02/11/14 – Will Grigg – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show.
Will Gregg is on the line, the heroic Will Gregg, author of the great blog Pro Libertate at freedominourtime.blogspot.com.freedominourtime.blogspot.com.
And his book is called Liberty in Eclipse, out soon in audiobook, or maybe already.
Anyway, welcome to the show.
How are you doing, Will?
Scott, it's always great to be with you.
Thank you so much.
Good times.
Very happy to have you on here.
Let me ask you, are there any trends in policing recently in America that you would like to comment on?
I think that there are a number of trends that are eminently worthy of comment, the most disturbing of which is to treat the presence of a firearm in a home that is targeted for an investigation as justification for a no-knock SWAT raid.
That's a really troubling trend because this partakes of the same sensibility I contend that leads to such things as hit people, strikes in countries like Afghanistan, or even drone strikes overseas.
I'm sorry, your phone cut out a little bit there right before Pakistan.
Oh, what's happening in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan is that when you have a certain number of hits in a threat matrix, then the targeted dwelling of the targeted individuals and everybody around them are considered to be fair game for drone strikes or hit teams or other ways of disposing of those targets with extreme prejudice.
We've not quite reached that state here in the United States, but every SWAT team has something they call a threat matrix, which I consider to be broadly or distantly kindred to the disposition matrix, which is the term used to describe this industrialized killing apparatus that is run by the NSA and the Pentagon and the CIA.
And in the threat matrix, there's a weighting of various factors that are taken into account on the basis of intelligence regarding a targeted individual or a targeted dwelling.
And one of the things that weighs most heavily, forgive me, is the identified, confirmed presence of a firearm, a legally owned firearm within that dwelling.
If there's a legal gun owner at an address, and the cops are thinking of a narcotics investigation, or even as was recently the case just outside of Des Moines, Iowa, this incident involving an investigation of credit card fraud, then this is used as justification for saddling up and getting everybody kitted out in their paramilitary drag and then conducting a no-knock raid that involves a battering ram rather than a knock and announce.
And this is going to get people killed.
Indeed, it's gotten people killed before.
And one such incident occurred in Texas last December 19th when a deputy by the name of Adam Sowers was killed as part of a team invading the home of Henry McGee.
He was on the basis of an informant, once again, identified as somebody who was growing marijuana in his home.
And this occurred before dawn at about 5.50 in the morning.
You had this band of armed marauders break into this man's home.
And so he did what he was trained by instinct to do and what he had the legal right to do, which was to grab his legally owned firearm and shoot the first assailant who presented himself, who just happened to be Deputy Sowers.
In this case, the grand jury in Burleson County no-billed Mr. McGee.
He still stands to be prosecuted for possession of a plant that the government doesn't like at this juncture in our history.
But he had originally been charged with capital murder for defending himself against somebody who didn't identify himself as a police officer.
And quite frankly, even if he had, really had no business conducting a pre-dawn raid on the basis of information that there was an illicit substance within the home.
But the reason why the raid was staged the way it was, if you take a look at the warrant, take a look at the history of such raids in Texas and elsewhere, it's because there was intelligence that Mr. McGee was a gun owner, that he had legally owned firearms in his domicile.
And this is treated within this threat matrix as good and sufficient justification for staging SWAT raids, including no-knock raids.
I do think that it's a tragedy that Deputy Sowers was killed.
He really shouldn't have been where he was doing what he was doing.
He should not have been killed, but his death was not the fault of the man who killed him.
The man who killed him was exercising his moral and legal right to defend himself, his property, and his pregnant girlfriend against an unidentified intruder who was a trespasser on his property.
And that's why the grand jury there in Brillison County no-billed him.
Now that contrasts rather sharply with a rather similar case from 2006 involving a man named John Quinn, who lived in McKinley, Texas.
