The Pima County sheriff's office is now claiming that the Iraq vet they pumped sixty bullets into was part of a "home invasion ring", although they still won't let anybody peek at the warrant or what, if anything, they took from the dead guy's house. As has been pointed out, apparently the Pima Co. Sheriff's department operates under looser rules of engagement than the slain Marine ever did in Iraq.
Assuming, for one moment, that this isn't a big fat stinking lie of a coverup, sheriff Dupnik, I want you to see if you can wrap your tiny mind around a simple piece of fact:
If your people weren't dressing up like masked thugs and kicking doors down and shooting people, then robbers wouldn't be able to impersonate your people by dressing up like masked thugs and kicking doors down and shooting people, in turn necessitating your people dressing up like masked thugs and kicking their doors down and shooting them.
Roll that around in your head for a bit and get back to me when you have a handle on it.
The only people skulking in my bushes and forcing my locks in the middle of the night should be soon-to-be-shot bad guys, not cops with Clouseau-like map-reading skills; I shouldn't need a scorecard to tell the masked players apart.
You could have a line up.... Home invasion thugs dressed like police on one side, and police dressed like home invasion thugs on the other. See if Sheriff sparkles can pick out his own men.
ReplyDeleteThe reality, both groups will likely kill you once they kick in your door, and lie about it after, no matter what you do. So what is the most reasonable response to a pack of screaming thugs dressed like terrorists kicking in your door in the middle of the night?
So what is the most reasonable response to a pack of screaming thugs dressed like terrorists kicking in your door in the middle of the night?
ReplyDelete7.62x51mm. Obviously 5.56x45mm isn't enough if you have to shoot a man not wearing armor 60 times.
I think the police should take on corporate sponsors. That way I can tell what team they are on by the flashy patches on their armor and we can take care of the excessive overtime. :)
ReplyDeleteIt's after 5pm, you're face is blacked out, your armed, you're kicking in my door; you're dead. If you have a badge and you enter that way...you're still dead. We'll sort all that badge shit out at the morgue.
ReplyDeleteJoseph,
ReplyDelete"Obviously 5.56x45mm isn't enough if you have to shoot a man not wearing armor 60 times."
They'd have shot him 60 times whether they were using 5.56, 7.62, 57mm, or flamethrowers.
They'd have shot him 60 times whether they were using 5.56, 7.62, 57mm, or flamethrowers.
ReplyDeleteYah. Had an apparent suicide by cop not long ago here (mentally disturbed vet with a realistic looking pellet gun) the two cops involved put out over 30 bullets. And think of everytime you hear the cops have shot a "dangerous" dog on its owner's property....its aways a massive number of shots taken to kill someone's pet.
Bunch of guys in dark clothing and masks kick in my door (and likely shoot my dog, cause afterall he's big and therefor dangerous) they will get met with a shotgun loaded with slugs.
Did anyone else notice that their hit ratio was awfully high? 71 shots and 60 hits is way better than the average cop shooting.
ReplyDeleteBut, Tam, he had a picture of a patron saint of drug running. Clearly, he was doing something wrong.
ReplyDeleteLike taking the newspaper.
Though... even if you didn' have this kind of loose SWAT policy.. there'd still be thugs dressing up as police.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, we had actual police SWAT members doing exactly that.. robbing and extorting mostly businessmen at gunpoint. Gang leader was a criminal detective.. kind of a double meaning there.
At least they're now all dead or in prison.
I really don't get one thing. Their family members tried to defend them, kept saying they were not.. evil, or police is scapegoating them. Even though they were caught literally red-handed, shot at other police while trying to escape.
Why can't people just accept responsibility for their fuckups and go cry somewhere? Or shoot themselves in the head, like military men who really fuck up are apt to do?
Far more dignified than kicking and screaming about how others are to blame all the way to prison.
I don't get some people.
LibertyNews,
ReplyDelete"Did anyone else notice that their hit ratio was awfully high? 71 shots and 60 hits is way better than the average cop shooting."
