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Ninth Circuit to DEA: Putting a Gun to an 11-Year-Old's Head Is Not OK

 
 
Reply Mon 18 Jun, 2012 08:24 pm

http://reason.com/blog/2012/06/18/ninth-circuit-to-dea-putting-a-gun-to-an#comment_3086520

Quote:

At 7 a.m. on January 20, 2007, DEA agents battered down the door to Thomas and Rosalie Avina’s mobile home in Seeley, California, in search of suspected drug trafficker Louis Alvarez. Thomas Avina met the agents in his living room and told them they were making a mistake. Shouting “Don’t you ******* move,” the agents forced Thomas Avina to the floor at gunpoint, and handcuffed him and his wife, who had been lying on a couch in the living room. As the officers made their way to the back of the house, where the Avina’s 11-year-old and 14-year-old daughters were sleeping, Rosalie Avina screamed, “Don’t hurt my babies. Don’t hurt my babies.”

The agents entered the 14-year-old girl’s room first, shouting “Get down on the ******* ground.” The girl, who was lying on her bed, rolled onto the floor, where the agents handcuffed her. Next they went to the 11-year-old’s room. The girl was sleeping. Agents woke her up by shouting “Get down on the ******* ground.” The girl’s eyes shot open, but she was, according to her own testimony, “frozen in fear.” So the agents dragged her onto the floor. While one agent handcuffed her, another held a gun to her head.

Moments later the two daughters were carried into the living room and placed next to their parents on the floor while DEA agents ransacked their home. After 30 minutes, the agents removed the children’s handcuffs. After two hours, the agents realized they had the wrong house—the product of a sloppy license plate transcription—and left.

In 2008, the Avinas—mom, dad, and both daughters—filed a federal suit against the DEA for excessive use of force, assault, and battery in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. That court ruled in favor of the DEA, and the Avinas appealed. Last week, the family got justice.

While the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals defended the agents' rough treatment of Thomas and Rosalie, it also declared that yanking the Avina children of their beds and putting guns to their heads did, in fact, constitute the “intentional infliction of emotional distress.”

"A jury could find that the agents pointed their guns at the head of an eleven-year-old girl, 'like they were going to shoot [her],' while she lay on the floor in handcuffs, and that it was excessive for them to do so," reads the Ninth Circuit's decision, which was filed June 12. "Similarly, a jury could find that the agents’ decision to force the two girls to lie face down on the floor with their hands cuffed behind their backs was unreasonable."........
 
boomerang
 
  3  
Reply Mon 18 Jun, 2012 09:00 pm
@gungasnake,
Well somebody had to say it so it might as well be the 9th.

These raids are crazy dangerous for both sides.

It baffles me how wrong addresses/tag numbers/identifications happen in situations that really need to be mistake free. I'm 40 years past 11 and I'd be completely freaked up if anyone busted in and put a gun to my head, even if they were the police.
gungasnake
 
  4  
Reply Mon 18 Jun, 2012 09:06 pm
@boomerang,
The kicker is, in this country at least, a person who were to shot and kill one or more cops or govt. agents in such an event would be totally within their rights. It has happened and in at least one case which I've read about, a jury took every bit of ten minutes to find a defendant innocent of all charges.

The root of all of this bullshit is the "War on Drugs", which has to go.
boomerang
 
  1  
Reply Mon 18 Jun, 2012 09:14 pm
@gungasnake,
I agree with you.

And that surprises me. Are you going soft of us?
0 Replies
 
roger
 
  2  
Reply Mon 18 Jun, 2012 09:19 pm
@boomerang,
Even the 9th had to get something right, sooner or later.
0 Replies
 
boomerang
 
  1  
Reply Mon 18 Jun, 2012 09:19 pm
@gungasnake,
I was having a conversation recently with my son about drugs. We try to be honest with him about things and he was hearing all this propaganda and it was confusing to him. He was asking what's so awful about it and I replied "Mexico."

Poor Mexico, such an insanely beautiful country and such wonderful people trapped between the South American cartels and America buyers.

I would love to take him to Mexico but I just won't do it right now.....
gungasnake
 
  1  
Reply Tue 19 Jun, 2012 05:19 am
@boomerang,
You might want to tell Mo about our FUBAR justice system and prison/industrial complex which is headed towards having eleven out of every ten people in prison or working for prisons, DAs who are paid by the head, privately operated prisons paying judges to send them as many people as possible, mostly on picayune drug charges, no-knock raids and all of that sort of happy ****.... No sane person at this point would want anything to do with our justice system.
0 Replies
 
OmSigDAVID
 
  1  
Reply Tue 19 Jun, 2012 05:30 am
@gungasnake,
gungasnake wrote:
The kicker is, in this country at least, a person who were to shot and kill one or more cops or govt. agents in such an event would be totally within their rights. It has happened and in at least one case which I've read about, a jury took every bit of ten minutes to find a defendant innocent of all charges.

The root of all of this bullshit is the "War on Drugs", which has to go.
Yes; the War on Drugs is deeply unAmerican
and it is the product of USURPATION of political power.
In America, government was created to defend our rights
from violation BY OTHERS, not to interfere with our own poor judgment.
Self-destructive conduct was never within jurisdiction.





David
0 Replies
 
OmSigDAVID
 
  1  
Reply Tue 19 Jun, 2012 05:36 am
@gungasnake,
It makes me think of what the government did to Randy Weaver & family.
gungasnake
 
  1  
Reply Tue 19 Jun, 2012 06:12 am
@OmSigDAVID,
The war on drugs is not a demoKKKrat problem. We need to get our own house in order on this one.

The incident I mentioned occurred in Western Md. in the mid 70s, four or five cops and fibbies were killed and a jury took less than fifteen minutes to find the shooter innocent of all charges and that took the steam out of no-knock raids for about 20 years, but they've come back since then. I think we're likely past the point at which a few cops getting wasted on one of these would stop it for another twenty years, the problem is political and needs to be dealt with via the political process. GOP politicians need to be aware that nobody wants this **** to go on.
OmSigDAVID
 
  1  
Reply Tue 19 Jun, 2012 09:55 am
@gungasnake,
I agree with u.

I did not mean to imply
that the War on Drugs was a Democrat problem.
I did not stop to consider it in partisan terms.

Most regretably, both parties have supported it.
Thay have failed to comprehend basis American filosofy.





David
0 Replies
 
 

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