Jose Guerena

Admin, if you feel this is spamming the forum, then please close this topic. I know it's unrelated to evolution/creation debate.I've been observing the news for details about the incident ever since it happened. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just do a search for Jose Guerena.For a short time, I actually quit my career in science and went into law enforcement. After a couple years being a cop, I decided it wasn't for me and so I quit that and went back to science.Now, I'm not saying I'm an expert on law enforcement. But from my experience and observation, it has become clear to me that it is a standard practice for law enforcement officers to paint a more severe picture with their reports than what actually happened. There's no better well known example than what happened with Henry Gates. The cop that arrested him for disorderly conduct reported he was yelling and drowned out radio noises and such. Unfortunately for the cop, witness reports as well as recordings showed us a completely different scenario. Did the cop lie? Well... no. But he did exaggerate on the situation. Gates was trying to explain to the cop he lived there but all the cop saw was someone trying to resist arrest.Now, I'm not putting law enforcement officers down. What I'm saying is that my couple of years in law enforcement has made me distrust police reports on a level that most people can't imagine. Most of the time, the reports don't lie. Every part of the report may be true, but the overall report is constructed to paint a totally different picture than what actually occurred.That said, I'm seeing the same thing that's happening with the Jose Guerena case. I'm trying to give the sheriff in Tucson the benefit of doubt. I really do. But there are just too many conflicting reports and tell tale signs of exaggeration and misreports.Days after the incident, swat team members reported they were littered with shots supposedly came from Guerena. And then a week after the incident, they backtracked and said Guerena never even fire a shot. They are refusing to report to the public whether they found any drug at all. However, a week after the incident, they reported they found large sums of money in his house. Then 2 weeks after they changed their story again and reported the money was actually found in another house.What really turned on my alarm was the way they reported their actual findings. Everything had a tell tale sign of trying to paint the wrong picture for the public. The found guns and body armor... nevermind that Jose Guerena just came back from 2 tours in Iraq. They also found a picture of Jesus Malverde, which they reported as a drug icon, nevermind that it was actually a Mexican 1900 Robin Hood figure. As I understand it, Malverde's image is part of the Mexican culture. You can see his figurine and pictures just about anywhere. This is not to mention that none of the mentioned items is illegal.I still have many friends in law enforcement. And I'm really trying to see this from the Sheriff's perspective. But so far I simply see too much bullshit coming from the swat team and the sheriff. And this scares the hell out of me.Ok, so perhaps there are details they can't release because it's an ongoing investigation. I can understand that. Nowadays, I still have to go to court to testify against some dirtbags I got for possession and transportation with the intent... anyway... So, yes, I understand the need to keep things under wraps for now. But must they release so much bullshit?What I have seen from the sheriff department is little more than "did glenn beck rape and murder a girl in 1990? I'm not saying he did, but it raises some interesting issues..." Technically, everything I said is true. But come on, we're not 2 year olds here.What do you guys think? And yes, google is your friend if you don't know what I'm talking about with Jose Guerena.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

Here is a blog that explains a little bit about the Jesus Malverde thing. To me, this is beyond cultural misunderstanding. This is downright purposely misunderstanding a different culture. What I mean by this is say I am from a completely different culture and have never seen boxing before (personally, I love to watch boxing). So, obviously the first time I saw it it looks barbaric and I see no difference between boxing and pitting 2 dogs together for a dog fight. So, later on when I find someone with a picture of Muhammed Ali, I'd point my finger and say "Aha! You support animal cruelty!"Anyway, here's a blog that explains this better than I can.Jose Guerena Evidence: Don't Buy Your Kids the Jess Malverde BobbleheadNote that the blog pointed out a very interesting thing. Right now, the strongest evidence they have linking Guerena to a drug conspiracy is a picture of Jesus Malverde. And it's true, that's all they've given us. My question is why mention the picture of Jesus Malverde at all? Is it a crime for me to possess the following picture? After all, robin hood was an outlaw, so surely I must be an outlaw, too.

Problem with this is a video can paint a wrong picture as well. Note that I haven't criticised swat for opening fire. I happen to thin they were justified. I also think Guerena was justified to point his gun at the swat. Especially when hs wife's sister was a victim of home invasion. The guy had a wife and a 4 year old to protect.What I'm thinking is whoever the person to authorize the swat entry had poor judgement. Especially when they knew a 4 yr old was around. Why not knap him when he was at work and then search his home?I can tell you this. If I have a child and you come blazing in my home I will shoot first and ask questions later. At The same time if I was a cop going in and someone points a gun at me I will fill his head up with lead.

