71 bullets

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Pete

I wonder how many Marines have had to face down 71 bullets at once aimed personally at them in mere seconds?

William Norman Grigg does a potent job of telling the story of the death of Jose Guerena by SWAT

‘Why Did Police Kill My Dad?’

[Thanks, Malcolm]
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

33 Responses to 71 bullets

  1. Gart says:
    May 16, 2011 at 9:00 am

    I keep wondering, where are the ‘democractic, patriotic, true Americans’ when it comes to rising up and confronting their government’s criminal policies. Where are they marching and protesting? Have all they moved to Mexico, perhaps?

    Gart Valenc
    http://www.stopthewarondrugs.org

  2. darkcycle says:
    May 16, 2011 at 9:45 am

    Powerfully written piece by Mr. Grigg. It ‘s clear to anybody who will look, there’s no ‘good guys’ or ‘bad guys’. Just two heavily armed criminal gangs. Both profiting from the illegal trade and the black market.
    Neither give two shits about your safety or your family’s safety.

  3. allan says:
    May 16, 2011 at 9:54 am

    damn it, I didn’t really want to get my blood boiling so early.

  4. Msgt Thomas Vance says:
    May 16, 2011 at 10:15 am

    The Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration are both, in their own special ways, stepping up the pressure on medical marijuana operations in states that have medical marijuana laws.
    The Drug Enforcement Administration has increased the number of raids on medical marijuana pharmacies and cultivation operations recently despite the President’s admonition that they should only raid facilities that are not in compliance with state laws. There have been more than ninety raids since the President’s announcement and compliance with the President’s pronouncement that they only raid facilities not in compliance with state laws is questionable at best. Claiming that enforcement agents are operating on their own does not exonerate the current administration from responsibility for these actions.
    Lawyers working for the Justice Department have been sending threatening letters to Governors and Legislators in medical marijuana states, particularly to those states in the process of authorizing and regulating medical marijuana distribution. The letters threaten criminal prosecution of state employees should the states pass laws allowing for cultivation and distribution of medical marijuana. If, as the President says, the states are the laboratory of democracy, then why threaten them for experimenting?
    The Government’s actions on these two fronts seem to indicate a sort of desperation or downright panic that the narrative, the story that justifies the continued prohibition of marijuana is no longer believed by the people. Polls not only show that more than fifty percent of the population favor medical marijuana, but that many also favor outright legalization. When the Drug Czar claims that ‘marijuana is dangerous and has no medical value’, while standing in California, a state that has had medical marijuana for 16 years, people can only surmise that the Drug Czar must be delusional. When the Drug Czar claims that legalizing marijuana will cause a huge increase in traffic accidents, people rightly ask where the statistics are showing an increase in accidents in states like California?
    These illogical attacks on medical marijuana show the stress of a bureaucracy determined to save itself at all costs. At the cost of logic, at the cost of science and most tragically at the cost of the more than 800,000 lives this bureaucracy must destroy every year to ensure it’s existence. Marijuana arrests provide the big numbers used to impress Congress, without them drugs become a ’minor’ problem not deserving of the 50 billion dollar a year budget they now enjoy.
    The policy of marijuana prohibition is a complete failure. The sooner the Government accepts what the people already have, that drugs are a medical and not a criminal problem, the sooner we can move to policies of harm reduction and rehabilitation, policies that will give us a realistic handle on drugs in our society.

    • brian bennett says:
      May 16, 2011 at 7:43 pm

      this piece would be a good op-ed

    • DdC says:
      May 16, 2011 at 9:20 pm

      people can only surmise that the Drug Czar must be delusional.

      That’s a prerequisite for the job. Same as most drug law reformers. The reason for the crackdown on buyers clubs is obvious. They are set to re-schedule THC solely for the sublingual spray’s and want no competition from homegrown. Stating the obvious for whom to see? Us who already know? The drug worriers who won’t believe it? The corporate media that hasn’t found time in 40 years to deal with it, why now? Keep wishing on stars to saved us and it will be another 40 years of running in circles chasing our own tails.

