When the media report on police crimes, they still use credulous language. What does that say?
There’s a lot to unpack in this story [nbc]:
“The no-knock warrants are going to go away like leaded gasoline in this city,” Police Chief Art Acevedo said after a raid in which two suspects were killed and several officers injured.
Good news, and it’s about time. Note the way the raid is described: “two suspects” killed and “several officers” injured. But wait:
Last week, it was revealed that an affidavit to justify the warrant appears to contain “some material untruths or lies” and police Chief Art Acevedo said an officer will likely be criminally charged in the case.
So the warrant was based on an affidavit that was untrue. In other words, the warrant was obtained falsely. That means that the two “suspects” that were killed were not “suspects” at all – they were “citizens” or “victims.” The language of police authoritarianism makes you a “suspect” if you have any kind of interaction with a cop, and that’s how the news often reports it, too.
“The family was murdered,” Eileen De Los Santos, a longtime friend of those killed in the raid, said during the meeting, according to the station. “I would like for someone to use the word ‘murdered,’ because they were murdered.”
That is correct; it was murder under color of law. I find it odd that the news reports “suspects” were killed when the “suspects” would be the cops.
The Harris County District Attorney’s Office has said that it is investigating every aspect of the incident. District Attorney Kim Ogg said at Monday’s meeting, “What charge is going to be presented will be based on the evidence and the evidence is still being collected,” according to KPRC.
Last week the local station obtained police documents that say the warrant was justified by a claim that a confidential informant purchased heroin at the home that was raided and that a weapon was observed there. But investigators have been unable to find that informant.
Narcotics Officer Gerald Goines provided the names of two confidential informants, but one said they did not work with Goines on that case, and the other said they purchased heroin from a different home at Goines’ direction five miles away, according to the documents.
Investigators interviewed everyone on a list of informants that had worked for Officer Goines and all denied making a buy for the officer from the Harding Street home or ever buying drugs from Tuttle or Nicholas, according to the documents. After the raid, police said they found several firearms at the home, along with marijuana and cocaine, but no heroin.
Goines, who prepared the search warrant, has since been suspended, according to Acevedo.
Goines is the “suspect.” He was also shot and wounded during the raid.
The whole notion of “no knock warrants” is, to me, a textbook example of an “unreasonable search” – in fact it’s exactly the kind of militarized searches that the colonists were reacting to, that made the 4th Amendment part of the constitutional rights reserved for the citizens. Law enforcement has consistently pressed against those rights, twisting and interpreting them in order to moot them. It’s disturbing when law enforcement isn’t happy even with the reduced citizens’ rights and its members lie to get warrants.
Here is a bit more about how the story is reported: [abc]
Police recovered two shotguns and three rifles from the residence and seized marijuana and a white powder they believe to be either cocaine or the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, Acevedo said at the time. But officers did not seize any black tar heroin, he said.
Note that Americans are allowed to have rifles and shotguns in their residences. And it’s pretty easy to tell the difference between “white powder”, cocaine, and fentanyl – there are testing kits that accurately identify those things. If it was actually tested, and it was actually fentanyl, one would expect the police to report the presence of an illegal drug. But, oddly, they did not. If the firearms were illegal, one would expect the police to report the presence of illegal firearms. If it was a large amount of weed, one would expect the police to report “${whatever}-lbs of marijuana were present at the scene. But, oddly, they did not. They did make sure everyone knew that the dog was a pit bull, because those are sure some scary dogs, unless you’ve got a shotgun.
One of the suspects, Tuttle, charged from the back of the house firing a .357-caliber Magnum revolver at the officer, hitting him in the shoulder, Acevedo said.
The police recovered two shotguns and three rifles and not a .357-caliber magnum revolver? How odd. One of those shotguns was probably a typographical error.
