El Paso is in the national spotlight again. Again, it’s for all the wrong reasons.
Shortly after he graduated from high school in El Paso, José Oliva served in Vietnam, spending the war’s deadliest year in charge of 12 men, all of whom survived. When he came home, Oliva spent decades working in law enforcement. But Oliva suffered his most dangerous engagement after he retired, when he was brutally choked and beaten by police while trying to see the dentist.
In February 2016, Oliva went to his VA hospital in El Paso for a routine dental appointment. Oliva waited in line at a security checkpoint, placing all his belongings (including his ID) in a plastic bin. One of the officers manning the metal detector, Mario Navar [sic], twice demanded Oliva to show his identification. Both times Oliva tried to explain that his ID was in the bin.
Agitated, Nivar forced Oliva into a chokehold. Another officer, Hector Barahona, grabbed Oliva’s arm so violently, it “made a loud popping sound.” After subduing the 70-year-old veteran, Nivar and Barahona handcuffed Oliva and charged him with “disorderly conduct.” Though that charge was ultimately dropped, the assault inflicted lasting damage, forcing Oliva to undergo two surgeries for his shoulder and treatment for PTSD.
. . .
[W]hen Oliva tried to sue the officers for violating his civil rights, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals used an obscure legal loophole to toss his lawsuit. Undeterred, Oliva has joined forces with the Institute for Justice and filed a cert petition on Friday urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case. Failing to overturn the Fifth Circuit’s decision would leave “an enormous constitutional vacuum” that allows “thousands of federal police in Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana to disregard the Fourth Amendment.”
This is that doctrine of “qualified immunity” that our El Paso Police Department supports. Qualified immunity allows three armed security guards to escape civil penalties for beating up a 70-year-old veteran on his way to the dentist at the VA.
Helluva country we’ve got here.
Is this the whole story? Because it smells. Not that this shit doesn’t happen; reference the “tourist enema” ICE gave to that NM woman a few years back with the help of UMC. But it just reads too over-the-top.
Then again, our Controllers are currently in freak-out mode over the restlessness of the natives. DC is an armed camp, states are stumbling over themselves to declare energy assets “critical infrastructure” to put environmentalists in jail for decades for spray-painting a pipeline, and Pelosi wants to make MAGA a terror movement (but not BLM or ANTIFA that really are).
Centralized Power doesn’t like to be challenged, all the more reason for citizens to organize locally and do exactly that. What if we had blocked construction of Woody’s new building for a year?
I checked out the agent’s LinkedIn, mostly to see if he was any neighbor of mine. He’s career federal LEO grunt, working his way up, and now he’s in South Korea.
But come on. The victim is 70 years old. He’s ex-law enforcement also. The cop is working the x-ray machine at the V.A. The victim maybe wasn’t going to take any shit from a guy one step up from a mall cop. Maybe he gave the security guard attitude. Maybe the cop was feeling a little ‘roid rage. Maybe he’d been binging on Rambo reruns. Hard to figure it any other way.
I’ve got my own theories about that woman from Lovington.
I’M SURE THERE IS ANOTHER SIDE TO THIS STORY.
I’m sure it’s those left-wing radicals at Forbes trying to make the police look bad.
Watch the video my friend it’s on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is6xeUihZ3E
Guess what guys, Supreme Court dismissed his claim against the tyrants. At least he can sue the Government, so long as he can jump through the hoops in the Federal Tort Claims Act.