Clarence Dupnik's Death Squad

A home invasion in Tucson, Arizona; below, right, its equivalent in Mosul, Iraq.

 




















Why did they use a SWAT team? 

If  Tucson resident Jose Guerena was plausibly suspected of narcotics trafficking, why wasn't he arrested on his way to or from his job at the nearby Asarco Mission copper mine? What justified a military assault on his home, when investigators knew that they could have executed a conventional search warrant?

 Jose was never charged with a crime. In a previous encounter with police he consented to a search of his vehicle. In an separate traffic stop, Jose was a passenger in a car in which police found a handgun and a trivial amount of marijuana; he was arrested and subsequently released without being charged with a crime. He was an honorably discharged Marine combat veteran and -- of infinitely greater importance -- a gainfully employed, married father of two children. 

There's no reason to believe that anything other than a conventional search warrant -- served by officers who aren't kitted out in paramilitary drag, who knock on the door, identify themselves, and display the document in question before gaining entry -- was either necessary or appropriate. This could have been done with minimal risk to everyone involved. 

If a routine search warrant had been executed on the morning of May 5, the substantive result would have been the same: The police would have found no evidence of criminal activity. The most important difference, of course, would be that Vanessa would still have a husband, and her children -- grade school student Jose, Jr. , and toddler Joel -- would still have their father. Instead, Jose was a victim of criminal homicide at the hands of a Pima County Sheriff's Office (PCSO) SWAT team. 

At the time of the raid, Jose had just finished a twelve-hour shift at the local Asarco copper mine; he was startled awake by terrified cries from his wife, Vanessa, who told him that there were armed men laying siege to their home. Jose told her to hide in a closet with their four-year-old son, Joel. 

When the intruders burst into the home, Jose was in his boxer shorts and reportedly was holding an AR15 rifle, which he never discharged -- contrary to the SWAT team's initial report, which was that Jose had fired on them. His wife, who claims that she had never seen the gun before, initially told investigating detectives that it had been "thrown" next to Jose's body. Whether or not Jose actually pointed the gun, the invaders flung a total of 71 rounds in his direction, twenty-two of which hit him. 

Significantly, none of the wounds, as described in the official Medical Examiner's report, appears to have been a killshot. Jose was grazed in the head, and wounded in the extremities. One round penetrated a lung and his spleen, causing a hemorrhage. The same report notes that there was "no evidence of medical intervention," despite the fact that one member of the SWAT team -- deputy Jay Korza -- is a medic, and paramedics summoned by Vanessa's panicked 911 call arrived at the home mere minutes after the shooting. 



Rather than rendering or permitting medical aid to their victim, the SWAT team barricaded the crime scene while Jose bled to death. They didn't even confirm Jose's death directly. Instead, they deployed a camera-equipped remote-controlled robot to investigate, and then obtained an official pronouncement by telephone from a SWAT team physician who was miles from the scene. 


The likelihood that Jose could have survived if the SWAT team had provided timely medical care elevates this crime from simple homicide to second degree murder through depraved indifference. But the guilty parties here aren't limited to the trigger-pullers who spilled Jose's blood: Given that there was no legal justification for a military raid in the first place, the policy-makers responsible for signing off on it are just as guilty as the people who carried out those orders.

In a petulant and self-serving television interview with local ABC affiliate KGUN, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik insisted that the SWAT raid was entirely "appropriate," and that since Jose was "part of a very violent organization, we considered it high risk." 

As helmet camera video of the raid documents, the comportment of the  SWAT team was not what one would expect from police carrying out a "high risk" mission against a potentially violent criminal. Music can be heard playing in the background; the mood of the SWAT operators seems more like what would be expected of a sports team preparing for a pickup basketball game, rather than combat-ready tactical specialists steeling themselves to confront a dangerous offender. 


Furthermore, Dupnik's rationale for the "high risk" operation is contradicted by Michael Storie, the attorney representing Jose's killers. Asked if Jose's previous arrest played a role in the SWAT team's strategy in carrying out the raid, Storie replied: "No. They didn't know anything about it and they didn't even know Guerena would be in the house at the time they approached."