      D.E.A. Confirms Grounds To Remove Marijuana From Sched#1 – 10/14/01
      On December 19th, DEA formally asked the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct “a scientific and medical evaluation of the available data and provide a scheduling recommendation” for marijuana and other cannabinoid drugs. This DEA request of HHS means that the DEA has for the first time made its own determination that sufficient grounds exist to remove marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). Schedule I is supposed to be limited to hard drugs with addictive propensities and with no legitimate medical usage.

      That’s as far as it went. The IOM is still in file #13…

      Is The DEA Legalizing THC?
      * Con Flicts of Interest Bush Barthwell & Bayer
      So, in other words, if a pharmaceutical product contains THC extracted from the marijuana plant, that would be a legal commodity. But if you or I possessed THC extracted from the marijuana plant, that would remain an illegal commodity. You can beat this dead horse all day and it will never pull a cart. It’s Fascism… Get over it.

      Al Capone and Watergate were red herrings to divert the countries attention from the Fascist acts of eliminating competition. Booze/Ethanol or Ganja//Hemp.

    • Duncan20903 says:
      May 17, 2011 at 12:30 am

      When the Drug Czar claims that legalizing marijuana will cause a huge increase in traffic accidents, people rightly ask where the statistics are showing an increase in accidents in states like California?

      In my experience they seem shocked when presented with the reality that California and 3 other States with medicinal cannabis patient protection laws, including one State where petty possession of less than an ounce carries no penalty have led the US to a statistically significant reduction in the incidence of “drugged” driving as reported by the NSDUH in December 2010.

      http://oas.samhsa.gov/2k10/205/DruggedDriving.htm

  5. denmark says:
    May 16, 2011 at 10:43 am

    Exactly allan. May those who fired the bullets with vigor suffer horribly in their self-created hell for a yuga or more. Is this a threat? No, just what I’d like to see happen to some of the lowest of low life’s on this planet.

  6. allan says:
    May 16, 2011 at 11:30 am

    I’d love to see Ron Paul or Gary Johnson use these sordid SWAT raid fatalities in example next time they’re asked about their opposition to the drug war. They need to wave this sort of shit in their opponents’ (and the voters’) faces… and there is no shortage – as we all know too well – of names and incidents to display righteous indignation about.

    I certainly hope our nation finds its way onto the streets this summer in protest of so much that is wrong. That enough don’t see or won’t acknowledge this violence-at-the-hands-of-gummint frontal assault on basic civility is so f’ing sad… makes me want to puke. So comfortable have we become, so distracted w/ the minutiae of celebrity and w/ making sure we keep up w/ the latest techno gadgetry… we’re spoiled and what’s to come will be really painful for our national ego. Unless… some spark ignites a fire under our large, lard laden (literal and figurative) asses.

  7. Trigger says:
    May 16, 2011 at 11:33 am

    he probably should’a had a V8

  8. Peter says:
    May 16, 2011 at 12:45 pm

    The recording of the 911 call with Jose’s wife is one of the most chilling things i’ve heard in a long time. It just brings home how out of line with the rule of law and civilized behavior these swat team raids have become. This needs a much wider audience so that US voter can see what is being done in their name. What irony that the swat team have the word “rescue” on their vehicle.

  9. Servetus says:
    May 16, 2011 at 1:08 pm

    Militarizing law enforcement is the worst mistake any state or federal government can make. Its malevolent consequences should be well anticipated after what happened in Germany in the 1930s. Likewise, police militarization in the U.S. has been a disaster on all fronts. SWAT has unleashed the worst aspects of law enforcement.

    Among those worst aspects, the name on the Tucson search warrant may as well have been ‘bin Laden’ as far as any SWAT soldier was concerned. That the name on the warrant was Hispanic, that the raid took place in Arizona, should be red flags to anyone investigating the legitimacy of the raid.

