Thursday, January 31, 2013

"Gun Violence": The "National Conversation" We Won't Have



Victim of state-inflicted gun violence: Jose Guerena, Jr. after seeing the dead body of his father.

 
Gabrielle Giffords, the “surprise witness” at the January 30 Senate hearing on gun violence, was among thirteen people attacked by a deranged gunman in the parking lot of a Safeway in Tucson two years ago. Vanessa Guerena, another Tucson resident whose husband was murdered in an act of gun-related criminal violence in their living room about four months later, was not given an opportunity to address the Senate panel. That’s because her husband’s killers – who remain at large – committed that crime under the color of state “authority.”

Guerena, a former Marine and Iraq combat veteran, was gunned down by a Pima County SWAT team who committed an illegal home invasion on the basis of a spurious search warrant. When the invaders arrived, Jose was asleep after finishing a graveyard shift at a local copper mine. It’s difficult to believe that the 26-year-old father of two would be working the graveyard shift if he had been at the center of a large marijuana smuggling operation, as the Pima County Sheriff’s Office later claimed on the basis of unalloyed speculation

The Sheriff’s Office was aware of Jose’s work schedule, because they had kept his home under surveillance for several weeks before the raid. If an arrest had been justified, it could have been carried out, using conventional means, at practically any time. In fact, the Sheriff’s Office conducted a conventional, low-profile arrest of three of his relatives. The suspects – two small women and a man well into middle age – were taken into custody by plainclothes detectives without a SWAT team laying siege to their homes. But this occurred nearly a year after the fatal SWAT assault on Guerena’s home. 

The Sheriff’s Office never explained why a SWAT raid was supposedly necessary in order to carry out searches that didn’t result in arrests until nearly a year later. The unspoken but obvious answer was that the raid wasn’t necessary – but it seemed like a fun and relatively low-risk outing for the armored adolescents that compose the local SWAT team. Their attitude as they approached the Guerena home doesn’t suggest that they were genuinely concerned about the possibility of danger. The officers were cheerful and light-hearted as they were decanted from their armored vehicle to inflict terror on an innocent family. 

After being shaken awake by his terrified wife, Jose grabbed a legally acquired AR-15 rifle and told his wife and their four-year-old son, Jose, Jr.,  to hide in a closet while he confronted the unidentified intruders. 

Within seconds of forcing their way into the home, the raiders -- who were armed with high-capacity “assault weapons” of the kind that would be banned for civilian use if Obama, Biden, Feinstein and their ilk prevail – had flung 71 rounds at Guerena. In keeping with established custom, the uniformed murderers lied by claiming that their victim had fired the first shot after growling a cinematic imprecation at the SWAT team.  It was later established that Jose didn’t even disengage the safety on his rifle.  He was hit with twenty-two rounds. 



During the assault, Vanessa called 911. Paramedics arrived on the scene in minutes. The SWAT team turned them away. According to the coroner’s report, the injuries Jose sustained were not fatal – if he had received immediate medical attention. There was at least one combat medic in the SWAT team that attacked the Guerena home. He was morally and legally required to provide aid. Doing so, however, might have posed an immeasurably small risk to that most precious of things, “officer safety” – so the team simply waited for Jose to die. 

One of the raiders expressed dissatisfaction with that decision -- but because he wanted to “finish” what they had started by cleanly killing off their victim, rather than doing whatever was necessary to save his life.

Vanessa pleads for someone to help her husband.

When a tearful and horrified Vanessa emerged from the home to plead for someone to help her husband, she was assaulted and dragged away to be interrogated without the benefit of legal counsel. Her abductors maintained the pretense that her husband was alive and getting medical assistance. After a lengthy interval, four-year-old Joel wandered out of the house. He most likely has vivid memories of seeing his father’s bloody and lifeless body on their living room floor.

Jose was a peripheral figure in the narcotics investigation. The marauders who attacked the Guerena family’s home did not know what they were looking for, and found no evidence that Jose was involved in criminal activity. They most likely wanted to blackmail him into becoming an undercover asset. 

