"Kill Them All, For God Will Know His Own"

Scene of the crime: The couch where Aiyana Jones was sleeping when she was killed. 

Kevin Weeks was a career criminal employed as a Mob hitman, but even he possessed sufficient good judgment and self-restraint to avoid risking the life of a seven-year-old girl.

In Brutal, his aptly titled memoir of the years he spent working for Boston Mob boss -- and protected FBI asset -- James "Whitey" Bulger, Weeks describes how he was given an order to assassinate Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr, who relentlessly tormented Bulger in print. Weeks set up a sniper nest near Carr's home. He had the target set up for the kill, but didn't pull the trigger because Carr's daughter, "a little girl, like seven years old or so," was walking hand-in-hand with her father. 

"I couldn't take a chance of the bullet fragmenting and ricocheting or hitting her or just killing her father in front of her," recounts Weeks.

Not ruthless enough for government "work": Mob Hitman Kevin Weeks

This episode, admittedly, is retold from the self-serving perspective of a convicted murderer.  Ironically, Carr himself, in his valuable book The Brothers Bulger, relates a somewhat similar story of a proposed contract hit that was vetoed by former Boston Mob boss Raymond Patriarca. 

Joe Barboza, a hitman employed by Patriarca, pointed out that the hoodlum targeted by the contract lived in a three-story house in Boston. Barboza suggested that he could "break into the basement and pour gasoline all around and torch the place, after which I either get him with the smoke inhalation or I pick him off when he's climbing out the window."

"Barboza had worked out a plan for every contingency," notes Carr. "He would bring three shooters with him, to watch each side of the house. They would cut the telephone lines to the houses, so that the victim couldn't call the fire department. And just in case one of the neighbors called, before setting the house on fire Barboza planned to phone in false alarms across the city to tie up every fire company." 

Patriarca, who had few compunctions about killing when it suited him, wasn't keen on Barboza's plan, in large measure because of the potential harm to non-combatants.

"Patriarca asked Barboza if anyone else lived in [the targeted hoodlum's] house, and Barboza mentioned the victim's mother," continues Carr. 

"You're gonna kill his mother too?" asked Patriarca.

"It ain't my fault she lives there," the hitman snorted by way of reply. 

"Patriarca canceled the contract," Carr tersely summarizes. Barboza, not surprisingly, proved to be too ruthless and deranged for the Mob, and ended up -- like Bulger -- as another of the FBI's protected assets.

It is a monumental pity that the Detroit Special Response Team, or the decision-makers above them in the Detroit PD, didn't have the sense of proportionality displayed by Mob figures like Kevin Weeks and Raymond Patriarca. If they had, the murder suspect they sought -- 34-year-old Chauncey Owens -- could have been taken into custody without the midnight paramilitary raid that resulted in the burning and shooting death of seven-year-old Aiyana Jones. 

Shortly after midnight on May 16, while Aiyana -- a radiant little girl who might have grown up to resemble Zoe Saldana -- was sleeping on the downstairs living room sofa where she would be killed just a few minutes later, the raid team gathered for a "safety briefing." 

As described by police sources to the Detroit Free Press, that briefing dealt entirely with considerations of "officer safety," which -- as any honest observer will admit -- is the highest and most important consideration in any law enforcement operation.

The raid team "was told there was information that the suspect might be armed, possibly with an assault rifle and a handgun," reports the Free Press. "Someone said there also might be dangerous dogs and that the house was believed to be a possible dope den." 

Another intelligence source speculated that the unprepossesing duplex might actually be the location of the missing Iraqi WMDs, which had been stored in a basement vault guarded by a basilisk. 

No, not really. 

But in its anxiety over officer safety, and its eagerness to stage a properly impressive raid for the benefit of the embedded A&E camera crew, the SRT did not take into account "the possibility of any children being present," despite the fact that the front yard was littered with toys -- a clue that even a police officer should be able to recognize -- and warnings to that effect offered by neighbors as the raid unfolded. 

Ground Zero: Notice the toys? The cops didn't.

 

Street officers and homicide detectives were already on the scene when the SRT's armored personnel carrier rolled up in front of the duplex. 

 

The APC was driven by Officer Joseph Weekley, who was also the first through the door after a flash-bang grenade had been thrown through the window. Weekley went barreling into the living room armed with a machine gun and protected by a ballistic shield. 

Meanwhile, Aiyana -- according to at least one eyewitness -- was being severely burned by the incendiary grenade that had been thrown into her bed. 

