Topic: War on Drugs
Baldwin will free Ramos and Compean Since "Snubgate," the Constitution Party has been actively trying to woo Ron Paul's libertarian supporters. However, this is not the way to go about it.by George Dance
(libertarian)
Monday, September 15, 2008
In the wake of the "Snubgate" scandal -- Bob Barr's refusal to appear at Ron Paul's September 10 press conference to promote his four-point "liberty agenda," followed by Paul's deletion of Barr's name from the agreement -- the Constitution Party (CP) has been making a concerted effort to win over Ron Paul's libertarian supporters. However, it is apparent that they have no clue how to do that.
The very day of the conference, CP presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin was on Lou Dobbs' CNN show, promising to pardon convicted federal agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean:
Vote for Chuck Baldwin for President in 2008. The first day I take office is the last day this lady's husband spends in jail. I will issue a pardon immediately upon assuming the White House; I will be glad to go personally and open the door for those gentlemen; I will restore their jobs to them if they wish to return to work. And I will do more than that: I will fire Johnny Sutton [the District Attorney who prosecuted the case]. (1)
In the press release announcing Baldwin's attendance at Paul's conference, his campaign made the same promise:
Baldwin, who joined other constitutionalists at Ron Paul's "Shadow Convention" on September 2 in Minneapolis, will be joined by Monica Ramos, wife of imprisoned Border Patrol agent Ignacio Ramos. Baldwin has called for the immediate pardon and release of Ramos and Jose Compean, who are serving 11 and 12 year sentences for attempting to uphold immigration law. (2)
Ramos and Compean are Border Patrol agents whose case has become a cause celebre since January, 2007, when they were incarcerated for the February 17, 2005 shooting of Mexican national and marijuana smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila.
On that February day, agent Compean had spotted a van which he suspected was driven by a drug runner or "mule" (correctly as it turned out; the van was later found to be packed with over 700 pounds of marijuana). When he tried to intercept, the van sped away, and Compean radioed for backup. Ramos and another agent responded, and set off in hot pursuit of the van, while Compean took another route to an interception point.
The high-speed chase ended, with the road, at a drainage ditch. The van's driver (Aldrete-Davila) abandoned his vehicle and took off on foot, with Ramos in pursuit. Aldrete-Davila raced across the ditch, and climbed the other side only to meet Compean at the top.
Accounts of what happened next differ. Ramos and Compean's supporters usually tell a story somewhat like this: "Ramos' fellow agent, Jose Alonso Compean, was lying on the ground behind him, banged up and bloody from a scuffle with the much-bigger smuggler moments earlier. Suddenly the smuggler turned toward the pursuing Ramos, gun in hand." (3)
However, eyewitnesses' testimony at the duo's trial told a different story:
The mule starts to climb the opposite side of the ditch, near Campeon [sic], and raises his hands.
At this point a couple other agents show up, including Ramos and Juarez. Someone yells for Campeon to hit the mule. From the evidence this has to be Ramos. As the mule gets near the top of the ditch, Campeon takes a swing at his head with the butt of his shotgun. The mule dodges and Campeon falls into the ditch, dropping his shotgun in the mud. Ramos, who is on the north side of the ditch, begins to cross it.
The mule takes off. Campeon, mad at being dodged by the mule, getting his uniform dirty and dropping his shotgun in the mud, scrambles up to the top of ditch and climbs to the top of a levee road that is just south of the ditch. He starts emptying his pistol at the fleeing mule. He gets off 11 rounds, changes magazines and shoots again. Amazingly, he misses on every round....