Also, the reporting baldly transmits Acevedo’s official line, which makes it sound like he’s the good guy who has decided that “no knock” warrants are a bad thing and he’s discontinuing them. Elsewhere, it is mentioned that Internal Affairs is investigating the use of “no knock” warrants and officer Goines’ actions:
But an affidavit filed in Harris County District Court on Thursday by Houston internal affairs detectives investigating the raid indicates the confidential informant Goines said conducted the drug buys on his instruction claims he never even went to the house.
It sounds like two people and a dog died, and others were wounded, over a small amount of weed. And, now that they have screwed up massively and are being investigated, the cops have decided to lie low for a while, until Internal Affairs goes away.
There is a report presented by the police chief here [po] and it seems to me that the presentation is a bit dishonest. Acevedo tells the literal truth “Officers were serving a warrant” but lies by omission, not mention it was a “no knock” warrant. It is relevant. The description of the incident provided by the police makes it sound as though they were just there, you know, serving a warrant, and came under fire – not smashing the door, charging into the room, shooting a dog, and then taking fire from the people in the building. It also sounds like a class-1 clusterfuck (with oak leaves clusters) with the cops bunched up in the door swapping bullets with the about-to-be-deceased.
“He said Goines, who has been with the department for 34 years and was previously shot twice in the line of duty, has been relieved of his duties and will likely face serious criminal charges.” – we’re supposed to believe that Goines was the only one who was involved in falsifying the information in warrants.
It’s surprising we haven’t seen cops killed during a botched no knock warrant served on the wrong house, with a giant mess of a trial getting press for months as the home owners claim self defense and stand your ground as defenses. Lots of Americans are paranoid enough about armed criminals breaking into their homes that they have elaborate preparations in place for defense, like furniture with hidey-holes for firearms. So it’s not hard to imagine them thinking guys with masks, body armour, and long guns breaking in with no warning were ISIS members, or whoever the hell it is they’re paranoid about.
Wait – these Houston cops killed white people? They’re not supposed to do that!!1!
Goines is just the fall guy. He’s ready to retire, was injured himself and is likely loyal and will play dumb. He might avoid serious consequences, like prison. Who knows anymore?
And it’s mighty convenient that the dog was a pit bull because I think most police forces just routinely kill any dog who happens to be there during a raid. Breed doesn’t matter.
So, Marcus, why is it that the news reports incidents like this with biased language? You posed the question, but didn’t offer any theories.
I will pose one theory. Lazy journalism. The police send an in idcident report using their biased language deliberately meant to subvert the truth and it it’s reported mostly unchanged because the story is hot and they want to get to air quickly and first. They are not cynical enough. By the time the news outlet actually investigates the story it’s off the front page and something else has the public’s attention.
Also, druggies with pit bulls don’t matter enough, even if they’re innocent.
Collected by whom? Internal affairs? Whoever it is, is there any reason to actually trust them any more than the regular cops? (It’s surprising they didn’t find the drugs they were looking for. Maybe they forgot them in the evidence locker?)
Maybe he’s been there long enough to retire with full benefits before the disciplinary paperwork has crossed all the necessary desks, so he gets to be the convenient scapegoat. Luckily, as I understand it, there are always distant departments on the lookout for experienced officers.
Voyager has beaten me to the retirement angle. Regarding the lazy journalism theory, could it also be an “access” thing? Journalists tend to be nice to beloved Presidente lest they loose access to the White House. I have no idea if the police can exclude journalists from press briefings or releases, but even if not some journalists might prefer to stay on the coppers’ good side to, for example, keep getting interviews with them.
So the guy who was killed by the justice system on erroneous information was actually called
BTuttle? Is the universe officially fucking with us now? This is unrealistic levels of irony.cf: Brazil
abbeycadabra@#6:
Life imitates art imitating life.
voyager@#3:
So, Marcus, why is it that the news reports incidents like this with biased language? You posed the question, but didn’t offer any theories.
