Another Day, Another Drug Raid Death
Radley Balko | May 27, 2008, 9:18am
Over the weekend, police in Connecticut broke through windows and deployed flash grenades while conducting a drug rain on a home in Connecticut. Gonazalo Guizan, 33, who was visiting and didn't live at the house, charged at the raiding officers, unarmed. The police shot him dead.
Early reports don't say much about Guizan, though in this comment thread, friends and family say he wasn't a drug dealer, wasn't violent, and wasn't a criminal. I suppose it's possible that an unarmed man would knowingly charge a team of raiding police officers. But I think the far more likely explanation is that he thought the place was being robbed.
We don't yet have details as to why the police felt it necessary to shoot Guizan, other than that he charged at them. I suspect the shooting itself will be ruled justified, as it probably should be. The question is why the paramilitary tactics were necessary in the first place, and whether yet another person has now paid with his life for the very reasonable mistake of confusing invading police officers with invading criminals.
The owner of the house was charged with possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia. Which means there weren't enough drugs in the place to charge him with distribution. He was released on $10,000 bond.
Brian Courts | May 27, 2008, 5:32pm | #
Far too often the response on H&R is "shoot the pigs: it's their fault" (to paraphrase a bit).
A bit? Please, that is a gross, unjustified and unfair distortion of the position of most people here who take issue with the cops themselves (as well as the "system"). It is disingenuous, if not downright dishonest, to twist a very few comments into "far too often" for the purpose of making your point seem more salient and reasonable that it really is.
for the most part the cops are trying to do their job and believe in what they're doing.
That may be true but that is largely irrelevant to the questions raised about the behavior of the police (if not part of the problem, in the case of their "belief" in what they're doing).
The solution isn't to shoot them
Stuff a little more straw in there...
Some of the H&R commenters don't seem to have the reading skills
Moving up from straw men to vague ad hominem
Come on, either respond to a specific comment or just make your point. No need to invoke mysterious "some commenters" to bash and to implicitly attribute your straw man distortions to far more commenters than have actually uttered anything like them.
The stuff that has been documented by Balko on this site, as well as the stuff that has come out in subsequent investigations, includes routine lying on affidavits by police, planting evidence, relying on uncorroborated sketchy informants as the sole basis for conducting SWAT raids, lying to protect their fellow officers, shooting innocent and/or unarmed people, general harassment, the list goes on and on. Certainly not least of all, there is the deafening silence of all the so-called "good cops" while all this is going on. You may say it's part of the culture and that is part of the system that needs changing (and if so, I'd agree) but that does not absolve the individual cops involved, nor the others who stood by silently while people's lives were ruined, from responsibility for their actions, nor from being criticized (or “vilified” if you wish) for them.
So yes, the system absolutely needs to be changed, but admitting that does not require us to excuse the individual actions of the WoD's foot soldiers, no matter how much they're just "trying to do their job."
Untermensch | May 28, 2008, 7:53am | #
Sorry in advance for the long response to a fairly long dressing down I received
A bit? Please, that is a gross, unjustified and unfair distortion of the position of most people here who take issue with the cops themselves (as well as the "system"). It is disingenuous, if not downright dishonest, to twist a very few comments into "far too often" for the purpose of making your point seem more salient and reasonable that it really is.
How often is not too often? Obviously we have a different assessment of this level. I'd hardly call what I wrote a "gross… distortion" when I look at the comments that are listed below: it's not too hard to find examples of what I'm talking about in H&R comments (see below).
for the most part the cops are trying to do their job and believe in what they're doing.
That may be true but that is largely irrelevant to the questions raised about the behavior of the police (if not part of the problem, in the case of their "belief" in what they're doing).
Like it or not, I think it does matter. Most of the politically engaged public probably know a cop or two (I certainly do), and the ones I know aren't crooked as far as I know. When commenters start attributing motives to cops as a class, the comparison data for most folks are the cops they do know. So it becomes highly relevant what most cops' motives are because most of us don't know (or don't think we know) the thugs that are focused on here. These reports have an inherent selectional bias: Radley isn't going to report on the cop that helped a kid find his way home, that stopped a rapist, or that rescued a kitten from a tree. (You can argue that these are trite examples, but for a significant portion of the population, that's what cops do, not beat up old ladies and plant drugs.)
