I’m no expert in SWAT tactics, but rolling up, setting off a car alarm, then bunching up near the entrance seem counterintuitive.
And when the shots start going off.. yikes… I’ts amazing Jose Guerena’s wife and son weren’t killed either in that 60 shot mess.
What do you guys think?
Full Story – HERE
Comments
27 responses to “Marine Vet Jose Guerena Killed By SWAT Team – Helmet Cam Video”
It looks like a justified shooting from the officers perspective, they clearly identified themselves BEFORE they open the door 0:20-0:30 (listen closely the engine/car radio drowns it out.) Regardless you can’t expect the officers to just stand there and get shot at.
This is happening more and more as police are randomly raiding homes all over the place for nothing. I live in a nice suburban neighborhood, homes in the $120-160k range outside Dallas, and two homes in my neighborhood have been raided in the last year. One a dog was shot, and the other the 12 year old girl that was home, and so traumatized she had to be hospitalized. She waits at school now, and is scared to be home alone. No drugs were found in either raid, and no charges filed.
The police state has to end. I am all for raiding a crack house, but this ain’t it. How many innocent people have to die? How many?
I have never done drugs in my life, and if you show up at my door with a warrant, I will let you in, but ANYONE bust open my door without showing me a warrant and I will stop you there, and tell you not to come in. This is my house, I own it, it is not the cities, states, or federal governments.
Yelling that you are the police is not justification for destroying my property. The police have no right to destroy my property for fun. (not to mention some home invasions begin with someone saying they are with the police)
trust me. its no FUN being in ANY kind of shooting. its SCARY. GOOD LORD there’s alot of cop-haters on here.
I’m not a cop hater at all, just that I see no purpose to randomly raiding homes and sticking guns in innocent peoples faces. That is asking for problems. That is not the police officers fault, it is the system and governments fault. The “police state” where we are all forced into compliance with a set of ever changing rules that are vague and “open to interpretation”.
I agree drugs are bad, but raiding homes randomly for “anonymous call”, or “too many cars parked out front” and in one case recently in my town, a DEA agent got the police to raid a house without applying for a warrant, citing the patriot act. (Nothing was found.)
When Police Officers I work with are complaining to me about all this, you know it’s getting over the top.
Cops are the enemy – treat them as such! Pity he didn’t take a dozen of them with him!
I don’t like when the media questions law enforcement decisions that are impossible to understand when you are not there at the time. Its sad if he is innocent and if he was only trying to defend his family, and I have no doubt that this is the case but if I am a SWAT team member and I see a Marine holding an assault rifle all I’m thinking is “I hope I get him before he gets me.” I’m not gonna ask him if he has his safety selector off safe.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/26/979293/-Why-did-Arizona-kill-Jose-Guerena,-26,-Marine-veteran-of-IraqAfghanistan
I understand the situation the SWAT officers were facing and how this mess occurred, however their conduct disgusts me; trying to cover their asses afterwards. Last time I checked, shooting someone 60 times is inexcusable, regardless of whether you’re a private citizen, a police officer or a soldier. As a marine with 3 combat tours under his belt, Guerena would have seriously hurt them if he wanted to; he definitely wouldn’t have been standing just inside the door if he wanted to shoot those SWAT guys. Marines are trained how to fight in urban environments and that certainly didn’t reflect itself here; this tells me he intended to deter a criminal threat, not a professional one. The fact that two relatives of his wife had been killed in a home invasion not long ago further reinforces his actions. Having a bunch of young trigger happy guys on the force doesn’t help this either. There are plenty of officers today who wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger on someone because they know they’ll be justified regardless of whether it was right or wrong. Sometimes sh!t happens and people make mistakes. This is the former of the two; it was an excessive use of force and it is inexcusable. To top it all off, denying the man medical treatment for 75 minutes is also inexcusable.
this is a terrible news :(
So what I understand after reading the full article, is that it’s a mistaken identity?
further more.. Jose’s weapons still had his safety on? and..
60 times shot? what.. did the 2 front guys did a full auto-burst and emptied their mag on him..
Not only is it tactically unsound, if there was an ambush force in the house, they’ve probably just emptied everything on one man and are not ready for much more.
and for the bunching up in front of the house, it HAD been a drug dealer, and he had booby trapped the entrance, they would have been in big trouble, all their eggs in one basket about to get blow’d up
Still though, I’d put this in the gray zone, because its hard to put all the blame on one side
It’s not a war on drugs; it’s a war on personal freedom. Worse still, it’s a cash cow; creating a huge incentive for police to militarize and engage in home invasions so that they can fund other activities with drug loot. Whether or not this was tactically sound is insanely unimportant. Throw another corpse on the stack.
http://www.cato.org/raidmap/
MUSA thats Bullshit this isn’t about questioning the damn police its pure bullshit look how they approach the house and 60 damn shots really? These cops need to be charged and sent to prison. If a group of police came to my house and my wife and kid had guns pointed at them by someone I would have went f’n RAMBO too. Then they retract there statement saying he fired admiting he didn’t really? We live in a country where most of the society is blind and love to be told what to do like SHEEP. We need to wake the hell up!
