Why the GOP-backed Indiana Gun Law Is a Terrible Idea
“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass – a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience – by experience.”
– Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist.
If Dickens were alive and writing today, he might have a character express a similar opinion of a law recently enacted in the otherwise sensible state of Indiana. The law, passed by a Republican-controlled legislature and signed by Republican Governor Mitch Daniels, authorizes citizens to use force against “public servants” (read police officers) whom they reasonably believe to be entering their home illegally.
This law is an ass, for reasons I’ll explain.
Some years ago I was the lead investigator on a case that attracted our attention to a particular apartment in a public housing project. We were thorough in our investigation, which included surveillance and other measures to ensure we were focused on the right suspect at the right apartment. I wrote a search warrant which was approved by a judge, and on the appointed day my colleagues and I prepared to serve it.
We were assisted in the matter by employees of the Los Angeles Housing Authority, which manages the city’s public housing complexes. I was supplied with a map of the complex in question, which indicated that the targeted apartment was actually two smaller units that had been combined into one larger one by means of removing a wall. During our surveillance, the suspect in the case was seen entering and leaving both sets of front and rear doors, proving, to our satisfaction and to the judge, that he lived there.
We selected one of the rear doors to the apartment as the place to make our entry as it afforded us the safest approach from the nearby parking lot. The suspect had been seen in the apartment only minutes before, so when we received no answer to our knock on the door and our announcement that we were police officers with a search warrant, we forced open the door and ran inside.
Immediately upon entering I could see something was amiss. The wall that had once separated the two apartments had been reinstalled: the two apartments that had been converted into one had been divided back into two. And we were in the wrong one.
Well, there was little time to stand around and ponder where we had gone wrong. We proceeded through the apartment from the back door to the front, exited, then repeated our knock-and-notice routine at the front of the apartment next door. In the end, the suspect we were after was arrested and the evidence we sought was seized. The suspect pleaded guilty, but not before some interesting court hearings at which was discussed the unconventional nature of the search warrant service.
In police work, as in all human endeavors, mistakes happen. Today in Indiana, officers making a similar mistake might find themselves in a gunfight with the occupants of a home they have mistakenly though lawfully entered. And under the terms of this new law, those occupants might kill a police officer and yet be vindicated in court. If they survive the encounter, that is.
I’m always wary of claims that this or that new law or what have you could get someone killed, but in this instance I see it as only a matter of time. And it won’t necessarily be a police officer who is killed but rather some innocent citizen whom the law is intended to protect. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the law allows the use of force to “protect the person or a third person from what the person reasonably believes to be the imminent use of unlawful force.” The trouble is, in the heat of such a moment, will anyone be able to make a distinction between police actions that are unlawful and those that are merely mistaken?
Incredibly (or perhaps not), the National Rifle Association lobbied for the law, arguing it was needed as a response to an Indiana Supreme Court ruling that held that a citizen had no right to resist an unlawful entry by police officers. That case arose from the arrest of a man who assaulted officers who had responded to a domestic-violence call. The bill’s author, Republican state Senator R. Michael Young, says there have been no cases in which suspects have shot police officers and then claimed justification under the new law.
No, not yet.
So now suppose Detective Jones of the Terre Haute Police Department finds himself on the hunt for some wanted and dangerous fugitive. And further suppose that Detective Jones receives information that places this fugitive at a certain residence. What will now happen if Detective Jones, despite his best intentions and all the careful planning one can hope to accomplish, barges into the wrong door in search of this fugitive? The homeowner, innocent of any crime and understandably startled, believes Detective Jones and his colleagues have entered unlawfully and arms himself so as to repel the invasion.
The police officers have mentally prepared themselves for a violent confrontation with the wanted fugitive whom they believe to be inside, so when the homeowner brandishes a weapon there is little time for calm discussion and admonishments along the lines of “Say now, gentlemen, don’t you think you’ve made some mistake here?” Someone is going to get shot, maybe a police officer, but almost certainly the innocent homeowner.
No one ever really wins a fight with the police, at least not for long. Even if our innocent homeowner manages to shoot a police officer or two and forces the others to retreat, it will only be a matter of time before the police muster additional firepower and resume their efforts, but now with even greater zeal. When a police officer has been shot, his colleagues are unlikely to be deterred by having it pointed out that they are at the wrong house. “Oh, you’re looking for 345 Lilac Circle? I’m afraid this is 347. Sorry about your friend there. Hope he’s up and around soon!”
The new law is truly an ass. Those responsible for it should realize it and take corrective action before something terrible happens. If they don’t, how awful will be the experience that opens their eyes?
Well, if they’re not breaking the law then they have nothing to worry about. Fair’s fair.
Right!?
We used to have a big hill in my town and I always coasted down it instead or riding my brakes but the car would pick up 6-8 mph of speed before reaching the bottom. I’m not a reckless driver and at the time I had never received a ticket. So one day I get a ticket for doing 6 mph over the speed limit at the bottom of this hill and I tried to explain to the officer that I was just coasting and the hill was why I picked up speed. I have an automatic transmission and the low gear was too low to keep a reasonable speed. “Too bad,” says the officer. “It’s your responsibility to make sure you doing the right thing.”
Now “Jack”, I don’t delude myself into thinking that there are no ramifications when police kick in the wrong door but it disturbs me that you think you are able to do so “lawfully but mistakenly”. If you get a warrant to search my house but end up in my neighbors home, you are not there lawfully. You don’t have a right to be there! If you get shot for being in the wrong home it’s not the homeowners fault, it’s yours.
In the case of my little story above, the officer made it clear that mitigating circumstances leading to my traffic ticket did not matter. The same should go for police officers too. I respect public servants and we have law enforcement in my family but there ought to be a level playing field, not a situation where I must bear responsibility for every nuance of the law regardless of circumstances but officers should be allowed to say, “Oops, sorry, my mistake! We meant to throw down and cuff your neighbor!”
Best intentions don’t buy you a free lunch if it’s not a common currency for all Americans.
You are absolutely right. A fair playing field should be a given if true justice is going to be served. I also have a severe hang up with the fact that it is a crime to lie to a police officer while they are perfectly within the law to lie to you.
I’m with you Matt, police officers and prosecutors can be assumed to be lying unless forced to do otherwise, and they are trained in ways to circumvent the bill of rights as well. Its no wonder people like Jack don’t comprehend just how much they offend the average citizen with their holier than thou/superior to you attitude.
“Oh, you’re looking for 345 Lilac Circle? I’m afraid this is 347. Sorry about your friend there. Hope he’s up and around soon.”
How about we change that just a little bit: “Oh, we were looking for 345 Lilac Circle. I guess this is 347 Lilac Circle. Sorry about your friend there. Hope he’s up and around soon. You see, being a cop is a tough job please excuse us and have a nice day.”
Its time they play by the same rules as Joe Citizen.
The end result will be less police going into homes to get criminals. A criminal will now know any home can be sanctuary because the homeowner could be armed and the police will not know it, so may not pursue. They just made the police;s job harder and riskier.
You reveal yourself as both a liar and a cophater.
@jschmitt: So be it. Let the criminals hold themselves up in their homes. They can’t hide forever.
whitetiger,
You reveal yourself as both a liar and a cophater.
I don’t know about the liar part but there appear to be a LOT of cophaters on the thread. Alcohol Prohibition did that too. Perhaps it is time to rethink Drug Prohibition as well.
jschmidt
“The end result will be less police going into homes to get criminals. A criminal will now know any home can be sanctuary because the homeowner could be armed and the police will not know it, so may not pursue. They just made the police;s job harder and riskier.”
You must be a cop. The end result will be less police going into innocent peoples homes without warrants. If the end result is less police going into homes to get criminals that is also a good thing. I have heard numerous accounts of police “accidentally” killing small time drug dealers or other petty criminals because they unnecessarily escalated the situation with a swat team. As others have pointed out, when the cops have been watching a criminal for some time they know his habits and often could arrest him in a less threatening situation. It is not the job of innocent people to give up their rights to make the job of police easier. If cops can’t handle the requirements of the bill of rights they should find another job. It just might not be one where they get paid to push others around.
white tiger
You reveal yourself as both a liar and a cophater.
Those are pretty strong words and a huge assumption to make from what I said. I don’t see how deploring lying by public officials reveals ME as a liar. It makes me wonder if you are a cop or an attorney.
I have personally witnessed cops and prosecutors, just prior to a hearing, collaborating on false testimony they would later present. I suppose that’s okay with you; as long as they get a conviction … whether the defendant is guilty or innocent. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that the cops get their way and the D.A. gets another conviction to brag about.
A cophater? Yes and no. I actually have friends who are cops. I do, however hate what a significant portion of cops have become. Thugs hiding behind badges. Those cops don’t deserve honor, and they aren’t a “tiny minority.”
I completely agree.
The Golden Rule of Law, which defines all situational morality and so enables trust, progress, and civilization, is simply: “Do Not Attack First.”
Even little kids instinctively known this, as the: “But Mom! THEY STARTED IT!” Rule.
(Attacking second, in defense of one’s self and of innocent others, is always OK, and is in fact necessary for any sort of retaliatory and ultimately preventative ‘justice’ to exist at all)!
Cops and prosecutors slanderously give themselves the “right to lie,” presumptuously victim-blaming that it’s to “defend themselves” and it’s “for your own good,” because of course everyone else is a criminal, and they actually get paid to pre-judge everyone else as: “Guilty Until (Never) Proven Innocent!”
Problem is, that makes THEM the ones who are attacking everyone else, first!
And lying is only the most basic form of THEFT – it’s the theft of the Truth!
This whole article makes the author’s case that the cops are always right, (even when they’re not) and that whomever they target are already to be judged guilty until never proven innocent. Shades of Judge Dredd! “We chose to join the police gang, so you’d better believe us even when we lie to you! Whee!”
No sane officer would have written you for six over. And any sane judge would have summarily dismissed the matter.
If uniformed officers knock I will allow them to enter. If some unidentified men in civilian clothing want in, I need to see some id. If they try to force their way in, it may be shootin’ time.
Whatever any court says, thats my course of action, and the chips may fall as they will.
“No sane officer would have written you for six over. And any sane judge would have summarily dismissed the matter.” Sorry to disagree with you there. I got a ticket for going 60 in a 55 zone on the highway in 1988. I went to court and told the judge that in my 1966 Mustang the speedometer had some bounce in it but he said “That doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility of following the law.” If they can hold me to that tight of a standard then I can hold them to the same.
you’re the one who is nieve’ there tiger. I have had cops pull me over for two miles over the speed limit and no judges don’t need to through it out. I’ve also had cops steel from me.
It wasn’t stealing. It was “collecting evidence”.
If you are suggesting that some law enforcement officers are insane, you’re right. Others are suffering from the delusion that they are God’s anointed, charged with smiting evil (definition subject to situation), while still more are merely uniformed thugs.
You aren’t going to get any sympathy from me. I don’t want the EPA coming to my home, or the USDA, or the SWAT team that the IRS apparently has.
This is doubly true of the cops.
If you “mistakenly” crash through my door, and you shoot me as I’m reaching for something…well, let’s just say I might as well die for a good reason. I’d rather have a chance of defending my home and my family by shooting you first.
Good lord, man. Look at the OWS protests and the number of police stations and associations who showed sympathy with OWS. UNIONS. The police have turned the public against them. They joined with Communists and now you’re upset that we don’t like you or trust you.
That’s your frigging problem, buddy.
I have long worried about SWAT teams. In the U.S. we have Posse Commitatus. This is supposed to prevent the military from being used against civilians. What is the difference between SWAT and the military? Same weapons and same training. Even the uniforms and the helmets are the same. The only difference is the color of the uniforms. Note that even the EPA has these guys. Let us not forget WACO or Ruby Ridge! BTW, in general, I am a supporter of our police. They do a very difficult job, usually quite well and for little recognition. However, using deadly force against “We the People” should be utilized only in rare situations. Unfortunately, the risk involved comes with the job.
What articles like this fail to mention is why the law was introduced. The Indiana Supreme Court ruled that it was NEVER ok to shoot an officer in your home. The court ruling meant a cop, on or off duty could walk into your house, give you the finger and start raping your wife.
If ANYONE should know that cops can be corrupt it would an officer from LA.
This bill simply clarifies that an officer doing something illegal is not above the law and is no different than a common criminal.
The Posse Comitatus Act does not prevent the military from acting as a police force if under federal authority it only prevents the states and local authorities from using federal forces as police. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
No knock raids that cause most of this sort of thing are a function of the Drug War – the rationale being “don’t let the perp flush the evidence”. So for a few grams of pot police are willing to do this sort of thing. (Flushing a kilo or two in a minute is not easy).
End no knock raids. Better yet end the Drug War.
Unwitting deception: “…there was a hill in my town…” Sure there was. When did it move to Miami?
Charlie, we are committed to die, if necessary ,for the “crappy job” of keeping YOU safe and well. Whether you like it or not.
James Wilson misrepresents the facts. Give us some of your alleged examples, Jimmy Boy!?
Because in some small town a person did not get a citation, therefore in many places the police are “sworn bullies”? Turn your thinker on, please!
Scoots, “ignoratio elenchi”, ignorance is no excuse. We are held reponsible to know the law, whatever it is. You are ignorant.
Glad to hear it. That means you won’t mind if you’re required to take a moment to assess the situation and make sure you’re in the right place, even if it means cops die. After all, better for the people who volunteered for the dangerous mission to die in the line of duty than for an innocent bystander to die because a cop screwed up. You volunteered to risk your life to keep me safe? Prove it by your actions.
no, white tiger you are not committed to die. The supreme court has ruled that cops do not have to protect other citizens.
I’m assuming you mean James Green, not James Wilson.
Perhaps I should have said there is a hill in a town I used to live in. Please tell me your “lack of understanding” is not a conscious decision. All I can do is speak for myself. Whether you believe it true or not, the situation can stand on it’s own.
Also, please save your “committed to dying” speech. No one is committed to dying…not even terrorists or insurgents. Go man a TCP in downtown Kandahar under the current EOF standards with a car barreling towards you at 80kph and it’s your job to determine if the car is a threat or someone who just doesn’t understand. Think about it; 80kph and 300 meters to go through the entire EOF process and make a life or death decision. It’s done successfully every day elsewhere and with much tighter “deadlines”. I don’t think taking a few extra minute to verify an address or knock to issue a warrant is asking too much….you could be the guy who has about 10 seconds to decide if he lights up a car with a .50 cal or lets it go…and hopefully it’s not an IED. Your high horse isn’t as high as you think.
white tiger,
A little advice: The arrogance that Jack Dunphy displays in the article and that you exude in your posts combined with your “poor me, I have such a hard job protecting all you lesser beings from yourselves”, attitude is exactly what makes ordinary people not trust you.
batfe has taken that sort of raid to an art form, to include killing harmless pets, terrorizing women and children, and outright murder.
Spot on. SWAT may have been created with good intentions (see ‘road to hell’) but it has morphed into a tool of choice in the drug war.
For those in doubt check out “OVERKILL: The rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America” from the Cato Institute.
You are an ignoramus. Please don’t procreate. This guy didn’t do anything wrong and therefore had nothing to worry about, right? Google Jose Guerena. A USMC Iraqi veteran intentionally murdered in his own home. Medical help was withheld and Mr. Guerena bled to death.
You are an ignoramus. Please don’t procreate. This guy didn’t do anything wrong and therefore had nothing to worry about, right? Google Jose Guerena. A USMC two tour Iraqi war veteran intentionally murdered in his own home. Medical help was withheld and Mr. Guerena bled to death. Really, just shut the f*ck up, idiot.
This is a horrible law and Jack, even you missed the nuances. Forget about search warrants and wrong houses for a moment. What disturbs me is what about the right house? How about a domestic violence issue? Remember the law states the subject only has to fear unlawful force. Please define that. Scenario: Suspects beats the hell out of the wife; police arrive; suspect decides that he is not going to go to jail; the fight is on. If the officer believes that he/she must use a baton or pepper spray to subdue the suspect who is fighting them, but the wife of the suspect, or even the suspect himself thinks it is unlawful, is he/she justified in shooting the officer? These issues don’t require the officer to have a drawn gun. Nor does it extend only to one’s home. It can include a traffic stop where the drunk driver decides to fight the officer. Remember it includes a third party interpretation. If I am walking down the street and see several officers fighting one guy (yes sometimes it takes more than one officer to arrest a violent suspect) and I know nothing about what is going on but I form the opinion that this poor soul will suffer from unlawful force being inflicted by the officers, I CAN SHOOT THE POLICE!!!! Wow!!! BAD law
We all agree that police work can be dangerous
If a police officer in uniform shows up at my door with a search warrant, knocks and announces, he’s not going to get shot. If someone kicks in my front door unannounced, I am going to assume that he’s a criminal. Criminals do that. On occasion, they even pretend to be police officers.
Yes, there are circumstances where a no-knock warrant is appropriate. A hostage situation. A terrorist situation out of 24. But otherwise? Knock and announce. It is safer for all concerned.
Exactly. Come in my house at 0 dark thirty unannounced and you’ll be shot. Knock on the door and show me a warrant and you won’t get shot.
Seems to me that this law protects the police as much as it protects the citizen.
Yes. My behavior towards Officer Dunphy won’t change a bit with this legislation. I will treat an uniformed officer with courtesy if he knocks and has a warrant. I will shoot him if he barges in unannounced with a weapon.
This legislation only offers me some legal protection for the mistakes of the police.
Sorry, but I don’t believe knock and announce is enough. These raids often (always?) take place in the wee hours when people are expected to be sleeping. They too often go like this: Knock, knock. “Police, search warrant.” One thousand one, one thousand two. Smash open the door and shoot the dog.
Is it reasonable to think that anyone who is asleep will hear the announcement? If you’re armed against intruders there’s a good chance you’re going to grab your weapon and die shortly thereafter.
Cry me a river Dunphy. Perhaps if you guys in the state issued clown costumes didn’t break the law with such regularity it wouldn’t be necessary to codify the right to self-defense against the state’s jack-booted thugs. Please visit “policemisconduct.net” to see what kind of criminal scum are wearing a badge. Note to Dunphy – Don’t break the fucking law and you won’t get shot by one of the little people.
I suggest you read Atul Gawande’s THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO: HOW TO GET THINGS RIGHT. It’s a study about how arrogant, aggressive men with power – airline pilots, surgeons (and yeah, cops) – get themselves into trouble because they overlook important details and refuse to learn from their mistakes.
Cry me a river Dunphy. Don’t break the law and you got nothing to fear. It is called a warrant. Perhaps you remember if from your time in the academy? Follow the law and you have nothing to fear, break the law and get shot, just like “little people”.
