Gonzalo Guizan: another death by drug war
June 13, 2008 – 7:06 pm by JohnRadley Balko writes of another victim of the paramilitary-style drug raids that Republocrats and their myrmidon voters continue to support in the name of protecting our liberties or our morals or some such.
On May 18, police in Easton, Connecticut conducted a heavily-armed drug raid on the home of Ronald Terebesi, Jr. They began the raid by throwing flashbang grenades through Terebesi’s windows, then battering down his door and storming the house. Friends say at the time of the raid, 33-year-old Gonzalo Guizan was visiting Terebesi to discuss the possibility of opening an employment business. According to police, the unarmed Guizan charged the raiding officers, at which point they shot and killed him.
As usual, the police, prosecutors, and state investigators are hunkering down, and not talking to the press. But some information is tricking out. Here’s what we know:
- The raid came after a tip from a stripper who had visited Trebesi’s home. She reported seeing two glass pipes and said she witnessed Trebesi smoke a small amount of crack cocaine he stored in a tin. She made the report at 9am on the same day of the raid.
- There was a reported drive-by shooting at Trebesi’s home in March, though Trebesi appears to have been the victim, not the perpetrator.
- Police found no guns in the home, but did find some cocaine and the two pipes, and have charged Trebesi with possession, which means there wasn’t enough to trigger an automatic charge of distribution.
So we have a heavily-armed, paramilitary-style raid conducted based on a tip from a stripper of drug use, not distribution. In the process, a slight, unarmed man runs toward the raiding police officers, and is shot dead.
We are told by willfully ignorant, hopelessly stupid, and/or downright evil politicians, voters, pundits, and journalists, who are in a perpetual state of denial, that the War on Drugs is necessary to prevent society from descending into an amoral, libertine hellhole of crack dens and crime, like one of the cities in Grand Theft Auto or Biff Tannen’s alternate 1985.
I wonder what types of amorality and crime they are talking about…perhaps irresponsible meatheads, who have no concern for or even concept of right and wrong, wielding semi-automatic weapons and wearing body armor, throwing flash grenades into innocent people’s houses, breaking down their doors, and shooting on sight? Would that be a fair description of the dark and evil happenings in the Statist’s vision of the free society?
Once again, we see that the crime and chaos that Statists imagine would reign in a libertarian society already abound in the Statist world, and—here’s the kicker—they are perpetrated almost exclusively by agents of the State themselves! And yet their answer to everything is more, more, more government. Willful ignorance and irreparable denial don’t begin to describe Statists.
If police officers are not prosecuted and convicted of homicide, and imprisoned or at least exiled for the rest of their lives for their crimes, and the DEA and its War on Drugs not terminated, then even Republocrats have to admit that something is terribly wrong with our “justice” system.
I hold everyone who has ever voted for a Democrat or a Republican personally responsible for the murder of Gonzalo Guizan.
