If you were to ask a thousand (or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand) people to complete the sentence, “It’s OK to kill people for ________”, or “People deserve to be shot to death for _______” I’d wager that less than 1 percent of them would complete the sentence with “doing drugs.” Keep that in mind, as the post below unfolds…

The Houston Chronicle reports some details of a drug raid that took the life of 29 year old father, Joel Alfaro (who was essentially killed for doing drugs), and threatens to take the life of a 54 year old police officer, Richard Salter.  Both men would be alive and well today, were it not for a senseless war on personal freedoms drugs.

As usual, witnesses to the raid say that police did not identify themselves, and approached the scene in an unmarked van with the headlights out. The surviving officers, however, claim to have identified themselves and indicated that they had a search warrant twice, while removing burglar bars from the door. The article does not indicate whether police found any drugs at the house, which probably means they didn’t find any.

And it’s curious that, although police officers now routinely videotape interrogations, confessions, and even routine traffic stops, you rarely see or hear about videotape from these volatile raids, which could certainly corroborate the officers’ assertion that they did adequately identify themselves as police officers. (IMO, whether they identify themselves or not, the raids are unjustified and unjustifiable, but that’s an entirely different discussion.)

HPD spokesman John Cannon said Alfaro knew police were outside his home Thursday night because surveillance cameras fed video to a television inside, and he could see them on the 55-inch screen.

This assertion is laughable. Apparently, we’re supposed to believe that Alfaro was committing suicide-by-cop. His history in the criminal justice system is far from exemplary, although it appears to consist largely of other non-crimes like marijuana possession.  The impartial Chronicle is quick to point out that Alfaro’s record has “several” charges in “recent years”, yet the most recent charge mentioned in the article occurred nearly 7 years ago.  Sure, Alfaro probably wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, and he may have been involved with drugs, but I remain unconvinced that with his two young children inside, he knowingly engaged four armed police officers in a firefight.

Given that

1. Alfaro may have been involved in some low-level drug use and potentially trafficking (as evidenced by his history), and that
2. Alfaro lived in a neighborhood the Chronicle describes as “hardscrabble” (which was evidenced by the burglar bars on the door at the residence), and that
3. Alfaro’s house had been previously burglarized (as reported elsewhere)

What is infinitely more likely is that he honestly believed he was being robbed, and responded accordingly.

The same people, most of whom would never say, “You know what? Anyone who does drugs should be summarily executed!” and even fewer of whom would ever volunteer to pull the trigger, themselves, are going to use this exact same un-logic, the “he got what he deserved” argument, in order to justify Alfaro’s death at the hands of the police. Nobody ever questions the legitimacy of the raid. No, if the State gives the officers an order to carry out, they are the “good guys” and the people on the receiving end (regardless of what “crimes” they’re accused of committing) are the “bad guys.” A commenter using the name “Shogun” wrote:

Under cover narcotics do not run warrants on innocent people. They spend long hours conducting investigations and surveillance. The suspect was a criminal and thats why he shot the officer and he got what he deserved. His family was obivously ignorant of what he did when they were not looking or just chose not to see him for what he was. I praise the officer’s partner for ridding us of this scum of the earth.

I’ve lost all fucking faith in humanity. All of it.

Apparently they didn’t conduct a thorough enough surveillance to know that Alfaro’s two children (aged 5 years and 5 months) were at home at the time. They didn’t conduct a thorough enough investigation to figure out any alternative time and place to apprehend Alfaro, choosing instead to launch a violent raid on his home. This could not possibly have been the best, or the most appropriate means by which to confront and apprehend Alfaro.

Another commenter at another news site says:

Glad this POS is going to be 6 feet under, prayers to the officer and the HPD

See, if the police investigate you and serve a warrant to you, you’re already guilty. Case closed, “the suspect was a criminal” is posited as an incontrovertible fact, which is then used to assign a motive to his actions (also posited as a fact) and subsequently to justify his death (he’s “scum of the earth”). I presume that “Shogun” and jgreen65 would beg to be considered “innocent until proven guilty” if they were ever accosted by police officers, regardless of fault or reason.

This is blind obedience to any authority symbol, no matter what are the commands, and post hoc rationalization of what most people would otherwise consider grave miscarriages of justice. Regardless of whether you think the war on drugs is legitimate (I do not), any reasonable person has to conclude that there has got to be a better way to apprehend suspects, than kicking down their doors in the middle of the night with guns drawn.