What this means, apparently, is that a SWAT team was sent to carry out a combat-style raid against a home the team believed was  occupied only by a young mother and her four-year-old child. The task force investigating Jose knew his work schedule and his family's daily routine; did it neglect to share that information with the SWAT team? Was that intelligence deliberately withheld?


Nothing was "mishandled" here, maintains Sheriff Dupnik, ignorant of the fact that once incompetence is eliminated as an explanation, we're left with something can only be regarded as sinister -- and criminal.

 The public shouldn't be alarmed over the raid that killed Jose Guerena, the Sheriff assured KGUN, since "We average about 50 of these searches" every year. Wouldn't this mean that there is a SWAT raid of this kind taking place practically every week in Pima County? In light of what happened on May 5, should Pima County residents receive these tidings with relief, or apprehension?


"This was an unfortunate situation that was provoked by the person himself," Dupnik maintained, asserting that this is the inevitable outcome when someone points an "assault rifle" at cops. A more honest person would acknowledge that the SWAT operators first pointed their weapons at Jose when they had no cause or justification to do so, and that it's always a bad idea to invade a home occupied by a young mother with a toddler. 

Dupnik, however, was too busy wallowing in self-pity to spare any sympathy for the young father who was slaughtered on the floor of his own home: "Unfortunately, in this particular case, the printed media ... for whatever reason, decided to beat Dupnik up, over the head, with a sledge hammer...."


Sending a paramilitary death squad to bust down a door and hurl lead in every direction is conscientious police work; criticizing the synapse-challenged apparatchik responsible for such atrocities is something akin to criminal assault. Is everybody clear on this? 

Dupnik's casually defamatory statement that Jose Guerena was part of a "very violent organization" isn't supported by evidence, and will never be proven in court. Since Jose was killed before being charged with a crime, his innocence will forever remain an unimpeachable legal fact. However, it is a moral certainty that Clarence Dupnik is the chieftain of a "very violent organization" that can kill innocent people with impunity.

The search warrant affidavit that lead to the May 5 raids in Tucson -- a tapestry of supposition held together by begged questions -- purports to describe a large, well-organized narcotics smuggling operation involving Jose's older brother and other relatives. 

The PCSO's Special Investigative Unit (SIU) investigated Jose and the others for about two years, including six months of relentless, highly intrusive surveillance. This included wiretaps, stakeouts, and detailed scrutiny of household finances. The central figure in the investigation appears to have been Jose's older brother, Alejandro, who did have a criminal history (albeit one not involving mala en se). 

Suspicions were piqued by the fact that this group of Mexican-Americans, most of whom received welfare, appeared to be living beyond their means -- which, while exceedingly unwise, is neither a crime nor uncommon, even in post-Bubble America. Jose, according to his wife, was the kind of frugal provider who made birthday pinatas for their son, rather than buying them. The affidavit insists that none of the subjects appeared to be gainfully employed. That statement is offered despite the fact that the same affidavit acknowledges that Jose, who retired from the Marine Corps several years ago, worked long hours at the copper mine.


Despite the depth of their suspicions and the extent of their investigation, the affidavit admits: "During the SIU surveillance concerning the aforementioned subjects [that is, Jose and the others], they were not observed handling or even in the proximity of narcotics."

The functionary who filed the affidavit, identified only as "Detective Tisch,"offers a litany of excuses for the absence of tangible evidence of the drug trafficking ring he and his comrades had purportedly identified. 

Some "drug traffickers are aware that electronic communications are subject to law enforcement interception ... [and therefore] prefer most transactions to be in person," he writes in lines 123-124 of the affidavit. Where and when did those transactions occur? Ahem -- well, you see, "it is your Affiant's belief ... that suspects who are involved in drug trafficking are aware that law enforcement officers conduct surveillance of their residences, their businesses, and their activities" -- so none of the deals would go down in any of those places, y'see. 

