Map of Botched Paramilitary Police Raids in the US

(Map Credits: Research & concept by Radley Balko. Programming by Lee Laslo. Add'l research/editing by Victoria Kurzweg and Killian Lapeyre.

SWAT team raids "The Garden of Eden" The beast is gaining more and more unbridled power to lash out as he did this week at "The Garden of Eden" - a small organic farm in Texas reported by a RT News. This is but one of many raids that take place on a daily basis throughout the U.S. In this case they held 6 adults at gunpoint and handcuffed them for 10 hours saying they were looking for marijuana. Throughout the day the police conducted their search, destroying parts of the farm in the process. However, the property owner Shelley Smith told the media, "They came here under the guise that we were doing a drug trafficking, marijuana growing operation. They destroyed everything.”

The residents believe the raid was only an excuse to allow them to change the farm's "unconventional appearance." Code enforcement cops came along with the SWAT team and Smith said that they had been issued a number of code violations recently including, “grass that was too tall, bushes growing too close to the street, a couch and piano in the yard, chopped wood that was not properly stacked, a piece of siding that was missing from the side of the house and generally unclean premises,” The cops found no drugs or criminal activity but arrested one of the members of the group for an unpaid parking ticket.

Perhaps to some readers, this one "small" example of U.S. police invading a farm is hardly worth reporting on an international website. But the picture changes when one sees the frequency of such invasions and moreso, how many people are being shot and killed by these raiding police which are looking more and more like Colombian paramilitary death squads.

There are far too many US deaths by SWAT teams over the last few years to cover in this article. But here are three of the many examples we could cite of U.S. government troops murdering people in their own homes. The first is typical of these raids, selected from Radley Balko's investigation:

Anthony Diotaiuto killed in his home

It took place in August, 2005 when a SWAT team killed an innocent man in his home while his wife and 4 year old son hid in a bedroom closet in Sunrise Florida. After killing the man, the police claimed they knocked on his door and announced they were police. But according to neighbors who watched the scene unfold from their window, the police in black masks did not identify themselves before smashing down his door and using a flash grenade expecting to find drugs and guns. The neighbors said that if the police had yelled, "POLICE!" - they would have heard it. The police claimed that 23 year old Anthony Diotaiuto (a two-time Iraq war veteran) fled from his bed into another room and "armed himself." Radley Balko (quoted above) reported that the police initially claimed that he fled to the bedroom for a handgun and pointed the gun at them. Later, the story changed with a spokesperson for the police saying that the "found the weapon next to his body" after they killed him.

Diotaiuto returned from his night shift at one of the two jobs he had to provide for his family. According to his friends, he had a shotgun and handgun which he kept for protection with a valid concealed weapons permit. Balko surmised that he rose from a deep sleep, disoriented by the crashing of his door and flash grenade and ran terrified into another room. After they killed him, the police claimed that they found 2 ounces of marijuana, some plastic baggies and a scale. But by the time the case went to a jury trial, that amount of marijuana was determined to be 16 grams, a little more than half an ounce. The Broward County medical examiner reported 10 bullet wounds in his head, chest, torso, and limbs.

Epoch Times cited Radley Balko's White Paper, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America:

Balko said that botched raids such as this one are not 'isolated incidents.' Other examples of SWAT teams misused are the hundreds of raids conducted each year at a wrong address. Often the people targeted are completely innocent, unlike in the Diotaiuto tragedy. Further, the 'no-knock' and 'quick-knock' raids often rely on anonymous tips and 'dubious informants to obtain the search warrants.' The raids are intended to terrify. The police generally break down the doors with a battering ram or blow them off with explosives. Sometimes police use a flash bang grenade. Once inside, police force the occupants to lie prone, generally at gunpoint... Balko wrote in Overkill, 'The idea of sending battalions of men dressed, trained, and armed like soldiers to do civilian police work should give us great discomfort'.”

The dead man's best friend, Charles Steeves said, "They killed an innocent person. He didn't sell drugs. He worked two jobs to buy that house." Diotaiuto's boss said that he was a hard worker, only smoked marijuana "casually" and did not sell drugs.

Seven year old Aiyana Stanley Jones killed by cops in her home in Detroit.