There are a bunch of reasons for that, including...
1) Firearms training has advanced in leaps and bounds since the early '80s when a lot of those "1-in-10" and "20%" statistics were compiled. NYPD, which used to be notorious for shooting up the scenery, was batting over .600 in a recent report I read.
2) Not all SWAT teams are filled with careerists just trying to fill a blank on the resume; many are actually staffed with well-trained shooters, especially if it's a full-time team with any kind of budget.
3) How hard is it to hit someone across the room? Even a German hunter could hit a man-sized target at 5yds 60 out of 71 times, with a handgun, especially when the target stopped moving long ago. :-(
ReplyDelete60 times?
ReplyDeleteIsn't that like.. unprofessional? Or just plain psychotic? At least that's what newspapers call it here when someone gets stabbed sixty times..
They used rifles, right? Two rounds to the head not enough for SWAT?
60 rounds.. that's like when you have to kill an Elephant and can't be arsed to aim for the head..
It has to be a closed casket funeral?
I'm reminded of what Col. Cooper said: I have been criticized by referring to our federal masked men as "ninja,"
ReplyDeletewhen in the view of the critic the traditional role of the ninja in Japan was to fight against oppression and tyranny. Let us note that almost no one ever resorts to force and violence unless he is convinced that his cause is
right, but without going into that let us reflect upon the fact that a man who covers his face shows reason to be ashamed of what he is doing. A man who takes it upon himself to shed blood while concealing his identity is a revolting perversion of the warrior ethic.
It has long been my conviction that a masked man with a gun is a target. I see no reason to change that view.
Also.. sixty rounds. Assuming firing rate of 10 per second.. that's like six seconds of fire from one person.
ReplyDelete71..sounds like three idiots emptying most of their rifles into one man.
Is that like.. good tactics? What if you run empty and someone else appears?
It does sound like several idiots emptying their rifles into one man. Excessive, maybe? Or maybe a few idiots emptying their rifles into one man were accomplicies in a "home invasion ring" that were trying to tie up some loose ends.
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing is I shoot a deer once and it is usually dead in seconds, from time to time it takes 3 minutes.
ReplyDelete"... any man who covers his face and packs a gun is a legitimate target for any decent citizen"
ReplyDeleteCol. Jeff Cooper
June 1993
The whole thing stinks profusely.
ReplyDeleteJim
This is not The High Road, so I'll say what I think. Those pigs who did that need to be gutshot, and afterwards ignored, and left to lie there, and beg for water, and not get any.
ReplyDeleteT. Stahl, I've always been a fan of the training and required skill set found in many European countries (Spain and Italy excepted, where lunatic bloodbaths are common).
ReplyDeleteI admire much about the German Jagt system, although the much greater amount of both hunters and open land in the U.S. would make some of it less than practical over here, and I wouldn't want to surrender the ease of access we have.
In fairness, America does manage reasonably well for moving 20 million men and women through several months of hunting with less than a hundred fatalities, and most of them from falls or heart attacks.
But the degree of level-headed professionalism I've seen in German and Austrian hunters is very impressive, and you do a great job of managing the resources.
It is amusing though to see a first time German hunter, used to years of waiting for a single auerhahn, to find himself in an Irish bog, surrounded by dozens of capalcaillsie, the same animal on steroids. The look could best be described as "Oh God, I've died and gone to heaven".
Especially when the Irish farmer says "Ahh, go on Fritz, take an extra one or two. The bastards are eating up all my corn".
I'll probably piss people off by saying this, but: If they were going to shoot once, then 71 times is not excessive. Remember, shoot until the threat stops.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I am not saying they should have shot at all, or that he was actually a threat. Just that the number of shots fired above "1" is not really a valid point. How many times do most of us rail against those arguments from family members or the press when the shooting looks legitimate? Let's be consistent. They fired until he stopped doing whatever it was that made them decide to shoot in the first place.
Of course, it looks like they shouldn't have been there at all, and the Sheriff's version of the story stinks to high heaven, but that's a different argument.