Well, why not stalk those insidious people to the secret lairs wherein they ply their insidious trade? Ah, gee, well, as much as I'd love to, Tisch stammers in print, drug dealers "are conscious of being followed by law enforcement officers and are therefore difficult to follow." All right  -- what about the fact that the SIU had terrifyingly detailed access to the financial records of those whom they were investigating? "Narcotic traffickers often use financial habits designed to minimize and hide a paper trail," Tisch wrote by way of prefacing information about the earnings, finances, employment histories, properties, and clothing purchases of Jose and Alejandro Guerena and the others. 

The most significant "evidence" of Jose's supposed involvement in the alleged drug ring was the fact that he was found in the possession of a large quantity of plastic wrap during a 2009 traffic stop. In a fashion reminiscent of Don Quixote seeing malevolent giants where windmills placidly plied the Iberian skies, Detective Tisch wrote that "it is your Affiant's belief that saran-type wrap is commonly used to wrap and rewrap marijuana for ease of transportation...." It was subsequently discovered that this illicit "masking material" had actually been used to wrap furniture at the home of Jose Guerena's mother. 


After paring away all of the officious persiflage that litters this document, here is the "evidence" is presented to the judge: 

This small group of Mexican-Americans in Tucson, who include some people with criminal records, has money and assets we believe, but cannot prove, are the proceeds of drug trafficking. The only way we can prove this is by deploying a military strike force to kick in doors and collect the evidence that we cannot find through legitimate police methods. A judge quite generously responded to that request by issuing a hunting license to the local SWAT team and calling it a "search warrant." 


The affidavit demanded permission to seize all "fruits, instrumentalities and evidence of the [drug-related] crimes" allegedly carried out by the purported marijuana trafficking ring. 
Although the PCSO "rip crew" found no evidence of any kind in Jose's home, they were nothing if not thorough: Among the supposedly "drug-related" items they plundered from the home were Vanessa's wedding ring and Jose's combat medals from his service in Iraq. 


Once again, this detail offers critical insights into the mindset and priorities behind the May 5 atrocity. This wasn't the behavior of people sworn to protect individual rights and private property; it was the opportunistic avarice of officially sanctioned thieves who consider themselves legally entitled to a cut of anything of value they can find. 

This is why Detective Tisch's affidavit (like any other document of its kind) should be seen as a report filed by a thief casing coveted properties on behalf of a home invasion ring: These people have a bunch of nice stuff; all we have to do is find a plausible excuse to steal it from them. 

 That's how the "War on Drugs" operates at the local level. For law enforcement agencies, the objective isn't to abolish drug trafficking, or even to impede it significantly; rather, it is to maximize the institutional profits they derive from prohibition. 

One properly notorious example is on display on Interstate 40 in Tennessee, where officers from two drug task forces prowl the highway in search of  cash they can seize through civil asset forfeiture.


Dutifully reciting the prescribed catechism, Kim Helper, District Attorney for Tennessee's 21st Judicial District, insists that the highway robbery scheme is "a way for us to continue to fund our operations so that we can put an end to drug trafficking and the drug trade within this district." Of course, those two objectives -- "continued funding" and "an end to drug trafficking" -- are mutually incompatible. 

Officers assigned to the task force often ignore actual narcotics shipments, choosing instead to focus almost exclusively on seizing money. This means concentrating on the westbound side of the highway, where the cash is believed to be found, rather than the eastbound lane, which is supposedly used to shuttle drugs in from Mexico. 

As Nashville's CBS affiliate reports, the salaries paid to the officers involved in this highway robbery ring are paid directly out of the cash and other assets seized by them; this means that police often find themselves competing to stop and shake down the same cars, sometimes nearly coming to blows in the process. 

The Patron Saint of narcotics task forces is 19th Century NYPD Officer Alexander "Clubber" Williams, who created an immensely lucrative fiefdom in a precinct ripe with vice and graft of every conceivable variety. 

Clubber's exuberant corruption made for good press copy, which was made even livelier by his compulsive quotability. "There is more law in the end of a policeman's nightstick than in a decision of the Supreme Court," he explained when he was criticized about his penchant for brutality. It was his proprietary brand of glib shamelessness that gave New York's vice district its name: "All my life I have never had anything but chuck steak. Now I'm gonna get me some tenderloin." 