Ramos hears the shots but doesn't see Campeon shoot because he is climbing out of the ditch. When he does get out, he runs over to Campeon's side, possibly believing there was an exchange of gunfire. He raises his pistol, takes careful aim and takes one shot, dropping the mule as he is about to enter the Rio Grande and make his way to Mexico. (4)
Even the two agents' accounts differed. "Ramos testifies as he climbs out of the ditch he sees Campeon motionless on the ground, runs by him and fires his one shot because he believed Campeon to be a downed agent." However, "Campeon testifies that after the mule gets loose (he didn't feel a gun in his waistband or it didn't fall out with all this wrestling?), he gets to his knees, sees what he believed to be a gun in the mule's left hand (he's right handed), shoots, then stands up to change magazines." (4)
All accounts agree, though, on what the two agents did next: "Once Aldrete-Davila was down from Ramos's shot to the backside, they decided, for a second time, not to grab him so he could face justice for his crimes.... Instead of arresting the wounded smuggler, they put their guns away and left him behind." (5)
Ramos and Compean's supporters, like Baldwin, say that the agents were just "doing their jobs." (6) Arresting drug smugglers is part of their job; yet Ramos and Compean did not bother with that. As National Review's Andrew McCarthy put it:
The rogue duo had two easy opportunities to arrest Aldrete-Davila: First, when he attempted to surrender and Compean decided it would be better to smash him with the butt of a shotgun than to put cuffs on him, as it was his duty to do; and then, when the "heroes," having felled the unarmed, fleeing suspect with a bullet fired into his buttocks, decided to leave him there so they could tend to the more important business of covering up the shooting. (5)
And cover up they did. Salon later reported:
Compean hid some of the shell casings and asked a third agent returning to the scene later that day to dispose of the rest. Neither Ramos nor Compean ever reported the shooting. They were arrested a month later, and then only because ... Aldrete-Davila's mother is friends with the mother-in-law of Rene Sanchez, a Border Patrol agent in Arizona. After hearing about the incident from his mother-in-law, Sanchez sent a report to the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, which then dispatched a special agent to Texas to investigate. (3)
When Ramos and Compean were indicted, their union rallied to their defence; some agents even nominated Ramos for Border Patrol Agent of the Year for the shooting. However, at the trial, other "Border Patrol agents from the Fabens station took the stand to testify against Ramos and Compean. Fellow agents, including one who had observed the shooting, contradicted Compean's story about where he was and how he was positioned when he fired his weapon. The agent who had helped Compean hide shell casings admitted it under oath. Prosecutors showed that Compean had repeatedly changed his story about the shooting and that it didn't match Ramos' account. They were also able to show that although Compean had discussed the shooting with other agents after it happened, it wasn't until his arrest that he began claiming that Aldrete-Davila had had a gun." (3)
Ramos and Compean's supporters, like Baldwin, also claim that Aldrete-Davila was "armed". (6) Yet the "preponderance of the evidence established that Aldrete-Davila was unarmed. Besides Compean and Ramos, there were several other agents on the scene. None of them believed Aldrete-Davila posed a threat to their safety; none, other than the two defendants drew their weapons; and Compean and Ramos neither took cover nor alerted their fellow agents to do so." (5)
That was enough for a jury to unanimously convict the two "of causing serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, discharge of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, and a civil rights violation." (7)
Many, including some rueful jurors, were shocked at the length of the sentences. McCarthy points out, though, that "the agents have mainly themselves to blame. The government offered them very generous plea deals. Compean and Ramos spurned them. If defendants decline to plead guilty and insist on proceeding to trial, it is standard operating procedure for the Justice Department to bring its best case which includes charging the offense that carries the highest penalty among all readily provable crimes. Indeed, it is common for the government to insist on the most severe, readily-provable offense even at the plea-negotiation stage -- something Sutton's office did not do." (5)
Ramos's father-in-law (a staunch defender of the pair) confirms that: "During their time in jail, awaiting their trial, Ramos and Compean were offered plea bargains approximately eight times. The last offer came five weeks before trial. That offer was for one year in prison and reimbursement to the government for the $35,000 in medical bills for the treatment of the drug smuggler." (8)
Instead, Ramos and Compean received 11 and 12 years -- which included 10 years for discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. Says McCarthy: "This crime carries a mandatory-minimum ten-year jail sentence which must, by statute, be imposed in addition to the sentence of incarceration on any other count of conviction. It is Congress that enacted this law ... (including some of the members complaining most vociferously about this case).... Congress carved out no exceptions from this statute for law-enforcement personnel accused of crimes committed in the line of duty." (5) (emphasis in original)
Others complain that Aldrete-Davila was given immunity to testify, received medical care at taxpayers' expense, and even successfully sued the U.S. government later. However, "the case would not have been nearly as strong without the testimony of the smuggler. He was the only witness in a position to explain the entire transaction and rebut the agents' perjurious version of events. If it was important to do this case at all, it was important to present that testimony. Otherwise, the agents would have been positioned to portray themselves as decent men doing a tough job who were being unfairly nickled-and-dimed over mere technicalities" (5) rather than two rogues who chose to shoot an unarmed fleeing suspect they could have easily arrested instead.