It's not clear whether Aiyana suffered her fatal gunshot wound before or after Weekley entered the house. In either case, Officer Weekley has been identified as the shooter. He initially claimed that his gun accidentally went off during a "scuffle" with Aiyana's 47-year-old grandmother. 

 

Within a few hours that account was "clarified" by the police, who said that there was incidental "contact" between Weekley and Aiyana's grandmother; the latter denies having contact of any kind with Weekley. Her story hasn't changed. The same can't be said for the official police account.

Geoffrey Fieger, the attorney representing Aiyana's family, claims to have seen a videotape of the raid showing that the shot was fired into the house shortly after the grenade was hurled through the downstairs window. 



Chauncey Owens, who has been charged with the murder of 17-year-old Je'Rean Blake, was arrested in the upstairs flat, a separate domicile from the one in which Aiyana was killed. Prior to the SRT raid, Owens had been seen on the streets near the duplex. There was no reason -- well, none not dictated by the demands of Homeland Security Theater -- to mount a midnight paramilitary operation to take Owens into custody. 

 Why wasn't an effort made to arrest him on the streets -- after staking out the duplex, if necessary? That question, of course, fails to take into account the "reality TV" camera crew. Once that factor is considered, it's a matter of res ipsa loquitir. 

A&E's Detroit SWAT program made Joseph Weekley a television star. The May 16 raid, as some veteran police officers might put it, wasn't Weekley's first rodeo. Nor was this the first time his conduct put children at severe risk. 




Weekley took part in a February 2007 SRT raid on a Detroit residence occupied by several children. A lawsuit filed on behalf of the family claims that the  SRT gunned down two dogs "without any justifiable reason whatsoever," and that during the operation the officers "had their guns pointed at ... [a] child and [an] infant." 


In that 2007 raid Weekley and his comrades were pursuing a suspect in an armed robbery. As was the case last Sunday, the SRT wasn't dealing with a hostage situation or a barricaded shooter, let alone a heavily armed serial killer on a rampage. None of the people terrorized by the raid and detained at gunpoint was charged in connection with the crime. At least in that earlier incident, the SRT -- in what appears to be an example of unwonted restraint -- declined to use a flash-bang grenade. 

Paramilitary units like the Detroit SRT are used to carry out what are described as "high-risk" operations. This description is generally true -- when applied to those targeted by the raids; the risks experienced by the heavily armed raiders in body armor are minuscule. 


On average, between 100-150 such raids take place every day in this supposedly free country, most of them are narcotics enforcement actions against people involved in non-violent, consensual behavior. Typically, the only "risk" confronted by law enforcement personnel in such circumstances is the possibility that if they knock on the door and present their warrant the evidence will disappear down the toilet. Under this order of priorities, the convenience of prosecutors enforcing asinine drug laws is served at the expense of those brutalized and often killed without reason in their own homes. 



The truly sickening thing about the death of Aiyana Jones is that the decision to carry out a SRT raid was almost certainly dictated by the media ambitions of Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans, who -- in the words of Detroit News columnist Charlie LeDuff -- is positioning himself as a "reality TV" star.



"Television executives around the country have been shown what is known in television parlance as the `sizzle reel' of Chief Evans himself, a video compilation of Detroit's top cop trying to take back the streets," writes LeDuff, who saw that footage several weeks ago. "It is part of a pitch for a full-blown television series."



As Detroit's civic and economic implosion accelerates, the city has become an irresistible setting for state-centric media outlets "peddling mayhem," continues LeDuff. "Spike TV featured the Detroit bureau of the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008. A&E is taping a season of `Parking Wars' here; production on a series about the Fire Department wrapped late last year. Even Animal Planet is in on the deal with `Animal Cops Detroit.'"

Badass FAIL: Wannabe TV star Warren Evans

Chief Evans' "reality" show pitch begins with the uniformed bureaucrat "gripping a semi-automatic rifle, standing in front of crumbling Michigan Central Depot, staring down a camera and declaring that he'll do whatever it takes to take his city back from crime. The camera will tag along with Warren Evans as he goes on house raids, smokes cigars with his underlings and recalls words to live by told to him by his mother." 



LeDuff's disclosures do much to explain why the A&E camera crew went along on the SRT raid that killed Aiyana Jones, and why the Department chose to stage a midnight "Shock and Awe" operation rather than quietly bringing in the suspect.

Aiyana Jones was killed because the Detroit PD wanted to boost Chief Evans's Q Score. 


Nearly two decades ago, millions of Americans were mortified by the assault on Randy Weaver's family in northern Idaho and the federal siege of the Branch Davidians at Mt. Carmel. 


