"Comply or Die is Not the Law": Relatives of police victims speak at Oct. 4 rally in Salt Lake. |
After 72-year-old Robert
Warren was shot in the face at the front door of his home in West Valley City,
Utah, the police quickly identified and arrested the likely shooter and three
accomplices. Two days later, while the victim was still recovering from surgery,
the alleged assailant, suspected gang member Raymond Marquina was back on the
streets, because
the West Valley PD hadn’t provided sufficient evidence for an indictment.
“I would say we are just as surprised as anyone else that
this case wasn’t charged the first time around, but we’ll do everything we can
to get him back into jail,” insisted West Valley PD Public Information Officer Roxeanne
Vainuku. The Fraternal Order of Police was quick to defend the West Valley PD, describing
the “accidental release” of the suspect as an “understandable” mistake on the
part of the police – while blaming Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill
for creating “an extreme public safety risk” by refusing to charge Marquina.
“We know there is enough evidence to support filing charges
against the other three suspects, as they remain in custody and have been
charged,” asserted the FOP in an October 31 press release. “Why will DA Sim
Gill not address the real reason why the man who pulled the trigger was
released?”
The “real reason” for Marquina’s release is the valuable and
often-ignored constitutional provision called the habeas corpus guarantee,
under which a suspect must either be charged or released within a very brief
period of time. Marquina was arrested on October 22 and released a week later
because, as
Gill explained, “under our Constitution we simply can’t hold people because
we want to, no matter how much I may have wanted to hold him.”
Not satisfied with mere innuendo, the FOP claimed that “the
evidence to charge Raymond Marquina was there [and] the DA’s office was aware
of this”; this is supposedly documented in email exchanges for which the police
union has filed a public records request.
Although “a mistake is understandable, DA Sim Gill’s
covering up of the mistake is not,” declared the FOP, demanding that Gill act
on its public records request “without delay.” For his part, Gill said that he welcomed
the release of the emails and that his office had “nothing to prove other than
to do our job diligently and work with our local law enforcement on this issue.”
Gill’s concept of diligence might differ from that of at
least one member of his team – Steve
Nelson, who is Chief of the Violent Felonies Unit. The attempted murder of
Robert Warren certainly qualifies as a violent felony, which means the case
would fall within Nelson’s area of responsibility – and it’s reasonable to
expect that his name would figure prominently in any interoffice email traffic
dealing with it.
Of even greater interest is the fact that Nelson,
a Republican, is running against his Democrat boss as the preferred candidate
of the FOP, which seeks to remove Gill as
punishment for his unsuccessful manslaughter prosecution of former West Valley
City Narcotics Detective Shaun Cowley, who killed
Danielle Willard two years ago.
Nelson’s vita depicts him as the flinty-eyed nemesis of
gang-bangers, boasting of his 2008 “Gang Prosecutor of the Year” award, his 2010
RICO prosecution of the Tongan Crip Gang, and a long string of professional
plaudits, crowned with “an award of special recognition from the director of
the FBI.”
It is inconceivable that Nelson would not have been in the
loop in the Marquina case. Indeed, nailing a Surenos gang associate for the
attempted murder of an elderly man two weeks before the election would
certainly play well with voters – assuming that Nelson could take credit for
the bust, rather than his rival, who also happens to be his boss.
The FOP carefully avoided any mention of Nelson’s possible role
in Marquina’s “accidental release,” choosing instead to advance its
characterization of Gill as a “cop-hating,”
criminal-coddling outsider.
Flogging a nauseatingly familiar theme, the Utah
FOP and its supporters denounced Gill’s decision to prosecute Cowley as a
threat to that most precious of all things, “officer safety”: By holding Cowley
accountable for shooting a terrified, unarmed young woman in a parking lot when
he faced no credible threat to his life, Gill would cause other officers to “hesitate”
rather than killing out of reflex.
“My concern is that a guilty verdict in this case will
jeopardize the safety of the community by making police officers fearful of
defending themselves against criminals who are threatening deadly force,”
explained former federal judge Paul Cassell (who later acted as defense counsel
for Cowley) in
a letter to FOP attorney Brent Rawson.
Neither Cassell nor Rawson explained how the “safety of the
community” is enhanced by preserving the lethal impunity that police officers
currently enjoy. This is because the only segment of the “community” whose
safety matters to Cassell, Rawson, and their ilk are police officers and their
faithful “partners” in the criminal “justice” system.
This explains why the entire “justice” establishment in Salt
Lake County has turned against Gill with the vehement hostility of True
Believers dealing with an apostate. Could Maquina’s release have been a product
of something other than incompetence?
Marquina’s arrest and indictment wouldn’t generate positive
headlines for Nelson. His supposedly inexplicable release without charges
generated negative headlines for his opponent. Viewed from the perspective of
cynical political self-interest, Nelson had more to gain by blowing the case,
because the proverbial buck doesn’t stop on his desk. But if the evidence wasn’t
sufficient to hold Marquina, the fault doesn’t reside with Nelson any more than
it would with Gill. This means that the delinquency, or deliberate sabotage,
occurred in the West Valley PD, a department that – even more than most – is run like a
street gang.
“Either the FOP and the WVCPD botched this because they are
incompetent, or they botched it because they’re corrupt,” declares Utah
attorney Ed Flint, who until recently was a prominent a criminal defense lawyer in Salt Lake County
and knows all of the principals very well.
Emphasizing that he was “just putting two and two together,”
Flint believes that the fault doesn’t lie with Gill or Nelson (whom he
describes as a “quality trial lawyer” tragically in thrall to the police), but
with the DA’s enemies in the police union.