Different people react to different stressful situation differently. People might think that Guerena had gone on 2 tours in Iraq so he was able to handle the situation without at least a degree of control over his tunnel vision and hypo-sensitivity. But remember that he never had to deal with armed men in his own home with his 4 yr old present. We have no idea if swat yelled out "police, get down on the ground!" and Guerena never heard a word because his tunnel vision told him a bunch of home invaders were present and his 4yr old was also present.Or, for all we know swat simply forgot to yell out "police, get down on the ground!"But as far as their claims are concern, remember that days after the event the swat team members still maintained that they were fired at and that they had bullets hit them. And then a week after the event the department had to admit that absolutely no shot was fired by Guerena. In fact, his safety was still on when they shot him to death.And not allowing medics to go in for 1 hr and 14 minutes really didn't help swat's side. They fired off 71 shots, hit him 60 times, and they thought he was barricaded?Again, since I've been a cop and know the mentality behind police reports, I this whole thing looks more and more like bullshit to me.For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, just try to understand this. There are many ways to present the facts honestly and still paint a completely fictitious picture. Case in point. They somehow managed to make Guerena look like a drug dealer by saying he's got a picture of Jesus Malvede. Everything they said in this regard is completely true. It is true that he's got a picture of Malvede... but so does half the rest of Hispanic population of the southwest. And Guerena was a suspect in a drug ring... but so were pretty much everyone else who's out walking about.Edit.They've also stated that he's got guns and body armor... but so does a kazillion other people. See how they could state completely accurate facts but paint a totally bullshit picture?Heck, if they ever raid my home and see my arsenal, they'd probably paint me out to be some kind of revolutionary. And they'd probably interpret my star wars posters to mean I really am a revolutionary!Again, all this bullshit info is coming straight from the top in Tucson. This scares the hell out of me. Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

CS, you have a very naive attitude about this. You think everything is black and white, obvious for everyone to see. I'm sorry, but if things are this simple, then everyone would be able to see right through them.Let me explain again. There are ways to report an incident with every individual fact stated accurately but to have the overall picture completely wrong. In this instance, it is very hard for you, the civilian, to prove otherwise. Why? (1) It's your word against a cop's. (2) If they ask you about it, you will have to confirm every detail in the report even though it is arranged in a way to make you look guilty.Take a look again at Henry Gates, for example. According to the police report, he was interfering with police investigation and disturbing the peace. Well... technically that's true. But then if you really look again at the case, you can't blame a man for trying to explain that it's his own home he broke into. The police report also said Gates was loud and overwhelmed the officers. While both the recordings and witness reports confirmed otherwise, I actually saw no lies at all in the report. Why? Because in this instance, the cop was reporting on how HE felt at the time. God knows how he really felt.The point is if they come for you, you're going to have trouble proving to people that they are lying because technically they're not. They're just presenting the facts in a completely different light and paint a completely different picture of the events than what actually happened.I'm just warning you as a friend to be careful about this. Nothing is this obvious nowadays in life. Why do you think Asians have such a hard time proving certain racism against them?

Let's work with the facts that we do have. Why do you think the shooting was not justified? But everyone is a potential criminal. Why? Because criminals know better than to distinct themselves from the rest of the populace. Welcome to reality where criminals don't always have a tatoo on their heads that say "criminal". This isn't the movies.When I first joined my department, there was an alert from the southern part of the state. A cop was shot in the face by one of those tiny guns that look like a cigarette lighter. The cop was on duty, relaxed among his friends, and was just asking for a smoke by a passerby. Turned out the passerby was a cop hater and wanted to shoot the cop in the face. Instead of fire coming out of that little gun, a bullet came flying out right into the cop's face.When I was working, I was always amazed how many people have a criminal record. In fact, a recent study show that roughly about 60% of the population has gone through the criminal system in one form or other. Again, this isn't the movies where a supercop can dodge a bullet and fire back, jumping up 8 feet into the air, and tackle the shooters. From your description alone, I can see why some of their flags were raised.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

Sorry to ruin the fantasy, but I've been assured by practically every asian I've talked to that their foods in the restaurant business have been heavily modified for white people.Just a couple months ago, we were invited to this vietnamese family thing. Right smack in the middle of the table, we saw a dish with little yellow round things that looked like oversized rice. I asked what it was and it turned out to be silkworm.Eating Silkworms | Muffin TopEdited by Taz, : No reason given.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

But CS, I used to be a cop, and surely I'm not shitty.

The fact that I'm not banned yet.

Perfect answer from someone who's never been trained or involved in a fire fight.In the real world, you don't wait for the other guy to shoot you first. That's liberal commie mumbo jumbo bullshit. (1) Cops don't personally know everyone.(2) Physics professors don't kill or maim people. There was a foreign movie I just saw about this very subject, actually. But it was about a war. So, we have 2 warlords fighting each other. They are at a stalemate. Warlord A wants to force warlord B to retreat 30 miles. So, every night he'd have people make a lot of sounds and battle noises every other hour. And each and every time warlord B would mobilize his army to prepare for an attack.Warlord B's advisors advised him to not pay attention any longer and let the army continue to sleep because after the first few nights it was obvious the cries for battle were fake. Warlord B said to his subjects "all it takes is for 1 out of 100 for the attack to be real and they'd be dead if they weren't prepared." 7 sleepless nights later, warlord B ordered his army to retreat.Or let's look at it from another angle. Suppose you're standing there and a machine is tossing knives in your direction at random times. I'll make it easier for you. Each knife only has 1% chance of hitting you. Are you willing to continue to stand there for the sake of being nice? I heard it on npr while driving. Can't find it now. I'll give it to you when I do. Worst that could happen to normal people is a slight inconvenience and a pissed off feeling. The worst that could happen to a cop is his life.Again, say there are knives flying in your direction and they got a 1 in a 100 chance of hitting you. How comfortable do you feel? Funny how you mentioned that video. Something like that happened to me with a drunk. All I did was let him continue to mouth me off while I wrote his tickets and paperwork to charge him. You know what happened to me? I got a reprimand from my serg because (1) I was being too nice to take all that shit and (2) I was sending that drunk a message that he could do that with every cop out there.So, the next time I got another mouthy DUI, my serg told me to watch him and then he got into a yelling match with the drunk.I guess it depends on one's perspective. While I was a cop, I was a really laid back cop. I never showed that I cared when people got mouthy with me. In the particular department that I was in, the guys didn't like that. They wanted me to be tougher. I guess I still don't agree with them.