On that note, the Sheriff's Office spokesman's claim that "This case was, we came in very high profile, lights and sirens. We go to the door, we pound on the door. We wait approximately 15 seconds" simply does not fit with the wife's story at all. She never mentioned lights or sirens, or anyone "pounding" on the door. Just seeing someone with a gun outside her window. She had enough time from that to wake her husband up, and for him to get his rifle and get her and their son into the closet.
It just doesn't fit, and the Sheriff's constantly changing story looks like they're trying to cover their own backsides because they know they screwed up.
The wife called 911. I can't see anyone on the wrong side of the law doing that.
ReplyDeleteI imagine that the cops are in full-on "testilying" mode.
"The wife called 911."
ReplyDeleteAnd that's another thing: as noted in at least one of the articles on this, the stories the Sheriff's Office is putting out don't mesh with what's on the 911 tapes.
I've seen dead skunks that don't stink this much.
Heh.
ReplyDeleteAnd here I had some Anonymous little authoritarians in another blog's comments call me a lunatic, last week, for predicting that anyone killed in an Indiana Court sanctioned home invasion would be painted as a criminal to shut up criticism.
When did they move Pima County to the Hoosier state?
ReplyDelete1. I hope none of his officers were using those deadly assault magazines!
ReplyDelete2. "The wife called 911. I can't see anyone on the wrong side of the law doing that. "
I assume you were being sarcastic.
If not have someone take you to an optometrist, it happens OFTEN.
When did they move Pima County to the Hoosier state?
ReplyDeleteMusta been some time ago. One thing I do know, Pima County ain't part of Arizona. And the residents of Pima County would agree.
The U.S. Military has a saying for people like Dupnik: Active/Stupid. But, hey as long as he can keep his Nose Browner than a Hershey Bar, the Powers That Be in Pima County will keep him around, and until the citizens of Pima County get rid of THOSE Powers that Be, they get Cops like Dupnik. Oh, one can Hope for Change via the Courts, but since they move at the Speed of Fossilization.....Elections have Consequences, now Pima County Citizens have to Live (and Die) with theirs.
ReplyDeleteWe need to nominate these jack booted thugs to the “Oath Breaker’s” blog.
ReplyDeleteA little public shaming goes a long way.
http://oathbreakers.blogspot.com/
Tam:
ReplyDeleteThanks for this paragraph:
"If your people weren't dressing up like masked thugs and kicking doors down and shooting people, then robbers wouldn't be able to impersonate your people by dressing up like masked thugs and kicking doors down and shooting people, in turn necessitating your people dressing up like masked thugs and kicking their doors down and shooting them."
Here in the People's Republic of Seattlestan, the police were denying that there even were home invasion robberies for almost two years before it became such a joke that they had to admit it was actually happening. And even then, they only admitted it after the news media broke the story.
Seems they were afraid that they might get shot because not-police-type-people dressed all in black, and yelling "POLICE", were breaking down citizen's doors, robbing, beating, and raping them, then leaving the survivors dead or tied up on the floor.
Fancy that. Unrecognizable black-clad thugs not wanting the proletariat to protect themselves from unrecognizable black-clad thugs.
Gee ... and the folks in Tucson like to think they aren't really Fascists.
ReplyDeleteConcerning Indiana courts ... does anyone know if this insanity going to the SCOTUS?
Or will the Pima Sheriff's office need to claim they heard a toilet flush before they gun a peasant down in his hovel?
OpenID LibertyNews said...
ReplyDeleteDid anyone else notice that their hit ratio was awfully high? 71 shots and 60 hits is way better than the average cop shooting.
Someone got lucky early.
Once he wasn't moving, it was easier. I'm surprised they didn't put a few rounds in each other.
Tam:
ReplyDeleteNo, it didn't take place in Indiana.
Yes, it does help prove my notion that some jurisdictions have been known to blame the victim after barging into someone's home unlawfully and shooting him.