    Arizona appears to be doing everything it can to incite a race war. In this case, it’s carelessly riding on the shoulders of the drug war—a war that’s always been racially driven—to achieve it.

  10. Duncan20903 says:
    May 16, 2011 at 1:35 pm

    .
    .
    Well of course the difference is that when a Marine is under fire his enemy likely is competent enough to hit the broadside of a barn. It isn’t like the TV crime dramas where the criminals with machine guns discharge several hundred rounds and then the protagonist pops them between the eyes with a single shot from 500 yards away. Somebody mentioned that 71 shots meant that the poor man probably got taken out by 2 rounds? Sounds like that’s about the right ratio from my observations.

  11. vickyvampire says:
    May 16, 2011 at 3:48 pm

    This story should call for a massive investigation by Pres. Obama administration and citizens groups for human rights on both sides of political side, they did not allow paramedics to treat her husband for security measures that alone should have these folks lose their jobs or be imprisoned themselves,this is very shocking, I know I should jaded by now I’m serious folks I’m actually crying tears right now this saddens me tremendously it’s so depressing,when will America wake up to this horrible injustice it’s turning officers into coldblooded killers over Drugs that give people pleasure,calmness,pain control,and on occasion spiritual renewal. Where is the outcry.

    Yes Servetus you are so right the militarization of our police force is the worst that could have happened to USA,I know they justify it saying that how can we possible fight the cartels they can outgun and out man us it’s called real old fashioned police work, like they used to do not NO KNOCK RAIDS and setting up people to get them at any cost by police breaking laws themselves.

    They just legalized medical Marijuana in Arizona was reading an article some idiot from Montana spouting how its nice Colorado is making good tax money on medical pot. but Washington state and Arizona had better be careful and eventually tighten up there state like Montana did even though yes THEY admitted Montana is a mess cause of three waring sides LAW ENFORCEMENT that does not want pot at all, health industry that wants limited pot and those pesky people that want anything goes pot everywhere. Oh yeah let’s just follow Montana lead that is now tangles up in Law suits and horrendous cruelty and disregard towards everyone in their state a judge a least temporarily banned the state to not enforce a ban advertising of Cannabis products.while a lawsuit is going on to overturn their Medical Marijuana Law for a much more extreme one.
    Yup Peter they had word Rescue on there vehicle how crazy is that.

    http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n309/a08.html?1055's

  12. Chris says:
    May 16, 2011 at 9:07 pm

    What confuses me is not the police’s ability to enter anyone’s house and shoot and kill them with no consequences. I get why that’s happening. I don’t get the public’s apathy towards it. Do they seriously think that the war on drugs cannot affect them if they do not use illegal drugs? Rhetorical question. I’ve seen people argue against paying for hospital bills to prevent overdoses, as if they pay nothing else as a consequence of drug use/prohibition.

  13. Steve says:
    May 16, 2011 at 10:26 pm

    > I keep wondering, where are the ‘democractic, patriotic,
    > true Americans’ when it comes to rising up and confronting
    > their government’s criminal policies.

    You just don’t see it, do you? The patriotic, true Americans are the ones bearing the brunt of the crusade against drugs.

    Here’s a minute or two of National Geographic’s “Drugs Inc. – Marijuana” in case you don’t believe me.

    The clip starts at 0 minutes 44 seconds, but the meat starts at about 1:13 and runs to about 1:31. I’m sure you’ll stand corrected.

  14. ezrydn says:
    May 17, 2011 at 2:08 pm

    I’ve had several machineguns bark in my direction. Does that count? And, Gart, yes. Some of us said “fuck it” and moved to Mexico. What you read and what the talking heads tell you is mostly scare-tactic BS. Ten years here now and I just keep on loving it. I had no say over where I was born but I DO have say over where I live and under what conditions. It’s that simple.

  15. ezrydn says:
    May 17, 2011 at 6:00 pm

    They ARE insane here. And that’s not in the comical sense, either. I was recently told that the “Law of Physics” isn’t the same in Mexico as it is in the US.