Damned Server Squirrels.
Sorry, Jack but you are wrong. This law is not about someone having the right to defend themselves against POLICE illegally entering their home. It is about a person defending their home from SOMEONE breaking in the door and coming in when they know they have done nothing wrong and there is no reason for them to believe that the police would be coming in, especially unannounced. the problem before the law is that if a police officer was shot in that situation, the innocent, law abiding individual was concidered just as guilty and culpable for shooting a cop as if he were a criminal who knew exactly who he was shooting at. I’m sorry but the police have the burden to make DAMN SURE they have the right place, even at the risk of losing the bad guy.
Mitch Daniels – “I neither proposed nor supported the legislation when it was offered in the General Assembly. I did study it very closely when it came to me. Based on what I’d heard, I was surprised to discover that this law increases rather than reduces the legal protection of law enforcement officers. The law enforcement associations with whom I communicated agree on this point. But, ironically, the law could have the reverse effect if its meaning is misreported or misunderstood.”
The passed law was in reaction to the Indiana Oligarchy – err – Supreme Court – striking down the law as it had been understood for nearly 200 years.
This quote from the article says it all: “No one ever really wins a fight with the police, at least not for long. Even if our innocent homeowner manages to shoot a police officer or two and forces the others to retreat, it will only be a matter of time before the police muster additional firepower and resume their efforts, but now with even greater zeal. When a police officer has been shot, his colleagues are unlikely to be deterred by having it pointed out that they are at the wrong house.
Nothing like doubling down after a bad bet.
The police are not above the law. It’s good for them to know that. Keeps ‘em humble.If this makes you want to leave the force – feel free. Based on what I see in this article you and your buddies aren’t wanted anyway.
Thanks Pardner,
I was going to quote the same paragraph but thought it was too long!
Screw the whining police apologists on this one. Every citizen has the right to use deadly force to protect themself from a reasonable threat of ILLEGAL force against them. Always have, uniform or no uniform on the perp.
ILLEGAL use of force, like body slamming a 90 woman. Or tasing a compliant suspect. Or seizing lawfully owned weapons Katrina Style
Go ahead Coppers. Try that stuff now. See what happens.
Might make you think twice before being a Complete Dick, or a Facist Tool doesnt it?
Dont like the risks of carrying a badge and a gun anymore?
Feel free to go into a different line of work.
Sorry Jack, I also agree with all the others here. The Police should have NO more protection than I do as a citizen who, in the comfort and protection of my home, has the right to be secure; even from the likes of the PD. If you are breaking down the door to my home and I have done nothing to deserve such an attach, coupled with the fact that I have no way to know for sure who the hell you are, I am going to yell a warning to stop or I will fire, then I will start shooting. I refuse to allow my family to die just because you the PD/FBI/DEA/ATF or whoever, screwed up and got the wrong house. I understand that I may take a dirt nap if/when this happens, but I’ve made the conscious choice to die free. I just hope I take a few of the thugs with me.
This country isn’t a complete Police State yet, close enough but not quite. I’ve read history and understand that if we don’t fight this crap now, God only knows what’s next.
Anecdotes make poor empirical data.
Good point. And projected anecdotes (“what ifs”) hold even less empirical data.
Save it, Jack. It’s long past time Americans sent a message to the burgeoning police state that we will defend our right to feel secure in our homes. Back off with the unnecessary SWAT “no-knock” raids; stop shooting family dogs out of hand. There is an increasing distance and distrust between law abiding citizens and the police.
I appreciate what Officer Dunphy is saying, but surely the police have become a bit, shall we say, authoritative, in the last couple of decades?
Think of the SWATing case recently where the conservative blogger suddenly found his house full of police, himself against a wall, his wife, too (I could easily be wrong on the details) but basically, did they not charge in? An exceptional case, but…
Look at it this way: I remember going to the police station in Lancaster, Ohio, some years ago (maybe ten or 12 now)–they had at that time recently built a new station–for some business, maybe pay a parking ticket, something like that. The old police office had been in the courthouse, open like the other offices. But when I went into the new police building, it was like going into a bunker on the Maginot Line. There was a small room only, with a small window, and heavy glass and a screen. You had to press a button to get attention.
It was surreal. Like one of those old Twilight Zone episodes. Lancaster was “lilly white” and the Long Branch saloon a few blocks away was where all the fighting/trouble was at that time. Drug use was on the rise, etc., but no one ever shot or attack a policeman or deputy. But in hindsight, I think my shock to see what they had built (to some degree, at least) suggested the gulf widening between the common people, and the armed authorities who had powers of arrest and detention.
So I have to agree here with the bloggers who (unkindly, some of them) are not in agreement with Officer Dunphy (whom I read whenever he posts).
In general, no police are necessary among free citizens who can govern themselves, while the opposite is: no amount of police are enough for a people who CANNOT govern themselves.
We’ll just have to see how the new law in Indiana plays out.
An Préachán
Thank you An Preachan, I too had to go to our local Police Office awhile back. To get in the front door you had to ring a doorbell and be checked out by a remote cam before they would ring you in. Once inside a small lobby, you had to take a number and wait to be called up to a bullet proof window to see a desk jockey to help you.
Unfortunately, much of this Maginot Line architecture came out of the madness of the 1960s.
If You’re referring to Patterico, I believe the deputies knocked, got him outside and then went in and checked on his wife and kids.
I’m afraid I’m going to have to go on the side of this new law. I’ve been worried ever since the Police went Para-military on us. If someone broke in my door wearing a mask and black BDUs I would be tempted to shoot too. Last I checked this is still a free country not a Police state though the way things are going I’m beginning to wonder. Drones and SWAT teams anyone?
Jack Dunphy, I’m sorry sir but in this situation you’re allowing your biased opinion as a former police officer (I’m assuming from the tone of your article) to affect how you view this law. While I concur with Clayton, I have to say The Fatman has it right, it’s no longer the small percentage of corrupt police officers who ruin it, it’s by and far the majority of police officers who abuse the badge and power.
I’ve been pulled over on my 2006 ZX-6R because, and this is a direct quote, “Your bike looks fast and I’m giving you a ticket for speeding in order to protect you and discourage you from thinking about speeding.” I was pulled over on another occasion (again on my motorcycle) because, and I quote again “The cars around you looked like they were getting aggressive and I felt I needed to protect you from them.” Didn’t even get a ticket and the closest car was 45 yards away from me. Wasted 45 mins of my time and I was late to formation.
My wife, hanging out with friends and having a good night in the back woods of South Carolina on private property is lured onto public property so the cops who were patrolling the area could arrest her and her friends for disorderly conduct. Her, believing the officers had her “best interest” at heart listened and did as she was told when they asked her to come into the street so they could have a civil discussion with her. Instead she winds up in jail with a misdemeanor on her record.
Yeah, sorry Mr. Dunphy, when officers have become nothing more than enforcers for corrupted politicians and abuse their powers, laws like this are completely justified. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that there are a lot of officers that just do their job and they actually server because they want to give back to their community and protect their friends and family. But in this case, a few bad apples have spoiled the bunch. Until they learn to respect the badge they wear others can not respect them or expect them to fulfill their promise of “To serve and protect”
I can see both sides of this. This is the eternal struggle between freedom and security, and this law is a stand for freedom from unconstitutional search and law-enforcement overreach. The problem here is that it’s too vague. The police have the right to shoot anyone who they believe is threatening their lives. It’s essentially a licence to kill whenever they feel threatened. They shoot knife wielding criminals all the time, and they shoot to kill…always. Doubletap. I told him to drop the knife. He didn’t so I gave him two in the left ventrical. So regardless of whether a homeowner has the “right” to use deadly force against a cop, the cop definitely has the right to use deadly force against the gun wielding homeowner. So it basically sets up a wild-west gun fight situation. The cop is going to win almost all of these contests.
Don’t know about you Jack, but all of the shooting training I’ve received has taught me to be pretty accurate with my aim. To make a statement like “They shoot knife wielding criminals all the time, and they shoot to kill…always. Double tap. I told him to drop the knife. He didn’t so I gave him two in the left ventricle.” Is the same as saying the police have the authority to kill without impunity. There’s nothing stopping the police officer from going “Drop the knife.” and when not followed putting a warning shot into the ground. If still no obedience, then put a shot in their lower leg or in their shoulder. To do a double tap to the chest is all the telling you need of the mentality of the officer who shot: An individual looking to take another’s life.
A good police officer will ALWAYS seek first to disarm the situation peacefully and only utilize force as a last resort. To often today it’s the exact opposite. And if you’re reply is any indication, you agree with the reverse of that statement.
Uh, hold on guys. I’m not disagreeing with the tenor of your post, but it’s clear you don’t understand much about gunfights. A man with a knife 21 feet away can fatally stab an officer before the cop clears leather. It’s called the Tueller Drill – look it up.
So, a man with a knife IS an immediate deadly threat if he’s within 20 feet or so.
And no, cops don’t “shoot to kill”. They shoot to stop the threat. That means the threat is no longer a threat – either the weapon is dropped or the person is no longer capable of causing harm. This usually means the person is down and not moving. The SIDE EFFECT of this is often that the threat dies. Oh well. But that’s not the intent.
BTW, no double taps – you shoot until the threat is stopped. The only people still teaching double-taps are the gun-store commandos. There is a place for them, but it’s very much a secondary technique, fore example, useful for multiple targets, but it’s not the preferred method.
And under the stress of a gunfight, there’s no such thing as shooting in the left ventricle. You shoot center mass, and you shoot until the threat is stopped. Shooting a knife or a gun out of a suspect’s hand is fine in Hollywood, where most people get their gun education, but it doesn’t work in real life.
Just to tag on- warning shots? Depending on conditions, they impart a severe degradation to the officer and suspects ability to hear/see depending on conditions. Every fire off a round in an enclosed space? In dark/semi-dark conditions? Auditory exclusion may help some, but odds are the suspect and police will have a hard time hearing any directon/response. Or perhaps see follow-on actions. Warning shot could spur a violent reaction due to not discerning it’s a warning but an attack. (Yeah folks do miss wildly in gunfights or misperceive actions). And then there’s the consideration of where to shoot to warn that is a completely safe backstop with no chance of ricochet/overpenetration and still not so far off line from the perp that you can’t get your gun back on-line. For studies on reaction times related to officer perp interactions http://www.forcescience.org/demos.html. Note their studies were based on college students unfamiliar with firearms for perp times and trained officers reacting to light signals for officer times.
Sad but true – warning shot = Hollywood gimmick. If a suspect is <20 ft. away, inside a house, holding a gun or a knife on you, a warning shot will not impress him. It may kill someone else in another room. Shoot him in the arm/shoulder/leg/buttocks/etc.? More Hollywood BS. Getting shot anywhere can kill someone. You know where the bullet goes in – you don't know where it goes after that. Or where it comes out, if there are innocent bystanders around. I assume the police use bullets that are designed NOT to come out, but to stay inside and cause as much damage as quickly as possible.
Mark v, I’m pretty familiar with gun fights and with the Tueller Drill. It was ap art of my training in the Marines. But that isn’t the situation here that Jack brought up. Taking the facts from his situation, it’s assumed the officer in question already has his gun drawn and trained on the “perp”. If the officer doesn’t have it drawn already than the rest of your argument is moot because it’s going to come to a fist/ground fight anyways.
As for your “shoot until the threat is stopped” philosophy, that’s a waste of ammo and causes you to need to reload quicker. Last time I checked, if you’re out of ammo and the threat is still there your gun is pretty much useless. That philosophy only works in Hollywood and video games. In real life ammo is finite and pulling the trigger haphazardly will empty out your supply rather quickly. Especially if you’re not taking the second or two to reacquire your target after every shot.
If I’m carrying a 9mm or something bigger, then 2 shots is more than enough, anything else is over kill. Most “perps” aren’t going to be familiar with getting shot and the second the bullet hits them they’ll either go into shock and mentally shut down or collapse in pain, freeing the officer in question up to move onto the next threat or to close in on the initial threat. And a double tap is always the preferred method, two well placed shots will always be more effective than squeezing the trigger until you’re out of ammo.
Styrgwillidar, I’ll agree with you that depending on conditions, warning shots will degrade awareness, but if the officer has been trained correctly, that degradation will be minimal. It is the reason why they fire so many rounds in a variety of conditions, in order to become familiar with the effect of pulling that trigger. I know when I was in the Marines doing our training, we fired our weapons in a wide range of environments so that it would be second nature, and the affect of the weapon discharge would not disorient us in the different circumstances. Because of all that I went from being timid and anxious within those situations to being comfortable and relaxed.
As for warning shots, sorry but dropping your aim all of 8-16 inches (depending on the distance) doesn’t take longer than 1 sec to go off target and back on. And, unless the “perp” is a well trained criminal (doubtful in probably 9/10 situations), a warning shot will get the point across. Same with shooting someone in the shoulder/leg. To believe it’s Hollywood b/s means you’ve never shot at anything except for a paper target, and even then your aim must not be that good. Don’t know about you, but I can put 5 rounds in a quarter sized hole anywhere I want on a target up to 45 yards away with a pistol. Last time I checked, that’s roughly 135 ft, so I should be good with a “perp” standing 20 ft or more away to put it in their shoulder/leg.
Over-penetration, ricochets, etc is all b/s excuses to not be aware of your surroundings. Sorry, but if you’re a police officer I expect one of the major things they ram home every day is situational awareness. If you’re not aware of where to place a warning shot within 15 seconds of coming into a threatening area than you’re obviously failing somewhere. Even if within that first 15 seconds you’re immediately faced with a threat, you should already be assessing the situation and how to handle it. Anything less means that you’re not trained for the job, and if you’re not trained for the job than why are you entrusted with it?
Dorlan,
Most cops only shoot their weapons a couple of times per year, on a static range, no moving targets, no changing distances and in well-lit conditions. At least, that’s the practise according to the officers I know on 8 police departments in my major metropolitan area in SoCal. Your marine training was far more intensive than anything the police do.
Check out the link I provided, a perp can certainly shoot in under the ’1 sec’ you figure it takes to put your gun off line for a warning shot. In fact, at .26 to draw and shoot from a waistband, and .25 for follow up shots (avg cycle time for officers using a Glock re ‘New Developments in Understanding the Behavioral Science Factors in the “Stop Shooting” Response’
William J. Lewinski, PhD) even an untrained college student is able to get off ~4 rounds at you (the fastest was able to draw and shoot in .09 secs so that’s an additional round incoming). If I give you the benefit of the doubt and don’t have the untrained college student react until you’ve dropped your weapon to low ready, it will still take you .83 secs to react and take a sighted shot. In that time the untrained college student has gotten off 3 rounds. Again, those times were from studies using inexperienced folks, ‘a well trained criminal’, whatever that is, would expected to be faster according to those who did the studies.
I agree with knowing one’s surroundings, but I disagree that one can maintain full SA on a potential perp and properly clear additional areas for warning shots, which I see having little value to begin with.
BTW, many police departments teach shoot until the threat stops. They train for individual encounters with limited numbers of perps, not combat where they expect to be in multiple/continuous engagments with an enemy.
Styrgwillidar, again I’m basing my responses off of the hypothetical situation Jack presented, a cop with his gun drawn and trained on a target holding a knife. The distance, location, environment, etc are being assumed by each of us. You’re assuming the target is holding a gun, in which case I’m a firm believer in “Drop your weapon!” give a 5 count for them to comply, if not, shoot to disable.
I did check out the link, and for the most part I’ll disregard that information, although it is good information to know. The “subjects” are in a scenario where they consider themselves to be “safe”. Additionally, they’re going to be “amped up” due to already knowing about the situation, both of which skew the data collected when trying to use it how you are. It’s like comparing a sweet apple with a sour apple, similar but the taste are completely different. You have to also factor in the mental aspect.
Actually sit there and try to picture this: A armed and trained police officer wearing body armor confronts you, an untrained knife wielding civilian not wearing body armor. He points his side-arm at you and orders you to drop your weapon. You are going to either a) sit there for several moments trying to figure out what’s going on b) raise your arm and try to rush him or c) drop your knife.
Majority of the time, if you’ve never been faced with a situation like that (or trained on how to handle it), your fight/flight instinct kicks in. If you’ve never dealt with your fight/flight instinct in situations like this it’ll take a few seconds or more for you to comprehend what’s going so (a) will be your first reaction. Once a shot gets fired at your feet, you’re throwing down your knife.
When I walk into a room I look for a) entrances/exits b) cover c) concealment and d) potential threats/allies. When looking for cover, you’ll typically identify areas that can’t be shot through, which can double as an area to fire a warning shot. You just have to be able to pick these out, and it’s pretty easy to do. Yes, my training has taught me how to do this, but again if the police are not properly trained to do this, then why are they entrusted with this position/power?
And if police departments are teaching shoot until the threat stops then that’s even more cause to put more laws and regulations on what they can and cannot do. Period.
Tell that to all the top law enforcement trainers in the country.
It’s standard doctrine with knowledgeable shooters, and has been for at least the last 10 years or so.
Mark v
Just cause you have a badge and you’ve attended a training sessions does not make you a “knowledgeable” shooter. Next time you’re engaging a target and you use your “pull the trigger till the threat is neutralized” theory you let me know how that works out when you’re in the middle of reloading and get shot/knifed because you ran out of ammo while you’re target took cover while you unloaded unnecessary rounds. Sorry sir, but if any “professional trainer” is telling you this “widely practiced” doctrine then the whole organization from top to bottom needs to be retrained in how to handle a hostile situation.
And you, my dear Horatio, may stuff your “Drill” where the sun don’t shine. In my neighborhood where I lived at the time, an armed, with his sword, karate instructor was accosted on a street corner by two youths in a robbery attempt. He assumed the position, they shot andy killed him. Don’t even presume to “Tell Me”, I lived at a Dojo.
Barring some really special circumstances, warning shots are out. Period. A private citizen who does that stands a fair chance of winding up in jail for it; cops are specifically trained not to do that.
And ‘shoot to disable’ is crap. There’s no such thing. Shoot them in the shoulder or leg? Guess how many major blood vessels are at risk? Not to mention the likelihood of permanent disability from damaging the joint. And you’re talking about a smaller target, etc. Again, without some very damned special circumstances, forget it.
Yes, it’s a disturbing law. The reason it was enacted is far more disturbing, a judge deciding that a cop is immune from being held to the law about breaking and entering, or forcible entry. The lack of respect for the 4th Amendment is the reason this law was proposed and passed.