( If some snark flew over my head unrecognized, I apologize )
Tam,
ReplyDeleteI've beaten this dead horse before with regard to these types of dynamic entries. Hey, did anyone know that the Pima Co. Sheriff's SWAT Team was made up of officers from various community departments within the county? That sounds like a problem from the git-go because I know we have trouble in TRAINING scenarios using officers from various departments who might be thrown together in a developing situation.
You might know that this would happen in Dupnik's department, with the attitude he has regarding civilians and the types of guns that, in his mind, only the popo should be allowed to wield.
I call the good sheriff, "Dufus Dupnik." If you recall, there was quite the national debate about Dufus spouting off about cause and effect, right wing kooks, prejudice and bigotry, etc., after the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in Tucson. Here's a memorable quote from Sheriff Dufus regarding that whole situation. "Pretty soon, we're not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people who are willing to subject themselves to serve in public office." I submit that actually, pretty soon, we won't be able to find reasonable, decent people who trust the sheriff's department if the lack of transparency demonstrated by the good Sheriff Dufus continues. To those of us in Arizona outside the confines of the La Raza infested jurisdiction Dufus oversees, he is an embarrassment to our state. Just sayin'
ReplyDeleteJust practicing for the next Waco...
ReplyDeleteWhen you're shooting from 10 feet... sigh... Once again rights are trampled and the po-po are cooking the story... We lost a good man, a veteran who had served honorably, and for what???
ReplyDeleteUmm, Tam, that "zocy" person who left the previous comment appears to be an odious loathesome evil criminal revolting piratical spammer, and thus an enemy of all of the human race.
ReplyDeleteHow come he didn't get shot sixty times, and an honest man did?
What bothers me is that this alleged member of a home invasion crew was pulling 12 hour shifts at a mine.
ReplyDeleteNot quite typical behavior for a career criminal.
Hell, I was half a paragraph down before realizing that zocy wasn't describing a SWAT officer...
ReplyDeleteI recall seeing a video (on this blog, I believe) about a somewhat... er... gravitationally-challenged man who demonstrated his plan for trouble: he kept an armored vest, M-1A, and pistol very handy in the house.
ReplyDeletePerhaps he was on to something.
With regard to home invasions by the police, I suggest that this will continue until a sufficient stink is raised, and that won't happen because the media is comprised of a lot of statists who think that the police SHOULD be allowed to do this sort of thing. There's only a stink about police tactics / thuggery when they are used against politically popular targets, like pot smokers and illegal aliens.
I've come to the conclusion that the divide in our isn't so much left vs. right, but rather elite vs. common: people who think that they know better because they ARE better and therefore have the right to tell everybody else what to do, enforcing their decrees with lethal force if necessary. The police have (at least to some degree) become NOT public servants but rather the elite class's hired muscle and praetorian guard.
Part of the problem is that most of us have a lot of respect for our police; we know that they have a tough, dangerous job and are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt not only because of that but also out of gratitude. At what point do respect and gratitude start to turn to suspicion and fear, and then contempt and hatred?
I'm curious....at what point does applying quantities of 7.62X51 to anyone in ninja suits in one's front yard or front door constitute "reasonable self defense measures" ?
ReplyDeleteSeems to me, given the behavior of both armed criminal thugs and the po-po, it should be "anytime it happens."
it's worth noting too that the SCOTUS just expanded the police authority to knock down your door if they think they hear something that might be illegal -- the case Kentucky v. King got an excellent write up here:
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/64yw999
The answer to illegal sentry team activity are sentry guns.
ReplyDeleteThese are fictional sentry gun. Sentry gun technology is entirely within our capabilites. May not be legal in most places, but I've seen sentry shotguns..
Also, sentry guns are fatal to bad engineers and anyone unlucky enough to wander by when it's switched on.
That is, automated semi automatic gun that shoot that everything without an IFF that looks like it doesn't belong there.
After first few SWAT ninjas end up riddled with ball AP in 7.62x54R ammo, they'll take the hint.
Also.. other idea for SWAT entry prevention.