(For what it's worth, Aldrete-Davila was later arrested on another mule run, and now is also serving time in a federal penitentiary.)
There are countries where soldiers and police can shoot suspects at will. The country where I live is fortunately not one of them. Neither is the United States of America. To quote McCarthy one last time; in the U.S.:
Cops are peace officers; absent life-and-death exigencies, they are not judge, jury and executioner. Not in big cities like New York. Not in rural middle America. And not on the border. As Sutton put it when I spoke with him, a big part of what separates us from many countries in the world is that "in America, the cops are the good guys." (5)
Are, or at least should be; and I believe that the majority do try to be. American law enforcement personnel by and large agree that they are not free to shoot whom they like, when they like. For instance, even before the trial transcripts were made public, "several long term, decorated Border Patrol agents who had access to privileged information refused to support Ramos and Campeon. One went so far as to say the public was 'picking the wrong guys to make heroes'". (4) The legal inablity of government agents to shoot whom they want, when they want, with impunity, is an important part of what distinguishes a free society from a dictatorship.
That is a distinction that Chuck Baldwin seems intent on removing. By pardoning these two convicted criminals, and even worse firing the man who brought them to justice, he would be signalling that one group of government agents -- the Border Patrol -- does have carte blanche to shoot some people -- illegal immigrants and drug runners -- at will, without fear of legal consequences.
Sadly, some of my colleagues agree with him. For instance, Ron Paul War Room (a blog that I usually respect) posted an article on the case in July which stated: "And even if it wasn't in self defense, where is the justification for taking down two border patrol agents for shooting some Mexican piece of filth dealing drugs?" (9)
However, I hope that other Ron Paul rEVOLutionaries, and libertarians of all persuasions, can see the parallels between American police pre-emptively shooting Americans, or American soldiers pre-emptively shooting Iraqis, and American border security pre-emptively shooting Mexicans. If one is wrong, so must the other two be wrong, for the same reasons.
Until Chuck Baldwin understands that, he does not deserve the vote of any libertarian.
(3) Alex Koppelman, "The ballad of Ramos and Compean," Salon, Sep. 4, 2007. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/09/04/ramos_compean/
(4) Bob J, "Ramos/Compean...A Bad Shoot," Free Republic, Feb. 21, 2007. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1788411/posts
(5) Andrew C. McCarthy, "The Border-Patrol Two Deserve Jail," National Review, Jan. 29, 2007. http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTQ4OWJjZTNmODMwNzhlMzA2MzZhYzJmYWM2NjBkYzI=
(7) "Ignacio Ramos," Wikipedia (accessed Sep. 15, 2008). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacio_Ramos
(8) Joe Loya, "The Ramos-Compean Affair: What really happened.," Ramos-Compean Blog, Dec. 5, 2006. http://ramos-compean.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2007-06-29T20%3A25%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=7
The views expressed in this
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In the mid-1960s, when I lived near the U.S.-Canada border, I had an acquaintance, a teacher, who worked during the summer as a border patrol agent. He told me once that he hoped he could get a summer assignment to work on the U.S.-Mexico border. The reason was that other patrol agents he had talked to who had worked that border told him that they always carried a Mexican knife with them. If they saw someone crossing the border, they would just kill them and drop the knife at the scene to "prove" it was in self-defense. As far as I know, the other border agents may have been just stringing "Jim" along. But I am sure that he was sincere in his desire to murder with impunity. In the current anti-immigrant hysteria with the increase in border security, I am sure that there are far too many "Jims" getting into the service.