Like the contemporary drug warriors who are his institutional progeny, Williams knew that vice cannot be eradicated through state coercion -- but that the "war" against it can be immensely profitable. As Professor Alfred W. McCoy of the University of Wisconsin-Madison points out, through drug prohibition, police act as "an informal regulator, controlling the volume of vice trading and setting the level of syndication"; this results in the creation of "powerful syndicates and a high volume of illicit activity." 

To see a splendid example of the process Dr. McCoy describes, all that is necessary is to cast our eyes to the south. Since 2006, the Mexican front of Washington's drug war has claimed more than 40,000 lives. It has militarized that country's law enforcement culture, thereby generating substantial profits for the corporate affiliates of Washington's National Security State. The inflated profits resulting from prohibitionist policies have likewise been a boon to the banking sector, both in Mexico and globally. The cartels themselves are thriving, diversifying, and expanding their institutional reach both into the U.S. and Central America.

This symbiosis police agencies and the vice cartels they help create enriches criminal kingpins on both sides. The consequences of this cynical charade are often lethal for innocent people needlessly targeted by  State-licensed thugs armed with combat-grade weaponry and imbued with the scruples of Clubber Williams.


The second hour of last week's installment of Pro Libertate Radio was devoted to the murder of Jose Guerena. Go here to listen.










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Dum spiro, pugno!

He Didn't Say "Infidels": Homeland Security Theater, Continued

The word has a very distinct connotation. There's nothing else that quite captures it.... Give me one word that captures the same image. One word. You name it, and I will use it. --

Defense attorney Robin Weathers arguing for the admissibility of a profoundly vulgar epithet involving the emunctory orifice in the film From the Hip.


A few months after Iraqi national Waad Ramadan Alwan was allowed to immigrate to the U.S. as a refugee, he found himself unwittingly cast in a leading role in yet another installment of Homeland Security Theater. 

Someone identified in the criminal complaint as a "Confidential Human Source" (CHS) in the FBI's employ -- that is, a bit player from the Bureau's large and ever-expanding troupe of agent provocateurs and "terrorism facilitators" -- approached then-28-year-old Alwan to recruit him into an effort to aid mujahadeen fighters in Iraq.

The script written by the Louisville Joint Terrorism Task Force called for the FBI's asset to pose as a representative of an unnamed "Hajii" with connections to Iraqi insurgents. After Alwan had been lured into the pseudo-plot, the role-playing stooge added a final decorative detail by claiming that he received money from Osama bin Laden -- a claim that neither impressed nor interested the Iraqi, according to the account provided in the criminal complaint.

The Bureau's bit player proposed that Alwan, who had taken up residence in Bowling Green, Kentucky, help train Iraqi insurgents in the manufacture and use of IEDs, and assist in smuggling weapons and a large amount of money to Iraq.

Alwan was let into the country in April 2009. A few weeks later, 21-year-old Iraqi
Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, who would be recruited by Alwan into the federally-choreographed "conspiracy," arrived in the U.S. The FBI operation began just a few weeks later after Alwan's arrival. The criminal complaint against Alwan states that he began "notionally assisting" the supposed plot "beginning in 2010."

Alwan.

 At least 19,000 Iraqi refugees were admitted to the United States that year; why was Alwan of particular interest to the Bureau? One possible answer is found in the fact that Alwan, a one-time employee at an electrical plant in Bayji, was a known insurgent.

From 2003-2006 Alwan took part in a number of ambushes involving IEDs, and was arrested by security personnel after one operation went awry. His fingerprints had been found on a wireless telephone base station used in an IED that failed to go off. That dud IED was found by occupation forces in September 2005.


Federal prosecutors have charged Alwan and Hammadi with several crimes -- including "Conspiracy to Use a Weapon of Mass Destruction," a category of armaments that includes any destructive device, no matter how trivial its yield, fashioned by anybody other that the United States government. The prosecutors refuse to say why the two Iraqis were let into the country, whether Alwan's arrest in Iraq was known to federal officials, or what prompted the Bureau to target them for a "sting" operation. 