In the first atrocity, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi proved -- by gunning down a nursing mother who was cradling her infant daughter -- that he wasn't burdened with the scruples that prevented Kevin Weeks from pulling the trigger on Howie Carr. 

The latter episode ended with the FBI (aided by the Delta Force) carrying out -- on a much larger scale -- an arson/murder plan very similar to the one proposed by Mob hitman Joe Barboza, and vetoed by Mob boss Raymond Patriarca. As Barboza proposed, the Feds pumped the Branch Davidian dwelling full of gas and, when the fire erupted, used snipers to pick off anybody attempting to flee the holocaust. They even interdicted fire and emergency crews while the victims burned and suffocated.




Waco and Ruby Ridge were anomalous only in the sense that they were large, well-publicized versions of the daily acts of state terrorism carried out by the Regime, both here and abroad. Pashtun and Tajik families terrorized by Special Forces raids in Afghanistan could profitably compare notes with survivors of SWAT raids in the United States.

Jason Moon, who served with the U.S. Army in Iraq, brought back a video in which a sergeant told his troops that "The difference between an insurgent and an Iraqi civilian is whether they are dead or alive." For the benefit of those who fail to take that sergeant's meaning, Moon explains: "If you kill a civilian he becomes an insurgent because you retroactively make that person a threat." 

Jason Washburn, who served three tours in Iraq, has recounted how troops were encouraged to carry "drop guns" to be deposited near newly-minted "insurgents"; eventually, this instruction was modified to permit "drop shovels," since a solider in the heat of combat must assume that someone armed with a shovel was planting an IED, and the holy imperative of "force protection" dictates that he take no chances.


By his third tour of Iraq, recounts Marine Jason Wayne Lemue, the rules of engagement had achieved a certain compelling clarity: "[W]e were told to just shoot people and the officers would take care of us." 

Terrifying as all of this is, the really bad news is that there is substantial reason to believe that there are fewer restrictions on the use of lethal force by domestic paramilitary police than there are on U.S. military personnel operating overseas. 

This trend will likely grow much worse when the Homeland Security Apparatus is filled with veterans of the Empire's current foreign campaigns. You know, the kind of people who can blithely dismiss the anguish of a father whose children have been gunned down by foreign invaders by saying, "Well, it's their fault for bringing their children to a battle." 




I can't help but see just a hint of that casual sadism in the following detail regarding the death of Aiyana Jones: Charles Jones recalls that after he heard a flash grenade followed by a gunshot, he rushed into the living room, where "police forced him to lie on the ground, with his face in his daughter's blood."

It was a terrible thing, of course. But at least the troops were safe. And, as Joe Barboza might observe, it wasn't the SRT's fault that Aiyana lived there. 


                                                  Of related interest ...

Here is my recent interview with Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio on the killing of Aiyana Jones, and police militarization in general.


                                                                            An Appeal 

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Dum spiro, pugno!

The Death of Aiyana Jones: "Showtime Syndrome" Claims a Child (UPDATED)

Death of a princess: Aiyana Jones, victim of the Homeland Security State

In physics, the term "observer effect" describes how examining a phenomenon can change it, because of the influence of the instruments used to make the observation. Something similar happens to human interactions when cameras are present. The irresistible impulse to play to the lens makes human behavior mannered and self-aware. Every statement becomes a performance, every gesture a pose. 

The steady onslaught of police propaganda shows of the "COPS" genre constitute the worst and most dangerous form of "reality" television. 

A couple of years ago I coined the term "COPS Effect" to describe how pseudo-documentary programs glorifying the police abet irresponsible (but highly telegenic) use of paramilitary tactics. The presence of cameras during law enforcement operations often triggers a condition I call "Showtime Syndrome," a frequently lethal tendency toward self-dramatization on the part of police.


Conflict and danger, whether genuine or contrived, make for high-impact television; de-escalation and sober, careful police work do not. Thus embedding camera crews with the police -- only officially vetted personnel from State-aligned media are suitable; Mundanes  with cameras are subject to summary arrest -- creates a perverse incentive for "peace" officers to choose an approach more likely to result in avoidable death, injury, and property destruction.

Aiyana Jones, the 7-year-old girl shot to death early Sunday (May 17) during a SWAT raid on her Detroit home, was almost certainly a victim of the "COPS Effect."

Troops from the Detroit Police Department's Special Reaction Team ("troops" is a more appropriate description than "officers") seeking a murder suspect executed a no-knock warrant on the home where Aiyana was sleeping on the couch.


