Editorial:
Death,
But
No
Justice
in
Houston
10/23/98
In Houston this week, a grand jury refused to indict six police officers who shot and killed Pedro Oregon Navarro, known to his friends as Jimmy Oregon, in the bathroom of his home after kicking in the door and entering without a warrant, searching for drugs. No drugs were found anywhere in the house, nor were drugs or alcohol found in Oregon's blood. Ballistics tests also confirmed that the officers were wrong in their belief that Oregon had fired upon them, and that the first shot was fired from the gun of one of the officers, as were the next twenty-nine. Oregon's gun, allegedly found near his body, had never been fired. He was 22 years old and the father of two small children. The officers, part of an anti-gang task force, entered the home without a warrant, on a tip from a suspect in another case who was not registered with the city as an informant, without any corroborating evidence. Of the twelve shots that hit Oregon, most were fired from above and behind the victim. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Entering a home by force is perhaps the most dangerous and intrusive part of the job of a police officer. One must embark upon such a task with the implicit understanding that anything at all, including an armed and dangerous individual, might be waiting inside. It is for this reason that it is in the interest of both the police and the community at large that such intrusions happen as infrequently as possible, and for much of our nation's history, such entries were, in fact, the exception rather than the rule. Enter the Drug War. Over the past three decades, the escalation of the drug war has made forced entry a regular part of police work. By its very nature, the black market and the use of drugs remain hidden, often behind the closed doors of private dwellings. There is rarely a complaining witness, and the word of an informant is often the only outward evidence of what are essentially consensual acts. In an effort to enforce an unenforceable prohibition, restrictions on "no-knock" entries have been loosened, and doors, often the wrong doors, are kicked in greater numbers year after year across America. Jimmy Oregon had done nothing wrong. He was simply at home, his own home, when six armed men burst in and shot him to death. There were no indictments for murder, there will be no significant criminal charges, it was simply a case of the police doing their job and escalating the war in the midst of an insane and destructive Prohibition. The grand jurors, perhaps aware of the difficulties and the dangers inherent in trying to enforce that prohibition, declined to indict on anything save a single misdemeanor for illegal entry by one of the six officers involved. Perhaps those grand jurors were right. Perhaps it is not the officers, but rather the drug war itself, which ought to be indicted. For we, as a nation have embraced a policy of domestic warfare. A policy that requires the state, armed with any information it can lay its hands upon, to kick in the doors of its citizens, guns drawn, prepared to kill. It is not a vision that our founders would have liked. It is not the America that they planned to build. We have become a nation at war with the shadows, shooting and killing and putting in cages anything that moves. Terrified and enraged by the prospect of what goes on behind closed doors, by the chaos we have created in our quest for order, by our inability to win the war. There is no justice in Houston this week, where a grand jury has decided, essentially, that being gunned down in one's own home by agents of the state is simply a price to be paid for living in a time of Prohibition. And even if those officers were indicted, and tried and convicted for the murder of Pedro Oregon Navarro, there would be no justice still. Because as long as we as a society are at war with ourselves, as long as we insist upon escalation rather than reason, upon terror rather than compassion, upon guns and prisons rather than regulation and control, there will always be a next time. And a time after that. But it is long past time for justice. And humanity. And peace. So for Jimmy Oregon and for thousands like him, for the health of our nation and the viability of our constitution, for our safety and our sanity and for the future we will hand to our children, it is time to stop kicking in doors. It is time to end the war. Adam
J. Smith
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