Great Article, George. I appreciate the truth coming out on these two Border Patrol agents. If we believe in good responsible government, then we cannot accept this kind of bullying by police enforcement.
American border security pre-emptively shooting Mexicans? Iraqi\'s did nothing, this \"Mexican\" tried to smuggle drugs across the border. He was breaking our laws!
Nice spin, but unfortunately, this has partisan politics written all over it. Barr screwed up and now the Libertarians have to attack Chuck.
Yeah, your 'eyewitness testimony' came from stupid Mexicans.
Sutton sent people down into the interior of Mexico to offer green cards and amnesty to drug dealers if they would testify against the agents. What do you think they would do?
I'm not being racist here, I am talking about people from Mexico, not immigrants to the United States. Come spend a week in El Paso with these narcissistic morons and you'll see how bad things can get.
Here's the thing: the Mexicans that can afford the cars and green cards are the rich and wealthy of Mexico. They come across to shop still think they are something special. They cut in line, ram you with their cars and flee across the border, cuss you out in spanish when they don't get their way, and all kinds of other rude antisocial behavior.
Come live with these assholes and you'll see why you can't trust their 'eyewitness testimony' in court, especially if they are basically being paid by the prosecutor for their testimony.
Nice try, but get your facts straight about your sources.
This would be such a funy story if two agents were not in jail. I am a man living in the middle east and for me this is an incredible story of misjustice. Obviously, when u are a border patrol man, u are bound to meet unsavoury characters. U are more then likely to develop an over reaching behaviour. U get to accept soldiers in Irak becoming more violent then they normally would be if stress free yet not border patrol men
The two guys, presuming the smuggler was telling te truth,did not go by the book.But they live a daily confrontation with smuggler, terrorist infiltrators as well as poor bastards coming to pick tomatoes and return home. Yes they were hiding evidence, yet they were scared and lied. For this they deserve prison. But sentencing of a decade plus for use of a weapon in a violent crime is ridiculous.This was ment for muggers and holdup perpetrators . Not for security officers.
What if instead of drugs in the van there was a terrorist bomb and the terrorist ran away with his hands up in the air. Would u just let him run away? So all u need to do in America to commit any crime is to be a good sprinter and carry no weapon. Do ur deed, raise u hands and start running and u are scott free .Lol lol .People like thiswritter,probably politically motivated,promote declines of Empires.
Posted By: Joe Scarafone
Date: 2008-12-28 22:19:00
I\'m a retired Border Patrol Agent. I worked the Border for 7 years and spent three years in recovery from an on the job auto accident that left my left and dominant arm 45% disabled.
I worked San Ysidro, Tecate, Campo, Boulevard, El Centro, Calexico, Yuma, Casa Grande, and Douglas.
I never have heard anything so rediculous in my life! RTBOHAN. I have some land I want to sell you. Please contact me.
This is more like it. Hear this. Customs and Border Protection, rumor has it, is installing push bumpers on thier vehicles. The Agents are calling it the new "rope policy". That's where they give you enough rope to hang yourself in a high speed pursuit. That's the Agents Sentiment. Not very gung ho is it?
You'd have to be an idiot to engage in a high speed pursuit NOW! You better have approval in writting!
