by
William Norman Grigg

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Authorized Rape: The Newest Weapon in the Prohibitionist Arsenal

Stanley
Gibson, a disabled Gulf War veteran, was murdered in a Las Vegas
parking lot last December 12. He was shot seven times in the back
of the head, without provocation, by a stranger wielding an AR-15
rifle. The
killer, 34-year-old Jesus Arevalo, remains at large and is easy
to find: He’s an officer with the Las Vegas Metro Police.

Gibson was
unarmed. He was not a criminal suspect and posed no threat to anybody.
His killing was a clear and unmistakable case of criminal homicide.
Yet Arevalo has not been charged with a crime. He is on an extended
vacation called “administrative leave,” during which he
continues to collect his taxpayer-funded salary and benefits.

Meanwhile,
Gibson’s widow, Rhonda, has been left all but penniless. Her husband
was a
fully disabled combat veteran of the first Gulf War who suffered
from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and cancer – the latter
affliction most likely a result of prolonged exposure to depleted
uranium. Over the past several years, Gibson’s disability benefits
were consistently reduced and cut off entirely shortly before he
was murdered by Arevalo.

The day before
he was shot, Gibson – whose anti-anxiety medication had been cut
off two weeks earlier by the Veterans Administration – suffered
a breakdown. According
to Rhonda, “He didn’t know where he was and didn’t know
what he was doing.”

The police
were called after Stanley wound up in the front yard screaming at
cars and “causing a scene.” Claiming that Stanley had
taken a “fighting stance,” the officers arrested him for
“resisting arrest” and booked him at the Las Vegas Detention
Center. Although they informed Rhonda that Stanley would be placed
on a 72-hour psychiatric hold, he was released within eight hours.

The following
morning, Gibson called 911 twice to ask for medical help. He eventually
drove to a nearby hospital, but left without receiving treatment.
At about 9:30 that evening he called Rhonda to tell her he was parked
outside their apartment complex – but he was nowhere to be seen.

Stanley had
actually pulled into the parking lot of a condominium next door.
She wouldn’t learn about what happened to her husband until seeing
a news report of the shooting – and recognizing his white Cadillac.

Eyewitnesses
recalled that Gibson drove slowly through the lot as if he was
lost and confused. At the time, Arevalo and three other officers
were at the condo responding to a call from a resident regarding
a suspected break-in. Although they had no reason to consider Gibson
as a suspect, they surrounded the vehicle and penned it in between
several squad cars. Disoriented and frightened, Gibson gunned his
engine and spun his wheels—but there was nowhere he could go.

For about a
half hour, the officers tried to get Gibson to leave the car. During
that period they should have been able to run his license plate
and identify the driver. They should have recognized that they were
dealing with a sick and confused man, and contacted a crisis intervention
team. They should have gotten in touch with his wife, who lived
less than a block away. They should have simply waited for Gibson
to calm down.

The officers
did none of those things. Instead, they chose to escalate the encounter
by devising a plan to force him from his car: One officer would
shoot out a window with a beanbag round, and another would incapacitate
him with pepper spray. After the window was shattered, Officer
Jesus Arevalo modified the plan by shooting Gibson seven times in
the back of head with his AR-15 rifle.

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Arevalo, who
has a lengthy history of citizen complaints and official reprimands,
was given the customary 72 hours to work out his story with the
help of a police union attorney. He was then placed on paid vacation.
Clark County Sheriff Douglas Gillespie, who supervises the Metro
Police, initially claimed that the shooting was justified because
Gibson supposedly threatened the officers by using his car as a
“battering ram” – a claim that disintegrated after the
emergence of a private video documenting that Gibson’s car was stationary
when Arevalo murdered him.

There is some
unbearably sinister symmetry in the way Stanley Gibson was murdered
by agents of the Government. As a U.S. Army cook in Kuwait, Gibson
was assigned to clear away what remained of the tens of thousands
of Iraqis slaughtered in the “Highway
of Death.”

During the
First Gulf War, shortly after Saddam Hussein announced the complete
withdrawal of his forces from Kuwait, U.S. and allied forces attacked
a convoy headed back into Iraq.