“The police have the right to shoot anyone who they believe is threatening their lives. ”
In the majority if states, that’s true of EVERYONE.
Which proves his point Rob.
1 armed man.
Several armed officers.
Odds?
Never let your rights trump your good sense. Any moron will tell you that drawing on several armed people is a good way to get killed.
“No one ever really wins a fight with the police….it will only be a matter of time before the police….resume their efforts, but now with even greater zeal.”
So this Jack (blank) is saying, too bad for you if we make mistakes, just suck it up and die?
Even if we scared the crap out of a completely innocent you, and you fired on us in a true belief of self-defense against a criminal, we’ll INTENTIONALLY retaliate further against you?
You may never, under any circumstances, lawfully resist the Forces of The State?
We’re the Law, and we’ll just kill you should you ever dare challange us?
Jack (boot) tell me, who died and left Union Bums with Guns as our new God?
Oh, thats right, that pesky Constitution.
If a police officer kills a homeowner who was firing in self-defense because the police officer busted down the wrong door, that’s not self-defense. That’s involuntary manslaughter, and he should go to jail for ten years and have a lifetime ban on both carrying a gun and being a police officer, because he engaged in gross negligence by failing to confirm that he was entering the right house before breaking down the door.
“If a police officer kills a homeowner who was firing in self-defense because the police officer busted down the wrong door, that’s not self-defense.”
And it wouldn’t matter because the homeowner would be riddled with bullet holes.
Which kinda negates all self-defense themes.
Self defense is not about taking aggressive action but about doing what preserves your life. Broad terms matter.
If you draw on several armed cops and you die you didn’t defend anything. You died an idiot.
There should be rules for these sorts of things. Replacement of destroyed property etc.
But telling homeowners that they are allowed to be morons is a step down. No winners there.
Here is a tip. If you allow your rights to drown out voices of reason you deserve what you get. Mistakes are forgivable. Allowing people to respond with action that will get them killed is not.
Cooperate, be polite and you will live to ***** and moan about your problem.
Or take out your gun and attack the people bashing through your door expecting to find a criminal and get shot and killed.
Quit focusing on individual events and start playing the long game! If an officer knows that busting down the wrong door may result in a homeowner shooting at him, and that this confrontation WILL end in the officer either dead or doing ten years hard time and forfeiting his job, pension and benefits, police WILL triple-check to make sure they have the right house. And if somebody busts down my door, how am I to know whether he is a police officer or a common criminal, or for that matter, if he wouldn’t simply kill me anyway because I was there?
“And if somebody busts down my door, how am I to know whether he is a police officer or a common criminal”
And if they bust open the door and find you diving for anything how are they to know you aren’t a friend of the person they are after?
So what you’re saying Carr is that we should just accept it and die/get arrested? If a criminal busts into your house you’re probably going to die. If a bunch of cops bust into your house with guns drawn because they are expecting a hostile criminal and you twitch wrong you’re probably going to die. May as well die with a gun in your hand, either way you’re screwed. I’ve worked with enough people with itchy trigger fingers in situations like that. If someone moves and it isn’t to drop to the ground they tend to get shot. You might be surprised how many people don’t immediately drop to the ground when a bunch of armed thugs breaks into their home.
If you draw on several armed cops and you die you didn’t defend anything. You died an idiot
I’m not sure why you’re assuming that homeowners knowingly and deliberately will draw a gun on people they recognize as police officers. To do that would be stupid, yes. But if you pay attention to the matter under discussion, it’s about police kicking someones door in without announcing their presence. All the homeowner can know is that he’s being attacked, not who is doing the attacking.
There’s a simple solution to this – end the practice of “no knock” raids. This would have the additional advantage of complying with the constitution. (Not that anybody cares about that anymore)
You can cow tow to the cops and kiss their a**. When they bust down your door and shoot you for no reason and then lie about it to save there own a**. You sound like the jews who walked onto the cattle cars and went to their own execution, when there were only a few guards herding them into the cars. They thought that they sere safe too.
So no no one here has read the story of the az. Vet. That just got off nightshift hit the rack and his wife woke him up telling him there were men wearing masks and with guns. Ho got his ar-15 as the swat broke into the WRONG HOUSE shot him over 70 times AND refuse medic access until after he died! Guess what they went into the wrong house going after a drug dealer. They then LIED and said he attacked although it was proven the vet still had his weapon safety on. There is a deliberate militarization of the PD. In this case the widow got a big “whoops” and they left a trail of dead body and destroyed family. Because they never face repercussions, which is long over due.
“Even if our innocent homeowner manages to shoot a police officer or two and forces the others to retreat, it will only be a matter of time before the police muster additional firepower and resume their efforts, but now with even greater zeal.”
If the homeowner is innocent, he has exercised his constitutional right to bear arms and resist illegal lethal force. What the author predicts is retaliatory murder, “……… by having it pointed out that they are at the wrong house.” The counter attacking cop who kills the home owner could face execution (I am ignorant of Indiana law).
The resolution lies in “reasonably believes to be the imminent use of unlawful force.” In the case sited, it is vital for life that the search warrant by accurate and valid. Otherwise people will die due to an illegal act, and that hard burden falls to our police. People who carry guns can not screw up once.
In the case sited, it is vital for life that the search warrant by accurate and valid.
The search warrant should be accurate and valid, and the police should knock on the damn door instead of doing this Gestapo routine of kicking it in.
Yeah, that comment bothered me, too. “With greater zeal?” They made the mistake, and now they’re going to get even with their victim? That’s the police function? Sounds like armed thuggery to me.
You picked up on exactly the point that struck me. The author predicts and implicitly condones retaliatory murder of householders who protect their property, lives, and families.
I make another prediction. If cops know that busting in the door of the wrong house means that the people inside have an absolute right to shoot them dead, those cops will learn to obey the law and to respect the constitution.
This is fantastic. I guarantee that this law will make these jack boots make very sure they are going to the right place for the right purpose.
We need this law in Texas.
Not so long ago, I would have considered myself an ardent supporter of the police; not any more. Too many cops now look and act like they’re on patrol in Iraq or Afghanistan rather than a quiet American neighborhood. The BDUs, the kevlar helmets, the vests, the M4s; if you want to be in the Army, go back in, ‘course these days the Army’s ROEs are stricter than a lot of police force ROEs. We’ve had several shootings by police forces here in AK because the officer went to deadly force to secure compliance, not to protect from a direct threat to himself or others. While it is technically legal, it sure as Hell ain’t right that a cop can shoot you if you don’t do as he says. Sorry, a bunch of guys dressed and acting like infantry using a flash-bang and a battering ram to burst in my door unannounced are going to be greeted by my Saiga 12 guage firing as fast as I can make it fire.
When the cops go back to wearing more civilian-like uniforms, carrying sensible weapons for self-protection, and acting like members of a community rather than an occupying army, I might return to supporting them. I can see the need for a SWAT-type unit to deal with really bad guys but such units should be held in reserve to assist officers or only sent into the known trouble areas. The SWAT wannabe’s image and affest simply isn’t appropriate for dealing with most civilians.
You do know why that is, right? For starters, a lot of cops are also in the Natl. Guard or reserves, and have been sent to Iraqistan multiple times. Small wonder, then, that they bring their “shoot first” and “us vs. them” combat attitudes back with them. Lots of them also have PTSD but won’t seek help for fear of demotion or dismissal.
Even worse, for years the feds have been supplying local law enforcement with military-style weapons and training. So even if the asinine wars had not happened, the militarization of the police would have.
What to do about it? 1) Prohibit combat veterans from serving as cops. No exceptions. Too many of them are time bombs waiting to detonate. 2) End the militarization by prohibiting all federal funding, equipping and training of local LEOs. 3) End the idiotic drug war, which is the main excuse for that militarization.
I think people are missing the point. You may be in the right but you’ll still be dead.
And if, with a law such as this on the books, the officers realize they are culpable for a wrong raid, you will certainly be left to bleed out. No sense messing up the “investigation” with the homeowner’s side of things.
But this article confuses things. In a break down the door situation, you will not be in a position to argue that the police entry is unlawful. Even if you know that they have no probable cause for entry, they may have objectively proved such to a judge making the entry legal.
This law fits more for a situation where the police respond less violently to a wrong address then insist on entry against the homeowner’s wishes. If he resists, he’s a criminal, and their entry is therefore lawful to affect arrest. This law leaves the innocent homeowner with his rights even if he uses force to defend them without that force becoming the probably cause for justifying entry.
The problem is accountability. Mistakes happen but there seems little accountability for repeated sloppy work on warrants. The judges signing these things should implement follow-up, identify officers who frequently offer shoddy applications and require more from them before signing off. Then the departments who refuse to enforce standards, can either do the extra work or get better officers.
As a single man, your advice makes sense. To those with a wife and kids to protect, it may make sense to use deadly force in self-defense even if you know it will get you killed.
My MAN. I have a family too and take the same attitude.
I’m single, for now anyway, but I am not worthy to take a wife if I would not protect her with my life, and that obligation extends to children. As Christ died for the Church, so must any Christian husband be prepared to die for his wife, if necessary, and I would bring shame upon Christ if I took a wife I did not love more than my own life.
Let me get this straight, Mr. Dunphy. You guys had seen the suspect go in and out many times? Well, then, why did you not just wait and arrest him on the street. That is, in fact, what the policy of police departments used to be.
This is the whole problem, right here. You think it necessary to break into a home to get your guy. It is not, unless there is a kidnap situation or the like. Shoot, even the SS, when they came to your house in the middle of the night, had the damned decency to knock. You guys, you kick down the wrong door, and you won’t even replace the door! It’s the homeowner’s problem!
What they should have done in that law, in addition, is make it illegal for police to break into a house except in extremis. That would make it clear to police, that what they consider commonplace is unconscionable to the rest of us.
Applause, Marc. Well said.
That is the heart of the matter. Too many cops watching half assed reality cop shows and wanting to use all these commando tactics and equipment. It’s way past time that someone put some respect for privacy and property back into these skinhead thugs.
Reminds me of Waco, TX. That one got waayyy out of hand and unnecessarily so. The reverend-whacko of Waco could have been arrested on many occasions prior to Reno’s Raid.
Reno should have been charged with murder and dealt with appropriately. Texas style.
He explained why they didn’t wait for the suspect to leave the apartment – they wanted to sieze his property.
Don’t you know that most states allow the cops to sieze all kinds of property from your home and keep it, even in cases where it’s proven you weren’t doing anything wrong?
Why do you think the drug war has ramped up so hard? Why do you think the cops love to knock down doors and bust people with the dope in the room? They can grab everything and keep/sell it for the department’s benefit. They can take your house and your car.
It’s not about “getting the bad guy”, it’s about running a racket. You know, “to protect and serve”.
Exactly Marc! No one will stay in any place indefinitely, just wait until he comes out – simple!!! This could have completely prevented the tragedy at Waco as well. Koresh jogged just about every day, the feds could have easily apprehended him any time they wanted, but instead they chose to murder nearly 100 people so only their story about what really happened would ever be heard.
Observing a suspect’s behavior and habits, and placing the arrest calmly on the street is good procedure. But it is not fun, it does not give the gung-ho types the chance to use their pretty toys that Uncle Sam sent them, no dogs to kill, and no family to terrorize. Where’s the fun?
/ must I?
I can appreciate your concern, Mr. Dunphy, but you offer no alternative. You suggest “When a police officer has been shot, his colleagues are unlikely to be deterred by having it pointed out that they are at the wrong house.” But they might be deterred knowing that –under this law– if they press the attack, they will be committing felonies. Simply to point out that this law could get a guy killed overlooks the fact that people are already being killed.
Right. Police have immunity when they break into the wrong house, kill or injure the wrong people, kill pets, terrorize innocents….
Tell you what, Jack: As soon as the police give up their immunity (along with their supervisors, Chief of Police, Police Board, Mayor, etc – the whole chain) and are PERSONALLY liable when they’re wrong, we can talk about giving them some special preferences wrt 0′dark – thirty breaking and entering….
Interesting. Virtually all comments here are in favour of this law. Even given PJM’s libertarian-tilting readership, this is remarkable. I can certainly see the possibility of bad things happening under this law, but bad things happen during no-knock raids without it. A big problem is that increasingly police are violating the old Peelian compact between them and the public they are meant to serve. In particular, the paramilitary nature of law enforcement, especially in the US, is counter to liberty and to good order. Police are civilians too. They have been gifted powers that the general public does not have, but they are still civilians. There needs to be a great deal more circumspection exercised by law enforcement. If the police do not wish to be regarded as jack-booted thugs, then maybe they should lose the jackboots and the thuggish attitude.
The police don’t serve – they take reports after a crime and they are revenue collectors (tickets). They have also been killing us with impunity.
The supreme court has also been helping them to kill us. Ruling that police are NOT required to protect your from a crime and a more recent ruling that they are perfectly able to violate the 4th amendment any time they choose.
So what we have to look forward to is home invasions that WILL likely end in us either being killed or at the very least having our lives turned upside down for untold HOURS because of THEIR mistake.
David: you pressed one of my hot buttons and brought out a great point together. When a LEO calls me “civilian”, I know exactly where I stand. I am seen as “the other”, “them”, “not as good as [LEOs]“. Next time I get that crap, I will look at their name badge and address them as “Mr. Dunphy”, for example. What’s he going to do? Shoot me? (then again, that might not be a good question to ask!)
“When a police officer has been shot, his colleagues are unlikely to be deterred by having it pointed out that they are at the wrong house.”
That’s the money quote, isn’t it?
A US military unit, informed they are firing at the wrong building, will cease firing. Yes, even if they are taking fire back.
Why not police, Mr. Dunphy? Poor discipline? A sense of superiority?
The very fact that an ex-police officer would say this shows the need for such a law. Existing rules, plus existing discipline and existing attitude, are apparently not enough of a restraint. One or more must be tightened up.
Either that, or we pull them off the job and use the Army, which is apparently better at this sort of thing.
Two more money quotes that indicate precisely why this law may make sense:
“And under the terms of this new law, those occupants might kill a police officer and yet be vindicated in court.” Yes, Mr. Dunphy, that’s both right and correct.
“No one ever really wins a fight with the police, at least not for long.” Thanks for the warning, Mr. Dunphy.
The police are no long there to function as peace officers. They are there to enforce Pax Romana…. the peace of the state. And if a few of the local populi get in the way of that, too bad for the populi, after all mistakes do happen. Not too much different from the Roman army showing up on your doorstep, grabbing a few dozen of the local gentry and killing them as a warning. If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, well, sucks to be you. You might get civil peace that way, but at what price?
This law is a good first step towards Pax Populi. Peace of the people.
There is still one big problem to overcome. The state brings charges, indicts and prosecutes. Yes, the populi have more guns and bullets than the police, but we are a civil society. But, when the guy with the badge and gun commits a crime and is shielded by the state, all in the name of Pax Romana, what then? The survivors might (MIGHT) have recourse to a civil claim, but criminal claims? Maybe this needs be addressed.
Sure, if this fails to solve the problem, then we need to grant individuals the right to bring criminal suits without the consent of the AG. They must, of course, be subject to prison themselves for bringing frivolous criminal accusations, lest people use the threat of a false accusation to extort or harass, or even simply bring a false accusation over a personal vendetta.
The police hardly ever make mistakes, except all these times…
http://www.cato.org/raidmap/
That was a BRUTAL response.
Hooah!
Orion
Mr. Dunphy —
Let me try a more polite rebuttal of your thoughtful piece.
The law to which you object addresses the issue of liability for specific actions – not the actions themselves. In the absence of the law an otherwise law abiding citizen who kills or injures an officer during the course of an unlawful (or negligent) entry is subject to the probability of criminal prosecution. This law simply absolves the citizen.
In our real world very few citizens would intentionally shoot at intruders when they KNOW the intruders are police officers (ok, life is tough – some damn fools would in fact relish the opportunity for a freebie but the likelihood of an unlawful entry to THEIR residence is slim). The problem arises when the identities of the door-crashers are unknown. The home-owner is then faced with the ‘tried by twelve or carried by six’ dilemma – compounded by fears for the safety of the entire family. Add to the equation that very few citizens are trained or prepared to act and/or perceive rationally in a ‘fight or flight’ situation.
I would suggest that the vast majority of armed citizens faced with unknown intruders and an at-risk family would react with gunfire. That is the PROPER and COMMENDABLE response to the situation. When it later turns out that the intruders were police officers acting improperly (I’ll use this less inflammatory word) the citizen should not be subject to criminal penalties. This law protects that citizen – and that’s all it does.
A word re: your potential scenario. I expect properly trained, prepared, and responsible officers faced with unexpected gunfire to withdraw, regroup, establish a perimeter, and make contact with the ‘barricaded suspect’. The situation would soon be clear and resolved without further conflict. If the situation within the house escalates beyond the initial confrontation the responsibility for further death or injury rests on the shoulders of the officers whose initial questionable entry created the clusterf***.
Mr. Dunphy – I almost always agree with your posts. May I respectfully request you reconsider this one and ask yourself if you haven’t simply succumbed to a knee-jerk ‘keep cops safe’ reflex.
Best reply of all. This law doesn’t declare open season on cops. It simply gives citizens some legal recourse should a “misunderstanding” occur during a police entry operation. From what I’ve read, such recourse normally does not exist. The citizen who shoots a police officer, even if the officer was mistaken or incautious or even downright criminal, IS going to jail. The State will do everything in its power to see him convicted. The citizen has no chance. The law in question gives the citizen a chance. I’m for it.
Mr. Dunphy – I enjoy (and agree) with most of your articles.
Not this one however.
As most above already said – knock and announce and things will go great. Barge in with a ram and I’ll be shooting first and asking questions second. The first mistake cops make when they get the wrong house is from a lack of sharing the surveillance information. Making sure (for an apartment especially) you’ve got the right number. In this day and age of computers and printers each cop needs to have a picture of the perp they’re looking for – and a picture of the house/apartment – with the address number.
When you say nobody wins in an altercation with the cops tells me you guys harbor a vindictive nature. In an accidental shooting of a cop (in Indiana or elsewhere) all you’ve told me is the innocent shooter is going to die if you have your way. Fine – but some cop or two needs to go to jail for that attitude – and for a very long time. Its seems to be the only way to cure the vindictive attitude you and your fellow cops hold towards the citizenry.
I know a few local cops – I golf with them on occasion and can relate many a story of how they ‘prey’ on the average citizen. They see themselves as above the law. So what they get the wrong house – your nothing but ‘one of the herd’ according to one of them. Step out of line and laws no longer apply. Hurt one of them and you’re dead meat if they get their way. As they see it – “that could have been me”.