And once again, on the basis of informants who were cooperating in order to get a downward departure on their sentences, it turns out neither of them was actually prosecuted in exchange for providing this information about Mr. Quinn's son, his adult son, Brian.
There was a post-midnight no-knock raid on Mr. Quinn's home.
And in the warrant, it said that this was necessary because once again, there were firearms on the premises.
That's something that they've been told by their informants.
And so they used a battering ram, busted down the front door.
Mr. Quinn grabbed his gun and went to the front door to find out what was going on.
And he was shot by a deputy whose last name was Guerrero.
And in this case, it was the defender who was charged with aggravated assault on a police officer in spite of the fact that he was the one who was injured.
And the individual who tried to kill him was no-billed by a grand jury.
That was in 2008, if memory serves.
Mr. Quinn was eventually acquitted of the charge of aggravated assault.
He was found guilty of possession of less than a gram of cocaine, which was found in a part of the home that was not subject to search.
And according to the terms of the warrant, it was considered a legitimate search because they had staged a no-knock raid and there was active resistance to that raid.
And so there's an active challenge before the Supreme Court now that's been filed on behalf of Mr. Quinn.
On the basis of the fact that the Fourth Amendment here as read in what I consider to be a deranged opinion by the District Court of Appeals there in Texas, the Fourth Amendment supposedly authorizes the use of this kind of tactic anytime there is a reasonable expectation that somebody in the domicile has a firearm.
And so if they develop intelligence, and it's not hard to do in this country, particularly in states like Texas or Idaho, for that matter, to develop intelligence that somebody in that domicile has a weapon, then they essentially can lay siege to that home in military fashion.
And if they meet any kind of resistance at all, that supposedly releases all considerations that might limit what they can do, where they can search, and what they might find.
I should point out in the case of John Quinn, his son, who had no self-interested reason to do so, said that his father never took his drugs, that he was trying to hide cocaine from his son in order to cure him of his drug addiction.
Medical examination after Mr. Quinn was taken to the hospital, subsequent to being shot, confirmed that he had no drugs in his system.
But he was found guilty of a misdemeanor of possessing less than, I think it was half of a gram of cocaine, and he was given a $500 fine and two years probation.
And that was the fruits of this paramilitary raid on this man's home in Texas.
I just found it striking that you have these two rather similar cases, one less tragic than the other, because obviously the case of Mr. Quinn didn't involve a death, and the death of Adam Sowers is a tragedy by any definition.
But I do think that the latter of those two examples, that of Henry McKee and Adam Sowers, does show a rather encouraging trend on the part of the juries, the grand juries here at least, in that at least they were able to examine Mr. McKee's self-defense claim on the merits and on the law, and decide that in spite of the fact that he was a mundane rather than a member of the state's exalted enforcement cast, that he does have the right to defend himself when he's dealing with unidentified intruders before gone in his own home.
That's grounds for some highly qualified optimism, I believe.
And that sort of underscores something that Lysander Spooner was writing about back in the mid-19th century.
He talked about the right to resistance, how the whole purpose of having a constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms was to use those arms at a time of our choosing to protect ourselves against the criminal aggression of the government, and that he confided in the ability of citizens acting as jurors to vindicate that right when a citizen defended himself against corruption or aggression on the part of what he called bandits or ruffians, and he was using that expression to describe state officials who were acting in defiance of the law.
And unfortunately, such defiance of law on the part of law enforcement agencies has become epidemic in our country, and I think that we're starting to see just the beginnings, the premonitory tremors, if you will, of active resistance to that on the part of the public.
I think perhaps the perfectly hideous outcome of the Kelly-Thomas trial in Orange County, California has, if you will, sort of stimulated a histaminic reaction on the part of the body politic.
I think finally, our allergy to tyranny or perhaps a better example or better parallel via the gag reflex has been triggered on the part of that section of the public that retains some respect for the principle of self-ownership and the idea of the rule of law.
I'd like to think that's the case.
It's badly overdue if that is the case.