Despite warnings from neighbors that there were children present in the home -- a fact attested by the toys scattered in the front yard -- the SRT paramilitaries chose a Fallujah-style "dynamic entry," hurling a flash-bang grenade through a closed window and storming through the front door with guns drawn.

The incendiary grenade landed on the couch where Aiyana was sleeping. Her father claims that the child suffered burns as a result. Seconds later, she was dead. 

One of the SRT troopers engaged in what was called a "tussle" with Mertilla Jones, Aiyana's grandmother. In the antiseptic and completely dishonest language favored by the state-aligned media, the officer's gun "went off."


This means, apparently, that the inanimate object simply discharged sua sponte, independent of intentional or negligent action on the part of its owner, a fully credentialed member of the exalted "Only Ones" -- as in "law enforcement and the military are the Only Ones who should be permitted to own and carry firearms."

Firearms in the hands of the hoi polloi, we are told, have a way of spontaneously firing and killing innocent children. Oddly enough, that's what supposedly happened to a beautiful 7-year-old girl named Aiyana Jones. 

The raid took place at about 12:30 a.m. The individual being sought at the multi-family dwelling was a suspect in a murder that took place at about 3:00 p.m. the previous Friday. Police report that they arrested the suspect at the duplex where the raid occurred. However, they pointedly refuse to say whether the shooting death of Aiyana Jones took place in the same unit where the suspect was found.

This was not a hostage situation. The proverbial clock wasn't ticking. Why didn't the police quietly set up a perimeter at the targeted address, and wait until the suspect left the building? Why stage a post-midnight paramilitary raid against a home where children were present?

A paragraph found toward the end of a Detroit Free Press account provides a likely answer:

"Outside the home, the department's special response team was prepared to go in. Film crews with A&E's `The First 48' reality show, which follows police departments nationwide during the crucial 48 hours after a homicide is committed, were taping the team for a documentary. Police spokesman John Roach said the tapes will be reviewed as part of the investigation."

In other words, the decision-making process in this investigation was being distorted by the "COPS Effect." The department insists that this was a high-risk warrant enforcement operation, but it wasn't too dangerous to bring a camera crew along. Had the intent been simply to capture a murder suspect, the police could have sent a team of street officers and homicide detectives, rather than the paramilitary goon squad and their archivists.

Detroit is an economic moonscape in which the police -- through the institutionalized larceny called "asset forfeiture" -- have become the single largest source of property crime. The SRT and the Narcotics Enforcement Division (which is trained by the SRT) average two full-force raids each day, most of them conducted against single- and multi-family dwellings.

A few years ago, the SRT was featured in an A&E "reality" program entitled "SWAT." Viewers learned, among other things, that each member of the 21-officer SRT is given a GI Joe-style "codename" that is "based upon a specific action, or character trait that the officer has. These codenames are used as tactical call signs, similarly to how pilots in the military refer to one another."

 If the member of this little club who shot Aiyana hasn't been assigned a codename, I think "Fumbles" would make the best match for his skill-set.

The SRT, described as "one of the nation's most elite SWAT teams," was also featured on Attack of the Show in a segment heavy on hardware porn and loaded with preening and posturing by overgrown adolescents who get to wear bitchin' black outfits and carry great big guns.

***

***

The SRT's armory, cooed the man-crushing host, is "beyond impressive," and its techniques and tactics are "awesome." Sure, the unit isn't all that useful when it comes to protecting life, liberty, and property, but it certainly looks intimidating, especially on television.

Just another day in the Reich: A child uses the bathroom under the benevolent gaze of a stormtrooper during a paramilitary drug raid. 

 Of course, this is precisely the point: Paramilitary outfits of this kind are designed to advertise the might of the State. That's why the cameras were along to capture the early morning raid that claimed the life of Aiyana Jones, and it's why the SRT -- rather than a less dangerous and less telegenic police unit -- was assigned that task in the first place.




The life of Aiyana Jones -- may she rest in God's peace -- ended violently in an act of homeland security agitprop. She wasn't the first to die that way, and won't be the last. 


                                                                   UPDATE

Attorney Geoffrey Fieger, who is representing the family of Aiyana Jones, claims that "video footage shows police fired into the home at least once after lobbying a flash grenade through the window."

This apparently contradicts the official account in which Jones was killed by a round fired in an accidental discharge during a "tussle" between one of the raiders and Aiyana's 46-year-old grandmother.

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Dum spiro, pugno!