We had a sheriff’s deputy a couple of years ago roll his car and was killed. What was not common knowledge is he was speeding – ‘over 100′ is what I was told. The story in the local papers said he was ‘run off the road’ by some trucker. Since it happened at 4 in the morning and there were no eyewitnesses he was hailed as a hero (albeit a dead one) and now we have a yearly golf tournament in his honor.
These are the kind of lies we have to put up with from ‘the law’. Personally I’m tired of you guys backing up and protecting each other – especially when it costs citizens money – and too often their lives.
I think this new law is a great idea and hope it catches on elsewhere – especially here. No more sheeple to push around – get it right with the search warrants or pay the price. It really is your choice. There are no excuses for bungling search warrants.
Check the 4th amendment next time you get confused about which laws are good or bad.
The problem is the no knock warrant. It was an awful idea and we see the consequences. There are times, very few, when it is necessary. Now it has become a convenience tool for police.
When we finally started paying police decent salaries and retirement, the PD’s started attracting slugs. That’s how it always works with government. Our local PD is one of the best in Northern California, yet out of 240 sworn officers, only 60 go on patrol.
I’ve taken all the combat pistol and shotgun training I can get – and I practice regularly. My instructors teach LE more than civilians and they all say the same thing. If their house is breached in the middle of the night without warning, they will return fire. In my case, my kids are in the house, my wife is in the house. I don’t have time to identify the threat. I’m not wearing a vest, my family is not wearing vests. I cannot take the chance the threat is just cops on a no knock warrant.
We are citizens, not subjects.
Wrong, Phil, VERY wrong.
Law enforcement personnel ARE civilians.
The PROBLEM is that too many of them no longer think so.
One aspect of this argument, which Dunphy seems to conform with, is the modern police attitude that every segment of the law should be written to make police officers safer. The good example is concealed carry laws in various states. There’s little doubt now that they a) don’t increase crime and b) make the public at large safer. However, many police officers oppose them, because the world would be a safer place for cops, if only out and out criminals had guns.
This argument is part of the same world. What’s really needed is a change in the law, so that these no-knock warrants are issued only if the person involved is a known, armed, dangerous felon. All too often these days, as I understand it, the individual in question merely has to be involved in drug sales somewhere, and suddenly you get 50 guys in ballistic vests and helmets, armed with automatic weapons and tear gas grenades. It’s a wonder there haven’t been *more* incidents where bystanders got shot. And aside from this, you have the incidents where the cops have bad information, and either enter the wrong home and shoot the dogs or even kill the homeowner, and then essentially act as if the whole thing isn’t their responsibility, more or less taking the “well, at least no cops were injured” attitude while someone else is trying to deal with the death of a loved one. My favorite is the Latino couple out in Arizona who had strange armed men at their door in the very early morning–and they called the cops, only to find out later that that was who was outside. The dispatcher didn’t want to tell them who the intruders were, because it might have endangered the police officers in question–no thought for the safety of the homeowner, who was shot and killed by the police, because he was armed. In his own home. The cops have spent most of their time since trying to connect the guy (unsuccessfully I might add) with some sort of crime, rather than apologizing to the guy’s widow.
What’s needed here is some restraint on the part of the police, not homeowners who are more compliant when some stranger kicks down their door at 3 am, carrying a gun.
I’ve taken concealed handgun courses in two states. They both said that, under the law, you have the right to defend yourself against police officers acting unlawfully. They also said something to the effect of, “God help you if you do, because even if you don’t get gunned down by other cops, you’ll never make it stand up in court.”
States that already allow this don’t have epidemics or even rare instances of citizens going free after shooting cops because they claimed lawful self-defense. Indiana won’t either.
In fact, this Indiana law merely codifies a centuries-old precept of British common law (which unfortunately has been allowed to decay here). Simply put, a policeman attempting to make an unlawful arrest — that is, with neither a warrant nor probable cause — is no better than any mugger or other criminal, and therefore such unlawful arrest can be resisted with deadly force. IIRC, a dozen states already had this statute on their books, so Indiana makes No. 13.
Wrong, Jack. Innocent people are being killed NOW in no-0knock raids. This law merely recognizes the moral right of citizens to fight back if their home is invaded.
In some cases, people have then been PROSECUTED for defending themselves.
This is wrong.
Nobody should EVER face prosecution for defending their home.
This is push-back by no-knock police bust-in’s. Too many rights have been violated and too many innocent people have been injured or killed in with the police state’s war on drugs. Police are people too. There are corrupt police and police that are sloppy in their work. In some places it is Waaaayyy too easy to get warrants on flimsy info. Good for Indiana.
How often do we law-abiding citizens hear from the police that if we’re not doing anything wrong then we have nothing to worry about?
Turnabout is fair play. If the police officer breaking down my front door at 2AM is doing the proper thing then he should have nothing to fear from me… or my 1911.
If the police officers end up shooting a law-abiding citizen brandishing a weapon to lawfully defend his home from the invasion of armed personnel, then they should face the full force of the law. The U.S. is NOT a police state and police breaking into the wrong home, be it because of bad map-reading abilities or typographical errors should not be protected from a citizen lawfully defending his home from invasion.
Not so very long ago on this website….a story was published about a man named Jose Guerena:
pjmedia.com/blog/americas/overmilitarized-police-claim-another-innocent-life/
At least this website is willing to show both sides of this issue.
Everyone needs to read the article linked above, especially Mr Dunphy.
Jose’ Guarena was a Marine veteran, two time deployer to Iraq, was shot 60 times (yes sixty), and never fired a round.
The police who shot him refused to allow paramedics to attend to him for 1 hour and 14 minutes. He was buried with full military honors.
I am a 21 year military veteran and I am grateful for my fellow citizens who serve as police officers. Having said that, the SWAT tactics and no-knock raids have gotten out of hand, and too numerous, and they are hurting our country.
If police officers crashed through the door / window and ordered me to get on the ground, (but not posing a threat to my life), should I start shooting at them, since I’m innocent of any crime and I consider their entry to be unlawful? I’m assuming that they don’t have to show me their badge or warrants, or otherwise make an effort to verify their identity if they (mistakenly) believe I’m an armed criminal expecting them.
If these officers were criminals in police uniform, then they wouldn’t need to storm inside. They could just knock politely and invite themselves in under false pretext (searching for a missing kid), present fake warrants, or just shoot me dead once inside without warning.
If an officer at my doorstep insists that he’s here to collect 1,000 dollars for a parking violation, I can safely assume he’s a fake. If he draws a weapon on me, I should be able to put him down. If I comply with an officer’s demands and he starts beating me up Kelly Thomas style, I have cause to defend myself. But a lot of things haven’t happened yet when police enter a residence, legally or not. Most self defense doesn’t happen without a series of slow turning events led to that point.
The problem is that we have gangs dressing up as police officers bursting into homes yelling ‘Police’.
If someone come bursting into my house at night and I know I’ve done nothing wrong, then I’m going to assume it is NOT the police.
If the officers are clearly identified as police, then sure, your argument makes sense. On the other hand, if you awaken at 3am because someone’s kicking down the door to your house, do you ask to see identification first, or do you respond by shooting. There are punks who break into houses this way, and rob or terrorize the occupants. The thug, drug dealer, etc., can probably figure out why the cops are there, and act accordingly; if a homeowner who isn’t a criminal has this happen to them, the chances are good that the person breaking down the door *isn’t* the police. The whole point to the “no-knock” raid is that the police give the occupants of the residence *no warning* before entering the place. Originally it was done because the occupants were deemed especially dangerous; nowadays I understand such things have become pretty commonplace. If they get the address wrong, or your ex-wife hasn’t paid her college loans, or your brother has rumored connections to drug dealers, this may be thought acceptable grounds for a “no-knock” these days, because you never know, someone in there might be dangerous…
One jackass judicial decision begot the logical reaction. If government employees carrying the means to kill, and WHO HAVE THE LICENSE TO KILL, can bust through someone’s house without obvious provocation, then as someone said above, FAIR is FAIR. I applaud the law. Cops are not superior human beings and my stomach turns whenever I hear the so called right doing their usual genuflection to law and order as if innocent people have never been killed or SENT TO PRISON for committing a crime they never committed by the same “super heroes”. The Founding Fathers understood that an armed citizenry was a check and balance against the government. The so called right is for gun rights. But when it comes to the topic of the “police”? They get all deferential and supine. Well guess what folks. The POLICE ARE THE GOVERNMENT TOO. And our Founders knew that the day might come when we needed to defend ourselves against a government run amok, and that day arrived in Indianan with that JACKASS judicial decision. If there was anything as unAmerican and fascist it’s been a long time since it has be matched. The next reform that should be taken up is to forbid cops from stealing property (confiscations) ahead of convictions IN ORDER TO PUMP UP THEIR BUDGETS. Yeah they do that too. We have rogue police behavior all across this country and if the right wants gun rights to counter the threat of government, our local police forces are a good place to test the theory.
What you are saying here is that they won’t fall back, reassess the situation and form a new plan of action. While this might be stupid and self-correcting in a combat zone it is unforgivable when the goal is not only law enforcement, but the “combatant” is very likely a US citizen or resident alien who has broken no law.
The solution is fairly simple – eliminate 99% of the no-knock raids and this will seldom be an issue.
It’s a sad reality that for a long time, most law and order types supported the police because they kept the bad guys away. At the same time, minorities have long complained about abusive police. Now, many law and order types are seeing the police as the problem, not the solution.
It doesn’t help that many police departments are becoming paramilitary operations with teams as heavily armed as an infantry squad. It doesn’t help when there are repeated stories of no-knock raids taking place at the wrong address, sometimes with fatal results for the homeowners and/or their dogs. It doesn’t help that too many cops take a “bully with a badge” attitude into every encounter with the public at large.
No cop is any better than the worst actor he allows to remain on the force. If you allow an abusive cop to remain a cop, then you’re just as bad as he is. If you look the other way at a corrupt cop and retreat behind the “blue wall of silence” then you’re just as corrupt.
That statement ought to be displayed on the walls of every police academy, sheriff’s station, and precinct house, and tattooed on the forehead of every police union rep.
Of course, it won’t be, because very few cops agree with it.
Something else that should be displayed on the walls of every police academy, sheriff’s station, and precinct house:
“We’re keepers of the peace, not soldiers.” — Mace Windu, Attack of the Clones
The sooner cops start thinking of themselves as Jedi Knights instead of imperial storm troopers, the better.
BTW, I’m OK with skipping the tattooing on the forehead.
Police are allowed to have overwhelming force in terms of guns and men so that they do not have to rely on tactics like no-knock, night-time raids. These sorts of raids use surprise in an attempt to make less force do the job of more, which is why the armed forces like them. So the correct response to Indiana’s problem is to increase the number of policemen, increase their armament and training, and outlaw all no-knock raids. Don’t enter anyone’s house until you have told the people inside who you are, why you are there, and have given them a chance to comply.
I might agree with the issues raised in the article …. IF ….
Police are stripped of their immunity protections and are personally held liable for their actions without special treatment
Those who assassinate citizens lawfully carrying are themselves executed following trial
Those who shoot dogs on private property are prosecuted under cruelty to animal statues
Police who beat cuffed suspects lying on the ground all the while chanting ‘stop resisting’ are themselves jailed as the common criminals they are
Those who repeat the mantra ‘Move away I’m in fear of my life’ while threateningly advancing on citizens exercising their Constitutional Rights to peaceably assemble and to record the police actions are disciplined for their actions
If it wasn’t common practice for police cars magically having their lights and sirens turned on to blow through red lights only to go quiet again on the other side
If police were held to the same ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse’ standard as us mere “suspects” were
etc.
I wish all police in the US would read this thread. Most of them would dismiss the commenters as “haters”. But it is time the pendulum swung the other way. The US has the most brutal and unprofessional police (with some notable exceptions like the California Hwy Patrol) in the industrialized West. They are arrogant and unpredicatable. I don’t think the military should appear in public in combat uniforms, and neither should the police unless they are on the way to a hopefully infrequent swat raid.
Not sure about that. I’ve read some highly critical things about the RCMP in recent years. Dudley Do-Right seems to have taken a step toward the dark side…
Clearly a lot of heat over this – and a lot of good comments; but only a couple of them came close to the real problem, and then dodged right past it. The problem is not in the SORT of police we have but in the WAY we use our police today. The sort of people in our police forces are the same sort of people we’ve always had: human beings, heirs to all the sins of Mankind. Most are good, some are bad. What has changed of late is the way cops are used – they are not being used a police force to prevent crime but, rather, as a paramilitary force engaged in solving crimes.
A properly employed police force keeps the peace; the primary responsibility of a police force is to ensure good order and safety in the public square. Our cops, today, do not do that – they cruise around in anonymous cars pestering honest folks with traffic tickets and only show up AFTER A CRIME HAS HAPPENED; ie, when its entirely too late to do any good. I don’t want officer Dunphy to have to spend a huge amount of police time figuring out that two apartments were converted in to one and the suspect is using both for his nefarious deeds…I want a beat cop on the corner who already knows who lives where and what they do and what their basic daily activities are.
Furthermore, as was pointed out in other comments, the only time a police officer should need to crash through the door of a home is when a life is in immediate danger. I don’t care if there are a thousand tons of cocaine and 500 automatic weapons in the basement…if there is no immediate threat to life and limb then the police should come in the daytime and knock on the door to serve the warrant. Sure, have the back up you need if the residents decide to resist (though most major criminals with that kind of material on them won’t do that – as they know the outcome) – but don’t come barging in to a house in the middle of the night to serve a warrant for drugs or weapons trafficking…the drugs and weapons (and suspects) would be there in the morning and if you do it in the morning (and are thus able to scope out the place and see if its Mr. Drug Lord or, instead, Mr and Mrs Middle America getting the kids off to school) you’ll be able to do it better and with far less chance of a mistake.
To solve this problem, disband the city PD Swat teams (leave that to the State police and the Feds), take the police out of cars and re-introduce foot patrols. Greatly reduce the detective forces and return the police to being a peace-keeping, crime-prevention force and not only will you have less crime (if there’s a cop on the corner then the liquor store on the corner probably won’t get stuck up) but you’ll also have better trust – and, indeed, love and respect – between police officers and the public…and thus the public will do their proper job in assisting the police in reporting suspicious characters cooperating with police when a crime is committed.
Ok. How much are you willing to pay for police ‘protection’? You make good points, but your methodology is far more expensive due to the number of officers required. It also makes it more difficult to respond in force to a major incident. Part of the change in policing is due to more urban sprawl and the distance/area one man in a patrol car can cover relative to the number required on foot to do the same thing. I agree there should be more officers in/on the streets and less administrators for the same reasons.
However, bottom line is that in the US it is not the job/responsibility of the police to protect anyone. (See SCOTUS decisions Warren vs DC, and Castle Rock vs Gonzalez) Their responsibility is to enforce the law it is the individual’s responsibility to protect themselves. Which is why it’s hypocrtical for state/city governments to try and ban guns and leave ‘protection’ to the police, then cite the above cases defending themselves for not protectnig the public.
From what I can determine, the Los Angeles Police Department has about 10,000 police officers. What I cannot determine – because no one seems to be in charge of telling the public this information – is how many of them, in any given, 24 hour period, are actually out patrolling the streets. Whatever the number is, you can be certain its not as many as could be – especially if they didn’t waste manpower on paramilitary SWAT teams,large detective agencies (remember, the key is to prevent crime – the more crime prevented, the fewer detectives needed for crime solving) as well as bloated, administrative staffs. The LAPD has such “vital for the safety of the public” positions as “Media Relations and Community Affairs C/O”, “Employee Relations Group”, “Department Risk Manager” and someone titled “Assistant to the Director OSO” which alarms me because the “OSO” in the USSR was responsible for sending people in to “Administrative Detention”…ie, it was the organization which gave Solzhenitsyn 8 years in GULAG. But, that aside, what is important here is that the police departments – especially of our larger cities – are staffed with (Democrat-donating) public employee union members and the whole system is geared towards the primary task of a bureaucracy: self-perpetuation with an ever larger budget and staffing level. It took a long time for the police to turn the general (and largely conservative/libertarian) public against them…but they did it because they became defenders of the political status quo rather than protectors of the peace and safety of the public.
What price would I pay for proper policing? Whatever proves necessary – but let us first audit the police and and reform them so that they are geared towards their real task. Once we have done that, if it proves necessary to jack up my taxes to ensuring enough beat cops on the streets to properly police my town, I’ll gladly pay it.
It all comes out in the wash. How much more do the police have to pay in insurance because the current state of affairs makes their employment high risk? How much does the city, county, state and individual officers have to pay in lawsuits when they use excessive force and intimidation? I guarantee this would offset the costs of getting a few cops away from their desks and walking around their neighborhoods a few hours each week.
In his article, Mr. Dunphy displays the arrogant attitude exhibited by many police officers…that they are special and above the law…they are not. I have all the respect in the world for police officers, as long as they show respect for their fellow citizens. I understand that they have a dangerous job, but that is their choice.Far too many are attracted to law enforcement because they get to bully people with a badge and a gun. When they behave badly, they never seem to be penalized. I saw a dangerous trend develop under Bill Clinton: The police departments became more like the military, and the military was pushed to become more like the police. Mr. Dunphy, many people have jobs that are hazardous. They chose them just as you chose yours. I respect that your job was difficult, but you are no more special than the law abiding citizens you were paid to protect. Misbehavior, incompetence, and arrogance displayed by some in law enforcement lead to laws such as this one.
Dangerous job? Really? You do know that the police is not even in the top 10 most dangerous jobs for the U.S. don’t you? The next time some ass-hat rolls out the “putting live on the line” canard explain to them that taxi drivers, trash collectors, loggers, fisherman and on and on, have more dangerous jobs than the po-po. Most on duty deaths for the po-po are traffic accident related. And guess who is usually responsible for that? It ain’t the people not in clown costume.
“A new law authorizes citizens to use force against “public servants” (read police officers) whom they reasonably believe to be entering their home illegally.”
You can do that now, law or no law…as long as you don’t mind getting your head blown off.
Things have to get pretty bad when a large proportion of the population has little use for those who protect and serve. Maybe Mr Dunphy’s next article could answer why that might be and what might be done about it.
You had me going with you until I read the following:
Immediately upon entering I could see something was amiss. …And we were in the wrong one.
… We proceeded through the apartment from the back door to the front, exited, then repeated our knock-and-notice routine at the front of the apartment next door.
I can buy that you made a mistake. No problem. But as soon as you realized your mistake you should have backed out the way you came in — preferably with apologies to the INNOCENT people you broke in on!