While technically yes, they were within their rights to shoot, something seems off. You can’t see inside the house, so does he move to drop the gun? I can’t remember hearing them yell “Drop the gun!” as per the ROE, if I recall correctly (I’m pretty sure police need to order the suspect to surrender before firing). So unless they say very quietly to drop the gun, these cops need to be charged.
It’s entirely possible that he thought it was an invasion, so he grabbed his gun. Judging by the video he had less than a second or two to see it was SWAT. He was probably going to put his rifle down but they opened fire on him. Even if they had because he’d refused to put the gun down, sixty shots? Really? Look at how they crowd the door, everyone’s trying to get a shot off it seems even after the suspect is without a doubt down.
Dude just worked an all nighter at a mine. Sounds like he was raking it in as a drug runner.
“Mike Storie, a lawyer for the SWAT team, said at a press conference Thursday that weapons and body armor were found in the home…”
Guilty or not, I find the fact that they’re using this bit of information to paint Guerena as a bad guy *extremely* troubling…
Yeah…being that they’re trying to justify their murder of the man, the “body armour” was probably just a tactical vest or something that can’t even hold a plate, unless Marines are allowed to bring their plate carriers home.
Well, yeah, actually. I’m not a Marine, I’m a Soldier, so I can’t say for sure, but I would say almost everyone I know keeps their gear at home. My unit recently installed lockers at my base for us to keep our TA-50 in, but for the most part it’s easier to keep in the trunk of your car or in your closet. Also, a lot of people that get out have extra gear that isn’t turned in when they do the out process, so sometimes that kind of thing makes it home. And while it may seem excessive to keep a SAPI plate and carrier at home to some people, it makes perfect sense to me. But then, a few years at war has a tendency to make you view the world a little differently then you did before you went.
I have serious doubts about how things went down, but I will wait until for information comes out to make my own opinion. But the whole “I have something for you” comment the SWAT officers tried to spin is a red flag.
On a tactical note I’ve seen better breaching and room clearing by Iraqi Police Cadets. That was piss poor. Look at the jackoff that runs up and blindly discharges his pistol into the doorway.
What I really want to see is the warrant that brought them to this house in the first place. Is seems so easy to get those without any cause that increases the number of police contacts with citizens in this manner. It stands to reason that the more contacts with citizens the more chance that something awful like this may play out due to misunderstanding. WE need cops that are better investigators than headcrackers.
I dont understand why swat teams are full of asshats that cant even breach and clear properly, much less get their target information right.
It’s like the more important criteria in picking a swat member is in those who dont question what they’re doing and not skills and abilities. Herp derp funnel in through one door. Gimmee a nice clean shot at all of you with my .308 with silver tipped bullets.
At least the Fort worth swat team knows what they’re doing :C
These people probably couldn’t stop an eighteen wheeler with someone held hostage inside without losing the hostage or causing a massive pileup somewhere.
what the hell are “SILVER TIPPED bullets”? wtf? seriously? who is this guy…
and i’m an operator who has operated in operations operating operators operating equipment in operations :3
Jesus. as a Brazilian tactical team police officer, the only thing i can tell its:
More Drills guys, ALOT more drills.
here we have a sentence that says: “An error on plan, its a plan to fail”
The whole thing was a mess. the tactical action was a joke, and lookslike, the info investigation too.
Wow a man was murdered inside his home and you guys are getting upset about the shitty entry tactics. The police did not even find anything illegal inside this man home because trust me even if a single bud was found they would be bragging about this find to make the raid seem legitimate.
Derp, he had buh-buh-body armor. He musta-been a bad guy. Police keep you safe, you no need guns and body armor. Derp.
Fucking disgusting.
Since the police sounded their siren, then knocked and stood at the door, any claim that it was a “home invasion” is ridiculous. Too many are trying to make this a 2nd Amendment Rosa Parks story, which conspicously failed in the Eric Scott case from Las Vegas. He went from a Green Beret West Pointer to a addled drug addict quite quickly.
Another story or our of control rouge swat team killers!
Don’t forget, the reason the swat teams are out there is to kill citizens.
If they don’t do enough raids, their funding will be cut, so they make up shit to keep going out on raids.
They arrest some low life, who is a snitch or informer, who doesn’t want to go to jail, so he cuts some deal with the cops saying he knows of a big drug deal going on.. So he grabs a phone book and picks out a name a random and you can guess what happens next.
Or someone at the police station typing up reports, types the address wrong, or is in a hurry and types in an additional number, or is on the phone at the same time while typing. You get the idea. Oops.
And to cops mind, everyone is a criminal execpt for other cops and judges. It’s true.
When cops blow someone away, they pat eachother on the back and laugh about it. Then put notches on their guns grip.
I hope every single one of these fucking cops face some sort of murder charge. I HATE cops!