Yeah, well, I mean, that was one of the things I was going to ask you was about the pushback, and I think people, I agree with you that it is sort of becoming common knowledge now that, well, it's like, we're all black folks now is basically what you're talking about here is this is how it's always been for the darker your skin, the more likely you are to be tortured by the local deputy sheriffs.
But now it's just everybody because there's no accountability whatsoever.
They can do this to a millionaire.
They could do this to somebody, you know, whose ancestors came off the Mayflower or whatever they want.
Nobody could stop them.
Deputy sheriff has more rights than a billionaire.
Now in America, all government employees do and there's no accountability whatsoever.
And so it's starting to, you know, now it's the nice side of town where this stuff is starting to happen, which means it's starting to get more attention from people who at least imagine they might be able to do something about it.
Like it seems obvious that you can pass a very common sense, nevermind libertarian, but just a very common sense law in any state in the union that says, oh, no, actually, you can only use a SWAT team if there's a real reason to believe that there's armed and dangerous, you know, felon, somebody's willing to shoot it out with you.
Otherwise, you cannot do that.
And you're going to have to, you know, really explain, you know, why it is that you could expect that.
None of this nonsense about, well, hey, if he's an American with a gun, of course he would shoot if he's being raided.
So they have to raid him.
That seems to be sort of the way that the defenders of this bootstrap, the argument they'll commit an act of undisguised paramilitary aggression against somebody who's suspected of a nonviolent offense and then precipitate some kind of a tragedy and say that the tragedy that was brought about by their own actions retroactively validates what they had done.
That's actually the way that the so-called law regarding resisting networks here in the state of Idaho, there was a decision back in, I believe, 2008, Lusby versus Idaho, in which a police officer basically bullied his way into the home of a single woman.
And she resisted him at the doorstep saying, you don't have a warrant, you don't have probable cause, you're not permitted into this house.
He shoved her aside and then said that her act of resistance was a crime and then arrested her on the basis of finding a marijuana pipe or some such trivial object in her home.
And this went all the way to the state Supreme Court in 2008 and the state Supreme Court ruling here in Idaho said that the act of resistance to this illegal search by a police officer retroactively justified the search.
That's the sort of thing that's engendering the pushback that we're starting to see and I hope that it will prosper and thrive.
Yeah, me too.
All right, I'm sorry, we gotta take this break.
Hold it right there.
I hate to interrupt you.
I know I'll probably just, you're done.
But anyway, we'll be right back with the great Will Gregg on the Scott Horton Show right after this.
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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
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Now we're talking with the great Will Grigg, a chronicler of America's police state at Pro Libertate.
That's freedominourtime.blogspot.com.freedominourtime.blogspot.com.
And we're talking about the SWAT raid and the threat matrix.
And now this is something when you were first talking about this new policy where if the warrant is to be served on any home where the cops think there might be a gun and I don't guess this is completely universal across, you know, all 18,000 counties in America or whatever, probably soon enough.
Anyway, if there's any reason to believe that there's perfectly lawful gun ownership going on, that automatically guarantees a SWAT team or at least, you know, is a big counter on their threat matrix.
You get, you know, plus two for having a rifle on their threat matrix.
And it reminded me of what we all read of Greenwald and Scahill in their first piece for the intercept about the, and of course, Gareth Porter's great work on the Delta Force raids in Afghanistan for Truthout before that about, and Iraq too, about how they just use their cell phone data in order to come up with, you know, and then maybe one other kind of also vague signals intelligence in order to murder somebody with a drone when we're talking about overseas.
Same point being that the decision quote unquote is made by the computer.
So all you're doing is putting a check mark in the box.
Is he above the age of 14 and below the age of 70?
Yeah.
Does he have a rifle?
Yeah.
Is he a posh tune?
Yeah.
Okay.
Then he scores a 60, kill him.
And so, right, that's the way they do it there.
Same thing here.