"Mom, was my dad a bad guy?" six-year-old Joel tearfully asked his newly widowed mother after the child -- who was at school during the shooting -- had absorbed the full horror of what had happened. "They killed my dad! Police killed my dad! Why? What did my dad do?" 

Vanessa assaulted by Pima County SWAT Team.

Vanessa should have been offered the opportunity to tell that story before the Senate panel – and in front of the national audience commanded by the January 30 hearing. Jose, Jr., who is now six years old, might also have been able to testify. But this wouldn’t have been compatible with the purpose of the event, which was to advance a “conversation” intended to promote the disarmament of the public, with the ultimate objective of creating a government monopoly on the use of force. That disarmament program would be carried out by, among others, the state-licensed assassins who murdered Jose Guerena. 

Among those who were invited to testify before the Senate panel was Baltimore County Police Chief James Johnson, who insisted that “we are long overdue” in enacting federal measures intended to prevent citizens from owning what he described as “firepower originally designed for combat.”

For us, but not for you: Chief Johnson with ammo magazines.
“Like assault weapons, high-capacity magazines are not used for hunting, and they do not belong in our homes,” proclaimed Chief Johnson. He urged the Senate to “stand with law enforcement on these common-sense public safety measures” – by which he means not a “ban” on those weapons and high-capacity magazines, but rather policies that would deny the public legal parity of weaponry with state-licensed home invaders like those who murdered Jose Guerena. 

According Johnson’s biography, he began his law enforcement career “as a police cadet at the age of 18” and has been employed with the Baltimore County Police Department for more than 30 years. In addition to documenting that Johnson has never held an honest job in the productive sector, that bio implicates the Chief in the January 2005 murder of 51-year-old Cheryl Lynn Noel.

During a traffic stop the previous October, Mrs. Noel’s 18-year-old son Matthew was found in possession of a plastic bag containing an unidentified “white dust.” A warrantless search of the trash outside the Noel family’s home yielded what the police described as “trace amounts” of drugs – that is, marijuana seeds -- and drug “paraphernalia.” It was at that point the police applied for a “no-knock” search warrant of the family’s home.

Although her husband had a thirty-year-old conviction for second-degree murder, Cheryl Lynn – who held Bible studies in the home -- had no criminal record. However, both she and her son Jacob owned legally registered firearms. That fact was listed among the details cited to justify a “no-knock” SWAT raid to arrest her younger son Matthew on a narcotics charge. Of course, the police didn’t explain why it was “necessary” to stage a pre-dawn home invasion, as opposed to conducting a conventional arrest. 

What Cheryl Lynn saw: Baltimore County SWAT operators.
At 4:30 a.m. on the morning of January 21, Cheryl Lynn and her husband were startled awake by the concussion of a flash-bang grenade and the sound of a battering ram being used to force open the front door. 

Mrs. Noel reached for her handgun and pointed it at the bedroom door, which was forced open by a figure in battle fatigues, whose face was covered with the visor of a black ballistic helmet, and who carried a large ballistic shield. 

Before Cheryl Lynn could fire a shot in her own defense, the intruder – Officer Carlos Artson – fired two shots into her upper torso. Cheryl's grasp on her handgun slackened – not surprisingly, since she most likely was already dead. Artson continued his approach, yelling at Cheryl to move further away from the gun. When the victim couldn’t comply, Artson shot her a third time, administering the coup de grace from point-blank range.

It’s important to point out that Matthew, who was the subject of the raid, was sleeping downstairs at the time. Even if the raid was justified – which, of course, it wasn’t – there was no need for the officers to barge into the upstairs master bedroom in order to carry out an arrest.

Charles Noel filed a lawsuit against the Baltimore County Police Department. Acting out of tribal reflex, then-Chief Terrence Sheridan responded by awarding Cheryl Lynn’s murderer the Silver Star, the department’s second-highest award for valor. The citation claims that Artson “saved himself and his fellow officers from being shot” after being “confronted by a woman pointing a loaded handgun at him, during the service of a high risk, `no knock' search warrant for an ongoing narcotics investigation.”