Res ipsa loquitir: Alman and Hammadi were allowed to enter the U.S. for the precise purpose of being lured into an FBI false flag operation. That conclusion is suggested by the circumstantial evidence in this specific case, and justified by the fact that every significant "terrorist plot" supposedly disrupted by the FBI since 9/11 has been a Federal Government production. 

In making its pitch to potential patsies, the FBI is too smart to appeal to the seething hatred of all infidels that supposedly festers inside  every young Muslim male. Instead, they exploit the perfectly understandable and thoroughly human resentment provoked by Washington's invasion and occupation of Muslim countries. 

Were Peter King -- former fundraiser for the most violent faction of the terrorist IRA -- an honest man rather than a feckless demagogue, his hearings regarding the "radicalization of American Muslims" would focus on the unparalleled success enjoyed by the FBI in recruiting once-peaceable Muslim men into ersatz terrorist plots. The Bureau has isolated a formula that works: Rather than trying to rile up Muslims over the decadence of American culture and the general impudence of the infidels, FBI-trained provocateurs focus instead on the horrific human cost of Washington's foreign policy.

Hammadi.

In the case of Alwan and Hammadi, the Regime was given the gift of two young Iraqi males who had already been pre-radicalized as a result of their life experiences. 


Alwan was born in 1981 -- the year after Saddam Hussein, in his role as Washington's regional subcontractor, began his war with Iran -- with Washington's covert encouragement and material assistance. Alwan was still in diapers when the Reagan administration removed Saddam's government from the roster of terrorism-supporting regimes, which permitted Washington to begin plying Baghdad with military and financial aid.

When Alwan was two years old, Donald Rumsfeld visited Baghdad as a presidential emissary, laden with promises of subsidies, military aid, and other forms of material and moral support. This included transfers of dual-use technology to Iraqi nuclear facilities, and tacit support for Iraq's development and use of chemical weapons (even though Washington acknowledged that this would provoke Iran to expand its own use of chemical munitions).

In 1984, when Alwan was a toddler, President Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive 139, which made preventing the "collapse" of Saddam's abominable police state a strategic priority.

Although  -- or, perhaps, because -- the war turned out disastrously for Iraq, Saddam continued to be a specially favored beneficiary of Washington's imperial largesse until literally the eve of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. During the 12-year intermission in the Persian Gulf war, Washington imposed a deadly embargo that further entrenched Saddam's rule while consigning hundreds of thousands of young Iraqis -- many of them Alwan's age -- to an early death through avoidable illness or starvation. 



Like millions of other Iraqis of the same age, Alwan has no memory of a time when his country wasn't either at war with Washington, or involved in a war as a result of Washington's chicanery. During the 1990s, his country was ravaged by a murderous embargo that was punctuated with airstrikes and missile assaults, even as Washington very thoughtfully cattle-penned Saddam's domestic opposition and allowed the dictator to slaughter them (something made clear in the account offered by former CIA operative Robert Baer).

Trench combat in the Iran-Iraq War.

Alwan was 22 years old when the distant government that had visited such favors on his country  invaded Iraq to remove the middleman. In a fit of ingratitude that would be inexplicable to neo-conservatives and others unfamiliar with the rudiments of human motivation, Alwan was among those who chose to greet the "liberators" with IEDs and high-velocity rounds fired from a sniper rifle, rather than flowers and sweets. 


The people on the receiving end of Alwan's attacks were Americans. They should not have been there. They had no right to be there, and no authority -- moral or legal -- to employ violence to force Iraqis like Alwan to submit to them. The policymakers who sent them to Iraq, thereby putting them in a morally untenable and physically vulnerable position, are criminals who should be put in the dock for mass murder and crimes against the Constitution. 

Donald Rumsfeld (l) helped Saddam obtain weapons later used to kill Americans.

 The grand jury indictment against Alwan accuses him of conspiring to murder "United States nationals outside the United States" by using "weapons of mass destruction" -- that is, crude, low-yield IEDs. 

The sight of an American who has been maimed, blinded, or killed by an IED set by an Iraqi insurgent is unbearable, and this moral conclusion is just as unavoidable: The people who set that charge aren't terrorists -- they're patriots fighting on their home soil against a prohibitively stronger foreign aggressor. If America were on the receiving end of a similar "liberation," American patriots would provide a similar welcome to our uninvited benefactors. 