Following airstrikes
that disabled vehicles at the front and rear of the column, a prolonged
assault with incendiary weapons and depleted uranium rounds was
undertaken. A sixty-mile stretch of highway was left littered with
the hulls of about 2,000 vehicles and the charred remnants of tens
of thousands of human beings – helpless, retreating soldiers, as
well as civilians who had been caught in the traffic jam.

Gibson spent
several days picking through the reeking rubble and disposing of
the dead. In one of the ruined vehicles he found the mortal residue
of a mother and child who had been melted together when their car
was struck by an incendiary bomb.

The exposure
to depleted uranium rounds quite likely was responsible for the
cancer that forced Gibson to undergo a half-dozen operations and
left his face partially paralyzed. Immersion in the horrific aftermath
of that atrocity irreparably wounded Gibson’s mind and soul. He
had no way of knowing that a little more than twenty years later,
armed agents of the same Government that had penned in and slaughtered
the helpless Iraqis would do exactly the same thing to him in a
Las Vegas parking lot.

Rhonda
Gibson blames the VA for the death of her husband. Originally
classified as 100 percent disabled, Gibson had seen the VA arbitrarily
re-classify him, alter his diagnosis, and change his treatment regimen.
Last October 24, during an appointment at the local VA office, Gibson
“aggressively confronted” an agency doctor about the capricious
cutbacks in his cancer treatment. He was arrested by security officers
and eventually pleaded guilty to “assaulting a federal employee”
– by raising his voice in frustration over the fact that the government
he had served was killing him through malicious neglect.

The couple’s
financial situation worsened with each of the agency’s reductions
in benefits. In November 2011, the couple lost their home and moved
into an apartment next to the condominium where Gibson was killed.
Now that Stanley is gone, Rhonda is both emotionally devastated
and financially destitute.

Righteously
furious over this state of affairs, Steven
Sanson, retired Marine and president of Veterans in Politics
International, seeks to organize a charity fundraiser: He has
challenged Arevalo – who is a former competitive amateur fighter
– to a refereed mixed martial arts match, with most of the
proceeds going to Gibson’s widow. Sanson hopes to hold the event
on 12-12-12 – the anniversary of Stanley Gibson’s murder.

Arevalo, who
was as bold as Hector when drawing a bead on the back of an unarmed
man’s head, has no appetite for throwing down with someone who can
actually fight back. There is no such thing as “qualified immunity”
in the Octagon; Arevalo wouldn’t be able to call for backup, nor
would he be able to press charges for “obstruction,” “disorderly
conduct,” or “resisting arrest.” The referee wouldn’t
give Arevalo special advantages, and impose restrictions on his
opponent, in the name of “officer safety.” If the bout went the
distance, the police union wouldn’t be able to influence the decision
rendered by the judges.

Not surprisingly,
Arevalo has made himself scarce.

“There
are many reasons why I’m trying to organize this event,” Sanson
told Pro Libertate. “First of all, there’s a grieving wife
who has been left without income of any kind and who is literally
wasting away. Rhonda approves of the idea – in fact, she’d love
to get in the ring with Arevalo herself, even though she’s down
to less than one hundred pounds.”

“Secondly,
I think this would help promote awareness of the desperate need
for policy and personnel changes at the Metro Police Department,”
Sanson continues. “It would also help focus attention on the
problems suffered by many returning veterans, some of whom may appear
physically healthy but who have psychological problems and deserve
much better treatment than they’re getting. I also want to build
public support for revamping the current policies regarding officer-involved
shootings. Las Vegas has seen far too many shootings of this kind
in recent years, yet the
official inquiries always exonerate the shooter, no matter
how absurd his story or obvious it is that it was a bad shoot.”

Until two
years ago, officer-involved shootings were investigated through
a County Coroner Inquest, a non-adversarial procedure described
by former Nevada District Court Judge Don Chairez as “a search
for justification of an officer’s actions.” Attorney Adam Lagomarsino
refers
to the County Coroner Inquest procedure as “a kangaroo court and
a dog and pony show.”

