| Dear Letters Editor: People who lived in police states used to fear the "knock on the door." In the American police state today, the cops sometimes don't bother to knock -- they just shoot the locks off the door. Such was the case in Compton, Calif., last month. At 11 p.m. Aug. 9, a Special Weapons and Tactics Team, supposedly serving a search warrant in a broad-ranging narcotics investigation, performed a "high-risk entry" on a private home. There was no knock. The cops blew off the locks on the front and back doors simultaneously. When they went in, their guns were still blazing. A retired grandfather was shot twice in the back and killed. His widow was hustled out of the house in nothing but panties, a towel and plastic handcuffs. She and six other "suspects" were taken into custody and interrogated. But no charges were filed. Investigators seized $10,000 in cash, a .22-caliber rifle and three handguns, but the drugs the cops were looking for were nowhere to be found. The family said the money was the life savings of Mario Paz, the 65-year-old killed in the storming of the house. He had taken the money out of a Mexican bank in anticipation of Y2K problems. Police claim they thought Paz was reaching for a gun. His widow, Maria Luisa, says that notion is crazy. But here's the most interesting twist on one more "dynamic entry" gone awry. The 20 cops who broke into the Paz home last month were not L.A.P.D. officers. They were not L.A. County sheriff's deputies. They were members of the El Monte police force -- operating way outside their jurisdiction. Why? Because the "war on drugs" allows them to do so. Joseph Farah WorldNetDaily Exclusive Commentary http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_btl/19990916_xcbtl_the_americ.shtml |
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