The decision is already, it's like if you work at Subway or whatever, the instructions on exactly how many pepperonis you're supposed to have or whether there's no discretion involved.
You're just supposed to do it exactly along the formula.
And so basically, the adult decision making process of, well, you know, I could see how you might want to do a SWAT raid.
But in this case, I don't know.
There are children's toys all over the front yard.
So maybe we want to be careful or I just don't feel like murdering anybody this week.
So let's wait until he goes to the quickie mark for a pack of cigarettes and then pull him over on the side of the road instead or something like that.
All of those kind of, you know, human adult decision making processes are left out.
And the decision making is turned over to this automated function.
And therefore, the responsibility is turned over to the automated function too.
And so first they have no comment because there's an internal investigation.
And then at the end of the internal investigation, they say they did everything according to the book, just in the proper procedure.
So therefore, it was perfectly moral, too, is all you need to know, right?
As long as they have some template that will produce that type of a result and they can certify the proper procedures have been followed.
They consider this to be a good and sufficient justification of anything that was done, no matter how abhorrent or no matter how obvious it is that innocent people ended up being hurt or killed.
And the purpose of this is to give those who carry out these raids a colorable excuse here that will make them qualify for what is called selective immunity or functional immunity.
There are all kinds of different forms of immunity.
Qualified immunity is usually invoked any time a police officer does something that would be prosecuted as a crime before we're done by somebody not a cooter in the state's formal garb.
And I do think that you hit it on the nose, Scott, when you talked about the fact that there is this standard approach, this ritual of self-justification that starts with deferring public comment until the procedures have been investigated and that the internal review has taken place.
Then afterwards, when they've consummated this familiar ritual, they say the procedures were followed.
We have nothing more to say about this.
The decision's been made.
We're not going to relitigate that issue.
We have to move on from here.
A really good example of this in a very minor way just happened a few days ago in a little town here in Idaho called Fyler.
It's about 2,000 people, 2,000, 2,500 in population.
It's between two towns with police agencies, one of which is the county seat with the sheriff's office, eight miles away from the sheriff's office.
They don't need a police department.
There are five members of this police department whose function it is to collect revenue, primarily by enforcing municipal codes.
That's the only reason they have a police department.
They got a complaint about dogs at large on Saturday afternoon.
A police officer rolls up.
The dogs are on the front lawn of the house in question.
The dogs come up and start to approach him because he's a police officer.
Of course, he emits this dense musk of fear.
That's what police officers do.
That's their distinctive aroma.
So he gets out of the car and the first thing he does is kick at one of them.
It was a Labrador.
Labradors are not noted for their aggression.
20 seconds later, the dog is dead.
The dog was crouching on the front yard of this man's home.
He shot the dog about five feet away from the house, specifically a bedroom where a nine-year-old child is not a bedroom.
I think it's the living room, but the nine-year-old child was having a birthday party with a bunch of his friends.
Now, if any other person, somebody who is not a member of the state's enforcement class had done this, this would have been considered a felonious act of reckless endangerment using a firearm.
And under Idaho state code, I believe it's 18 to 37.
That's a felony for which the person would be liable for a 15-year prison term.
But within a few minutes of this happening, the police chief, Darren Feiler, signed off on his thing.
He followed proper procedures as far as I'm concerned.
He did everything that needed to be done the way it should have been done.
And the thing that really aggravates me about this, if you watch the video, and I posted an item about this on the Lew Rockwell blog early this morning, if you watch the video, you never see the encounter between this man and the dog's owner.
But the police officer pounded on the door and immediately lit into the owner.
You can hear the panic in that officer's voice.
His voice is tremulous.
He's completely lost all control.
And he is threatening to take the man away, arrest him for resist and obstruct because the man refused to provide his ID, which is not legally required to provide, by the way, unless he's operating a motor vehicle.
A police officer has no right, no authority to demand his ID.