In a typically onanistic and self-congratulatory statement announcing the arrests of Alwan and Hammadi, David J. Hale, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky, said that the Feds are prepared "to pursue terrorists wherever in the United States they may be found.... Whether they seek shelter in a major metropolitan area or in a smaller city in Kentucky, those who would attempt to harm or kill Americans abroad will face a determined and prepared law enforcement effort ... to bring them to justice." (Emphasis added.) 


Note well that these two purported terrorists were not accused of plotting to kill unsuspecting Americans anywhere within the United States; they were allegedly plotting to kill the heavily armed, well-protected military personnel who still occupy their home country. If they had been consumed by an unconquerable desire to smite the American infidels wherever they could be found, they had no shortage of opportunities here.

In any case, rather than congratulating the Feds for their vigilance, we should be demanding to know why they knowingly permitted Alman, a purported mass murder, into the country to begin with. After all, isn't the supposed purpose of occupying Iraq to "fight them there, so we don't have to fight them here"? But, once again, the critical fact is that these Iraqis had no interest in pursuing vengeance against Americans who are simply minding our own business.

As one telling exchange with the FBI's agent provocateur illustrates, Alwan didn't lavish hostility on all infidels, or even on Americans in general; instead, he apparently focused it on a small, selective sub-population.


During a meeting last November 8, according to the criminal complaint, the FBI's undercover asset told Alwan "to pick up weapons from a storage facility, place them in bags, and deliver them" to a waiting vehicle. 

"You will be shocked with the RPGs," the provocateur boasted. "It is almost like you see in the movies."


"Yes, the a**holes built it?" Alwan inquired, prompting the FBI's stooge to reply, "Yeah, yeah -- it is American."


That epithet, once again, wasn't "infidels." It's also pretty clear that Alman wasn't applying that insult to Americans in general, but rather to those he blamed for turning his country into a perpetual spectacle of violence, disease, terror, and tyranny.  Why wouldn't he perceive such people as -- well, you know...?


Every human being has the potential to earn that designation, and nearly all of us qualify at some point in our lives. Government, said James Madison, is the "largest of all reflections on human nature." Given that the behavior of human beings invested with power is invariably asinine rather than angelic, Madison's metaphor would work better if it employed a proctoscope, rather than a mirror. 

If I take his meaning correctly, Alman wasn't even necessarily referring to the foreign troops occupying his country, but rather to the craven and despicable policymakers who had sent them there, and the corporatist parasites who profit from State-orchestrated bloodshed -- which includes the death and dismemberment of American troops sent somewhere they didn't belong to carry out a mission they shouldn't have been given against a population that never harmed or threatened us in any way.


In describing people capable of orchestrating atrocities of that kind, there simply isn't a suitable substitute for the expression Alman employed.

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Dum spiro, pugno!


 

"What Were You Guys Thinking? Why Did You Kill Him?"

"Why, why did you kill him?" a traumatized Vanessa Guerena begged to know as she was interrogated in a makeshift "command center" by detectives from the same Sheriff's Office that had just slaughtered her husband Jose. Her questioners, eager to exploit her trauma to extract information, initially refused to give her a straightforward answer. 

Jose, who had finished a graveyard shift at the Asarco copper mine, was sleeping when a SWAT team from the Pima County Sheriff's Office laid siege to his home on the morning of May 5. Vanessa was doing laundry, and the couple's four-year-old son Joel was watching "Transformers," when the SWAT raiders pulled up in a Bear Cat armored vehicle. 

The siren sounded for less than ten seconds; just a few seconds later, the order to "breach" the door was given because, as on-scene commander Deputy Bob Krygier later explained, nobody inside the house had "submitted to our authority."

Vanessa initially thought that there was an emergency "somewhere in the neighborhood," and called the police. When she saw armed intruders on her property, Vanessa screamed for her husband to wake up. Jose told Vanessa to take their younger son (whose older brother, Jose, Jr., was in school) and hide in the closet, while he went to confront the invaders. 




