I think you're right; it's highly likely that they did more investigation, and they could have even put an undercover officer or informant into the game before busting it. And I understand the need to keep the specifics of an ongoing investigation secret.

But detailed information on their policy isn't available, so we don't even know how they determine whether to send SWAT or a few officers with a search warrant. All we can do is speculate, because the information we need to have an informed discussion simply isn't available.

1600.00 on the table come on guys...thats not a game.

The key word is armed guard. and yes, I would imagine they would roll out swat for both. try to look at it this way. Police get a report of a possible crime ( does not matter the crime) and in that report, there is a indication that there is an armed guard. The police are not going to mess around and send in partol cops to take the place. There going to send in cops that can take the place down fast without injury. They do not know what they are getting into.

I would imagine police protocol for using swat includes any scene that has armed persons.

Do I think you need SWAT for busting a underground poker room. No, its a joke.

Do I think you need SWAT in cases where there may be armed people. yes I do

Maybe they should of sent someone in undercover as Schmendr1ck mention. In that case they could of determined what response is required. But the news link posted in this thread does indicated a armed guard who was carring a 9MM handgun


Busted the game with a total of $1600 in cash. WOW, thats like very funny. Someone on a anti gambling kick down there.

Then you really are clueless as to how and why games get busted.

First of all, there is not an armed man that has held the patrons of the poker game hostage. This is not a crime in progress with an immediate threat that requires immediate police attention that they are going to just send SWAT right over.

Read the report again: "Deputies Thursday about 11:30 p.m. served a warrant" AND "Four men were arrested on charges of operating a gambling house". The police KNEW what they were getting into and I would make a large wager they had spent time staking out the game. This wasn't a spur of the moment bust based on some report or triggered by the rumor of an "armed guard". They obtained a warrant and were out to bust an illegal gambling operation, not heading there to shut down an armed guard.

Also, the amount of the money is what was reported on ONE guy associated with the game. Most raked games have one or multiple safes or other places to store money. They confiscated a money ledger. Players at games like this also sometimes play on credit and settle up later. Who knows how much was actually in play.

I just stumbled across this story, and it couldn't be more relevant to our discussion: SWAT Raids Home Investigating Threats Made to EPD Officers and Families.

If you watch the 3-minute video (or read the transcript on the same page), you'll learn about a "major investigation" leading to a raid in Evansville, Indiana. The raid was conducted by EPD SWAT on a home where police believed that someone was making "specific, on-line threats against Evansville Police officers and their families." In the story, an EPD spokesperson states, "The threats that were made were specific, talked about having explosives," and, "During the investigation we uncovered some more information that led us to believe someone in the home may be armed."

And the chilling conclusion to this fine piece of unbiased journalism: "While Thursday's raid may not have netted an arrest yet, the investigation is far from over. It's an investigation that hits close to home for many of these brave officers. 'They're making threats and we're going to address that. We owe that to our families, to our children and to the community. We're not going to let these types of people take over and have us scared in our own homes.'"

Oops.

Apparently the residents of this home had an open wireless router and were otherwise uninvolved. And the police, having nothing more than a few anonymous posts made from their IP address, decided to go into the house with SWAT, shattering windows and tossing in a couple of flash-bang grenades before hauling out people and personal property.

This doesn't do much for my faith in the risk assessment procedures that police departments use. And it pretty much kills the tiny bit of hope I had that some local news departments might still practice real journalism.

Here's a wrong-house raid that killed a guy
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...n_1116239.html

Thank goodness he didn't kill the five officers.

Here's a tip for not getting killed. Don't point your AR-15 at armed police and suggest you might be planning on killing them.

Seems like using SWAT went right. While obviously I'd prefer nobody get killed, it looks like someone was going to be on the wrong end of a gun that day.

Isn't the whole purpose of the second amendment to give the citizenry the means to resist against a police state?

We are a very confused country, this much is certain.

First, it's not certain that he even said this. The same SWAT officers who reported that quote also said that he fired his weapon at them, and this was later proven to be false (his weapon was never fired and the safety was still engaged). Secondly, less than a year prior to the raid, Guerena's wife had two relatives killed in a home invasion. She reported after her husband's death that at the time, they believed they were the target of a similar attack and were unaware that the invaders were police. Finally, the guy was an Iraq war vet who had just spent 12 hours working overnight in a copper mine and was sound asleep when the raid started. Flash-bangs were used by the SWAT team, and the family was awakened and believed they were under attack.

Is it really surprising that he grabbed a weapon to defend his family? And with only a modicum of investigation and common sense, couldn't the police have figured out that it would likely go down this way?

It seems to me that if they had used a different approach to arrest the guy, nobody would have been killed. The shock-and-awe approach frightened the guy into arming himself just in time to get killed by the SWAT team that was entering his home.