But what you don't see is that the man was confined to a wheelchair.
He suffers from Parkinson's disease.
The dog was his trained companion animal, his trained guide dog and assistance animal.
No record of aggression at all whatsoever.
And he ends up handing this man a citation, $100 citation to pay for the expense of murdering his dog.
If you don't think the word murder applies, you're slaughtering his dog, perhaps is a better expression.
But this is all ratified because it fits the template of procedure.
And it's not just dogs that are being killed.
I mean, that's a horrible thing, but it's not in any way comparable to the killing of innocent people, including children.
You mentioned swap raids taking place in homes where their children's toys strewn in the front yard.
That reminds me of the Ayanna Stanley case from several years ago, where you have a SWAT team pursuing a murder suspect.
That's a serious crime, but it was a murder suspect they could have apprehended if they had simply staked out the house and waited for them out of the dwelling.
But they had a camera crew with them from A&E Network.
And so Showtime syndrome descended upon them.
That's when they wanted to pose and preen for the camera.
And many members of the SWAT team- Showtime being the code name for the ATF's murderous raid on the Branch Davidians.
And that's a big part of this conversation, Scott, is what we're finding here is that time after time, these SWAT raids are being carried out for reasons of propaganda, for reasons of agitation and propaganda, rather than for any tactical reason that will withstand scrutiny.
Of course, the whole war on drugs is one immense propaganda exercise.
There's nothing that happens that is of any substantive benefit to anybody.
I'm sorry, though, I stopped you from telling the story of what happened in that raid.
Well, in the Stanley case, you have a midnight raid that involves a flashbang grenade being thrown into a living room where this little girl, I think six or seven-year-old girl, was sleeping.
She was burned by the flashbang grenade and then shot in the head by the first trooper through the door, who later tried to blame the grandmother, claiming that the grandmother had grabbed the barrel of his gun and somehow forced it to discharge.
That's Joseph Wheatley, the name of that trooper that was the first through the door.
But there were people who were warning the SWAT team as they're gathering around the house that there were children inside, there were toys scattered in the front yard.
Even to somebody of the dubious observational capacity of a police officer, that's a clue that there are probably children inside the dwelling.
And they didn't have to do this.
They needed to lock down the perimeter here and just wait for the man to come out of the house.
It wasn't a hostage situation.
They got away with that one, too, didn't they, Will?
Yes, they did.
They did because they follow procedures.
And that, of course, is the reason why those procedures exist.
They're not to serve the benefit of the public.
They're to exculpate the people who carry out these killing errands on behalf of the state.
All right, now, I'm sorry, because we're almost out of time here.
And I really want to ask you if I can figure out the right way to phrase it.
Do you think that liberals imagine that gun laws will only be applied to the caricature of a Republican voter?
Do they think that that's who the war on guns is about and for as a bunch of upper middle class, you know, small business owners and golfers and whatever?
Do they not realize the hand-in-hand nature of the war on guns and the war on drugs, the demonization of gun ownership to the degree where the very same people who they decry as innocent victims of a drug war gone mad are made that level of victim because of the cops' assertion of probable gun ownership around, you know, legal or illegal?
I think you're describing accurately the tribal myopia of that faction of our political system.
And there's complimentary nearsightedness on the part of conservatives as well.
The difference is the conservatives are a lot more possessive here when it comes to the right to keep and bear arms.
I don't know why it is the self-described progressives don't reverse engineer our present circumstances to see that the current enthusiasm for gun control began with an effort to disarm black people in the Bay Area in California in the 1960s who were being abused by the police.
I'll go back a little bit further and see how the American Indians were disarmed before they were slaughtered and broken in the back.
Well, and the gun rights right needs to recognize just how militarized their gun control cops are because of the drug war they've supported all this time.
I'm sorry, we're so out of time.
Freedominourtime.blogspot.com.
Thanks, Will.
Thank you.
Take care, Scott.
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