Seconds later, Jose was sprawled face-first in a pool of his own blood, shredded by more than sixty rounds fired by the SWAT team. That's how his four-year-old son would later find him. Joel was left alone after Vanessa, who had gone out to plead for someone to get medical help for her husband, was assaulted and brutalized by the SWAT operators and then detained for questioning. The child remained alone in the house with the body of his dead father while Krygier developed a "tactical team" to extract the child at minimal risk. That is, minimal risk to the berserkers who had just killed Joel's dad.

As the minutes dragged on, one of the SWAT operators --  according  to Krygier -- grew impatient over being forbidden to enter the home. 


"Might as well finish what I started," groused the armored assailant. I suspect he wasn't referring to the need to render timely medical aid, unless he intended to administer "one behind the ear" as a form of Kevorkian-style treatment.



Krygier and his little band of heroes were decked out in full SWAT regalia --  "I had my body armor on, a duty belt with a side holster, a ballistic helmet, clear sunglasses, [and] a handgun," he later reported. Yet the paramount consideration of "officer safety" prevented SWAT team members from rescuing Joel in a timely fashion, or even confirming first-hand that Jose was dead. Rather than rendering aid, or permitting the paramedics to treat Jose, the SWAT team -- bold, valiant badasses every one of them -- huddled in the BearCat and sent in a robot to poke and nudge the victim to make sure he was dead.

Despite the fact that one member of the squad, Deputy Jay Korza, is a medic, nobody went into the house and "physically" confirmed Jose's death, Krygier later explained to detectives. Instead, a call was placed to "our SWAT doctor, Dr. [Tammy] Kastre ... [who] pronounced him dead in the way that doctors do."

This indifferent and perfunctory confirmation was an appropriate coda to a SWAT assault that began with an entirely spurious search warrant. Michael Storie, the police union attorney representing Jose Guerena's killers, has admitted that neither Jose nor his home was specifically mentioned in the warrant, which was served as part of a "complex investigation" into an alleged marijuana smuggling and home invasion robbery ring. 

Three other homes were hit the same morning that the SWAT team gunned down Jose Guerena. But his was the only home devoid of anything resembling evidence in a criminal investigation. Thus it is remarkable that Jose, according to Krygier, was considered "the main bad guy" in this purported criminal syndicate, which was supposedly "hiring out to do rip crews -- to steal other people's marijuana and perform home invasions."


Assuming that gang actually exists, it would best be described as a private SWAT team, given that it would be carrying out exactly the same kinds of missions conducted every day by tactical police units in the "war on drugs." This would mean that the May 5 SWAT raids weren't so much a law enforcement exercise as a turf war between rival criminal gangs. 


Distant relatives of the Guerena family were killed in a home invasion robbery about a year ago; that fact was described by Krygier as a "connection" to a "double homicide." Other relatives are allegedly involved in narcotics trafficking, but Guerena himself has no criminal record. The former Marine worked long shifts on a predictable schedule at the local mine.

If Guerena was involved in criminal activity, a low-key arrest was eminently feasible, as was a conventional search of the home. But that's not how things are done in the American Reich. It's far more convenient -- and, one supposes, a lot more fun -- for the police to employ what will someday be known as the Jose Guerena Model: Lay siege to the home with a paramilitary death squad, gun down the suspect, and then interrogate his terrorized wife.


When the questioning began, Vanessa thought Jose might still be alive. She still harbored a faint, fugitive hope that the armed strangers who had invaded her home had taken her husband to the hospital. It wasn't until the detectives had begun the interrogation that she was able to learn that Jose had died.

Vanessa Guerena being interviewed on local television.

As the numbness of pure horror began to wear off, the newly minted 26-year-old widow started to feel the effects of injuries sustained when she had been roughly seized from her home, thrown to the ground, stepped on, and otherwise "treated like a criminal" by the death squad that had just poured at least sixty rounds into her husband. That treatment continued -- albeit in a more subtle fashion -- after she was placed in the custody of the detectives. 