    I honestly almost choked when I heard that.

    Of course, one has to understand the core basis of Mexican public education first. You see, there is nothing existing outside the boundarys of Mexico. Don’t believe me? Just ask my wife. LMAO

  16. allan says:
    May 17, 2011 at 6:12 pm

    when a lone nut case fires on a crowd, killing a few and wounding others including an Arizona politician, we are outraged. But police shooting a man who had not fired on them (tho’ if you read thru the different stories some early on said that Guerena shot first, quoting police), at home, a working father, a veteran and so far apparently innocent, I hear hardly a peep.

    Why? Why is it that police get a free ride? And you know if the case is reviewed by a grand jury or an internal investigation, all will be swell with no wrong doing by police.

    We are being attacked, by our government, in our homes on fraudulent laws. And now with the Supreme Court’s recent turd letting the police don’t need a warrant (even tho’ the 4th Amendment clearly states that no searches or seizures shall be conducted w/o a warrant naming that which the search is being conducted to find).

    So, here’s a relevant question… when is enough, enough?

  17. Duncan20903 says:
    May 17, 2011 at 11:05 pm

    .
    .
    I’ve come across a couple of news items worthy of a 1920s Hearst Newspapers. I’m serious, a man that beheaded a woman while stoned and then walked down the street head in his hands, and a guy that smoked pot and then tried to murder his brother while sleepwalking. This was in the friggin’ US I don’t fishmouth when I see flapdoodle like this out of some 3rd world country.

    http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3584084/Chilling-boast-of-maniac-Deyan-Deyanov-who-beheaded-gran.html

    I suppose (hope) The Sun is a rag? OK, it didn’t take much to verify that. They did have a picture of a woman with the largest breasts imaginable on the front page. Hey, where’s your wheelbarrow sweetie?

    http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/the_intelligencer_news/brother-jailed-for-sleepwalking-stabbing-attack/article_a90ee8db-e9c5-5d85-b88e-bf8638e9e91b.html

    Just imagine if the youth in Asia get their hands on some reefer. No more need for death panels for Obamacare. It’s a darn good thing that Barry quit smoking the weed because otherwise he’d throw all of our grandmothers under the bus himself to screw us with universal health insurance. I had no clue that Barry or that the youth in Asia were so evil. Let’s just pray they don’t form an unholy alliance of geezer killers.

    Well we can’t say that Harry J. didn’t warn us.

    “You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.”

  18. Servetus says:
    May 17, 2011 at 11:18 pm

    Somewhere, at some point, I recall a legal argument written into some state law that said a person cannot be held legally accountable for what they do within the first few moments of waking up and finding themselves beset upon by strangers. Seems the law recognized an autonomic response to a potential threat as being totally involuntary, by definition, and therefore guilt free.

    Whether that applies here in some legalistic sense is a problem for the lawyers; the fact remains that a home invasion in the middle of the night pushes a lot of buttons in the human brain that aren’t necessarily rational.

    The police invasion tragedy is further complicated by an utter lack of background investigation on the suspect. Any veteran of foreign wars is likely to respond to a sudden intrusion of their sleep in ways that don’t necessarily resemble those of a more typical victim of a drug war invasion. Cops should know this. Try approaching an officer silently and from the rear, as I inadvertently did, and you’re likely to freak him into doing a Wyatt Earp flinch.

    On second thought, don’t ever do that….

    So, what we’re seeing here, is a breakdown in communications. We’re also seeing a law enforcement system that scrapes the bottom of the barrel, despite an inordinate amount of drug enforcement funding, here being meted out in the tiniest of portions to a young American veteran, in one of the more memorable encounters of a person’s life with their allegedly benevolent and grateful government. Couldn’t do the research, eh?

    Nothing helps ends a drug war like the inane and tragic performances of the prohibitionists.

  19. Peter says:
    May 18, 2011 at 5:36 am

    So far as I can make out none of the mainstream media have covered this story….i wonder why?

Comments are closed.