Artson was “confronted” by Mrs. Noel in exactly the same sense that any armed robber could make that claim. Of course that comparison is unfair: Armed robbers don't give each other puerile little baubles to celebrate their “valor.” 



At the time of the fatal home invasion that resulted in the murder of Cheryl Lynn Noel, then-Colonel Johnson supervised the department’s tactical unit. This means that he had “command responsibility” for the SWAT team’s actions. In June 2007, Johnson was chosen to replace Sheridan as Police Chief when the latter was appointed head of the Maryland State Police. I’m cynical enough to believe that Johnson’s promotion, like the “valor” award presented to Artson, was intended – at least in part – as a defiant gesture of contempt toward those who had condemned the murder of Mrs. Noel.



The Noel family lost their case, and Artson remains at large. Last July, in a incident that was eerily similar to the murder of Cheryl Lynn Noel, Artson murdered Ronald Cox in the course of a paramilitary raid to arrest suspects in an attempted murder case. Like Mrs. Noel, Mr. Cox, the owner of the home invaded by the police, was not a criminal suspect. Like Mrs. Noel, he was armed when he encountered the police in his upstairs bedroom. However, he didn’t have a gun; he had what was described as a “large sword.” The police report complained that Cox had “damaged” Artson’s ballistic shield. 

Apparently, summary execution is appropriate punishment for Mundanes who impudently disfigure government property in that fashion.

According to Clarence Dupnik – the craven, dim-witted functionary who presides over the Pima County Sheriff’s Office – about fifty SWAT raids of the kind that led to the murder of Jose Guerena occur within his jurisdiction every year, which is shocking. In Baltimore County, Chief Johnson’s Einsatzgruppen conduct more than 120 attacks of that kind annually, which are among the 1,600 military assaults carried out in Maryland each year, a figure that is genuinely horrifying. Gun-related violence by government-licensed killers is ubiquitous – and it is also a forbidden subject in the “national conversation” our rulers have orchestrated for their benefit. 

(Note: This version was edited slightly edited by removing a reference to Guerea's legally acquired rifle being "properly registered.")

 Once again, thank you for your continued support to help keep Pro Libertate on-line. We honestly couldn't make it without your help. God bless!






 Dum spiro, pugno!

38 comments:

liberranter said...

That photo of Dupnik (or, as those of us liberty lovers in the area call him, "Dumbnik" or "Dopenik") is far too flattering and confers upon him an undeserved air of actual intelligence. Just be glad that the photo isn't a link to a YouTube segment of an actual news interview in which he actually opens his mouth. There's a reason why this loser tends to avoid talking to the media (or perhaps more accurately, why the county discourages him from doing so). Imagine the foot-in-mouth stupidity of Dan Quayle or Joe Biden on steroids and you get the idea.

Robin said...

If a person cannot receive justice through the court system, they are morally justified to seek it in a manner of their own choosing. Sounds like some of that needs to happen in Maryland. There is usually a very good reason for vigilante action.

KPRyan said...

Just horrific stories... 2 young boys having their father murdered and for what? This drug war has allowed so many instances of abuse of power and authority that it amazes me that more Americans aren't outraged and demanding action.

But I guess we have more important issues.

The Super Bowl is this Sunday. And now I hear people who don't even like football tune in to watch the COMMERCIALS.

Really it is getting so those of us who can think and reason need to start taking drugs just to make sense of this world.

Anonymous said...

We are awarded the tyranny we are willing to tolerate. And we appear to be a people far too tolerant for our own good.

jk

shootfirst said...

Clarence Dumbdick and the Pima county Sheriffs Dept. is as corrupt and evil as Hitler's Gestapo. In 1997, The Ajo Substation, falsely arrested and accused me of multiple counts of aggravated assault because I defended myself IN MY HOME, against a known drunken violent intruder. 12 out of 13 involved deputies lied under oath in their reports, to get a search warrant, to get an indictment, and on the stand during my trial. I refused to plea bargain and was acquitted. Sgt. David Allen, the lead costumed thug, even after losing the bogus case was elevated to Lt. They are ALL filth.