Joseph Weekley

In May, 2010 Joseph Weekley, a Detroit cop shot and killed Aiyana Stanley Jones, a seven-year-old girl when they raided a home during the early morning hours as she lay sleeping on a sofa in her home on Lillibridge Street in Detroit. Aiyana was shot in the head and neck. Assistant Police Chief Ralph Godbee said the heavily armed "Special Response Team" was executing a "no-knock" search warrant for a homicide suspect and they threw a flash grenade through an unopened window around 12:45 a.m. before charging in with guns drawn but they got the wrong house. It may have never gained international attention except that it was recorded by a reality TV crew, which was filming an episode of “The First 48,” a program like "Cops" and other racist TV shows that feed off the misery of victims in praise of the work of US police.

In June, 2013 Weekley went on trial for involuntary manslaughter with a possible sentence of 15 years in prison. The cop claimed that he had "physical contact" with the little girl's grandmother, Mertilla Jones, after entering the home. On June 18, the trial ended in a hung jury and he is now to be retried. In the trial, Grandmother Mertilla testified,

"I saw the light leave out of her eyes, and blood gushed out of her mouth. I knew she was dead.” After the first trial, Mertilla stated, "He admitted he shot and killed her. He's a dirty cop because he said I touched him. I never touched that man. ... I was never anywhere near Joseph Weekley. He's a lying [expletive] cop."

Lakrista Sanders consoles her brother Charles Jones, Aiyana's father

Gonzalo Guizan

In May, 2008, a SWAT team raided a home in Norwalk, Connecticut after a prostitute called the police telling them that the home contained drugs and weapons. She gave the police a false name and after the killing no weapons were found but the police killed Gonzalo Guizan and dragged the home owner, Ronald Terebesi out in handcuffs. In February, 2013 taxpayers from 5 Fairfield County towns were ordered to pay $3,500,000.00 resulting from the raid on the residence in Norwalk that left Guizan dead, Terebesi traumatized and heavy damage done to his house. Reporter Jonathan Turley expressed his view of the $3.5 million settlement:

"Now, Easton First Selectman Thomas Herrmann insists that the settlement does not reflect any negligence by his officers or those of the other towns: 'While the defendants, police departments and officers from Darien, Easton, Trumbull, Monroe and Wilton maintain they were not responsible for the unfortunate death of Mr. Guizan, the insurers for the defendants, who will bear the full cost of the settlement, believed that it was best to resolve the matter rather than incur further attorneys’ fees, which were anticipated to be significant. The defendants concurred, further believing it was important to facilitate the Guizan family being relieved of the combined burden of litigation.' "That seems a rather belated concern for the Guizan family since you first launched a virtual military assault on a drug allegation, then killed the unarmed Guizan, and then fought their claim for damages until you had little practical alternative but to settle."

The only thing the police found were two smoking pipes and a tin with a minuscule amount of drugs. Jonathan Turley described the raid and this part of his original story has since been redacted,

"One would have thought this was the alleged bin Laden raid, as it looked like a military operation in a war zone. Heavily armed police and SWAT teams raided a home owned by Ronald Terebesi based on a tip from a local stripper that she had a “dispute” with Terebesi. This sounds pretty harmless so far, but SWAT team members dressed in armor bore down on this home with flash grenades, snipers surrounding the house, and a virtual tank supplied to this police department after the cover up of 9/11 by DHS. "When all was said and done, one man, Gonzalo Guizan, was killed and Terebesi was dragged from his home. Both of these men were unarmed, and had done nothing to warrant this raid, and in fact were cowering in a corner when the spray of bullets were fired."

And of course we all know how the Federal, State and City SWAT team killed unarmed Tamerlan Tsarnaev after the Boston Bombing earlier this year and critically wounded his 19 year old brother in a brutish show of force after ordering people to leave their homes during their private house raids in nearby Watertown.

As the map of botched SWAT team attacks in the US shows these raids are common in the U.S., The U.S. Beast is the perfect weapon of mass destruction the government is "using against their own people" under various pretexts such as "the war on drugs." He is unrelenting and will continue to pillage ordinary civilians in the U.S. until he's drawn his last breath.