding.

[Serafina]

I suppose my question is, why couldn't you simply use teargas, flashbang grenades and tazers during raids such as this, where you clearly have overwhelming superiority. Obviously, police should be prepared for escalation if neccessary, but when they are entering a person's home one should assume they might first attempt to defend themselves not realizing who it is to begin with and perhaps take other precautions.

Because those are ineffective against a subject willing to use deadly force to prevent capture. If you go in a home with taser and your subject greets you with gunfire even if you had your firearm out you're already behind the curve. Now, you need to draw you firearm and engage the person that is currently trying to kill you. The odds are that you're probably going to get hit several times.

I'm pretty sure flashbangs are regularly used against armed criminals. They don't necessarily take out the suspect, but they'll most likely destroy any combat capability for a sufficient time.

You're certainly right on the tasers tough, and using tear gas can be problematic enough that it should not be used regularly.

[Kamakazie Sith]

I'm pretty sure flashbangs are regularly used against armed criminals. They don't necessarily take out the suspect, but they'll most likely destroy any combat capability for a sufficient time.

You're certainly right on the tasers tough, and using tear gas can be problematic enough that it should not be used regularly.

You're right, of course. My bad for not being thorough. My point is that using a flashbang even in combination with a less lethal weapons is foolish because things can not work how you plan so you need to be ready.