If you see masked gunmen in your garden, activate the sprinkler system you have converted to a flamethrowing system.
Before they could shoot out the sprinklers, the whole garden would be on fire. Ninjas would be on fire too.
Also, make sure to have activate and have deployed a water spray system that'd keep spraying the exteriror walls of your house, so it won't burn donw.
Shit .. I meant to write illegal SWAT team activity.
ReplyDeleteAnd more like illegal I mean immoral. Killing innocent people because you fuck up and target the wrong house is just.... very, very wrong.
And here are some fictional sentry guns:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipYkuCZ2IYI
This is a real world paintball sentry guns.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QcfZGDvHU8
Some people have built real world sentry guns, but for obvious reasons, they don't advertise that.
Y.T. I don't think there are any jurisdictions left that allow mantraps.
ReplyDeleteBesides, your strategy is severely flawed. The best way to win a firefight is to not participate in one that someone else starts. Or even one you start, for that matter.
If you feel that you are in danger of having JBTs bust your door and shoot you, you should be thinking "safe house", not :sentry gun".
"It has long been my conviction that a masked man with a gun is a target. I see no reason to change that view."
ReplyDeleteDang-I sure miss Jeff Cooper's writing.
Fred
"Also, make sure to have activate and have deployed a water spray system that'd keep spraying the exteriror walls of your house, so it won't burn down."
ReplyDeleteNo, no, no. You want it to burn down. Remember, ninjas can't catch you if you're on fire.
@Kristopher
ReplyDeleteWas this marine they murdered expecting JBT's?
I doubt that. Were he, he'd more likely left the gun in it's place, and allowed himself to be arrested.
Since you can't tell when JBT's will misread a map next time and bust down your door.. you can either go completely illegal and hide, or build enough traps around your house to completely kill anyone invading it.
If death by SWAT is common in your area.. maybe a Good idea would be having a ten foot tall concrete privacy fence topped with electricity, and large warning signs proclaiming your fondness for machinegunning home invaders. Just to be on the safe side.
You know.. the give JBT's pause and check whether they really, really want to storm into such a domicile unannounced.
Ed,
ReplyDeleteGerman hunters are infamous for being bad shots. Saying that a German hunter could've hit something is like telling someone that my grandma is a better driver than he is.
@T.Stahl
ReplyDeleteWhy? I mean... getting to be a hunter is an incredible chore in Czech Republic. Like a year of extra college classes.
I don't think someone who manages that will be a bad shot. I don't even have to try hard to shoot 4 MOA with a supported gun.. learned that in a couple of days. I know it's not much, my aim is 1 MOA eventually.. but for a beginner..
Lanius said..
ReplyDeleteYou know.. the give JBT's pause and check whether they really, really want to storm into such a domicile unannounced
That will just lead them to use their armored vehicles more often.
@TomcatTCH
ReplyDeleteYou know, building an accurate recoilles gun with HEAT ammo isn't as hard as you might think.
Antitank mines and the shaped charge bombs used in Iraq are fairly easy to built, and will riddle your basic M113 tin can pretty easily.
Anyway, a country where SWAT teams bust down doors of innocents and riddle them with so many bullets ..
Al Capone could've probably killed a dozen people with 71 bullets.
So.. I think US is just doing it wrong. I mean, would it be like a bad thing if SWAT teams were abolished nationwide, no knock warrants would have to be served by ordinary cops and cops were restricted to body armor and semiautomatic rifles?
Or maybe abolish no-knock warrants. They don't sound like something the people who founded the US would like.
Spray and pray isn't the best tactic anyway..
Lanius,
ReplyDeleteGerman hunters shoot less and worse than German cops.
Of course there are exceptions. There are a few hunters and a few police officers who are sports shooters, too.
Those expensive and time consuming classes you mention are about being able to tell which tree a leave belongs to and which animal dropped which piece-o-$h!t, not about shooting. Especially not handgun shooting.
Ok, I should've used a different comparison. How about: Even a staff officer from a logistics battalion could hit a man-sized target at 5yds 60 out of 71 times,...
