Mesa County Sheriff Buys Drone Airplane

TheDenverChannel.com

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. -- The Mesa County Sheriff's Department has purchased a small drone aircraft for $14,000 to use in investigations and in search and rescue operations.

Sheriff's officers demonstrated the 4-foot-long, 9-pound vehicle Friday. The plane can stay airborne for an hour, fly at an altitude of 400 feet and send video and infrared images to ground controllers...[Full Article]

Drone Gives Texas Law Enforcement Bird's-Eye View on Crime

By Kris Gutiérrez

Published November 16, 2011 | FoxNews.com

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office is weeks away from launching an unmanned aerial asset to help deputies fight crime. The ShadowHawk helicopter is six-feet long, weighs fifty pounds and fits in the back of an SUV.

“We can put it over a fire, put it over ahazmat spill, put it over a house with a suspect barricaded inside and literally give the incident commander the ability to look at the entire scene with a bird’s eye view, ” Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel said.

Sheriff’s deputies will fly the ShadowHawk with nothing more than a laptop computer and a remote control similar to that used for video games.

It’s equipped with an infrared camera that can clearly read a license plate from an elevation of twelve hundred feet. The helicopter cost upwards of $300,000 and was purchased with a grant from the federal government.

Vanguard Defense Industries built the helicopter. The company has also supplied aerial assets to US forces over seas.

Critics argue the drone-like vehicle isn’t safe, because it’s unmanned.

“I gotta tell you, it sort of looks like boys and their toys, ” said Terri Burke, Executive Director of the ACLU of Texas. “We’re giving up our privacy, we’re letting the government have way too much power.”

The ACLU is concerned that technology used by law enforcement officials in general is getting ahead of people’s privacy. No one has complained to the ACLU about the Montgomery County helicopter, but some fear it could be used to spy on people.

“The Constitution spells out very clearly that we have a right to privacy, ” Burke said.

“This sheriff’s office has better things to do with its time then spy on people, ” McDaniel argued. "That’s not our mission. The only way that it’s going to be an invasion of their privacy is if they are committing some type of a criminal act where we might utilize this to catch them.”

South Carolina Sheriff: 'You Need to Protect Yourself'

Fox News

A South Carolina sheriff is making the extraordinary suggestion that local women arm themselves following the attempted rape of a woman at a local park, saying, "you need to protect yourself."

Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright, the county's top law enforcement officer since 2005, suggested local women apply for a permit to carry a concealed weapon during a news conference Monday about the attack on Sunday at Milliken Park in Spartanburg...[Full Article]

Arizona SWAT Team Shoots Decorated Veteran 60 Times Then Let Him Bleed to Death

He Served the Empire Abroad; The Regime Killed Him in His Home

Lew Rockwell

Jose Guerena survived two combat tours of Iraq, only to become a casualty of the Regime’s longest war — the one waged against its domestic subjects in the name of drug prohibition. The former Marine was slaughtered by a SWAT team during a May 5 assault on his home in Arizona.

Guerena’s wife, Vanessa, heard a noise outside the couple’s home near Tucson at about 9 a.m. Jose, who had just gone to bed after pulling a 12-hour shift at the Asarco Mine, suspected — correctly, as it turned out — that his family was threatened by an armed criminal gang. Grabbing his AR-15, Guerena instructed his wife and four-year-old son to hide in the closet while he confronted the intruders. According to Mrs. Guerena, the stormtroopers from the Pima County Regional SWAT team never identified themselves as police; they simply stormed into the home and started shooting...[Full Article]

The Murder of Jose Guerena, Continued

Lew Rockwell

The SWAT team that murdered Iraq War veteran Jose Guerena in his home near Tucson kept a medical team waiting for more than an hour as the 26-year-old father bled to death, and then “sent them away,” reports Tucson ABC affiliate KGUN.

Jose’s wife Vanessa called 911 after seeing a knot of armed men approaching her home. She insists that the assailants never identified themselves as police. After waking up her husband — who had just finished the graveyard shift at a local mine — Vanessa hid in a closet with their four-year-old son. Jose grabbed his AR-15 and confronted the invaders, who burst through the door and started shooting. The intruders fired a total of 71 shots. The assailants initially claimed that Jose had fired on them — an entirely appropriate response to a criminal invasion of his home — but later admitted that the husband and father was killed before he could pull the trigger.