The US is a very authoritarian society; we just don’t think we are. We are also heavily propagandized to accept and kowtow to authority, while simultaneously seeing ourselves as independent and freethinking. J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI was largely a marketing organization, and the CIA and military also have massive budgets for public outreach. Members of the press were raised, like every other generation, with propaganda telling them that the police are on their side, and the police are the good guys, etc. And that manicheanism is everywhere the military and police only need to say someone is a “bad guy” and they are targetable with maximum force; no more complex justification is necessary or even desirable. The media is not consciously adopting the language of their masters; they’re doing it because it’s what they have been trained to do – very few of them question why bad guys are bad guys because they accept and trust the designation. It’s a necessary part of the epistemological warping that the American System needed to apply to its citizens in order to maintain a constant war footing and a completely militarized police-state/economy.
There are some journalists (e.g.: Radley Balko) who see the reality of the situation but most of them won’t take the red pill.
I just finished a book on J. Edgar Hoover and the media, his constant effort to get the FBI portrayed as the saviors of America, etc. It’s pretty depressing. It fits right alongside the way the military has promoted itself through football (because American! means “ready to do violence to bad guys!”)
Basically, we’re living in Edward Bernays’ utopia.
Timgueguen:
For self defense grounds, does it matter if the warrant was valid for your house – assuming it can be argued that you didn’t expect a police raid? Though I suppose if you do manage to shoot one or two or five of the officers, lethally or not, you very rarely survive to stand a trial. That could explain the lack of cases
Well, I don’t think this happens often to nice white people. The house in the video looks like it’s half a hurricane from falling down and I think the technical US term for the inhabitants is “white trash”, so no one really cares if the police shoot them. After all there were drugs.
That aside, the whole idea of a no knock warrant is just ludicrous. Even when my legally certified crazy cousin threatened to return to a casino and shoot people (and he had previously threatened people with an illegal weapon at another casino), police rang the fucking door bell. Of course they then had to knock down the door because the little idiot was high as fuck again, but the point is: nobody got hurt. Except for the poor front door.
lumipuna, I assume a lawyer would try to make an argument based on the fact the occupants of the home had legal firearms, and that the police didn’t identify themselves before entering the home.
As for the wrongly warranted homeowners being shot there’s a perception that US cops are more likely to try to avoid shooting suspects if they’re white, even if they respond with gunfire. For example on Thursday deputies of Pasco County, Florida’s Sheriff’s Department executed a search warrant on the home of the mayor of Port Richey. Dale Massad opened fire on them, although he hit no one. He was arrested in one piece.
https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/pascocounty/mayor-accused-of-shooting-at-deputies-was-a-known-drug-dealer-sheriff-says/67-2aaba9dc-aab5-4fb1-bea2-56fa1671149e
Giliell@#10:
Well, I don’t think this happens often to nice white people.
Well, rarely, anyhow. Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort are outliers.
There’s another point buried in all this, which I have not tried to exhume: it says something about how helpful guns are as protection against home invasion. The victims of the police in this article – we know nothing about them other than that they were poor. We are supposed to assume they were drug dealers or somehow “bad people” because they had guns and apparently a tiny amount of weed. Like a lot of us. They may have been ordinary Americans who had those guns for sporting reasons or to defend themselves against a home invasion attack; they just never expected the home invasion to be a goon squad of armored-up cops.
Guns aren’t very good for defending a home! At the point when you’re under assault, you’ve already lost the initiative to the aggressor. It doesn’t take a strategic genius to understand that, if you want to defend your home with a gun, you need to be in ambush the whole time.
Marcus:
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition… Though I’ve understood that some Americans do indeed prepare to fight against the agents of a tyrannical government. I’ve heard there’s even some general reluctance of the cops to go after known militia/sovereign citizen types because of the risk of getting shot. Perhaps it’s even more dangerous than going after known drug lords? Then again, the militia types in question probably don’t fully grasp how weak their own chances in these gunfights are.
