An unfortunately ongoing series here at my blog.
This, via Reason, "
Another Drug Bust Gone Bad".
Yeah, I guess an octegenarian retiree being shot to death IN BED, unarmed, by some overzealous paramilitary SWAT team with six bullets from a submachine gun is pretty, really, very "gone bad".
As for his wife, his poor wife-she says:
"I just
want him back."
"On a
sweltering summer morning in the California desert, deputies
looking for methamphetamines and bearing automatic weapons barged
into the home of Eugene Mallory, an 80-year-old retired engineer
living a quiet life in the small community of Littlerock."
"Moments
later, Mallory lay in his bed bleeding to death from six bullets
fired from an MP5 9mm submachine gun.
"The murky circumstances that
led to the shooting are now the subject of a federal lawsuit."
"
The
officers found no meth on the property."
"LACSD officials declined to talk with Reason TV for this story,
citing the pending lawsuit.
Pate, who's still awaiting an initial hearing in the case, knows
that no amount of money or punishment will undo her husband's
violent death at the hands of cops looking for drugs that weren't
there.
"Every day, he'd get to tell you a joke, tell you something,
tell you you're beautiful, and now he's gone," she says.
"I just
want him back."
RELATED:
"Military style" raid at dawn leaves American grandmother angry and humiliated
BUT NOT DEAD.
"It was early Friday morning, October 18, 2013, in Mission, Texas, just a
few minutes before dawn. Joel Escamilla, a supervisor at a local paper
plant, was just about to step through the front door of the home he and
his wife built together 17 years ago, the home in which they raised
their two daughters, and go to work, as he has done every weekday for
years. His wife, Gracie, 51, had not gotten out of bed yet."
"The Escamillas’ world crashed in on them shockingly, when men dressed
in black poured over their six-foot fence and into their front yard.
The men converged on the front door and began pounding and demanding to
be let in."
“I was in bed. I heard a loud noise, you know, somebody was breaking
into my house,” Gracie says."
“I came out [and stood] on my staircase,
with only my underwear, no top. Afraid. I thought it was an invasion. A
home invasion.”
"Joel’s first thought as he stood at the door was to get his handgun and defend his wife and daughter."
"The county sheriff’s own son was among the officers convicted of home
invasion and other crimes. In a region where you cannot trust the
police, where trusting the police can even get you into serious danger,
you must trust your own instincts. But had Joel acted on that thought
and retrieved his handgun, he probably would have been killed. The men
who were swarming in their yard were all wearing sidearms and body
armor. Police raids resulting in shooting and death have become all too
common in the past few years, a fact that was racing through Joel’s mind
that morning."
“It was very scary,” Joel says.
"A military veteran, Joel
identifies the officers as federal. He says they were obviously armed
and wearing body armor.
“My pistol wouldn’t have done anything against
them,” he says.
"He let the men in. Both he and Gracie agree that the men never
allowed them to read a warrant. One officer flashed a piece of paper and
said that they were arresting Gracie on suspicion of Medicare/Medicaid
fraud. Gracie says that the officers, who she and Joel say were from the
Federal Bureau of Investigations, never read Gracie her rights."
“They did not read my rights. They just said, ‘You cannot get
anything. You can’t get your purse. Your phone. Nothing at all.’”
"Gracie
says she was never told to find an attorney."
"Even worse, Gracie was still in her underwear when the mostly male
squad of officers entered her home. They quickly separated Joel and
Gracie from each other."
Added insult to injury and NEAR DEATH BY POLICE SWATTING:
"Gracie was born in Mexico, legally immigrated to the United States as an
infant, and grew up in El Paso. She became a US citizen in 2005. Her
husband, Joel, was born in Chicago and served in the United States Army.
They built their home themselves, to raise their daughters and enjoy
the life of home ownership."
Read the whole thing.