But that isn’t what you said you did. Instead of recognizing your mistake, you preceded to invade the innocent party’s privacy and the sanctity of their home to troupe through the entire floor of the apartment from front to back in order to go to the correct door. AND YOU THINK THAT HOME INVASION IS FREAKING ACCEPTABLE?????
This kind of reasoning is why the average citizen no longer has much respect for the criminals in blue, such as yourself.
By the way, I am definitely NOT one of the gun-yahoos on this website. But I very definitely agree that people have the right to own and use guns to protect their homes, even if I do not choose to exercise that right.
And if I were on a jury and told that a police officer was killed doing exactly what you described doing, assuming no other contradictory evidence — I would likely acquit.
And what, pray tell, is a “gun yahoo”?
And what, pray tell, is a “gun yahoo”?
See “myth buster” postings (below):
June 12, 2012 – 3:36 pm
June 12, 2012 – 4:05 pm
I could not define the term any better then “myth buster” just demonstrated.
My post was specifically a reply to Carn’s line, “no… creed… is worth dying for.” That is cowardice, and I will not let an advocate of cowardice in the face of persecution go unanswered. Someone who advocates submission to tyrants who demand worship and forsakes the Faith in order to save his life, spits on Jesus and all of the martyrs, and God will not hold him guiltless for even feigned worship of false gods.
The logical end-point to the over-use (some might even say abuse) of the no-knock warrant, Jack.
Indeed. I’d be a good deal more sympathetic to Mr. Dunphy’s point of view if we didn’t have an appalling number of overeager and even profit-motivated police kicking in doors, using the flimsiest of justifications, and causing great harm and property damage to the perfectly innocent taxpayers therein. And to add insult to injury, if someone DOES do the reasonable thing and shoot at someone kicking in their door they get charged with assaulting (or trying to kill) an officer.
No, it’s past time the cops had some skin in this game. If they’re going to kick in doors in the middle of the night then they should have every possible incentive to make sure it’s the right door.
I interacted with several police organizations while coordinating use of a public shooting facility by numerous user groups. Except for one police range master, the other law enforcement personnel often displayed unethical behavior: refusal to admit to using CS gas grenades on the range without notifying subsequent users about the residual CS present (leading to several people being sickened when the range props were subsequently burned); promising that modifications to a range bay would not inconvenience other users of the bay, and then modifying the bay in such a way as to make it unusable by others and unilaterally closing the bay to other users; using high powered rifles to puncture steel targets owned by other users of the range, and then not admitting to what they had done; and so on. Officers with such compromised ethical behavior, when using dynamic entries as a standard technique for serving warrants, will often cause problems for law abiding citizens.
The author notes that the suspect could have been arrested when out in open, therefore a dynamic entry was optional. This same situation was present prior to the Waco ATF raid, which ended up killing dozens of innocent civilians.
Police departments voluntarily eliminating dynamic entries would certainly be a step in the right direction. Taking such a step would eliminate a major source of citizen dissatisfaction with the police. Such a step would also tend to discourage militaristic ego-driven candidates from becoming police officers.
To many times have I seen DEA, IRS, local police break into the wrong address and terrorize innocent citizens. And they have absolutely no recourse. This is the result when the government becomes arrogant and abuses the people. Tough luck…if you enter my house illegally, you will not be going home that day.
In my last (and, I hope, my only) “interaction” with my county police, they treated me extremely well. I felt they went out of their way to make the experience less traumatic than it could have been. I was cooperative, they didn’t treat me like a criminal. So I know there are cops out there who aren’t cynical, who don’t think all civilians are scum, and who care what happens to people. I’ve met plenty of them.
But I think some of that care goes out the window when cops get militarized. They’re on the hunt, armed to the teeth, and seemingly given carte blanche by a judge. Maybe their attitude goes from “protect and serve” to “attack the enemy.” Do cops really need all the hardware and the tactics? It’s not the 80s cocaine wars anymore. Unless they’re dealing with massively-armed drug cartels, why do they feel the need to go in heavy? Are they just afraid?
You know legal truism that says “better a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man be imprisoned?” Maybe we should use the same principle regarding SWAT operations. Better for a hundred drug dealers get away than for the cops to kill a single innocent man by accident. Or to terrorize his wife and kids. Or to throw his elderly mom on the floor and handcuff her. Or to shoot his dog.
We can always count on the pseudonymous Officer Dunphy, an uncritical War on Drugs enthusiast, to side with the police about such matters. The notion that a right to be secure in one’s home against unreasonable searches and seizures implies a right to defend that right with deadly force bounces right off his consciousness when the violators tote badges along with their firearms. But the idea that a man could possess a right he’s forbidden to defend is a contradiction that no amount of rah-rah about Our Glorious, Heroic Boys In Blue can harmonize.
If Officer Dunphy did not exist, the Left would happily create him — to use him as a smear on conservatives.
If Officer Dunphy did not exist, the Left would happily create him — to use him as a smear on conservative.
Oh, come off it. The left loves a militarized police force at least as much as the right, and probably a lot more. Does the name Elian Gonzalez ring any bells? What about Waco?
This is a good decision, and here is why! Front of the Guerena Residence Front of the house where Marine Jose Guerena was killed by Pima County Arizona Sheriff Swat: They violated most of his Constitutional rights doing so. Recorded on May 30, 2011 using a Flip Video camcorder.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR0d-85PEcI&feature=youtu.be
The law is definitly an ass here. The most retarded move you can make in response to several armed men busting in is to pull out a gun.
Shots will be fired, you as the party of one will die and the gene pool will be cleaner.
The point of the forced entry is to completely overwhelm before a countermeasures can be taken.
If the person is dangerous that danger can be mitigated by giving them no chance to mount a defense.
There should be more checks to the current system but kicking off WW3 in your home is an ass-backwards way to do it.
Makes me glad I’m an Independant. I;pd hate to have my political affilation attached to this stupid law.
Wow. What a sniveling coward you must be. someone attacks me, I will attack them back, harder. They pull a knife, I pull a gun….it’s the Chicago way.
The only reason police tend to win is they have automatic weapons and a free-fire mentality. Remember, police shoot innocent bystanders far more often than legally armed citizens do.
But, you wouldn’t know about citizens and their responsibilities: Being a serf and all. Just wait for the thugs to show up one night when you have outlived your usefulness.
My goal is to live. And I will do anything to insure that. Pride, rights, love, morality, faith, creed, and political affiliation have no place when the goal is to live.
And if that’s cowardly I’ll live a coward rather than become another body for the gutter.
Assuming that way is cowardly which is really just your opinion.
You are a coward, and even Jesus finds scum like you downright pathetic. Go and lick the boots of those who step on you. In time of persecution, you’d bow down and worship the State for letting you live, while calling the martyrs fools and cursing Christ for dying for you. Hell awaits cowards like you, for you’d deny your God and betray your own flesh and blood if they refused to deny Him. You seek to preserve your mortal life at all costs, but remember what Jesus said, “He who seeks to save his life will lose it.”
“You are a coward”
Name-calling?
“even Jesus finds scum like you downright pathetic.”
Then how’s it feel to be right here with me? He’s not a fan of judgmental folks either.
” In time of persecution, you’d bow down and worship the State for letting you live”
And stab them in the back at the nearest opportunity. Given the choice between effective and symbolic I like effective.
“while calling the martyrs fools and cursing Christ for dying for you.”
Don’t presume to know me. You can fit your knowledge of me into a thimble.
“Hell awaits cowards like you”
And judgmental hypocrites like you.
“you’d deny your God and betray your own flesh and blood if they refused to deny Him.”
I stick with family. Always. Those bonds may not always be present but they are there.
“You seek to preserve your mortal life at all costs, but remember what Jesus said, “He who seeks to save his life will lose it.”
Death is inevitable. The fate of all who live will be death.
I will die when it is my time. No fighting will prevent it. But laying down to accept death means that it happens all the sooner.
That does not make you any less of a coward! You may call it name calling, but it’s straight from the Bible- given the choice between denying Christ and death, a Christian must choose death under pain of Hell if he instead chooses to deny Christ, for any reason! You are the one who said that no creed mattered when your life hangs in the balance, so by your own words, you are a coward. You say you’d stab them in the back, but you’d deny Christ to do it. “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” what was an unjust persecution before becomes a just execution once you make yourself a murderer by lying in wait and taking private revenge, and you would still be guilty of the sin of cowardice for even pretending to worship a false god in order not to be martyred.
Independent? Sounds more like the ‘Better Red Than Dead’ crowd. A Democrat.
A man afraid of dying will never experience the joy of living.
“Independent? Sounds more like the ‘Better Red Than Dead’ crowd. A Democrat.
A man afraid of dying will never experience the joy of living.”
Nope Independant. I recognize nuts from both sides of the isle and would rather keep my options open and my affiliations clear.
“A dead man is dead and is worm food.”
~Me
Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.
and you are a coward.
I always liked Heinlein’s quote from Have Space Suit, Will Travel…and I’m not sure I’ve got it exact:
Better a dead hero than a live louse. Everyone dies sometime and the louse is forever having to explain his choice.
Orion
You are all idiots idiots idiots idiots idiots.
Now look. I repeated an assertion five times.
Unfortunatly due to the combined factors of you not knowing me and repetition not making a statement fact the above statement much like your assertion of my cowardice is false.
@Myth Buster: Doesn’t the bible have something against judging? Actually now that I look you are no better a christian than me.
By your own admission, you are a coward. There is nothing that is more important to you than living. You are so constrained by your cowardice that concepts like honor and transcendental love are so foreign to you that it’s like trying to make a blind man able to visualize a photograph.
Well . . . Awright then. May your chains sit lightly upon you.
Except that many of us are better trained than the officers who are likely to be unlawfully breaking into our homes. I know I am. I’ve shot against PD and SWAT on combat ranges before.
And I train in room clearing as well. I know the drill. Part of the advantage they count on is overwhelming speed and aggression. It doesn’t work as well against people who know what’s coming. I KNOW where the lines of sight and fatal funnels are in my home. They do not.
Orion
This law changes nothing and only re-emphasizes what has always been legally true, except in states where an unintelligently imposed “duty to retreat” was in place.
As for the–yes–cowardly notion that no creed is worth dying for, I’m glad that none of the Signers agreed with you.
And when Adams was writing about crouching and licking hands, he was writing about your sort.
This entire discussion reminds me of the Arizona case of a few months ago, wherein the police (can’t remember the agency) smashed in the door of the wrong house occupied by an Iraq war veteran and his family in the middle of the night. Having been awakened by the door breaking and seeing men dressed in black carrying guns, the homeowner grabbed his gun and fought back. The result was the homeowner killed in front of his children, an “oops wrong house” apology from the agency and no compensation for the family or consequences for the officers. If memory serves (and I could be wrong) the official response was “he shouldn’t have pointed a gun at us”.
Seems to me, this law will at least make law enforcement think about where they are before smashing a door in. I personally see no reason for a no knock warrant in the middle of the night. Wait until day light, surround the place and knock on the door before smashing it down. If you’re at the wrong house, I’m sure a law abiding citizen will open the door and ask what you want. A criminal will either surrender or give you the “not by the hair of my chinny chin chin” routine, at which time you can smash the door down.
Its time to roll back the asset seizure laws and legalize most drugs. These two factors have contributed more to police corruption than the invention of the donut.
Well said.
It’s the drug war that has led to such bad policing. Basically 30+ years ago policy makers decided that getting to the contraband (drugs) was more important than the lives and property of the suspects or the officers involved. Thus the use of “dynamic” or “no knock” raids was adopted far and wide. We can see where this has led us.
It’s time to end the tyranny. It’s time to end the war on drugs.
Yes, this law is dangerous.
So are law enforcement agencies which stage kinetic no-knock entries on the wrong address.
The real problem is too many LEAs that are sloppy and unaccountable about no-knock warrants. An address error on a no-knock warrant should be a career ender for somebody – maybe two or three somebodies.
Police have a dangerous and difficult job to do, and there will be honest errors. There are political hyenas stirring up de facto lynch mobs against the police.
But there shouldn’t be errors of carelessness and negligence. Official immunity for law enforcement should be matched by rigorous internal accountability. When it isn’t, police forfeit public trust, and measures like this result.
Sir Robert Peel was the Home Secretary (Head of the DoJ) in Britain who formed the first official police service in modern times in 1829. To this day police are refered to as ‘Bobbies’ (positive) or ‘Peelers’ (negative) in Britain. He drew up the principles which should apply to a civilian police force which are as relevant now as they were 160 years ago. I think that modern police should take particular note of the 7th point which I think has been forgotton recently.
1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.
2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions.
3. Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.
4. The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.
5. Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.
6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to be insufficient.
7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions, and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.
9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.
When I took the Florida concealed carry class, the instructor noted the different standards for being “right”. If an ordinary civilian, i.e., everybody in the concealed carry class, is told by someone that “a man wearing a red shirt and green pants just took a shot at me and ran around the corner”, and the ordinary civilian runs around the corner, sees a man with a red shirt and green pants, and when that person reaches into his pocket the ordinary civilian shoots him, and it turns out it was the wrong guy, that ordinary civilian is in a real heap of trouble. But a law enforcement officer in exactly the same circumstances is held to a very different and more relaxed legal criteria. He doesn’t HAVE to be right. He only has to have GOOD REASON to think the way he does.
Now consider the circumstances of a truly innocent person yelling at O’Reilly on the tube when somebody breaks in the front door. No matter how that somebody is dressed, does the truly innocent person HAVE to be right about using force to stop the entry? I say “no”.
But what if the kindly officers are politely knocking? I’m going to call 9-1-1 and ask if indeed a car has been dispatched to my house. They say “yes”, the door opens without further resistance. They say “no”, and I’m not letting whoever is knocking into my house. I will ask the “real” cops to pretty please send a real squad car to my house immediately.
I agree with Mr. Dunphy on this one. It is very strange that we seem to be moving in a direction in which we view any public employee (teachers, firemen, DMV, DNR, ag agency, and now police) as somehow the “enemy”. Public employees are US, they are our family, our friends, our neighbors. What kind of alienation from society is required to see the police as the “enemy”? What a paranoid world view.
Sorry, you’re got a totally invalid arguement there. For poster children of the paranoid just hang out with police in groups. They generally have an “us vs. them” mentality where every citizen is a criminal that just hasn’t been caught yet.
A friend of mine is a cop. He is a good family man and otherwise reasonable. He’s clearly showed and voiced an “us vs them” attitude to “civilians” in my presence, barely concealing his contempt for the average citizen. Anecdotal but there it is.
He’d be no friend of mine after expressing sentiments like that.
Maybe if the “us” against “them” feelings that LEO people project every single minute were not so prevalent, just maybe this law would have not gotten proposed.
Break into my house unannounced it will likely turn out bad for all, end of subject. There is no need for no knock night time warrants.
There are many fine officers, as good people as you will ever meet. However there is a large group that have the attitude that there are only two kinds of people, cops and a$$holes, and you aren’t a cop.
I work with police every day and that makes this discussion very difficult because of the many good cops. I believe the law may be necessary because of the over use of the swat tactics that have become so prevalent.
Interesting perspectives, thanks! I tried to make the point, inarticulately perhaps, that public employees, including police, are us. Cleaving a divide between people who work for the government and people who do not, isn’t helpful and only creates an artificial “us v them” mentality.
I’m suprised that no one has brought up the role of steroids in increasing police agression. I have read several studies of this and it at least was a major problem.
Jack, your fears about this law changing the way people will react to a police entry is unfounded. This law isn’t going to change people’s reactions one iota. If the homeowner knows it’s the police coming through the door, they will probably not resist (the same as before). If they think it’s a criminal, they might fight back. Either way, this law only determines what to do with a homeowner that fights back. Without the law, the homeowner gets the short end of the stick every time, and the police never have to take any responsibility for their actions. If the wrong door is entered and someone gets hurt, it’s a tragedy, but it’s the POLICE who are at fault — NOT the homeowner. A law which spells out that simple, undeniable fact is nothing but a good thing.
Let’s say Joe Doaks lives in a bad neighborhood. Officer John Law reads the house numbers wrong and mistakenly enters Joe’s house, violently, after midnight.
If Mr. Doaks shoots Officer Law, Doaks is doomed.
If Officer Law shoots Mr. Doaks, Doaks is dead, and almost nothing bad will happen to Officer Law.
Does this sound like equal protection under the law?
If Mr. Doaks shoots Officer Law, Doaks is doomed.
If Officer Law shoots Mr. Doaks, Doaks is dead, and almost nothing bad will happen to Officer Law.
Does this sound like equal protection under the law?
Is that a trick question?
Mr. Dunphy,
This is the natural political consequence of misuse of official authority. Law enforcement agencies in a democracy simply cannot expect to avoid responsibility for such errors in the line of duty. I’m talking here about the judicially created doctrine of limited immunity. Such immunity in no-knock situations is contrary to both good sense and the public sense of fairness and justice, and the public is always right at the polling place.
Please consider urging legislation mandating no-fault civil liability of public entities for personal injury and property loss arising from use of a no-knock warrant by law enforcement against any residence other than where the suspect resides. That might satisfy the public’s demand for fairness and justice concerning government wrongs against them.
Deny the public reasonable redress for police errors in this situation and expect them to shoot back. This Indiana law won’t be the first until that changes.
I don’t believe that I have ever seen a policeman tried and convicted after a “shoot,” anywhere I have lived over these last almost 70 years. ”Suspended while an investigation is being conducted” perhaps, “temporarily reassigned” perhaps, even very occasionally “permanently reassigned,” and very rarely even” fired,” but somehow the “shoot” is always justified, and the cop never goes to jail. The “Blue Line” protecting its own, and you, Mr. Dunphy, have shown us exactly why—the civilian—right or wrong—never wins, and likely never survives either.
Add to the mix the many millions of dollars in military equipment that the DOD has given police departments all over the country, and the Federal money that allows them to buy even more, and you now have these militarized SWAT teams seemingly everywhere. Well, they can’t just sit around, and let all this shiny new firepower, and equipment, and training o to waste, can they?? So, more and more they are deployed and, more and more, innocent civilians are shot, their families terrified, their dogs killed, and their homes trashed, with nary an apology from the police.