"You're not allowed to leave," explained Detective Dan Preuss, who insisted that this "doesn't mean you're under arrest." That was a lie, of course: Any time a police officer presumes to detain a citizen, the detainee is under arrest. That Preuss was deceiving Vanessa about this -- as he was trained to -- is demonstrated by the fact that he and his comrades took several minutes to Mirandize Vanessa in both English and Spanish. 

"We don't trap you in a room and say, `talk to us,'" Preuss assured Vanessa as he and his colleagues did precisely that. As Preuss worked to extract information from Vanessa that could potentially have been used to incriminate her, the detective repeatedly told the horrified young woman that her questions would be answered in due time. But the only question to which she wanted an answer was the one she asked immediately after the raid: "What were you guys thinking?"
 
A few minutes after the questioning began, Vanessa asked the detectives why there had been a search warrant for her family's home. In a moment of depraved creativity, one of them insisted that "I can't answer your questions" because at that point Vanessa hadn't been Mirandized -- an answer demonstrating, once again, that the young wife and mother, whose husband had just been killed while defending his family, was being treated as a criminal suspect.


"Is there anything in the house the police would be looking for?" pried Detective Preuss, who wouldn't have had to ask that open-ended question if he and his comrades were enforcing a constitutionally valid warrant. "Now, be honest with me ... we're gonna go in there.... Is there anything illegal in the house?.... Is there anything in those rooms that would be illegal? Drugs, guns? Monies?"


"These are important questions, 'cause obviously we're gonna find out one way or another," Preuss continued. "We also need to have information about ... people that you know, okay?.... Do you know if Jose was involved in any activity? Even if he's trying to make some money for you guys, so you can live good."


Vanessa, who had neither the time nor the presence of mind to contact a lawyer, replied that Jose was "working very hard" at the mine, that they had just bought the house and were doing everything they could to save money. This included taking the time to make home-made pinatas for their son's birthday party, as well as painting and refurbishing their fixer-upper house themselves, rather than hiring others to help. 

Preuss seemed to think that all of this was an elaborate plot to disguise Jose's life as a lieutenant in a narcotics cartel. His questions suggested that the young father's home improvements included "secret compartments," "secret doors," and other hiding places for drugs, guns, and money. He also insisted on batting away a statement that Vanessa made that an honest investigator  really should examine more carefully.

When asked about the AR 15 Jose reportedly brandished to defend his home from the SWAT team, Vanessa stated -- more than once -- that she "didn't see a weapon" in Jose's hands, and referred to the rifle found near his body as "the weapon that was thrown right there."


"Nobody planted a gun," insisted Preuss. How did he know this? Weren't Preuss and his associates supposed to ask questions, rather than provide the answers?


In all likelihood, the gun belonged to Jose, who had every right to use lethal force to repel lawless aggression against his home. However, it should be remembered that the Regime's home invasion squads -- both domestic SWAT teams and their equivalents deployed in Iraq and elsewhere -- are known to carry "drop guns" for the purpose of framing victims as "insurgents."

Jason Moon, who served U.S. Army in Iraq, testifies that 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 for whom that comment is too opaque, Moon explains: "If you kill a civilian he becomes an insurgent because you retroactively make that person a threat." 

If the AR 15 had been planted next to Jose, that could explain why the safety was still on when it was found -- something otherwise difficult to understand, given that he was a Marine combat veteran. The "drop gun" scenario, while dubious, is quite a bit more plausible than the one suggested by Preuss, in which a young father who worked overtime at a local mine and made pinatas by hand to save money was actually a secret drug kingpin whose home was honeycombed with secret caches laden with guns and cash.


The possible existence of a "drop gun," while potentially quite significant, is not critical. The purpose of planting a gun is to provide an ex post facto rationale for an officially sanctioned home invasion that results in a homicide. The people responsible for the murder of Jose Guerena appear to be perfectly capable of retconning this atrocity without the help of hardware. 

A Timely Proposal

A decade ago I wrote a slender book entitled Global Gun Grab dealing with the subject of civilian disarmament -- primarily, but not exclusively, by way of the United Nations. I have a limited quantity available and would be happy to send a personalized copy to anybody who offers a donation of $10 or more to help me keep Pro Libertate up and running. 

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Dum spiro, pugno!