Eric Kush is not an intimidating fellow. He's about five-feet-six-inches tall and weighs about 125 pounds. There was no indication he had taken anybody hostage or was endangering the neighborhood.
In fact, neighbors say he is a friendly and easygoing guy. His only legal blemish was the outstanding misdemeanor warrant.
Jackie Mercandetti
Justin Delfino at first thought the SWAT team was a
street gang.
Jackie Mercandetti
The fire wrecked the Ahwatukee home.
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If MCSO truly believed they were facing a madman armed to the teeth with armor-piercing bullets that would cut through the flimsy chicken-wire and stucco walls of homes in the neighborhood, they didn't have the sense to alert neighbors to get the hell out of Dodge.
Instead, they left the entire area at risk of getting mowed down by a spray of bullets fired from automatic assault rifles that easily could travel a mile. But who cares about innocent neighbors when Arpaio's morons take to the street to make a pinch?
Who cares that there was a far easier and safer way to nab Kush for questioning?
The most prudent, cautious and least costly way to pick up Kush would have involved only a handful of officers. That wouldn't have been anywhere near as much fun as whipping out the big assault rifles and putting on all that manly body armor.
And MCSO wouldn't get to deploy Arpaio's beloved armored personnel carrier if they opted for the low-key approach to community policing. Lucky the damn tank didn't run over some kids playing in the street!
Arpaio unleashed his SWAT team on Ahwatukee without bothering to give Phoenix police, which has primary jurisdiction in the community, a heads-up about his latest Joe Show.
The sheriff's failure to alert Phoenix police about the planned SWAT assault will be the focus of a high-level meeting between the two police agencies. Phoenix City Councilman Greg Stanton says Phoenix police should have been notified before MCSO launched such a dangerous and ultimately unnecessary SWAT maneuver.
Most police agencies would consider the afternoon's outing disastrous. But for Arpaio's idiots, it was a good day -- at least they made an arrest. No matter that they arrested Kush on a misdemeanor warrant and found none of the automatic weapons that were supposed to be stashed in the house.
As fire spread throughout the house and engulfed the dog, the SWAT team soon had another crisis erupt.
The armored personnel carrier was pulled back from the house as the fire raged. But a deputy apparently failed to set the brakes on the heavy vehicle and it began rolling down a hill and smashed into a parked car.
The combat vehicle caused at least $4,000 damage to Julie Madrigal's car. The 44-year-old mother and her 9-year-old daughter had already been terrified by the tear gas assault as they fled from their car and ran into their house. At least Madrigal and her daughter weren't in the path of the carrier as it careened down the hill.
"I heard three shots as we were running in," Madrigal says. "I thought, `Oh my God. They are shooting at us.' I didn't know what was going on."
Madrigal says she watched the house burst into flames and moments later was shocked to see the "tank" roll down the road toward her car.
"All of a sudden, I saw my car jump back three feet and the tank land on top of it," she says.
The grand scale of the assault by Arpaio's Barney Fifes made neighbors wonder if Osama himself was holed up in the house. As details about the raid circulated through the community and word spread about the absence of any serious and immediate threat to the peace, neighbors became enraged over Arpaio's ludicrous use of force.
"We gathered all around all afternoon to talk," Madrigal says. "We were all saying this was just ridiculous. They just went way overboard. This was just crazy. They should have given us some kind of warning."
Finally, MCSO packed up its toys and went away.
But the stench from their operation would continue to linger for almost a week.
MCSO's callousness toward the dog, its owners and the neighborhood continued for another five days as the dog lay decomposing inside the burned-out house.
Delfino says the stench permeated his car and left neighbors gagging when they went near the house.
"When I finally went in [to the house], it was enough to make you throw up," Delfino says.
It never occurred to the MCSO that the rotting dog was a health hazard and a public nuisance. Once Arpaio's deputies finished their so-called investigation, they walked away from the mess they created, leaving Dre's body embedded in the rubble.
It was only then that the occupants were allowed inside.
Delfino says he was with Kush and Trisha Golden when, while digging through burned debris on the kitchen floor, they came across Dre's remains. Kush, Delfino recalls, fell to his knees and began vomiting.
They could only stay in the room for a few moments, but long enough to gather some evidence of the animal cruelty inflicted by Arpaio's deputies.
"I took a picture of [Golden] with a shovel holding the dog's head," Delfino says. The Ahwatukee fiasco is just the latest in a long string of bumblings and constitutional breaches by Arpaio and his nimrods. This comes on the heels of last November's botched prostitution raid where Arpaio's bozo posse men got naked and, in some cases, had sexual relations with hookers -- leaving Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley little choice but to throw out the cases.