Then there’s all the petty criminals and random idiots with a gun in their pocket, who just might try shooting a police officer as a panic reaction. All this contributes to making US police work more dangerous, which again contributes to legitimizing overly aggressive police practices.
A lot of people, even many firearm “enthusiasts” don’t seem to understand that there is a vast difference twixt a handgun and a rifle.
I might be able to hit a person at 30′ with a handgun. With a rifle, I could pick which eye to put a round through. And then there is the power issue. Most handgun ammo won’t penetrate typical body armor, most rifle ammo will.
It really annoyed me when those fuckwits occupied that national park a few years back. A squad of active duty infantry Marines would have rolled right through them, with minimal casualties. It’s less about the blinged-out weapons, and more about the training and teamwork.
I imagine movies/tvshows have some influence in this, they frequently show people armed with handguns taking out people with assault rifles at a distance, and using things like car doors, couches, flipped tables, and drywall as cover. Oh, and also video games – I had a lot of arguments with an old housemate about firearms, and their only information was from playing FPS games.
@ 1 timgueguen
You sum up my thoughts perfectly.
Unless one is arresting a Michael Cohen or Roger Stone a no-knock warrant sounds crazy.
Who is more likely to be paranoid (and heavily armed in the USA) than drug dealers worried about potential home-invasions by rival drug dealers or even druggies?
lochaber@#14:
A lot of people, even many firearm “enthusiasts” don’t seem to understand that there is a vast difference twixt a handgun and a rifle.
You’re not kidding. The difference in firepower is appalling, to say nothing of the ranged accuracy. Trying to explain these things to someone who majored in Call of Duty is pointless. I had one guy telling me over and over that sniper rifle bullets leave contrails. Uh, no, never seen that. I checked with Sazz (wondering if the humidity in Vietnam might have pulled a contrail from his .300w/m. Nope. Then I asked if they had ever actually seen this behavior and they said they’d never been near a gun going off. Oh.
The marine infantry are scary, no doubt about. In part because they’re less concerned with being cute than special operations guys. The marines’ll get it done and if they encounter effective resistance they’ll call in airstrikes. They’re very practical fellows.
Related to the original topic: that’s one reason I don’t worry too much about militarized police. They’re sentient enough to know that there’s a world of difference between what they do and what veterans know how to do – which is why they’ll walk around the block in the rain to avoid running afoul of veterans that might be involved in protests. As dad used to point out all the time, revolutions only begin to succeed when the standing army or veterans begin to act against the state. Up until that moment, it’s never really in doubt.
I imagine movies/tvshows have some influence in this, they frequently show people armed with handguns taking out people with assault rifles at a distance, and using things like car doors, couches, flipped tables, and drywall as cover.
Also, popping their heads up to shoot from behind things, and not moving around. Sharpshooter’s feast.
Unrelated but this might amuse you: it’s an old piece about what happens when I get stupid after shooting off my mouth. [ranum]
Marcus Ranum@16
nice, I’ve seen some of your posts previously, but missed that one. Mighta skipped it due to complete apathy about so many of these conspiracy theories. Since I never really bothered to learn much about the Kennedy assassination, I assumed it was at a decent distance. 160 ft is absurdly close, I don’t understand how anyone would think that would pose a problem.
I think some of the video games have the weapon rounds leave trails, I don’t like first person shooters, so… I don’t know whether it’s just a neat special effect, emulating tracer rounds, or to make PvP a little less frustrating so people can tell what direction the fire is coming from. I’ve heard rumors that shooting a .50 Cal in a field can cause a visible wave/ripple in the grass, but I never witnessed it myself, and have a lot of distrust for those sorts of rumors.
Yeah, I really want to know where you buy a bullet-proof couch from. Presumably it’s a Tactical Couch (TM)…
Marcus Ranum@ # 16 – Cute, quite cute, but when will you replicate the “magic bullet” that made Arlen Specter famous?