After the fatal fusillade, Vanessa pleaded with the SWAT team to call for medical assistance; rather than doing so, they held help at bay until their victim was dead, supposedly in the interest of “security.”...[Full Article]

SWAT Kills Decorated Marine, Jose Guerena - Tucson, Pima County, Arizona



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0zStEtTVjk

Uploaded by CorruptPhillyCops on May 18, 2011

TUCSON, Arizona - A decorated Marine's family cannot believe their loved one, who served two tours of duty overseas, is gone. They never expected him to die here at home at the hands of law enforcement. A Pima County Sheriff's Department SWAT team shot and killed Jose Guerena eight days ago; it was executing a search warrant. Four days ago, in a news conference, a sheriff's deputy said the department makes it clear when SWAT is about to enter a home. Lt. Michael O'Connor says SWAT says it never wants to be mistaken for other people, "We had our large armored vehicle there with the markings on it. It also has lights and sirens. It was going. So we do everything we can to try to portray the image that we're law enforcement, we're not home invaders."
But, Guerena's wife, Vanessa, who hid in the closet with her youngest son while 71 rounds were fired her husband's direction, said she heard nothing. At any point did you hear them yell, 'police" or 'SWAT'?" KGUN9 asked. "No, no!" answered Guerena. A neighbor who heard the shooting corroborates the wife's account, "The only sirens I heard out here were like maybe 20-30 minutes into the entire ordeal," said David Watson. Watson is very familiar with gunfire and stressful situations; he's a Vietnam combat veteran, "I want to make this as clear as possible: you only heard the announcements after you heard the gunfire?" asked KGUN9 reporter Joel Waldman. Watson quickly answered, "Yes!" Raising questions about this assertion: "This was not a "no knock" warrant. We come in very high profile with lights and sirens. We go to the door. We pound on the door. We wait 15 seconds, and, then, we breach the door with a heavy tool and open the door," explained O'Connor.
SWAT also entered Guerena's neighbor's house. "When I came home, the whole house was searched. All the doors were open. And, (our house) was searched through; it was like an invasion of privacy," said Carissa Franco.
SWAT says it was concerned about a hole in the Franco's home, worried someone else could've been wounded. So, it said it did what they needed to get inside. Pima County released a statement about that breach, saying in part, "The Regional SWAT Team made entry into two additional residences very soon after the deadly force encounter. This was done in order to ensure that there were no injured persons in those residences as a result of the shooting. These entries were made without warrants due to the exigency of the circumstances. No one was home at either residence when entry was made.

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Additional links...

Police change story in fatal shooting; wife wants answers

Former Marine killed by SWAT was acting in defense, family says

Raw video: Sheriff's Office interview on fatal SWAT raid

Family of Tucson man killed by SWAT hires high profile attorney

PCSO: SWAT incident suspect did not fire at deputies

SWAT team fired 71 shots in raid

Brodesky: Tucson deserves to know more about Guerena shooting

Tucson SWAT Team Defends Shooting Iraq Vet 60 Times

Sheriff blames free speech as likely cause of Arizona massacre

In a press conference held hours after a deadly massacre in Arizona, Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnick targeted free speech as a likely cause of Saturdays shooting. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was having a public event when 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner reportedly approached the crowd and shot 19 people, killing Federal Judge Judge John McCarthy Roll and five others, including a young girl...

[Full Article]

Chicago sheriff says no to enforcing foreclosures

CHICAGO - Two of the largest U.S. mortgage servicers have said they will resume home foreclosures, but a big-city sheriff has news for them: he won't enforce their foreclosure evictions.

The sheriff for Cook County, Illinois, which includes the city of Chicago, said on Tuesday he will not enforce foreclosure evictions for Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase and Co. and GMAC Mortgage/Ally Financial until they prove those foreclosures were handled "properly and legally."...

[Full Article]

Bossier Sheriff Launches 'Operation Exodus'

The Bossier Parish sheriff's office is launching a program called "Operation Exodus," a policing plan for an end-of-the-world scenario involving a mostly white group of ex-police volunteers and a .50-caliber machine gun, inspired in part from the Book of Exodus in the Bible.

"The buck stops with Larry Deen," said Bossier Parish Sheriff Larry Deen. "The liability stops with Larry Deen. I am the chief law enforcement officer in this parish, and it is incumbent upon me protect all of the people in it."

Deen said he had been formulating a plan to protect Bossier Parish's vital resources, like food and gasoline, in the event of a catastrophic event, such as war or a terrorist attack. Deen said he had been thinking of the plan since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001...

...Under the plan, these volunteers, supplemented with active public safety personnel, will be dispatched to vital areas in Bossier to protect them from looters or rioters. Deen listed as examples food inside grocery stores and gasoline in gasoline stations, not to mention protecting hospitals and other public meeting places.These volunteers will be armed by the sheriff's office, using, among other things, shotguns, riot shields and batons. The members are mostly white men. Five are black. Women involved will only be used in "support roles," Deen said, which indicated non-combat activity. One of their first official training sessions was Feb. 20 when they learned basic hand-to-hand combat techniques...