Anonymous said...

Home security now includes building a swat-proof house.
Law enforcement refers to these as "compounds."

I'm starting to understand that the bars placed on doors
and windows of homes in high-crime neighborhoods are not
in place to keep out burglars but to protect from police
home invasions.

The Judges who sign these warrants are the true culprits.
They should be held up to public scrutiny and outrage but
you never hear them mentioned.

shootfirst said...

Don't forget the County prosecutors like Barbara LaWall. She is the Pima County bitch who lies right along with the gestapo thugs she sleeps with.

Robert Fallin said...

I am surprised and a bit disappointed the sheriff and his SWAT team have not been discovered, bones bleaching in the desert. I keep a loaded 12 gauge at my side just in case I ever receive such a visit.

Anonymous said...

Analysis:

(1) The Einsatzgruppen are TRAINED to act aggressively. (2) Simple psychology confirms that an aggressive approach is more likely to provoke an agressive response than a calm approach. (3) For this reason, when a SWAT team smashes down a door and begins shouting and acting like rabid animals, they EXPECT an aggressive animalistic response. (4) When they see someone with a gun facing them, they are terrified for their life. (5) Consumed with fear and testosterone, they react instinctively and fatally.

So WHY are the Sturmabteilung being trained to behave this way? Because the State which employs them is a criminal enterprise, which, just like any mafia gang, relies on intimidation of its victims to coerce meek compliance with its bloodsucking depredations and thefts.

Conclusion:

We will not change the behavior of these neuronally challenged servants of Moloch by sweet reason or by armed resistance. Moloch itself must be destroyed! Rather than fantasizing about the bones of these pet hyenas bleaching in the desert, we should think towards the day when the bones of those who hire them, (not those who pay their salaries - that would be us, their victims,) molder in some dank charnel house in the lower reaches of Hell.

The Empire is dying. Nothing is more dangerous than a wounded beast fighting for its life.

Note to the psychopathic 1% of us two-legged animals who think they have bought the world with their trillions of dollars: Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin. Prepare to meet your master, Satan.

Mohammed al-Kabuli said...


That photo of Clarence "potato-head" Dipstick is precious. Did Pima County residents actually ELECT this person to be their sheriff? Or did he crawl out from under a moldy half-eaten tortilla in some Taco Bell dumpster? Either Pima County inhabitants are as dumb as fence posts, (in which case Clarence Dogtick might actually be a worthy representative of the county,) or else the electoral process is deeply, deeply flawed, and as corrupt as the Pima County Sheriff's Department. Either way, he utterly disproves Darwin's theory of evolution of the human species, in which theory Clarence Dogschitz probably does not believe anyway. When I contemplate the uncertain future of Al-Umrika I am undecided whether to laugh or cry. If these are your "law" enforcement representatives, give me the Taliban any day.

Anonymous said...

God, I've read this tragedy before, Don (elsewhere) seems right, more and more.

Sometimes it is Very hard to practice the N.A.P.

This is one of those times.

- IAM

Bill St. Clair said...

Jose Guerena's AR-15 was "properly registered"? Does Arizona register rifles? Very few states do, and I doubt very much that a Constitutional Carry state would be one of them.

GunRights4US said...

If these murdered citizens were my son or daughter, or my mother or father, I would make it my life's mission to get bloody revenge on those responsible. And I would extend my violence to their families - even to their damn pets! If it were within my power I would burn their houses and salt the ground. This satanic regime deserves to be utterly crushed and destroyed.

William N. Grigg said...

Mr. St. Clair, thank you for that very important correction, which has been made (and noted at the bottom of the essay).

Bri2301 said...

