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.
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 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."
"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.
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 Terrance B. 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.
By Lewrockwell