Tell me, after the cops have done any or all of these things–smashed down your door, shoved a gun in your face, dealt with you roughly and probably cuffed you and any other adult in the house, maybe ripped apart your house looking for something that isn’t there, terrified your wife and children, and killed the family pet, then just walked out the door when they realized it was all a mistake, who pays for the damage, who can put the pieces back together, and who can give that family their sense of security back again
Then, there are things like the 2006 case of 38 year old Fairfax county, VA Optometrist Sal Culosi (see http://reason.com/archives/2011/01/17/justice-for-sal), who, with no criminal record, was heard by a cop making a $50 football bet with friends in a bar–according to reports Culosi not a Mob guy, not a criminal mastermind, the head of a huge betting ring, or with any violent tendencies or record—but the cop who overheard the bet “befriended” him, and encouraged him to up the betting to a prosecutable $2,000, and Culosi was to be served with a search warrant.
Well, a full SWAT team was sent out to serve the warrant (apparently all warrants are now served by SWAT teams in Fairfax county, VA), and they rolled up and caught the non-gun owning, unarmed Culosi in his shorts and a t-shirt in his townhouse driveway, as he came out to meet the cop who had wormed his way into his confidence, and somehow or other one of their crack, trained SWAT team marksman “accidentally” shot him in the heart, and the testimony was that this “trained” officer had had his finger on the trigger going in and, well, it just “went off.”
Thereafter, the Fairfax county chief of police said that they were going to” thoroughly investigate this regrettable incident” or something to that effect, there was a follow-up story or two in the paper and, then, the story just faded away. The unmarried victim’s parents suffered through five years of legal proceedings, and recently received a $2 million dollar settlement, but the SWAT shooter –the parents, despite a couple of years requesting it, couldn’t pry his name out of the police department, and only found it out when a reporter revealed it–eventually got only a three week suspension without pay, which the police union protested as being ”too harsh.”
I received rifle training from Marines. One is NEVER to have his finger on the trigger until he has a lock on something he intends to shoot, and a trained marksman KNOWS that. That incident was, at a minimum, involuntary manslaughter, and likely second degree murder. There is no statute of limitations on murder, so I would encourage his parents to demand that he be arrested and charged with second degree murder. Let him plead down- his own words convict him of manslaughter, because a trained marksman doesn’t have his finger on the trigger in the first place unless he intends to shoot somebody, so if his finger was on the trigger and “slipped,” that was no accident, but rather at the very least reckless homicide.
Well, 51 threads, 85 comments, so far, and only one dissenter. And these are the law-abiding types, Mr. Dunphy. These are people who usually agree with you. This is what your supporters say. Your supporters, not your detractors. That should really make you stop and re-think your position. Great-big, red flag.
To the one dissenter, the guy who said it is just dumb to fight back, that you’ll only get killed, well, that is the whole problem, isn’t it? That you’re in a situation where you might get killed at 3AM, by the police whose salaries you pay with your taxes? But hey, we should not fight back, because we will die? Dude, there are far worse things than dying.
“Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night, because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
If we were to all agree with you, none of us would sleep peacefully in our beds at night. You can only say this thing, because others are willing to do the violence. If you do not want to fight back, that’s okay, but try not to insult those who have the courage to put their lives on the line for freedom. Say nothing, or just say thank you.
The really interesting question is why do conservatives who 20 years ago would have always given law enforcement blanket benefit of the doubt are now all so skeptical. What changed? A few guesses:
1. poor training and discipline resulting in some notorious cases of excessive force
2. domestic violence laws that require police to burst into a man’s bedroom while he’s sleeping and haul him away because someone made an anonymous allegation
3. a general sense, particularly in big cities, that union cops aren’t interested in justice any more
4…?
4…?
Detective Upwardbound and his partner need four more big (read MEDIAWORTHY) busts to get enough brownie points for promotion to whatever. His superviser needs ten more big busts for his department etc., etc.
Lie to get a warrant, lie to get authorization, lie to the docile homeowner before you shoot him, and never, ever apologize. The informant lied to us, the suspect was about to destroy the evidence, it was an emergency national security situation, and one more from column B.
5. After 911 and again with the Stimulus – the federal government dumped loads of military weapons and equipment on police agencies at all levels. Cops look more like an occupying army now than the public servant walking a beat a couple of decades ago. Not a sight that inspires affection.
6. The drug war got cranked up to an insane level. Maybe to justify to all those cool guns and equipment. Please don’t shoot up my neighborhood if my neighbor has an ounce or two of pot.
7. Cops, prosecutors, mayors, and judges in most places seem real comfortable with non-knock warrants for the most minor of offenses. These raids are done with more violence and looser rules of engagement than our troops are allowed to use in a combat zone. Why do we expect more self-control from 20-year-old Marines than 30-year-old cops?
8. Most of our encounters with police are annoying. They are set upon on us to write traffic tickets for the sole purpose of collecting fines. People long ago stopped viewing this as having anything to do with public safety.
9. Big government – as government gets bigger and more intrusive, it is the police and federal alphabet agencies who are sent out to enforce the unpopular new laws and regulations.
These raids are done with more violence and looser rules of engagement than our troops are allowed to use in a combat zone. Why do we expect more self-control from 20-year-old Marines than 30-year-old cops?
^^THIS.^^ I have the distinct impression that our soldiers and Marines showed more deference and respect for the Iraqis whose homes they searched than the average policemen show for American citizens in the same situation.
Something I haven’t seen mentioned, yet, but which Dunphy makes clear when he said that “no one really wins a fight with the police, at least not for long”. F**k with the police, and you WILL die.
If the cops break down your door at 3 a.m., and you defend yourself, and you prevail (in your fight and in court), that will not be the end of it. The police will find some way to “get” you. You may not die that morning, but they will kill you: someday, somehow, somewhere. Cops have long memories, and the first pull-over in an isolated area will the end of the road for you. I mean, who would doubt the word of a dedicated public servant? “Ladies and gentlemen, this man hated cops. He killed a police officer last year, and he attacked one of my officers last night while he conducted a traffic stop. My officer had to defend himself, and the perpetrator died in the altercation. I’m sorry, what was that? Yes, the perpetrator had been handcuffed and pepper-sprayed and shot 17 times in the face, but that is consistent with our internal procedures. Thank you, and please support your local law enforcement.”
Dunphy has graciously warned you what will happen to you when you mess with the cops: “death squad” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Then here’s my reply: Police must be obligated to wear video cameras at all times while on duty. Any missing footage results in immediate termination of employment and forfeiture of all benefits, just as failing a drug test would. Any police department that covers up such an incident gets its chief fired and 10% of its funding cut, to be administered either by an across the board 10% pay cut or laying off 10% of the police force at random. Let’s see how long the Thin Blue Line lasts when they become liable for their colleague’s mistakes/offenses.
Oh, please. The camera will be “defective” or “out of service”, or “something went wrong and the chip/tape/disc got erased by accident”. Funny how dash cams have the same “problems”.
There’s been a sea change in the attitude of conservatives towards law enforcement. As the state has swelled in power and officiousness, its essential nature is coming into sharper focus for many of us — we’re beginning to understand the libertarian insight.
“The police officers have mentally prepared themselves for a violent confrontation with the wanted fugitive whom they believe to be inside, so when the homeowner brandishes a weapon there is little time for calm discussion and admonishments…”
Mr. Dunphy doesn’t trouble himself to acknowledge the too many incidents in which the innocent homeowner is shot down on sight, brandished weapon or not. Dunphy could ask Jose Guerena Ortiz of Tucson AZ, or Alberto Flores-Haro of New Columbia, OR.
Oh, wait — Dunphy can’t ask them what they think of this law, because, well, they were murdered by SWAT teams who invaded the wrong house. And the men on the SWAT teams? They went home, scot free, because they’re immune from the lawsuits – and jail time – they so richly deserve.
I predict this won’t be the last such law. Arizona seems especially ripe.
Remember Jose Guerena. No more Jose Guerenas. We citizens will use whatever tools available to stop this runaway renegade use of SWAT callouts.
I actually want legislation that codifies the specific circumstances under which a SWAT call out can be authorized. I also want legislation laying down specific standards of training for SWAT members.
Until that time comes, I will gratefully accept any law that helps prevent any more deaths like Jose Guerena.
Lots of good comments on this thread, and I’m going to pile on as well. The root of the problem is the increasing militarization of the police, largely thanks to the war on drugs. SWAT-type raids are far too commonplace today. It used to be that they were only employed in hostage situations, which is as it should be.
(As an aside, no-knock raids are often justified in order to prevent suspected drug dealers from flushing the evidence. But so what? Doesn’t that get the drugs off the street? You could probably take more drugs out of circulation by simply knocking on doors, yelling “Police!”, and then moving on to the next house while the paranoid perp huddles in front of his toilet.)
It has been pointed out that, in the event of an economic breakdown in society, the police will be vastly outnumbered and outgunned by criminals, gang members, and assorted zombies. They are going to need decent, law-abiding, armed citizens who will have their backs. If they continue to treat “civilians” as adversaries, they will find themselves without friends and allies when the SHTF. And that won’t be good for any of us.
And furthermore, it costs the gangs a lot of money. If they keep destroying their inventory because they think they’re about to get arrested, they’ll put themselves out of business soon enough.
This subject has certainly ignited a firestorm of criticism – and surprisingly from those of us who normally recognize the plight of the average cop. No longer it seems. I’m not surprised by the reactions of the conservative and libertarian crowd. Law enforcement has increasingly crossed the line – look at all the postings of links above. Not mentioned is a former US Army officer seen in a Costco that was shot full of holes because someone in that store caught a glimpse of his lawfully concealed pistol.
The list of grievances is long and gets longer daily Mr Dunphy. Your example of watching a perp at his residence makes no sense to me. Why the hell didn’t you grab him OUTSIDE? Your under cover operatives watched him coming and going. Is it just SOP to wait until the perp is inside so you can use those playthings like battering rams and guns? This makes no sense to me whatever. Randy Weaver was observed many times by the Feds strolling down the sidewalk unarmed and without a care in the world – they could have nabbed him any time they wished – but their ‘wish’ apparently was a shootout. They got their wish – and collateral damage too. Same at Waco – Koresh could have been taken easily on the street but the Feds wanted more. They got more than they bargained for – a few dead agents and many dead civilians.
All this adds up to for me and most of the commenters here is you guys are just spoiling for confrontation.
Be careful of what you wish for – there are many more of ‘us’ than there are of ‘you’ and we are getting increasingly tired of the no-knock mistakes from ‘law’ enforcement.
To Serve And Protect – I see that on police cars in my area.
Perhaps a new slogan is in order?
To Harass and Terrorize? Sounds about right.
I like this law, let the Police sit outside and arrest people when they come out, they have to come out some time and its only polite to have a little patience. These assaults with breaking down the door in the middle of the night are uncalled for. There are several cases where the police have been mistaken and gotten the wrong house, broken in and murdered innocent unarmed people who had done nothing, and received no punishment. I like the idea that there will be more sieges, and fewer bloody stormings of the walls.
With respect, it’s not this law that is an ass; in many cases, it’s “The Law”.
The case of Jose Guerena is a case in point:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/05/27/20110527arizona-police-shooting-tucson-veteran-documents.html
The biggest lie you were ever told: “The policeman is your friend”.
It wasn’t always that way. In the span of my lifetime, the police (in general – local results obviously vary) have gone from protecting citizens from criminals – to treating us all like criminals.
I find the police my age (40′s) tend to be far calmer and more polite than the younger ones. I think this is going to get worse and become a major issue in the coming years.
Back when I was CPT Hoge (US Army), a cop referred to me as a “civilian” because I wasn’t a policeman. My response was to ask him when he had enlisted or been drafted.
Back when I was CPT Hoge (US Army), a cop referred to me as a “civilian” because I wasn’t a policeman. My response was to ask him when he has enlisted.
So the Democrats can now cast the Republicans as anti-police. Whose brilliant idea was this? The Republicans are not called the STUPID PARTY for no reason.
You really know how to add to the conversation don’t you? All you ever post is “The Republicans are not called the STUPID PARTY for no reason.”
Go bray somewhere else.
Talk about stupid Democrats…
Some things are better left to the decision of the courts. If the officers did not do their proper diligence in determining which house they were supposed to search, and they get hurt in the process, I do not think the homeowner should be held responsible.
Furthermore, announcing that they have a search warrant in advance is key. In the case of drug dealers, there is a serious problem because the perpetrators literally will flush the most damning evidence down the toilet. The difference between the aggressive search warrant gone wrong, and appropriate police work is ultimately a judgement call.
In the case of a mistaken search warrant, an armed homeowner must be given some leeway. But exactly how much depends upon what happened, how it happened, and what lead up to it.
This is why we have courts. We can’t make laws for every situation. We have too many as it is.
No there cannot be laws to cover everything, but the law can state just principles clearly. This law repudiates the decision of a judge who said it is not lawful for the citizenry to oppose the unlawful entry of the state into their homes.
This law only re-iterates that the courts operate only after the shooting stops, and that it is lawful for the state to be opposed with force when it is violently–in all other circumstances inarguably feloniously–wrong.
sorry i have to disagree with the Author, The coursts stated that we do not have the lawful right to protect our homes from police entering illegally. then we dont have the right to protect ourselves. As a free nation we have the right to defend ourselves and our homes from ANYBODY. this includes police as well. Im a supporter of police, but not so much that ill trust them blindly and soley with my life! Simply put a cop enters my home without my permission and without probabale cause or a legal warrant then he is breaking into my home and I will kill him. There is NO reason for a police officer to come in illegally. I urge all bloggers to arm yourself and do not register your guns. they govt will nickle and dime our rights away until we are slaves. do not allow this. the 2nd amendment is the only permit you need and anyone trying to stop it is an enemy and should be delt with as such
Hey, Dunphy — seems a change of slogan is in order. No more “To Protect and Serve”.
With this new law, it ought to be “Leave No Witnesses”.
Why don’t you guys make that SOP? “When we get in there, kill anything that moves, even the kids. No witnesses, no case. Can’t take any chances, boys.”
Way back when there was a case in my home town. Two plain clothes policemen mistook a man for (I forget what kind of crime) and one attempted to subdue him.
It turned out the man had a black belt in Karate. Both policemen were killed. And then the DA took the man to court for murder. A jury of his peers found the man not guilty – the homicide was self defense. Honest to crap the DA brought up something about the guy not warning these two guys he never saw before that he had a black belt while one of them was trying to strangle him.
Hey, Dunphy…we’re CITIZENS, not SUBJECTS. Your bunch are the SERVANTS, not our MASTERS. You guys screw up, YOU die, not US.
afraid i’ll have to side w/ the new law. they are sending a message, long overdue. take heed. you guys work for the people, to serve and protect. lack of professionalism causes deaths in many fields of endeavor. arrogance is another matter.
Sorry, officer, I beg to disagree. Our country was founded with the idea that a man’s home was his castle, and police were not supposed to enter a home without a warrant. The USSct recently threw out knock & announce as a requirement, but it is still a time-honored method to ensure that the inhabitants of a dwelling understand you have a facially valid-if erroneous– warrant.
The police have grossly reversed the respect due for a private citizen’s rights in his/her dwelling, as this local horror story–and coverup–makes clear: http://www.theledger.com/article/20030713/NEWS/307130443?p=1&tc=pg
In my home state we have something called the ‘Castle Doctrine.’ It gives the homeowner the right to use deadly force against an intruder if the homeowner feels threatened. Not too many questions would be asked…
This law is just the natural full extension of such a ‘Castle Doctrine.’
As mentioned on several posts the seizure laws have made criminals of law enforcement. As citizens we are guilty before evidence is offered or even available. In the absence of guilt, we must still prove ourselves innocent to maintain ownership of our own property. This is clearly unconstitutional yet remains US law, it is just one example of the loss of freedom we allow to happen.
There are two families of police i know, one is ethical and reasonable, the other family must be given wide berth and avoided at all costs. They are criminals and have planted and manufactured evidence, seized cash, drugs and property from Crime scenes and used their positions to pressure favors from govt officials, criminals and innocent citizens alike. They are a criminal enterprise and operate openly in the major city’s department they work in.
Take a chance one of the corrupt cops will enter my house at night and leave without assaulting my wife or stealing jewelry..hell no. Would rather die defending my house and family, at least taking 2-3 of them with me will rid the City of their filth.
How can most of you be serious? You are going to justify shooting a cop for kicking in your door, by accident? Really, Justifying homicide, or taking ones life, for a mistake? You half minded computer warriors assume cops sit in a squad room and boast about “taking your rights away”. Please America, stop watching T.V. and assuming its reality!
And a thought.. The idea brought by Mitch Daniel’s office, google him if you are not sure who this is, was “A citizen cannot shoot a cop who is in his house raping his daughter. The citizen can only sue the cop in court.” Not much was brought up on no knock warrants. Clearly, the concern here is “cops” raping daughters while on duty.. Really? LoLZ! Classic Fail.. If a Cop is raping someone.. Guess what Johnny Q Stupid, He isn’t a cop at the time.. Clearly, you can shoot him.
In closing, I am shocked and sad that our society has come to “authorizing cop killing laws” to “PROTECT AMERICAN RIGHTS IN THEIR HOME”.. Lol..
I guess this knocks “beautiful Indiana” off of my list of places to visit!
PS.. Yes I quote a lot.. I’m allowed! Thanks
Not “by accident”, cholo; a bunch of cops breaking into my house through gross negligence of their powers and my rights, killing my pets, terrorizing my family, and stealing my property.
Um, if the cop is no longer a cop when he’s raping someone (breaking the law) – then he’s no longer a cop when he’s unlawfully kicking my door in either. Mistake or no, he is breaking the law. So by your own logic, he’s no longer a cop and we’re fine with shooting him.
And as for ‘keyboard warriors’, you might want to read the threads a bit more often. I recognize a lot of these posters from other threads and they include Soldiers, cops, firefighters, etc. For example, I’m a Soldier, a former (7 year) EMT/Firefighter, and I work for a Law Enforcement agency. I have nothing but respect for Cops, I’m friends with many, But someone unlawfully entering my house? Sorry. As you point out – they’re not a cop at that point.
Orion
Whoa… bear in mind two critical points.
1) In this scenario the homeowner doesn’t know the intruder is a cop.
2) In this scenario the homeowner can be reasonably afraid of a deadly intrusion.
Take a slightly different scenario.
A gangster, seeking “revenge” because he thinks a drug dealer cheated him, writes down the wrong address, breaks into the wrong house, gun drawn and shouting, looking threatening.
And you shoot.
Same deal? You are, after all, shooting someone because of a clerical error.
What does the law say if you shoot him?
If an ambulance runs an intersection with its siren screaming we all know whats going on and we let him by. If an ambulance runs an intersection in the middle of the night with his lights off and his siren quiet someone can get killed. Trying to make that the fault of the other drivers is not quite right.
>You are going to justify shooting a cop for kicking in your
>door, by accident?