Lagomarsino
filed
a lawsuit against the Las Vegas Metro Police on behalf of the
family of Lavon Cole – an unarmed man who was gunned down in his
bathroom by a uniformed serial killer named Detective Bryan Yant.
Cole, who had been targeted for a narcotics sting by the Metro Police,
was trying to dispose of roughly an ounce of marijuana – a quantity
insufficient to sustain a misdemeanor possession charge in Nevada.

The raid on
Cole’s home was staged for a film crew employed by Langley Productions
– the loathsome outfit responsible for the police-porn series “COPS.”
Playing to the camera, Yant had brought along his AR-15 rifle, which
was unnecessary for an operation targeting a mild-mannered non-violent
offender. After bursting into the bathroom, Yant shot Cole in the
back while his pregnant girlfriend was pinned to the floor in the
next room with a gun to her head.

In addition
to a previous shooting under very similar circumstances, Yant
had compiled a record of corruption, dishonesty, and criminal misconduct.
His version of the Cole shooting – in which the victim supposedly
made a “furtive” movement that left the heroic detective
in “fear for my life” – was impossible to reconcile with
the forensic evidence. Naturally, he was exonerated by the Coroner’s
Inquest.

The inquest
procedure was introduced in 1969. Between 1976
and 2010, more than two hundred lethal force incidents were examined
by a seven-member jury. Only one of them was ruled “negligent” –
and that decision was overturned on appeal. This isn’t a surprising
result, given that the
inquest procedure was a collegial exercise: The D.A.’s office
literally choreographed the questioning with the police department
prior to the hearing.

Attorney Lagomarsino
points out that no cross-examination of police officers was permitted
during the inquest. “We were allowed to submit written questions,
one at a time, to the prosecutor, but we couldn’t cross-examine
Yant” or even ask follow-up questions, he told Pro Libertate in
an August 2010 interview. The prosecutors didn’t even bother
to present a summation for the jury. At the conclusion of the inquest
into the Trevon Cole shooting, notes former District Judge Chairez,
it appeared that the judge “was almost asking for a directed verdict.”

Five days
before Stanley Gibson was murdered, the Clark County Commission
passed an ordinance to reform the Coroner’s Inquest process by including
a representative of the victim’s family and making key evidence
available to the public. This prompted a protest by the city’s largest
criminal lobby – the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, which
instructed its members to stop cooperating with the inquests altogether.
On June 21, the
police union filed a petition for a writ of prohibition against
the revised inquest – the most recent of several legal challenges
it has filed to prevent the system from being implemented.

“This
process is no longer fair to our officers,” sniveled union
spokesperson Chris Collins, whining that the revamped arrangement
wasn’t a “fair and level playing field.” Bear in mind
that police officers were still immune to cross-examination, and
the inquest jury was still prohibited from handing down an indictment.

The DA’s Office
remains disinclined to pursue grand jury investigations of police
homicides. Accordingly, the only “accountability” for
Metro officers who kill while on the clock is that provided by the
department’s “Force Investigation Team.”

Although he
is on congenial terms with Sheriff Gillespie and other key officials,
Steve Sannon isn’t willing to countenance their self-serving corruption
– and he says that he knows more than a few police officers who
share his opinions.

“There
are law enforcement officers who have expressed concerns to me about
bad leadership at Metro,” Sannon told Pro Libertate. “I’ve
even had a few of them call me and tell me they’d love to see me
in the ring with Arevalo, who’s considered a cocky jerk.”

Sannon says
that sponsors are lining up to promote the event. There is no institutional
or legal impediment to the proposed fight. In fact, an active-duty
police officer participated in the June
11 Rogue Warrior Cage Fighting Championships at the Cannery Casino,
which raised money for the Stars and Stripes Foundation.

“There’s
no reason why Arevalo, who was a fighter before becoming a cop,
couldn’t take part in this event,” Sannon observes. That is
to say, there’s no reason apart from cowardice and (what’s
much the same thing) a bad conscience. In any case, Sannon isn’t
going to relent in his efforts to impose hands-on accountability
for the murder of Stanley Gibson by calling out a police officer
who is protected by a system permitting him to kill without consequences.

Reprinted
with permission from Pro
Libertate.

June
23, 2012

William
Norman Grigg [send him mail]
publishes the Pro
Libertate blog and hosts the Pro
Libertate radio program.

Copyright
© 2012 William Norman Grigg

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