BULLSHIT.

Over the past few years, due to California and Texas basically sewing up their borders, Arizona has had an huge influx of border crossings. The confrontations between smugglers and border patrol units has risen, and as such so has the number of violent encounters. While I try not to speak for people when I’m not in their shoes, it’s clear that this is a job where the dangers are known and evident by each rookie even before they sign up for the job. For that matter I would expect that all who DO take the job were people who can handle the stresses and make quick RATIONAL decisions when faced with a situation. This applies to all law enforcement and even the military.

If you aren’t able to handle the responsibility of the power to kill someone, you should not be allowed the job. It’s akin to giving a child the keys to a car if they don’t know how to drive… “hope you can figure it out when you get in trouble!”.

What I’m getting at is my frustration with a situation that just occurred at the border on monday. When it was initially reported, a spokesperson for the agency said that the officer was surrounded by people attacking him with rocks. While a stoning may have been a situation that would warrant lethal force as defence, a video has been released which greatly contradicts the official account of what happened. Watching the video, taken by bystanders, it is clear that there are people attempting to cross the border illegally, lead by one or two people. The agent who rides up on a bike, detains one person, and proceeds to point his handgun across the river at a couple of the other people who had crossed. According to the people filming, some rocks were thrown at the agent, followed by at 3 shots in return. In the end Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca was shot dead. He was 15, not of any size or stature to physically intimidate the agent and according to his parents (not that it’s relevant), an A student.

NOW, obviously he was a coyote. Obviously he was breaking a law. He had been apprehended by the border agents 3 times previously, but had never been charged criminally. And there’s gonna be people who are gonna try to justify what happened because he was a criminal and was throwing rocks, etc. There was even a SERIOUS discussion on the John & Ken show (a radio talk show on KFI 1070 here in southern ca) about how a rock, thrown from a person 80 feet away could impart the same impact that a bullet from the 9mm gun could, thereby “justifying” the response of bullets to thrown rocks. I’m not gonna get into the specifics of their “logic”, but lets just say they ignore some SERIOUS contextual and physical holes in their “study”… Like the fact that a rock, even traveling at the speed of a major league baseball pitch, thrown from 80 feet away is 10 times more avoidable than a bullet from a 9mm.

Take a look at the video and let me know if it looks like the agent was in imminent danger of death or dismemberment. Please take note that the victim was shot from diagonally across the river, the same area where the other people who were attempting to cross the border were at. Which means that was the ONLY area where any rocks could have been thrown.

So, after watching that, would you have acted the same? In my opinion, the agent did not have appropriate reason to open fire. I’m only speaking about this one situation and ones like it and am not getting into a discussion about the agency as a whole. To me it seems that there are too many people working for the agency that do not have the appropriate mindstate to deal with situations like this, and this is when innocent people are killed. And yeah i said innocent-even in the course of committing a crime, if the outcome does is not justified by the actions of the person committing the crime, than they are innocent in the sense of being a victim of a murder.