That Chief Johnson and Officer Artson aren't wearing orange jumpsuits or some similar clothing and getting three hots and a cot is a crime in itself. Instead we have the "Chief" testifying about the need to preserve the superiority of firepower of the police forces. And, Artson goes about his way continuing to murder in the name of the state. Seems like their brother Lon has some quality company.

Anonymous said...

"(5) Consumed with fear and testosterone, they react instinctively and fatally."
Don't forget the likliehood of steroids which shrink the testicles and cause inchoate fits of rage in addition to building muscle mass.
_revjen45

Kevin said...

well written but why you you say "properly registered" multiple times? is this just your way of showing that the ones murdered were in full submission to the govt? Ass kissing to the media and govt? At least you didn't say "law-abiding" as i hate that label even more. Law-abiding up to death & disarmament. just like the subjects you mention.

William N. Grigg said...

Kevin, my point is a bit more subtle than that: My intent was to demonstrate that even those who fully submit to registration are considered expendable. It's possible that if Cheryl Lynn Noel and her older son hadn't registered their guns, the fatal SWAT raid wouldn't have been approved.

That's a case in which registering a gun arguably proved to be fatal.

MoT said...

This is why the whole notion of "registration" is in and of itself a link in your chains. They KNOW you have it so therefore you're already tagged. It's what they don't know that they fear. And to me that's just dandy.

Patrick Henry said...

Just a few more factually recorded murders in facts and evidence and the criminal perpetrators not being held accountable for their domestic terrorist acts! We are paying for these terrorists and their families to murder our neighbors and families and allowing it! Well they can all go to hell as far as I'm concerned ANYONE wearing a badge and a gun is a domestic terrorist until they prove different by their actions. Everyone needs a ballistic shield by their bed and a very heavy piece of firepower especially if you are good man or woman all they do is murder arbitrarily and then investigate their own men and OF COURSE find them free of any crime. Biggest terrorist, extortionate gang in We the Peoples country today. Another great example of your truth outing the terrorists currently being paid by us to murder us, appreciate it Will.

Anonymous said...

Pussy Police pretending to be GI's with out the balls to go into real combat but revel in murders against innocents was a sore spot for Col Jeff Cooper..

I have been criticized by referring to our federal masked men as "ninja," when in the view of the critic the traditional role of the ninja in Japan was to fight against oppression and tyranny. Let us note that almost no one ever resorts to force and violence unless he is convinced that his cause is right, but without going into that let us reflect upon the fact that a man who covers his face shows reason to be ashamed of what he is doing. A man who takes it upon himself to shed blood while concealing his identity is a revolting perversion of the warrior ethic.

It has long been my conviction that a masked man with a gun is a target. I see no reason to change that view.

Col. Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper's Commentaries

I agree Completely to this day.

Yank lll

Warren said...

And that's why I smile every time when I read that a cop was shot.

MoT said...

Will, the thing I noticed upon reading what is going on in Maryland is that they mention the "safety" of officers first and the citizenry comes second. Naturally! What are WE but collateral damage in their puritanical zeal to walk all over us.

Happiness said...

They kill then they taunt the families of the Dead. Unbelievable.


In certain extreme situations, the law is inadequate. In order to shame its inadequacy, it is necessary to act outside the law. To pursue... natural justice. This is not vengeance. Revenge is not a valid motive, it's an emotional response. No, not vengeance.

Punishment.

Chris said...

In Maryland, all handgun purchases are registered, as are all rifles deemed (by MD law) to be "assault rifles". (The usual crap about having adjustable stock, pistol grip, bayonet lug, etc.) Given that Baltimore County (which, in MD, is separate from Baltimore City) is relatively low-crime, one wonders how hard imaginations have to work to get warrants for so many SWAT raids.

I have lived in Baltimore County nearly all of my 61 years, and have personal knowledge of only a few house break-ins. Hardly the stuff to justify what the police are doing. Unless the goal is terrorizing the public into docile obedience.

Will Wright said...

Did you see that sniper Kyle got his comeuppance?

liberranter said...

I am surprised and a bit disappointed the sheriff and his SWAT team have not been discovered, bones bleaching in the desert.

