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daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Thu Aug 26 11:54:46 1999
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 17:19:02 +0200 (CEST)
Message-Id: <199908261519.RAA12803@mail.replay.com>
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
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Bereft Family Disputes Police Shooting Report
By ANNE-MARIE O'CONNOR, Times Staff Writer
It was an hour before midnight when an El
Monte police SWAT team, serving a search
warrant as part of a broad-ranging narcotics
investigation, undertook what it called the "high-risk
entry" of a Compton home--shooting the locks off the
front and back doors.
Their warrant, which named no one in the Paz
home, says police expected to find marijuana and
cash belonging to a suspected member of a drug ring
who had allegedly used the house as a mail drop.
They found no drugs, but in the course of the search
they shot a retired grandfather twice in the
back--killing him.
The widow was hustled out of the house in
nothing but panties, a towel and plastic handcuffs.
She and six others were later taken away and
intensively interrogated, but no one was charged.
Ten thousand dollars in cash was seized as
evidence, along with a .22-caliber rifle and three
pistols, according to investigators for the Los
Angeles County Sheriff's Department. The family
said that the money was patriarch Mario Paz's life
savings and that he kept firearms for protection in the
high-crime neighborhood.
El Monte police, who obtained the search
warrant and conducted the Aug. 9 raid, said they
were using standard procedure for dangerous places
where they fear officers will be fired on. A sheriff's
investigator said the El Monte officer shot Paz
because he thought he was reaching for a
weapon--something Paz's widow, Maria Luisa,
adamantly denies.
Now the six children of Mario Paz--a grandfather
of 14 who would have turned 65 this week--are
demanding to know why the police burst into the
home while the family was sleeping. And what were
El Monte police doing in Compton?
The arrest warrant said the Paz home was
considered high-risk because high-powered rifles
were found in a search of another home linked to the
suspect. And El Monte police say their aggressive
anti-drug strategy commonly prompts them to serve
search warrants as far afield as Riverside, San
Diego and San Bernardino.
"We go all over. Anything related to our town we
go out and get," said El Monte Police Sgt. Steve
Krigbaum, the head of the force's Narcotics Policing
Division.
"If we can show it directly impacts narco activity
here, we'll go after it," he said.
Brian Dunn, the lawyer representing the Pazes,
said the officers should have known the family did
not pose a threat.
"They fired shotguns through doors and windows
as people were sleeping," Dunn said. "The tactics in
this case were beyond merely reckless. I don't think
there's anything [the family] could have done to
prevent [Mario Paz] from getting killed. This was no
different than a home invasion, in terms of what
happened to the family."
'It Was Like War,' Neighbor Says
Family members said they believed that a
robbery was in progress when they heard the
shooting.
Sheriff's investigators say El Monte police shot
the locks off the front and back doors to the house,
shot a "diversionary device" into a back bedroom
window that illuminated it, and threw a so-called
flash-bang grenade on the ground behind the house.
Neighbors said they awoke with a jolt when they
heard the shooting.
"It was like war," said Luz Escamilla, who lives
next door.
El Monte Police Lt. Craig Sperry, commander of
the Special Emergency Response Team that carried
out the operation, said up to 20 El Monte officers
were involved in the raid. He said he could not
comment on specific tactics used that night because
of the possibility of litigation. He said Compton
police, who have refused all comment, were also at
the scene.
However, Sperry said, "We always announce, 'El
Monte police. Open the door.' "
El Monte Assistant Police Chief Bill Ankeny said
an explosive entry is a standard SWAT procedure
and can involve opening a door with a battering ram
or a round of gunfire.
"We throw flash-bang grenades. We bust open the
doors. You've seen it on TV," Ankeny said. "We do
bang on the door and make an announcement--'It's the
police'--but it kind of runs together. If you're sitting
on the couch, it would be difficult to get to the door
before they knock it down."
Sleeping on their couch, the Paz family said, was
David Martinez, 63, a convalescing friend. He was
unhurt.
Until the raid occurred, the family said, they had
been resting after a routine Monday.
Maria Luisa Paz, 51, said her husband, a Mexican
immigrant, had been driven to Tijuana for doctor's
appointments that morning. She showed a reporter
his purchases of medicine prescribed for his heart
condition, prostate ailment, and back problems from
a 1985 on-the-job injury.
She said he also emptied his Tijuana bank
account of more than $10,000 in savings, fearing that
the money could be lost to the much-publicized
computer complications that some people are afraid
will occur Jan. 1. She showed a reporter the bank
receipt for the withdrawal.
Mario took his medicine at 8 p.m. and went to
bed, she said.