A far cry from Cowboys and Mexicans. And this was always the case while I served. It was made plain at every station I worked at that, Management didn\'t have any problems hanging you out to dry, or putting it more mildly, taking hundreds of thousands of dollars, well unlimited, and perhaps years in court, figuring out, if the decision you just made in a fraction of a second was legitimate. That definitly does not promote a gung-ho attitude. If anything, we don't do enough. I mean 12.5 to 45 million un-documented migrant workers illegally present should prove that point. And since I started with the Patrol in 95, Congress has mandated hiring a thousand Agents a year, but we couldn't keep anybody because they were so disgusted with the Job, they quite faster then they could be hired. We lost an Agent a day in San Diego Sector. What else do I need to say idiot! I witnessed no outright corruption at all, I'd say it was more like apathy.
On the use of deadly force, since I was a defensive tactics instructor, I knew the policy fairly well. You could use deadly force to stop a fleeing suspect if you believed that he is likely to harm youself, your parnter, or, an inocent third party. The question here is, When? Well, the previoulsy arrested criminal, Davila, who was awaiting conviction/sentenancing, just got into a scuffle with an Armed Federal Agent and apparently inflicted damage, (I wonder if he stopped to talk to his partner and chit chat to get all the details before resuming the pursuit?), a reasonable person would believe that he posed and iminent danger at some future point. Okay so lets say they scuffled, the agent fell down the bank and banged himself up. How different is that than if the criminal, DAVILA, in this case previously arrested and waiting conviction, ran somebody over? Would it be okay to shoot then? I wouldn't have a problem with it.
The man is willing to get away at all costs.
That reminds me of a Border Shooting I was in. A lady fell off the Border fence and I went down to help her. She snapped her leg when she fell off the fence. Just when I reached her, got out of my ride to help her, all the "fence rats" that live on the south side of the fence started throwing rocks. I immediatly tryed to put her in the truck. She screamed in agony. I looked, there was a palm tree yards away. I dragged her to cover while firing my gun at a person I could see throwing rocks, who was on top of the fence. Of course his buddy's were on the south side. Myself a Federal Agent, and an inocent by stander, thier fellow countryman, were being showered with rocks. It was 3am. Sounds like your on thier side RTBOHAN?
My supervisor instructed me, after I told him shots were fired, to leave the woman on the ground, call local emt's and get back to the station. If it hadn't been for a junior ex-army corman, who spoke up and said, "she's a witness in a shooting, we have to arrest her", I easily could be in Ramos Campeons' shoes if I hit somebody on the south side. I wonder if my supervisor would have admitted his mistake? What if I had hit somebody? I was cleared by OIG and the FBI in 2 hours. The Border Patorl on the other hand took a month to return my weapon. Thank God I didn't listen to my supervisor and, there were other Agents who had enough sense to speak up. When you start squezzing rounds off, immediatly your relieved of your weapon, Paper is cute, period!
You sit here and expect me to believe that several other Agents didn't tell thier supervisors anything? Yeah Right? It sounds like Sutton had an Agenda, a Pro La Raza Agenda, and probably threatened everybody remotly involved with "repisals and reprocussions", if he didn't get the story he wanted. He reminds me of Spitzer.
This whole thing sounds like something right out the Duke's of Hazard. You expect me to believe there was no radio traffic, nobody called shots fired, officer down? How many Agents witnessed this? Sutton made it sound as if there were a whole bunch on Fox. Because if that's true, there should be more firings. If not jail. I don't buy the whole thing, it's BS. Great Job Johnny. Thanks for making the Border a Less safe place to work.
As far as I'm concerned I want to thank Campeon and Ramos for almost getting DAVILA, a NOW convicted smuggler, off the street. They deserve medals as far as I'm concerned. I think they should get a huge settlement, say 50 million, and, early full retirment if they want it. Can you imagine being locked up with the DAVILA. They should make'em cell mates. That'd be like salt in the wounds. Why not?