Most of us have far too much love of and respect for the Sonora Desert to defile it with such trash.

liberranter said...

@Mohammed al-Kabuli:

Don't even get me started on Dumbnik and the stillborn sheepletards with voter registration cards who've kept him in office for 32 f***ing years (if this isn't an airtight case for term limits in any office, then I don't know what would be)! Pima County obviously has the government it deserves - not that Dumbnik's opponents in the last election in November were any better than he is.

I could rant for hours about life in this land of beautiful scenery and climate that is also, unfortunately, home to some of the stupidest people to ever inhabit God's earth. But I save that for another forum.

liberranter said...

Did you see that sniper Kyle got his comeuppance?

Yes, and at the hands of one of his fellow PTSD-addled vets, no less. Oh, delicious irony!

Of course, the decision to take this guy out to a firing range, given his condition, will not exactly go down in history as one of mankind's brighter ideas, even for a brainless thug like Kyle.

Anonymous said...

More on sheriffs protecting their constituents from the federal govt:

www.prisonplanet.com

"UK gov't prosecutes farmer for selling raw milk." (Selfridges grocery and Steve Hook from 'The Moo Man.')

www.theblaze.com

"15 tons of cheese trashed
after
two-year raw milk battle ends and sheriff called in to carry out orders"

~
lava
~

little dynamo said...

re yr 2011 investigation --


http://news.yahoo.com/7-calif-deputies-fired-roles-clique-020625228.html


a whitewash, but at least an acknowledgment that the gang existed! lol

well-done mr grigg, thanks for the good works

aferrismoon said...

RE: The Chris Dorner hunt - the LAPD shoot 2 women in a truck as it looked the same.

Is this 'Officer Safety' in extremis - Officers may shoot at anything thatv makes them feel under threat.

The women will get a new truck - dismissive to the max.

cheers

Anonymous said...

Local airports and homeowners are being warned of Dorner's desparation
to flee authorities.

They should all be armed and ready.

I can't think of anything more dangerous than a rogue cop and can't
think of any greater reason to possess a firearm, on your person.

Of course you won't hear that in the media, they will spin it in opposite terms.

Meanwhile, all of us are targets by both Dorner and panic stricken cops.

Keith said...

I haven't read all of Dorner's "manifesto" - there's only so much twisted self importance, and grievance I can take,

has that twisted individual actually threatened productive citizens?

willb said...

@Keith

Did you miss the fact that he shot to death the daughter
of the lawyer that represented him at the Police Dept.
administrative hearing?

I believe she was a teenager?

Yes. He is completely out of his mind and has become
nothing more than a mad dog to be shot on sight.

willb said...

Ok, I spoke a little too soon in the last post (I too am susceptible
to emotional outbursts, but I soon regret them.)

We need to take Dorner alive, verify his story in a court, then shoot him.

The daughter was married so I'm not sure of her age.
Was it provoked? Was it Dorner?
This is why we have courts but I doubt he will make it to one.

For all I know, the so-called manifesto was not even posted by Dorner.

Due process is not just for the accused but also so the rest of us
can at least attempt to get to the truth.

willb said...

Update: I'm working my way through Dorner's supposed manifesto and have
now arrived at the Mia Farrow/Senator Feinstein gun control accolade.

Now I'm smelling a rat, but am I smelling Dorner or someone else?

Perhaps the establishment has just supplied us with a domestic Osamma Bin Laden?

I'm ready to start taking bets that Dorner is never found and will remain at large.

Bets anyone?

willb said...

Ok, I finished the "Manifesto" and suggest that everyone should read it.

If nothing else, perhaps it will change some minds about whether or not
allowing children to watch TV influences their behavior.

Dorner didn't mention his favorite video games but I could probably make
some accurate guesses as to which ones would make the list.

As Mr. Grigg points out, our nation will never have an honest conversation
about what caused all of this.

I think Ron Paul's article, posted on Lew Rockwell today, provides some
useful insight.