“The cops and the Fraternal Order of Police are slimy,
corrupt, and out to get Gill,” Flint elaborates. “Gill says he can’t charge
[Marquina] on `made-up’ evidence. The [West Valley] PD knew what they needed to
do, they didn’t do it…. They brought the evidence for the accomplices, but not
the [would-be] murderer, because it makes a bigger headline, and a bigger
last-minute-before-the-election slimy smear on the DA they’ve decided is not
their puppet.”
Gill was supported by the FOP during his last campaign,
which made the foreign-born Democrat politically palatable in conservative,
Republican-heavy Salt Lake County. Flint reports that the controversy over
Marquina’s release is having a measurable negative impact on Gill’s image. Flint
describes how a close friend, “a staunch Democrat,” is thinking about
supporting Nelson out of the belief that Gill “needs to come clean” about
something that most likely is not his fault.
“Who do you think screwed up?” Flint continues. “The DA for
refusing to abuse the Constitution, or the cops for refusing to provide
sufficient evidence on one of [the] suspects to sustain probable cause?”
Asked if he thought that the FOP possess sufficient amoral
deviousness to arrange the release a violent criminal in order to obtain
political leverage against an independent DA, Flint was unequivocal: “Absolutely.
They are that evil, and that Machiavellian. No doubt.”
Marquina is a “known gang associate,” which means that the
cops can keep “a close eye on [him] so he won’t be too far away to grab, and
for them to grab the publicity of re-arresting the [would-be] murderer that Sim
let go,” Flint predicts. This would most likely happen after the election,
however it turns out.
The Utah FOP has doubtless taken alarm over the growing
public disaffection with the police, which has been propelled by outrage over
the Danielle Willard case and dozens of others similar to it.
On
October 4, hundreds of Utah residents – many of them relatives of people who
had been killed by police -- congregated outside the Scott Matheson Courthouse in Salt
Lake City. Invoking the theme of the protest, Sandy resident
Edward Peltekian, a former civilian police volunteer, declared: “`Comply or
die’ is not the law. We are not subjects, we are citizens.”
The concluding speech at the rally was offered by former
Davis County Sheriff William Lawrence. In 1974, Lawrence
helped organize one of the state’s first SWAT teams. On September 22, 2008, his
son-in-law, Brian Wood, was killed by that SWAT team outside his home following a
12-hour standoff.
After
suffering a breakdown of some kind, Wood called 911 to report (falsely) that he
had beaten and raped his wife. SWAT operators used chemical weapons to force
Wood from the pickup truck in which he had taken refuge, then treated him to a
barrage of rubber bullets, projectile bean bags, and pepper-spray rounds, in
addition to tear gas and flash-bang grenades. While Wood was prone and helpless,
he was shot with a Taser at least eight times by one officer, and an unknown
number of times by a second — before being shot at point-blank range by another
officer wielding a .308-caliber rifle.
One
witness described the onslaught as “horrible — just like
someone tormenting an animal in a cage.”
In
his speech at the October 4 rally, Lawrence pointed out that in recent decades,
law enforcement officers have been marinated in the conceit that they are a
caste apart from, and superior to, the population they supposedly serve. Whatever
else can be said about Salt Lake County DA Sim Gill, he apparently agrees with
those concerns.
For the FOP, it is unacceptable for a prosecutor to take the
side of the Mundanes in any case involving the use of lethal force. The union
had motive, means, and opportunity to “botch” the Marquina case as an
election-eve dirty trick at Gill’s expense.
Setting a would-be killer loose did
create, as the FOP acknowledged, “an extreme public safety risk” – but that’s a
trifling price to pay to punish an enemy of the police union and preserve the
privileges of Salt Lake County’s coercive caste.
If you can, please donate to help keep Pro Libertate online. Thank you!
Dum spiro, pugno!
3 comments:
Great article; And I agree that the FOP is evil and would absolutely do such a thing.
I am glad that the my theme of Comply or Die is NOT the Law was pick up as I believe that the Holy Ghost gave me that slogan the morning before the rally; which I loudly invoked with my bullhorn during the rally and also the sign you see in the rally photos.
Unfortunately Jacob, "Comply Or Die" IS "the law", as is anything else the Kings' men demand of you.
Will, I believe you mean "Public DIS-Information Officer", don't you? :)
“My concern is that a guilty verdict in this case will jeopardize the safety of the community by making police officers fearful of defending themselves against criminals who are threatening deadly force,” . . . that is truly rich! Coppers already jeopardize the safety of the community by NOT being held to the same standards of Rules Of Engagement the rest of us peons are . . . true threat of deadly force, not simply feeling fearful, which would ultimately give the porcine ilk license to shoot everybody on sight. "hesitate"?? . . . like the rest of us have to in order to ascertain with certainty that we are indeed under "imminent threat of grievous bodily harm or death"?! Holier-than-thou types surely are annoying and dangerous, especially when they are empowered and equipped with MY money.
Well I have to agree with Jacob Law. And this sorry no good COLD BLOODED killer needed to be chargered tried and covicted but of murder. They dont do the job they swore into do. PROTECT AND SERVE. They dont PROTECT AND SERVE because they are to busy breaking the Law and being EVIL CROOKED AND CORRUPT. They put themselves in situations that they put themselves in danger so they can't do their jobs right.When you can't even feel safe in your own COMMUNITY because you never know what could happen or When. There is a problem. Innocent people are during daily at the hands of law enforcement and it's just getting worse. Its sad and can be prevented.
Post a Comment