Some of the H&R commenters don't seem to have the reading skills
Moving up from straw men to vague ad hominem
Sometimes ad hominem
is appropriate. When someone reads Balko saying "I'm very sorry Officer John Doe was shot. He should not have been in the situation in the first place and it's the fault of a broken system that he was" and responds with comments like the ones that follow, I do have to question reading skills. Those folks certainly aren't responding to Balko's argument.
Come on, either respond to a specific comment or just make your point. No need to invoke mysterious "some commenters" to bash and to implicitly attribute your straw man distortions to far more commenters than have actually uttered anything like them.
Two points:
1. It's you who is assigning a number of commenters. I never said how many said that. I realize my lead sentence could sound like it was all or many, but at the end of the paragraph I referred to those who do say those things as "a few intemperate yappers", which should be a clue that I didn't mean all...
2. This happens often enough that I take it for granted that there are those who
do say things like that. However, your point about attributing to specific folks is well taken, so I did a quick search of H&R on "shoot pigs" and "shoot cops" and it wasn't hard to find plenty of comments that could be accurate paraphrases of what I said people said and that often go beyond what I wrote. Here's just a smattering of real live quotes from H&R, some quite recent:
“SHOOT A COP, SAVE YOUR FREEDOM! [my paraphrase ain't too far off, is it…]
This is why we need more snipers on hills to start picking off police, randomly, they need to learn to WORK WITHIN the LAW not be the LAW
What about their families? Wahhh snipe them too" [So their families are fair game? That's a lovely comment that's sure to win friends and convince people that libertarian arguments should be taken seriously]
Or the pithy and witty comment by "Copkiller" (I'm sure that name was just a nice little witty repartee):
Pigs..
Or perhaps this one is an example of the comments that no one is making?
I'm at the point after reading this stuff, that we should actively shoot police like rabid animals. I'd rather have no police at all if they keep at this kind of idiocy.
As for the politicians that support this kind of thing: targeted assassinations.
There are plenty more like this. So, now that I have some specifics, how much of this is straw?
The stuff that has been documented by Balko on this site, as well as the stuff that has come out in subsequent investigations, includes routine lying on affidavits by police, planting evidence, relying on uncorroborated sketchy informants as the sole basis for conducting SWAT raids, lying to protect their fellow officers, shooting innocent and/or unarmed people, general harassment, the list goes on and on. Certainly not least of all, there is the deafening silence of all the so-called "good cops" while all this is going on. You may say it's part of the culture and that is part of the system that needs changing (and if so, I'd agree) but that does not absolve the individual cops involved, nor the others who stood by silently while people's lives were ruined, from responsibility for their actions, nor from being criticized (or “vilified” if you wish) for them.
I acknowledged that Balko will take on individuals when it's justified. Throw crooked cops in jail. You have a good point about the silence of good cops. But to go from talking about them having culpability to the idiotic comments I was referring to is going too far. I don't see anything temperate in those kinds of comments and, unfortunately, all it takes is
one comment like one of those in a whole series of otherwise sane comments and readers who might listen to the real arguments will be put off. So I stand by "far too often". These comments, rightly or wrongly, are what too many people will remember and think that libertarians support.
So yes, the system absolutely needs to be changed, but admitting that does not require us to excuse the individual actions of the WoD's foot soldiers, no matter how much they're just "trying to do their job."
Nothing I said was intended to suggest otherwise. However, once they are in a situation that they should never have been in in the first place, assigning blame for what happens gets harder. When a cop shoots someone he thinks has a gun in a no-knock raid, it's a damn shame. But, to echo Balko, he never should have had to make that choice. Is he to blame or a crooked system that put him there in the first place. Sort of like asking if a soldier in Iraq who shoots an unarmed civilian he thought was planting an IED is to blame.
My comments were not about the cops (at least not primarily), but rather about some commenters on H&R and how their “rhetoric” (I use the term loosely) is a real detractor from the work of folks like Balko who are working to make a difference. Imagine that a journalist is bothered by the Cory Maye case and comes to Reason to read more and starts finding those comments and takes them as representative of the sort of people Balko “represents”: in that moment we have lost a potential ally and an opportunity to make an impact.