Many local goverments are facing enormous pressure to reduce spending due to declining revenues, opposition to tax increase and rising costs. In most cases, the single largest part of the municipality's budget is spent on first responders. When cities are seeking to resolve their budget problems, it seems inevitable that police / fire / ems are going to be forced to find a way to operate more cost effectivly

I would not ask "Don't the cops have something better to do?", I want to ask "Was this a good use of the tax payers money, in light of the financial stress the city faces?" SWAT operations are expensive, costing the tax payers $10,000 to $12,000 per incident (Perhaps more, perhaps less depending on how we do the cost accounting.) If this type of police action is representative of the SWAT team's duties, the tax payers seem to have good cause to question the value of the SWAT team's on-going existance.

For the moment, let's accept that it is good public policy to pursue legal action against unlicienced card games. We are not targeting terrorist cells, drug dealers, mobsters, etc that happen to also be involved with an unlicensed poker game. The question is how best to accomplish the policy in terms of both economic and safety issues. (Let's presume that some level of prior police work has been done to establish the nature of the crime and to support the search and arrest warants.)

One way to handle this might be with a handful of officers, maybe a few arrests and the rest given citations. At the far end of the scale, maybe we could accompish the public policy objectieves by the same means we handle unlicensed sale of tobbaco or booze.

On the other hand we could build a SWAT team and hold it in reserve to handle these types of situations. The extra financial cost is obvious. It is harder to see if the taxpayers got much, if any, value for their $10,000+ spent on this action.

We often hear how dangerous it is to be a cop and that cost savings shouldn't trump officer safety to justify police budgets. Both parts of this proposition are untrue.

It is not particularly risky to be a cop. Police deaths were 22 per 100,000 officers. That is comparable to the death rate for electricians. The most risky jobs are mainly in agriculture with death rates roughly ten times higher that of law enforcement. When we hear about 'police putting their lives on the line for us' just remember that the guy working on the light swtich is taking the same statistical risk, and the workers who produced the food for dinner are the folks really putting their lives at greatest risk.

Public policy decision often balance cost vs risk to life & limb, not just for police but in many other areas. When cities disregard cost, as many did leading up to the financial difficulties of 2008-2012, they end up with high levels of debt, fixed costs higher than income and difficult decisions caused by irresponsible spending.

It seems perfectly reasonable to question the sequence of policy decisons that resulted in having SWAT resouces available for and used in this type of police action. Not only did it waste taxpayer money but it may well have increased the risk to the public and police.

I know - tl/dr -=- DrStrange

PS disclosure - I am the finacial officer for local taxing agency that manages non-police first responders. We are just now having this type of discussion for next years budget. It is not easy balancing public safety vs fiscal realities.

I was going to write up a thing detailing my thoughts on this particular dead guy, how he escaped a half-ton pot bust because it was just his relatives (and how half-ton pot busts in southern Arizona don't involve the tye-dyed hippies), and how his family must be the least lucky law abiding citizens ever (the home invasion rate is pretty damned low - especially if you and your family aren't in or near the drug trade), but I'm pretty sure I managed to break the Tucson Police Department web search portal for crime statistics.

Lets just say that from everything I've read, I BELIEVE this guy isn't the saint a few would like to believe him to be, and that's why I believe when someone shouted ¡POLICIA! at his door, he grabbed a gun. At least he didn't grab the stolen gun found in his house -- I mean, we all have those, right? We're gun liberal in AZ, but we still frown on having stolen ones.

Police spend a month of surveillance all the time on totally innocent guys, and at the end of the month, they totally just raid anyway if after watching you for two fortnights they don't see anything.

And, sure, he was an ex-Marine who wanted to join the border patrol -- or cruise around town with his buddies with pot in the car and weapons concealed (or whatever gets you a minor gun charge here) -- law enforcement or complete disregard of the law, whatever, I'm easy.

FFS, I've had enough for one day about how the man is trying to put us down. ****'s simple in Arizona -- don't ****ing deal cartel drugs and we probably won't have to send SWAT to your house.

And nobody's going to have SWAT knock down my door either; because I'm not a damned drug dealer with cartel ties and a drug and weapons history who's been under surveillance for a month by the cops.

You can bitch about the militarization of the police all you want, but ours are out-gunned here in AZ.

They were aware of a armed guard.
Michael Droske, 45, of Palm Coast, was carrying a 9mm handgun on a holster and acting as guard, the Sheriff's Office said.
that included an armed guard at the door


I would assume, they staked the place, saw there were atleast one armed guard and decided to use sawt.

Just because it's sometimes warranted doesn't mean it's always warranted.

Excellent post, and this was the point I was trying to get at before I let myself get a little derailed by the Jose Guerena thing.

I fully understand and support the need for SWAT teams to handle certain types of high-risk arrests/raids/etc. But the use of SWAT puts an additional financial burden on the taxpayers, and (in my opinion since I have no stats to back it up) increases the risk of killing both the accused and innocents like family members and friends who may be in the way. It should be an option of last resort, and the criteria used to make that determination should be available for public review.