Why do you want to retain this special immunity for police officers, when the law for civilians kicking down doors with drawn weapons, and getting killed by the home owner, is called justifiable homicide?
Here’s some background information that Jack Dunphy left out of his post (Stolen shamelessly from a post on the news article @ Fark):
A couple years back 2 officers responded to a 911 call of domestic violence in a small Indiana town. When they got there, the girlfriend/wife/whatever recanted and the guy blocked the front door refusing to let them in. Indiana has one of those automatic arrest thingies for domestic violence(girl had visible marks) so the cops entered the guy’s house(legally) and the dude started punching and kicking them. So he gets arrested, but the domestic violence charge doesnt stick. To get out of the assaulting a police officer charge, he gets the ICLU on his side and they argue something along the lines of it being an illegal entry because there was no domestic violence. Goes all the way to the Indiana Supreme court who rule that under the existing (broadly written law) citizens shouldnt resist cops whether the entry was legal or not because it puts everyone in danger. The victim(homeowner) can seek remedy through the court system later if they did indeed have their rights violated(cough-laf). Couple all that with a huge uptick in no-knock warrants, and Indiana’s recent publicized promotion(and corruption) of the property-seizure biz– and you got the libertarians(and a whole lot of liberals) going batshiat screechy. Sooo, this law was put in place to actually put restrictions on the previous law which was so poorly written it gave police carte-blanche to do pretty much whatever the fark they wanted, even in the homes of private citizens.
So Mr Dunphy, why didn’t you do some research on the background on the law and present this info to the readers? If you have an axe to grind, try not to be not only partisan, but dishonest.
What about the young former Marine who was gunned down in his own home late at night in front of his wife and child, then left to bleed to death? The local Sheriff called it justifiable. The young man was awakened from sleep to hear his door breaking in, and followed his marine training to protect his family. He didn’t even fire his weapon before he was gunned down in cold blood.
Of course, the cops didn’t even think about trying to contact him at a more reasonable time and in a more reasonable location. BTW-no drugs or signs of illegality were found. He leaves behind a traumatized wife and four year old son…that is his reward for serving his country.
Sorry Jack, too many local cops AND federal officers are acting just like narco death squads. You guys need to step it back so we can trust you again.
Wow, what a bunch of cop haters. “narco death squads” and all the speak of crooked cops who think they’re above the law?! You people obviously live in a bubble and are out of touch with reality. And my guess is that you’re prodominantly Ron Paulites who are obsessed with protecting your weed from “the man”.
We have the most accountable police force in the world and if they act in an illegal manner then they are held accountable. And if you look at the statistics of how many cops break the law as opposed the the number of police there are in this country, you’ll find that the over whelming majority are honest and have integrity above reproach. The bad ones are quickly purged from the ranks and punished.
Cops are asked to do a necessary but unpopular duty for our society. Everybody loves to see the firefighter or paramedic but no one wants to see the cop. But yet, have someone steal your property, assault you or your loved one and the cops better get you your justice. They damn well better find out who victimized you and they damn well better punish them (even though that’s the court’s job).
Do me a favor and go be a cop. That is, if you even qualify to apply and then pass all the months of extensive testing. Then come back and talk about a level playing field. This isnt a game, these are people’s lives. People who have familys who take the calling to serve our communities.
We have the most accountable police force in the world and if they act in an illegal manner then they are held accountable.
Now that there is funny. I don’t care who you are.
Might want to look at the behavior of the Las Vegas PD re: police involved shootings and the New Orleans PD throughout Katrina as two starting examples in your education.
Orion
Ah, the old 2004 “chickenhawk” argument revived! I’d put my 27+ years in the Army with enough combat experience, thank’ee very much, andf 5 years as an Assistant State’s Attorney (in IL)against such a logical fallacy-ridden defense.
“The bad ones are quickly purged from the ranks and punished.” is probably the weakest statement in your argument – but I can only draw my experience from Chicago PD and several suburban departments and two IL State Police Districts. There is a reason that the old joke exists – “what is the sound of police misconduct being gotten away with?” “FOP FOP FOP FOP FOP”.
Of course if you have the “statistics” to back up your assertion, I would take a look at them and judge accordingly.
“We have the most accountable police force in the world and if they act in an illegal manner then they are held accountable.”
Hogwash. I can show you an entire street full of illegally parked vehicles, and since they belong to cops, not a one has ever had a ticket and none ever will.
Around here, one recent defense against “ticket fixing” complaints was the idea that it is so common it is perceived as just an ordinary perk. The officers were dumbfounded that people actually considered it to wrong.
Jack —
Brother, you are delusional. I CANNOT believe you would post something so ignorant in the age of the Internet, when massive evidence contradicting your ridiculous assertions is readily accessible to all.
Why don’t you take a few moments and examine the archives at Radley Balko’s “The Agitator” site. You will get a firm, fact-filled, thorough education on “police accountability”….or, rather, the lack thereof.
Dammit Jack, reading the posts up to now, I’ve simply disagreed with you. Now, you’ve just seriously angered me.
“Wow, what a bunch of cop haters…You people obviously live in a bubble and are out of touch with reality.”
Really Jack? Cop haters? Bubble dwellers? Just who the hell do you believe PJMedia’s readers are? The readers of these pages are amongst the most responsible, God-fearing patriots you’re likely to come across. And the fact that the vast majority of these posts, from readers of this caliber, indicate a stout opposition to your point of view ought to tell you something; if you’re not too arrogant to hear it.
This law was passed because the IN SC said that even if a police officer was comitting an illegal act outside of his official duties, one could not use deadly force to protect themselves. An example would be if a cop was going to rob your house, it was a crime to use force to prevent that. This law merely returns the common law right to use force to protect oneself from illegal acts by police officers.
@Beth – that’s the case I was thinking of as well – and wasn’t that in California?
I have police friends and work with retired law enforcment guys, but I have to say, that when the police wrongly enter a place, the innocent do usually suffer if they in any way provide resistance. If I hear my door crashing in while it is the middle of the night, my first thoughts aren’t “Golly, let me go and check if that is a police officer making a mistake BEFORE I get my gun”. If police are not held liable for an unintentional wrong, then neither should a wrongfully targeted citizen.
No that was in Pima County, Arizona (Tucson area). The police claim that they announced themselves properly and it wasn’t a “no-knock” raid, but look at the video from a helmet cam: http://www.thefix.com/content/ex-marine-gunned-down-chaotic-drug-raid-0
This is what we need to protect ourselves from.
At 66 years old, never arrested, I’ve never seen the policeman I was glad to see. They’ve always created more problems than I’ve ever seen them solve. Get robbed, call them, make a report, and never hear from the police again, even when they are handed a solid lead to the criminals. Come through my door uninvited and an arsenal of loaded weapons, rounds in chambers, will be fired at you and your companions, regardless of the costume you’re wearing. It’s long past time for government thugs to fear The People. Pitchfork at the ready.
Isn’t the current to-do about the practice of SWAT-ing innocent (conservative) bloggers raging *because* of the potential of police SWAT teams barging into a blogger’s home and shooting him/her before the blogger has a chance to question or explain? I understand the adrenaline factor and the desire to promote as much safety for the police on the job as possible, but really, if there’s a prove-able trend that citizens need to be afraid of being SWAT-ed to death by the police at the instigation of progressive punks then cops need to be looking at different ways of keeping themselves safe. I think on the whole, I would be in favor of this legislation because police need to *always* keep in mind that the citizens’ right to protect their own safety comes first.
I ahd written my Indiana state congressman twice requesting changes to Indiana’s qualified immunity statutes. Instead we got this; nothing more than codifying common law and the Fourth amendment, really. That’s why the governor and the people recognized the court case as overturning 200 years of precedent.
At this time I have to wonder if LE would rathwr have it like it is and not have qualified immunity removed from their protection, either including or instead. I like including better.
What the real solution to the problem of overzealous police raids is to remove qualified immunity as a defense. As the LE says, ignorance is no excuse. Yet ignorance is exactly the excuse qualified immunity is designed to justify.
We must remind our public servants of two things. First, we are the sovereigns. Second, they are called servants for reasons bearing heavily on the definition of the first thing. There is no reason that good faith errors cannot be adjudicated for lesser sanctions, depending upon circumstances. Let the jury decide. That is our check and balance.
Answer this: why should government employees be immune from prosecution or sanction for breaking the law? All that does, and I do mean all, is give rise to criminality.
This legislation won’t protect you if the cops come in on a 0300 SWAT raid. They will come in armed and armored, throwing concussion grenades and waving automatic rifles about. They will still shoot your dogs and terrorize your kids. If you resist, they will cheerfully kill you. This may actually increase that probability, slightly.
On the odd chance you drive the cowards off with gunfire, it may help, but they’ll probably just kill you anyway, and burn down your house with you and your family in it.
What it will protect you against, and this is significant, is the predictable charge of resisting arrest after they handcuff you and kick you half to death while repeatedly screaming “Stop Resisting.”
I can see both sides of this…Oh? We are all on the same side…aren’t we ?
This is the eternal struggle between freedom and security.
‘They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.’ – B. Franklin
The police have a right, a license to kill, anyone they believe threatens
their life…and ‘civilians’ don’t ?
So it basically sets up a wild-west gun fight situation,
and the cop is going to win almost all of these contests.
Say that they do; The police are badly outnumbered
by those civilians who will fight home invaders.
How many police funerals before the survivors
refuse to participate in more home invasions ?
Hey Jack…did you ever step in it or what? Everyone before me has pretty much covered all the arguements I would offer. Find better ways to do your job than breaking down doors in the middle of the night and there wouldn’t be a problem or and issue.
My understanding about this law is this:
That it is designed to decriminalize shooting of a police officer by a resident who is defending his home and family from unknown intruders. The fact that the person is identified as a cop after the fact does not change the imminent danger that the resident believed themselves to be in.
This law is consistent with laws which protect drivers who refuse to pull over because they believe the person stopping them is not a cop….You can’t be held responsible for what you don’t know…only what you do know.
An intruder is an intruder….When the police decide to enter a residence with the element of surprise as an intentional component of that entry…they assume some degree of risk. If they put an unsuspecting resident in the spontaneous position of “kill or be killed”….that person should have legal protection if they are otherwise innocent of wrongdoing.
Sounds good to me, living in the NYC area, I know the police to be goofy on occasion. If you kick down the door on the wrong house, guns ablazing, you deserve what you get.
Back in the day, I was rear-ended in Chatham, NJ and because the woman was the police sex toy, she didn’t get a ticket. I have no sympathy for that department, and why should anyone? There as in many places the police a sworn bullies.
One of the more nonsensical opinions I’ve read in recent weeks. Citing an exceptional set of circumstances in which no one was actually killed is not a basis for a serious criticism of this law. It is teenage sophistry.
The law does not address the wisdom of the action. It does mean that a person who fires on an intruder and survives can’t be charged with the willful killing of a police officer.
The force behind the creation of this law is the dispicable behavior of cops in far too many cases where the innocent were humiliated and terrorized in front of and along with their families. The fact that there is never any cost to this behavior has led to this bill.
The Constitution is not a negotiable item for your convenience or my safety. The Founders would consider your swat teams a standing army, which they abhorred.
“…under the terms of this new law, those occupants might kill a police officer and yet be vindicated in court. If they survive the encounter, that is.”
Your arrogance fails to surprise me.
If you come to my door at oh-dark-thirty everyone will be asleep, and your announcement will not be heard. But I assure you that any attempt to break and enter will be met with armed response. Do you really want to die for your crappy job?
Charlie
I do not agree with this article at all. It is a load of crap imo. If someone kicks down my door and barges in, they are going to get the same response, no matter what uniforms they are wearing, or what laws are on the books.
I do not support the shooting of police, I do support the right of an American to defend themselves first and ask questions later.
Although the Indiana law was written to protect citizens from “rogue cops”, it does pose a new danger to police officers and citizens.
Police officers these days are highly trained and re-trained professionals. Yes, police sometimes do burst through a door, and a citizen may react, but officers are likely to keep control and refrane from using deadly force…unless confronted violently.
In the “burst in” situation, a citizen can immediately surrender and submit to police…and be released unharmed. In a similar situation, where a citizen resists he and/or an officer may be killed.
Police work can be dangerous, police deal with a lot of really nasty characters and every year a number lose their lives protecting us.
The Indiana law should be repealed, citizens should understand the situations officers face sometimes and the split second life and death decisions they are sometimes forced to make.
Let’s not make the job more dangerous, rather let’s take steps as a society to make sure police officers get to go home at night, citizens can sleep soundly…and criminals are put away behind bars.
I can only assume for the sake of charity that you are completely ignorant of why this law was passed. That is, the Supreme Court of Indiana ruled that there simply exists no lawful basis to resist an officer who has illegally entered your home. If a cop kicks down your door without a warrant starts looking around, prior to this law, Indiana Supreme Court precedent held that you had no right to stop him even though it was objectively a felony with a serious civil suit angle. This law was passed by a nearly unanimous legislative push to make it clear to the police: no warrant and no probable cause+exigent circumstance = we throw you to the wolves if you enter their home or car.
Cops are expected to uphold the law in how they enforce it. When my father was a cop, this law was the norm, not the exception in most states. If he kicked down your door at 3AM with the wrong address on the warrant, the onus was on him to be right and you were free to shoot him or his partner dead. Funny thing is, most of the cops of his generation had no problem with that. The law was a lot simpler back then. Right was right, wrong was wrong, accidents on the part of the state didn’t constitute a duty to surrender like serfs on the part of the citizenry.
You know what? He and most of his professional associates are actually wary and even afraid of dealing with young cops because of the modern cop culture and their supporters like you.
It never has been and never will be legal to shoot dead a cop who owns up to his mistake and tries to surrender or leave peacefully. What this law does is make it clear to the police that if they break the law, the citizen will have no duty to back down. Period. If the cops retreat, they cannot be shot in the back in all 50 states like anyone else fleeing.
Yes, cops have dangerous jobs, but that has no bearing on their legal and moral duty to get it right, use force lawfully and back off the moment they realize that they have broken a rule or targeted a possibly factually innocent person. Professional cops would have no issue with that statement anymore than professional soldiers have an issue with rules of engagement that tell them to cease fire immediately if they are targeting the wrong location even if those hold up are still shooting (meaning, you hit the wrong house, they’re still objectively defending themselves so fall back rather than double down on the error of hitting the wrong people).
Question. In the southwest, where violent home invasions by cross-border gangs which get innocent houses as often as their intended targets, happens so often it is routine and they are almost always dressed in “Police” swat-style apparel and shout “POLICE” while kicking down doors, what do you suggest we do? Let them take us hostage? Happens all the time. We don’t trust the police to properly announce themselves. The police will be indistinguishable from the REALLY bad guys. The police have the same responsibility to not make a mistake as I do. Anyone barging in like that will initiate a firefight.
Don’t believe the police don’t properly announce? Look at this, the Pima County Sheriff’s office officially claims they announced themselves. Listen for it: http://www.thefix.com/content/ex-marine-gunned-down-chaotic-drug-raid-0
I have some sympathy for older LEOs such as this author. However, the understanding by the public and justification for modern police tactics that he seeks have long ago let the barn. They left due to the excessive militarization of police departments in general and the attitude that they are always right and in charge regardless of their actions.
Civilians — and yes, civilians as compared to the militarized police of today — have died, had their property destroyed or confiscated (the fraud of asset seizure laws which enrich police coffers), pets killed and falsely imprisoned due to the arrogance and, in many cases, deceit by the modern police forces. Granted, a great many of those serving are or, at least began their careers for the right reasons. However, it’s no longer a case of a few bad apples spoiling the group — in fact the bad apples are in some departments the majority of the force.
In my Colorado hometown we still have a lot of the good guys on the force. However, we have so many bullies and deceitful cops now that we hesitate to call them for fear of getting one of the bad apples responding. It’s sad that we have come to this, but it’s only going to get worse with the schism between LEOs and the bullied civilians growing exponentially. When and if the s**t really hits the fan the police are going to find themselves without public support if not actually targets of local rage.
The real story here, born out by the bulk of comments,
is that a frighteningly large percentage of the population
has lost confidence in and and respect for the police.
This used to be a belief mostly confined to the “lower class” -
now it is prevalent in mainstream America.
Jack’s living in a dream world. Right near where he lives, the Orange County DA is prosecuting the uniformed thugs who beat Kelly Thomas, a homeless man in Fullerton (California), to death last year. The beating took place in front of a crowd of witnessess and was recorded by a PD camera on a nearby light pole. The repercussions so far: Chief resigned, 3 council members recalled, and an FBI investigation, plus the legal proceedings against the two cornfed “officers”. In just the past couple of years, this Department, which polices a pleasant suburb has had to deal with cops accused of grand theft, fraud, misappropriation of assets and seized property, false arrest, escalation of non-threatening incidents, assault, and destruction of evidence.
With any luck, the citizens’ rebellion in Fullerton will spread across the country.
Wake up. Maybe there are plenty of good cops out there, but there are way too many bad ones protected by the rest. And the bad ones are getting away with too much too often.
I used to admire the police, and to some extent still do. But the images I get these days when I think “cop” are primarily: overweight, corrupt, steroid user, arrogant, unhelpful, functionally illiterate, and threatening.
A free society is one where I can flip off a cop and not have to worry about any consequences.
Police uniforms, especially SWAT outfits are easy to counterfeit. This law only hampers power hungry prosecuters from persecuting innocent homeowners/renters for defending their person from lethal attack. It seems that everyone missed the point concerning the police-persons threat whether at the right location or not. When at the correct location they are likely be met with an armed response, sometimes with fully automatic weapons. There was a widely reported case in the greater Atlanta area of an innocent woman shot to death by a “no knock” SWAT attack at the wrong address. We citizens hire the police force to protect us, not to kill us. Criminal smash and grab has become prime TV news, we have the right to expect police protection from all who knock down our doors, however 911 response times are terrible, especially in the inner city. Two cases personally encountered: Portland Oregon, thugs siphoning gas from my car, I spotted them and called the police, one hour later a patrol car came to investigate, next time I told the 911 operator that the police could meet me in the parking lot, I would be the one with a shot gun… response time 30 seconds. Second time in inner city Atlanta, Georgia, a man was engaged in a gun battle with a car in front of our home, I called 911, three hours later a patrol car pulled up out front to investigate. No wonder that a citizen needs a gun of some sort to protect the lives of his family. He also needs the right to protect his house from persons breaking in the front door, without having to determine on his own whether they are police or not, and without being prosecuted for making a mistake about who the perpetrators really are. The police need to be prepared for an armed response, whether they have the right place or not.