Why do you think I quit being a cop? It just didn't match with my personality.

Dark surrounding... pointing something at the police... common sense...

Have you ever played the what-if game with your friends? I'm a history buff, so I play this game quite often. After you played it for a while, you will realize that a lot of famous figures in history were idiots. Why? Because they didn't know something that you know now. All those French and British idiots who could have gone all the way to Berlin during the phony war period but didn't do shit. All those American idiots who saw all the signs of an impending Japanese attack but didn't do shit.Do you really want to play this game using our point of view to judge those in the past?And yes, he was pointing something. In the dark, he put his hand in his pocket, took out his wallet, and held it out (pointing) to the police officers. The situation was made worse when one of the cops tripped and fell backward.I'm not saying it was completely his fault. I'm not saying it was completely the cops fault. But I blame on the situation. It sucked for both parties.

Actually, what you're talking about already happened as well. There was a case in Texas where a cop made a traffic stop of a man who now we know was a self-proclaimed cop hater. The man got out of his car. The cop took out his gun and commanded him to get down on the ground. The man opened his back door and began to put his rifle together. The cop commanded him to put the gun down. The man loaded his weapon, the cop commanded him to put the gun down. The man aimed at the cop. The cop commanded him to put the gun down. The man pulled the trigger and killed the cop.Unfortunately, cases like that one where the cop(s) waited to be fired upon never had much press coverage.The point is there are examples of both cases (cops are too trigger happy - cops hesitate to kill somebody) but most of the public only get to know about cases where the cops are trigger happy because of press coverage.There was another case where a cop was going through a neighborhood, heard a woman yelling out stuff like "help!" and "oh god!" He knocked down the door and it just happened to be a couple doing a bdsm (bdms?) thing. The cop was sued. A couple months later, another cop was making the rounds and heard the same sort of noises. Thinking back of what happened to the other cop, he waited for the landlord to come with the key. Well, this time it happened to be an intruder raping a girl. This cop was also sued.Again, we can play this what-if game based on our perspective all day. But the fact remains that those cops in those situations made the choices as best they could. They were probably not THE best choices to be made. And we also have to put into account the adreneline and stress levels involved. You will not find a single cop out there that won't admit he's a coward. This isn't lethal weapon. In fact, I think you've seen too many movies of sort. This is real life. Most cops will admit to you that (1) they are afraid to die, (2) they don't want to be a hero, and (3) they will not sacrifice themselves to save someone else. Again, this isn't the movies.

We know that now. But the swat didn't know that then. Again, in the real world you don't wait for the other guy to pull the trigger first. He points a gun at you, you open fire. Jesus christ, how many times do I have to repeat this? At this point, yes.You keep arguing with me using what we know now instead of what they were faced back then.There was a case in chicago about 7 years ago that almost stirred up a riot. At about 1 am, a couple of cops pulled up to a young man walking down the street. The young man pulled out a gun and pointed at the cops. They fired. You know why people wanted to riot? Because it was a toy gun. Jesus christ, how the hell were the cops suppose to know it was a toy gun? Enough. Please know that one of my cousins is currently serving a life sentence for murder. Drug related. He and I used to play together when we were little. I never saw anything violent in him.That said, again, cops don't know everybody. Jesus christ, how many times do I have to repeat this? Jesus christ, now you're going to twist my words? I said from the cops perspective everyone is a potential violent criminal. I didn't say everyone is capable of being a violent criminal. Now, this I agree with. When I left, half of me didn't want to go. It really really wanted to stay. My issue was I didn't agree with a lot of what was going on. My reports, especially on the more serious incidents, were kicked back several times not because of writing quality but because of description.This is why I left with a great sense of distrust in police reports. Now that I know how they do it, it scares me to death to have a police encounter as a civilian. Some are really really good with arranging the truths to paint a false picture. And no, from your words, I'm thinking you still have no idea what I mean. You keep thinking they twist the truth and stuff. That's not it at all. Police report writing is an art. They have to make sure the details will stand up in court while painting a false picture for the public. It's not as simple as twisting the facts.PS - Funny how I never once participated in a police forum. I lurked a little and saw many young'uns eager to get their badges.Also, now that I've been a cop, I will kill myself before I go to prison.