There ought to be a rule you can't vote unless you can shoot 8 MOA from prone at standing targets or something.
ReplyDeleteYou know.. how the French say a rifle makes all man great.. and mandate that only great men can vote.
What happened to the age old tactic of cordoning off the area, with people covering all possible exits and proclaiming by way of loudspeaker "Come out with your hands up"?
ReplyDeleteGee I guess that everyone is going to have to start building "kill boxes"....google it. A bit of rebar and that will slow them down a bit while your mull over your options.
ReplyDeleteLanius: Right now, you are in about as much danger from face-eating monkeys. These incidents are still rare, and if we can generate enough outrage, and not let these thugs get away with it, we might be able to keep them rare.
ReplyDeleteIf it ever gets to the point where it becomes a real everyday threat, one needs to think more like a guerrilla, and less like Rambo.
T. Stahl: I stand (or sit) corrected. I was going on the assumption that all my Bavarian, Austrian, and Sudeten Great-Uncles were typical.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't considered that they had all served in the American army after they got off the boat.
Also, I have relatives in Ireland who briefed me on what they call the H&H (Hollands)course, a very tough afternoon of required sporting clays type shooting to qualify for a "Shooting License".
Plus, a Norwegian friend was commenting about moose hunting in Sweden, and the running moose target he had to hit 4 out of 5 times in a circle of something like 15 cm. at 80 meters.
Still, the Irish do have a lot easier time with German hunters than Spanish. For some reason, the Spanish feel they have to kill everything bigger than a microbe every chance they get.
Of course, the Germans gave or sold the Irish so many weapons over the years that the sound of gunfire in the hills is still referred to as "Mauser Music", so perhaps it's just that they like you guys.
When I was 16 I was getting ready to get one of those swedish hunting licences, I had been training with an older friend who had a 20+ rifle collection, I could put a 2 inch group of 5 shots on a target at 200 meters(210 yards), so he deemed me ready for it.
ReplyDeleteMy ten pennies worth:
ReplyDeleteI would have thought that if an ex-serviceman (especially an ex-marine) wanted to fuck up a few SWAT members, they could.
To me, he went by his training- To ID a target before lighting it up. I wonder what training the cops went by?
Rusty
@Kristopher
ReplyDeleteThey are rare. But in other countries they are more like non-existent.
I dont think our SWAT has ever killed anyone who wasnt a criminal so far.
Though they do behave like JBTs when raiding various clubs on drugs charges. No needless deaths, and no, you cannot just sweep police murder under a rug here.
Slovaks cannot really keep secrets.. the whole country is too small for that.
"I dont think our SWAT has ever killed anyone who wasnt a criminal so far."
ReplyDeleteThink again.
Here's a "Botched Raids" map of the U.S. The sort function doesn't work for the map, but for the stories at the bottom of the page. This is an excellent resource and should be shared:
http://www.cato.org/raidmap/
Slovakia isn't on that map.
ReplyDeleteFound this from one of Balko's posts:
ReplyDeleteWorse even than those dreary numbers is the fact that more than half of the county’s SWAT deployments were for misdemeanors and nonserious felonies. That means more than 100 times last year Prince George’s County brought state-sanctioned violence to confront people suspected of nonviolent crimes. And that's just one county in Maryland.
http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/01/45-swat-raids-per-day
Balko has a paper (can't find the address right now) listing all the records he could find over one year of wrong address/wrong person SWAT raids; scary as hell.
It's also not really SWAT. It's called 'zásahová jednotka', means something like an 'action(or raid) unit', is subordinate directly to state police HQ and located only in major cities.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah.. they dress up like ninjas and raid criminals (so far) while in body armor and tote assault rifles... and have snipers.. so it's like a SWAT.
nickname is 'Balaclavas', because other cops show their faces, and even news sources usually call them that.
Czechs have a rather more entertaining "detachment for rapid deployment" (URNA). Acronym also sounds like the local word for cremation urn.. so it has a nice ominous sound.