I was in another shooting too. In this case it wasn't on the Border. It was about 75 miles norther of the border. It started as a failure to yield, (for people that don't know what that is, that's when a guy with gun and badge tells you to stop your car, and you don't), the circumstances led to the driver attempting to run over myself and my partner, while we were out of our car, he was shot. He was found guilty of attempted murder with a deadly weapon and OR\'d (released on his own recognizance, he was here illegally, LOL), pending sentencing. What dumb ass thinks he showed up for sentencing? Raise your hand. My entire mind set changed that day. It got worse later though when myself and my partner had four FTY\'s in one afternoon and were ordered not to pursue. Thank God they weren't terrorists and didn't have nuclear weapons in their trunk. Those thoughts went through my mind then, pre 911.
My attitude completly changed. I wouldn't think of putting my ass on the line for such a ridculous mission. In my case I was hit by a drunk driver who died. Poor kid, a letterman. 19 years old.
What a COMPLETE waste of American Tax Dollars. We'd be better off with the Brasero Program.
Talk about a gaggle, this whole thing was a dog and pony show designed to satisfy the voting (illegal) masses and make Sutton and Bush look good. It doesn't look like it worked out.......
Oh and I saw Sutton on Fox recently. He said that the Agents claimed there were over forty shots fired and the entire transcripts of the hearing were on line. I still can't find them. And I don't believe Sutton only because I worked for guys like him. They couldn\'t care less about stopping crime, unless he benefitted somehow. It's only the next promotion he concerned with, looks like AG's out of the question. He'll probably wind up like elliot spitzer, a ZERO. FORTY ROUNDS and it took a month to arrest the Agents. How many other Agents were cohersed with reprisals and reprocussions to get this story? It wouldn't be hard, after all, it is an accepted positon now.
President Bush should be ashamed of himself for not Pardoning them fully, especially after some of the white collar criminals he pardon, PLEASE!
Mr. Gargour & (esp.) Mr. Scarafone: Thanks for your feedback. It's clear that, while R&C are not the heroes some are calling them, neither are they cardboard villains either. To tell you the truth, even based on the trial evidence alone, I can see possible extenuating circumstances in both their acts: C could have been missing on purpose, trying to frighten D into surrendering, while R (who heard C's shots but didn't see who was firing) could have believed there was an exchange of gunfire. It's probably also true that they were advised to not file a report: that such bad shoots are routinely not reported. (I suspect that at least some of the agents who testified against them were complicit, but were also given immunity deals.) The border is turning into a war zone (not Gaza yet, but getting there), and it's certainly not R&C's fault alone, or even the Border Patrol's fault alone.
For all those reasons, I'd support pardoning both of the 10-year sentence which the court had to impose; meaning they'd both be free today. I'll meet you that far.
But I'd definitely draw the line at the idea of firing Sutton. Regardless of his motives, he did the right thing here; if he were fired for it, I suspect, the deterrent effect would be such that no one who shoots a Mexican on the border, for any reason, would be prosecuted again; no DA would dare risk it.
Which I suspect is what Baldwin would want: shoot-to-kill on the Mexican border. During his campaign he repeatedly called illegal immigration an "invasion," and declared himself in favour of stopping it with "any force necessary." And it was Baldwin, not me, who reportedly went around the country referring to Davila as an "illegal immigrant."
Add to that that there would be no legal immigration in a Baldwin administration -- both he and his party's platform have called for a moratorium on legal immigration until the welfare state is abolished (no Social Security, no Medicare or Medicaid, etc.), and the consequences are clear: he would turn the border into a domestic version of Israel/Gaza. If the only way to get into the U.S. were to be prepared to shoot Border Patrol agents, then, that's who'd be crossing the border; and each killing would make the next one more likely.
I admire your country, but it's becoming so militarized in so many ways; not just the border, but the cities and now even "Mayberry" are turning into places where government agents are shooting and killing more and more people. Which puts their lives at risk more, too. It's a scary situation which I don't admittedly have all the answers for. One thing I do suspect, though, is that a Baldwin presidency would have made things much worse in that respect.
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