El Monte police showed up about 11 p.m.,
according to Sheriff's Lt. Marilyn Baker, who is
conducting the standard investigation into the
officer-involved shooting. Myrna Serrano, 44, a
friend of the family who lives in a converted garage
at the front of the house, said she awoke to gunfire.
"I didn't even hear them say they were police,"
said Serrano, an employee at an art frame factory. "I
thought they were thieves coming to rob us. I never
dreamed they would be police busting into the house
in camouflage and hoods."
Maria Argueta, who works as a nanny in
Manhattan Beach, awoke in a back bedroom to the
flash-bang grenade and screamed, "Don't kill me,"
the family said.
By that time, Maria Luisa Paz said, she may have
heard officers yelling "search warrant," but "I had no
idea who they were. They didn't show badges or
anything at all. I yelled to my husband, 'Get on the
ground! We're being robbed.' "
She said she got on the floor in her panties while
her husband got his $10,000 from under the bed and
put the money and his hands on the bed.
At this point, Sheriff's Lt. Baker said, two El
Monte officers entered Mario and Maria Luisa's
bedroom while six others searched the rest of the
house.
Conflicting Accounts of Patriarch's Actions
The officers said they ordered the couple--in
Spanish and English--to show their hands, according
to Baker. The lieutenant said Mario Paz "appeared
to be reaching for something, and believing him to be
arming himself, the officer fired two rounds . . .
striking Mr. Paz in the back."
His widow described the scene differently:
"They yelled and yelled. I said, 'My husband is
sick! He's an old man!' I grabbed [the officer's] leg,"
she recalled. "[The officer] just pointed the gun at
my husband and shot."
She said the officer, wearing a mask, "just looked
at me." Then another officer came in and ordered her
in Spanish to "get up and put something on," she
said.
As police hustled her outside, someone handed
her a towel that she draped across her chest.
Sheriff's investigators said two of the pistols
were in a drawer on the floor near Mario and a third
was in a bureau drawer with the rifle.
Maria Luisa was allowed to dress before she
was put into a mini-van, where she found that her
great-nephew, Juan Carlos Mechaca, had been
handcuffed when he got home from practicing with
his band. His mother, Leonela Ramos, Mario Paz's
niece, had been detained when she got home from
her night shift at a credit card factory. Maria Luisa's
son Jorge, 20, a computer drafter for a Norwalk firm
who had been in another bedroom when the raid
occurred, was also handcuffed. Altogether, seven
people were taken to the Compton Police
Department for questioning by El Monte police and
Los Angeles County sheriff's investigators.
Though they stayed until dawn, the Paz family
said they were never read their rights. Sheriff's Lt.
Baker said that was because the family was not
under arrest--they were detained as witnesses to the
shooting.
"They were not [detained as] suspects," Baker
said. "They were taken in as witnesses to the
officer-involved shooting. Witnesses do not get read
their Miranda rights. People can be detained in
handcuffs for safekeeping."
But Jorge Paz said one sheriff's investigator
"asked if my dad sold drugs or ever had a problem
with anybody. I said, 'No, no.' My dad didn't even
want us to smoke or drink. He wanted us all to go to
school. He was a good man."
The drug suspect named in the warrant is Marcos
Beltran Lizarraga. The Paz family said that he lived
next door in the early 1980s, that Mario sold him a
car six years or so ago and that he occasionally used
the Pazes' mailing address. The family said that they
sometimes would mark the mail "return to sender"
but that on other occasions their father gave it to
Beltran's nephew.
Mario Paz was pronounced dead at 11:29 p.m. at
Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center,
according to the county coroner's office.
At the time he died, he was planning to sell his
house and move to Colorado, according to Mario
Paz Jr., 31, a computer operations supervisor for the
Denver office of a California HMO.
"This was a real shock," he said.
El Monte Assistant Chief Ankeny said his
department has begun an internal investigation. He
said two officers were placed on routine
administrative leave after the shooting but have since
returned to work.
"Obviously, the officer who killed the person
actually felt he was being threatened," he said.
John Bellizzi, director of the International
Narcotics Enforcement Assn. in Albany, N.Y., said
surprise is an essential element in getting evidence
for SWAT team raids. Because of the danger of
fighting drug dealers, officers "have to take serious
precautions to safeguard their lives, and sometimes
unforeseen things happen. It's unavoidable
sometimes. These drug dealers are better equipped
sometimes than the police are."
But David Lynn, a private investigator assigned
to the case, said: "Even if this guy was the
'Godfather,' that would not justify the level of
violence used in this search."
Times staff writer Joseph Trevino and
correspondent Richard Winton contributed to this
story.
http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/STATE/topstory.html
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