Opinion Forum

The Media Should Not Question Police Activity

May 21st, 2011

The media should not question police activity – to do so is disgraceful! So says Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik.

There has been more media coverage of the Pima County, Arizona SWAT team raid that resulted in a twenty-six year old former Marine dead with sixty slugs in his corpse.

The Tucson, Arizona SWAT team defends shooting an Iraq War veteran 60 times during a drug raid, although it declines to say whether it found any drugs in the house and has had to retract its claim that the veteran shot first.

Questions have been raised as to why medical personnel were not allowed to enter the house where the shooting occurred for an hour and fourteen minutes after the encounter which lasted ten seconds — and only after they were informed that the man was dead.

Meanwhile,

A spokesman for Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said he could not discuss whether any drugs had been found at the home or make any other comment. “We’re waiting for the investigation to be complete,” he said.

In a statement, the sheriff’s office criticized the media, saying that while questions will inevitably be raised, “It is unacceptable and irresponsible to couch those questions with implications of secrecy and a coverup, not to mention questioning the legality of actions that could not have been taken without the approval of an impartial judge.”

Uh, the impartial judge issued a search warrant; he did not issue a death warrant.

Those irresponsible media! Don’t they know their proper place in a free society? Why can’t they just cover all of the countless heroic actions of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department? For shame! (on the media, of course).

(This article was first published at The PJ Tatler.)

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: Dupnik, killing, Marine, medical, Pima County, police, satire, warrant
Categories: Media, News, Politics | Comments (2) | Home

2 Responses to “The Media Should Not Question Police Activity”

Tom Carter | May 21st, 2011 at 4:00 pm

This guy Dupnik is a piece of work. Remember, he was one of the main voices decrying the influence of vitriolic rhetoric among conservatives in the aftermath of the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords. He, like everyone else peddling that line, made a fool of himself in quick order.

One has to wonder if an ideologue like Dupnik would have taken the same positions if he were talking about the actions of some other police agency.

Brian | May 22nd, 2011 at 11:05 am

I’ve observed over the years that places where the press isn’t allowed to question the police/military are places that we usually call dictatorships, and the press functions solely as an agent of propaganda.

I didn’t particularly care for the press when I was a cop, but that’s part and parcel of living in a free society.

As far as Dupnik is concerned, he’s a typical liberal statist: violence is fine as long as it serves his ends.