Watch this video of the SWAT team killing of Jose Guerena:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XP0f00_JMak
Then tell me citizens do not need to protect themselves from the cops.
My son is US Army Infantry. A fire team leader, highly trained to clear a building. I KNOW how dynamic entry should be performed. The SWAT team in the video is a bunch of yayhoo cowboys. They unloaded SEVENTY ONE rounds through that doorway. Some were firing their weapons while holding them up over the shoulders of the guys in front of them.
This is sickening and disgusting. It must be stopped.
failed police raids have killed too many innocent Americans.
A man’s(woman’s) house is his castle etc. Make the police accountable and subject to the same laws as citizen/taxpayers.
I’ve always been dismayed by the death penalty being given to those who murder police but not to those criminals who murder American taxpayers?
Jack, your fun tale from the LA projects is a good read.. but doesn’t have a thing to do with Indiana’s new and good law. Now, had you NOT had a warrant, or had you got the wrong floor, rather then just the wrong “extre” door for the proper residence, you’d have announced at some uninvolved stranger’s door… and learned you had the wrong place entirely, warrant or no. Once learning that, apologise and move on, back too the research phase of your project. No harm, this law wasn’t needed as the innnocent occupant was never in direct threat of his life. HOWEVER< as often pointed out in above comments, far too often these days the MO for your warrant service wold be cordon off the entire street, clear the public off the grounds, stage a SWAT team or two at each door, without any warning or announcement, bust in all four doors at once and come in, guns and laser sights trained on everyonne in the place. Now, suppose you'd done that on the wrong floor…. innocent (armed, as is his right) resident hears doors crashing in, reaches for his sidearm, trains on the first moving object he sees, and fires. One dead cop. IF the others back off, regroup, realise they're on the wrong floor, and are big enough to back off rather than totally destroy the wrong apartment and everyone in it, the situation is deescalated. And the resident will not be convicted for shooting an unlawful intruder who just HAPPENED to be dressed in a govenment issued costume.
As mentioned, when LE again realises they are OUR servants and stop elevating the barriers that elevate them to a special class of elites, above and in control of we mundanes, laws like this well enver be neded. What gave rise to this one is a rotten case where cops played hoodlums, a citizen resisted their unlawful advances (didn't even shoot at them)and was tried and convicted for the dsstardly attitude that he had a right to defend himself against a violent attack that was illegal on its face.
In New Mexico some time ago, a Marine was killed, seventy rounds from a gang of trigger happy SWAT guys, who busted down his front door in the middle of the night.. the guy had a Wife and two kids to protect, and was doing so. No warning, no knowck, only CRASH in the dark…. and figures in his dark living room. He had his AK, safety still on….ready to defend those under his protection, as ALL real MEN in this country must. He was hit seventy times and never got the safety off. The cops refused to allow availble medical assistance to treat the man, who bled out on the floor, his wife watching and rapidly become a widow… powerless against the government thugs who had just killed her hsuband. End result.. wrong address. More recently, a woman was getting ready for work, in the shower, knock at the door, police, open up… they allowed her time to put some clothes on, she opened the door and wars rushed…. next thing, her eight year old son had a large number of red laser dots on his chest…. loaded guns at the other ends of each red stream of light. WHY? They were after a suspect whom this woman had said had not lived there for over a year… where is she" I don't know, but she's on government supperted housing go ask them, they know where they are paying her rent. Multiple times they'd been told they have the wrong place….. it is THIS sort of cop stupidity/pigheadedness that is putting WE THE PEOPLE at risk these days. Jack, you are part of the "old guard" days when LE were on the same side as the general public. These days, LE are more like an occupying force, able to do, and doing, whatever THEY deem appropriate. "We don't need to warrant", "don't give me that constitutional rights crap" "stop resisting" as I taser you three more times…. like the poor man back in Maryland alst week, pepper sprayed as he opened the window of his just-wrecked car (he''d had a seizurel leading to the crash), then as he got out of the car they tased him so many times he died from it. Nice cop… forty of them. Beating and tasing him, when he was ot resisting at all, unable to after being tased multiple time. Makes the cops the last people I ever want to see approach MY car at the scene of a wreck.
When cops will allow true citizen review and accountability, rather than settle for "department review" of what is almost certainly unlawful use of force BY THE COPS, maybe laws like this won't be needed. The ligislators of Indiana are, rightfully (it is WHY they were elected, right?) moving to protect their constituents from rampant police abuse and defiance of the law… and doing so under the aegis of some unwritten code that places them above accountability for their (illegal) actions. I could wish for a return too the way things used to was back when you were a beat cop…. even in LA. YOU guys actially got a warrant, did your homework, moved in on the perp with wisdom and caution, responded well to a surprise, and apprehended your mark and the goods. These days, the SWAT team would trash the place with glee, shoot anyone they'd happen to come accross as "accessories" (well, he was THERE, was't he? He MUST be involved….) and likely do so at three AM with no knock, no warning, little caution for anything other than their own safety. Public be hanged. And if they happen to ahave been careless in their workup of the situation and kill four people in the wrong apartment, letting the real perp escape, no repercussions.
It was precisely this sort of tyranny led the Colonials to rise up and push back against their British overlords, throwing them off. WHY do you expect the general public, the SOVEREIGN in this land, to ahve any different sentiments today? We want to be free of such tyranny. Indiana have made a solid move in that direction. Good on em. May many more states follow.
Let me see…….if the police kick down your door and shoot you because they got a bad tip or wrong address…..it is just a mistake.
But, If you do the same to them when they make a mistake it is bad?
The quickest way that I know of to get the police to do better work is to give them a big fat consequence. THEY get shot!
In fact the entire concept of the police kicking down a door without proper warning and a proper (verified) warrant is wrong.
The real issue is the corrupt attitude of the government employees of nearly every kind and level. Part of the problem is the invalid notion of “official immunity”. If there weren’t so many coddled and protected corrupt cops and so many coddled and protected corrupt judges, coddled and protected corrupt and oath-breaking congress-critters, and so many corrupt people in the DoJ, for instance, we wouldn’t have gotten to the statist quo where we have to assume that the government employee or person pretending to be a government employee is corrupt and dangerous and acting with criminal intent. But now that nearly all of them are, well, the situation is what it is and must be dealth with accordingly.
“authorizes citizens to use force against ‘public servants’ (read police officers [code nazis, zoning thugs, utility snoops, un-manned aerial vehicle operators, helicopter operators with FLIR units, phone tappers, hackers...]) whom they reasonably believe to be entering their home illegally."
"I wrote a search warrant which was approved by a judge"
I don't follow your thinking. No explicit "authorization" should be necessary for a citizen to defend himself. The constitution requires special authorization for any government functionary to enter anyone's home or barn or garage or place of business. And it specifies that no such authorization is to be given unless believable affidavits (not obvious and self-contradictory tissues of lies like some we've seen in highly publicized cases) and other evidence establishes, to the satisfaction of a reasonably skeptical judge, that it is probable that the person has or is in the act of initiating force or fraud against another. The judge is supposed to write the warrant, not the government-employed burglar, and he/she is not supposed to give them out lightly. As a matter of fact, judges should be prosecutable for giving out warrants in cases in which it is obvious that they should not have done so.
"In police work, as in all human endeavors, mistakes happen."
And such mistakes should have negative incentives, which should prevent you from or cause you to avoid making such mistakes ever again. If you break into the wrong house or apartment, you've broken into a home and should be treated the same as anyone else who has broken into a home.
"police officers and prosecutors can be assumed to be lying unless forced to do otherwise"
"If a 'police officer in uniform' shows up at my door with a 'search warrant', knocks and announces"
I have to assume he's a phony, or an off-duty corrupt cop, or even an on-duty corrupt cop, until and unless I can check the veracity of that warrant through other channels. But I also have to assume, because it is almost always the case, that an attacker will not give me time or opportunity to check it through other channels.
The corrupt congress-critters have voted for and a corrupt president has signed, legislation declaring that it is OK for corrupt government employees to lie. Those congress-critters and that president violated their oaths of office in the process and should have been impeached and conscientiously prosecuted, along with every government employee who abuses that doctrine. Today, until this can be corrected, we have to assume every cop of every sort is lying every second of the day. Now, if you're a spy on foreign soil (including embassies to the US or the UN) that's a different matter; lie with my blessing because everyone in those activities does so, and is expected to do so, but the same rule of thumb should not have to apply with police.
They've got time and money to smuggle guns to cross-border gangsters, they've got time and money to snoop on and track and extort and rob and otherwise harass peaceful people, time to declare play-ground disputes and wearing non-PC T-shirts at school to be "crimes", but they don't have inclination or time or money to actually defend the borders and ports, let alone to remove the flood of illegal aliens; and they're just not able to bring themselves to get around to catching initiators of force and fraud like the guy in the pick-up truck who murdered my father nearly 20 years ago in Indiana, while he was out walking his dog one evening.
"Police officers these days are highly trained and re-trained professionals."
Give me the sheriff's conscientious good ole boys any day rather than most of the university educated "trained and re-trained professional" slimey rights violators and pseudo-rights imposers. (At least the sheriff's good ole boys caught the guy who burglarized my car, with the help of the many obvious greasy finger-prints he left behind but that the "professionals" were not interested in. Decades back, with my father's help, they caught the guys who robbed the store where he was moon-lighting and dragged my father off blind-folded as a hostage, eventually dumping him in a rural field. The university educated and trained and re-trained professional thugs I called when my car was burglarized seemed far more interested on violating my privacy than actually investigating the burglary, though I later learned that we had a high rate of such burglaries of vehicles and homes in the community where I was living at the time.)
"They will come in armed and armored, throwing concussion grenades and waving automatic rifles about. They will still shoot your dogs and terrorize your kids."
Yes, I agree that they are corrupt and evil. That's why one should endeavor to get the drop on them, overwhelm them, and eliminate their ability to carry out the attack before they realize what's happened, and why it is important to lend your friends, relatives and neighbors aid in such situations, e.g. by flanking and 5th column work as well as direct defense... and continue to oppose such corruption in legislative, judicial, and executive branches.
Mr. Dunphy: Here’s a prime example of why the people are rapidly disrespecting and even fearing the police. This is an ongoing saga where the police story and justification for their actions keep changing, trying to stay ahead of the laughter.
EXCERPT:”Police Lt. Robert T. Glover was pleased with the seven-hour operation, which resulted in securing items commonly found in millions of homes across the country. He told Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier in his report that there were no recommendations for improvement.
The dry after-action notes give no clue to the property damage done that night. Officers tore apart the 900-square-foot place. Instead luggage being unzipped, knives were used to cut open and destroy the bags. The raiders dumped over bookshelves, emptied closets and threw clothes on the floor, Sgt. Corrigan said.
In the process, they knocked over the feeding mechanism for the tropical fish in the sergeant’s 6-foot-long aquarium. When he finally was released from jail two weeks later, all of his expensive pet fish were dead. The police turned on the electric stove and did not turn it off. They left without securing the broken door.”
As long as you have police using these tactics and claiming them just, the more people are going to distrust and ignore them. Quit using Gestapo methods and crying for sympathy when people object to such tactics. If the job is too dangerous for I’m sure that you can find other employment.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/12/breaking-doors-and-the-constitution/?page=all
Jack,
I respect you guys – the good boys in blue – and really like reading your articles.
One thing I keep hearing more and more in the news – granted, this is anecdotal – is home invasion robberies by crooks that shout “Police” when they kick down your door. By the time the homeowner realizes he’s been duped, it’s all over but the crying.
If someone’s breaking down my door, it doesn’t matter what they’re saying – they’re attacking me and mine, and need to be repelled.
The bit about “No one ever really wins a fight with the police, at least not for long.” is a lot of hubris that I usually don’t hear from you, Jack. I’m disappointed. A REASONABLE RESPONSE to a homeowner returning fire would be to be withdraw, contain and negotiate, not pour more gasoline on the fire. In an honest mistake – from BOTH SIDES – a de-escalation is the only solution. An otherwise law-abiding homeowner who had reasonable cause to suspect his home was being invaded should be not held liable for injuries to officers attempting to enter his home.
Of course, the real solution to this problem is that no-knock raids MUST STOP.
Arrest people in public, rolling black and whites with lights and sirens going, official uniforms on. It’s much more obvious to people that you’re police at that point.
@ Dolan
I think I’ll take the word of the country’s best law enforcement/self-defense trainers (like Dennis Tueller, for example, who is a fine gentleman, BTW, or Massad Ayoob, or John Farnam, ad infinitum) over some gun-store commando.
Einstein once said: “Two things are infinite – the universe and human stupidity, and yet I’m not sure of the universe.” This applies to the new law inventors!
If I am awakened by the sound of the front door being kicked in, accompanied by shouts of “Police!”, because I have never and do not now participate in any kind of illegal activity there is absolutely NO reason to presume the people breaking into my home are, indeed, simply a bunch of badly-mistaken LEOs. The sad reality is that nowadays many home invaders will often do exactly the same thing in order to buy themselves time since they know most people still trust police.
This means that the only logical defense is a good offense and anyone breaking into someone’s occupied home – whether LE or criminal – should expect to find themselves looking into the barrel of a gun. It should be presumed that all law-abiding, responsible adults will be (should be) prepared to properly defend their loved ones and property from violent invaders, while criminals will be prepared to put up a fight.
It then follows that the onus is on LE – and LE only – to insure they know EXACTLY what they are doing and they must be willing to accept the full consquences of making a mistake. If they enter the wrong home and kill someone other than their intended target, I personally don’t care who in the chain made the mistake, it should be a criminal case and everyone involved should be summarily dismissed and the shooter(s) forced to pay appropriate restitution after serving time in prison.
As citizens, however, we do bear responsibility in regards to who we elect as local prosecutors and judges, as well as mayors who appoint police commissioners, etc. since policy about the use of SWAT teams and such is a result of their beliefs. It is up to us, as a society, to make the Blue Line mean something truly honorable again.
There needs to be a law that makes betrayal of the public trust a separate and equal felony to the crime committed by elected officials and government employees when they abuse the powers of their offices. That means any sentence for a crime betraying the public trust is doubled, and in the case of a capital crime, an automatic death sentence.
Dorlan,
Yes, the times are unrealistic since they’re done in a controlled environment which is acknowledged repeatedly through the papers. However, the studies skew in favor of the police- that is, the times presented are the best that can be hoped for on the part of the officer placed in a reactive mode. They will be worse in real-life scenarios where more judgement is required and more is at stake if a wrong decision is made, as opposed to just reacting to a light signal. Taking your gun off-line to fire a warning shot is a bad idea with a suspect holding a knife within 21 feet. Action beats reaction, you can see it in the FS data. OODA loop theory, which came out of aerial combat, is a good place to start to understand it. The observer/reacting person is always at a disadvantage because they have to observe and interpret the aggressors actions, determine what they mean, make a decision about it, and then take their action. As a marine in combat, you have the luxury of becoming the agressor and forcing your opponent into reactive mode. It’s why we in the military constantly try and get inside the other guys decision cycle, compress our time requried to make our decision to force him to react and fall behind. Cops typically don’t have that advantage.
Then make damn sure you are entering the right hose or wait until the suspect exits the property. Law enforcement are not Gods. Side stepping the constitution does NOT make ANYONE safer. I completely agree with the new law I hope Arizona joins in re asserting the constitution and the absolute limits it puts on government.
I have four words for you, Jack. Two names, actually:
Jose Guerena
&
Kathryn Johnston
Add to that the list of folks whose homes were invaded “mistakenly” by the police and had themselves, friends, family or pets shot by unrepentant and self-justified police officers who almost never pay any real price for doing so, like the officer who, after multiple disciplinary issues in multiple departments, shot a family dog in Dekalb Co., Ga. (outside Atlanta) when he barged into the wrong home (after forcing his way into the garage) on a Domestic Vio. call, and the case of another officer in Texas who did more or less the same thing and shot the family dog known as “Cisco”.
The governments “limited interest” in home invasions is massively outweighed by the publics interest in it’s own safety and freedom from tyranny, as codified in this little thing known as the 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Perhaps Jack should try reading it sometime.
The author’s main contention concerning this: “The trouble is, in the heat of such a moment, will anyone be able to make a distinction between police actions that are unlawful and those that are merely mistaken? Incredibly (or perhaps not), the National Rifle Association lobbied for the law, arguing it was needed as a response to an Indiana Supreme Court ruling that held that a citizen had no right to resist an unlawful entry by police officers”
…is that the cops will probably “win” anyway, even if they have to leave and return with more force later. This means his initial stance is one of “Might makes right, so you’d better SUBMIT!” compounded with his presumption that, when repelled and confronted with their initial “mistake” – where, using “unlawful” force, (i.e: reckless endangerment) – their usual response will be to turn their initial act of negligence into further acts of CRIMINAL negligence.
(The difference between negligence and criminal negligence, is intent: say you return from chopping wood at your cabin, and you’re so bushed that you hang your axe above the door. Someone notices this, and points it out to you. Now, you have two responses to choose from: 1. You can admit your mistake, and say “Gee, you’re right! My bad, I’ll fix that immediately!” and/or: 2. You say “Screw ‘em; I meant to do that, Nyah”)!
Seems to me the author is advocating for the might-makes-right law of the jungle, here (“We cops WILL win, because we WILL turn our acts of negligence into criminal negligence, so you’d better bend over, peons!”) and for the cops’ self-proclaimed, alleged right to be irresponsible, too.
And it’s not surprising that his instinctive reaction is to bluster it out: all cops only join up to get paid to pre-judge everyone else “guilty until (never) proven innocent!” They’re all scared little big blue gangsters, who only want to hide behind their shields and to be the only onles allowed to have and use guns on everyone else. Serve “the public?” Nonsense – they only serve themselves. Like their liberal, CONFORMIST masters, they pretend to imagine they have the right to stay wrong!
People have always had the legal right to repel unlawful (aka CRIMINAL) force with force, and the only reason this law was passed, was to counter the “judge’s” babbling nonsense that the public has no right to defend themselves from the special people’s group known as “public servants” because that would be against the idol of “public policy.”
The only place this law errs, is in making the test the “reasonably believes” opinion of those choosing to resist. This conflates a test of merely subjective, fact-free opinion, with that of objective fact.
Maybe we could outsource policing to German lawmen. German police shot only 85 bullets in all of 2011, most of those shots weren’t even aimed people: “49 warning shots, 36 shots on suspects. 15 persons were injured, 6 were killed.”
By the way, those who make peaceful resistance impossible make violent resistance inevitable. If police murder innocent people and/or cover up said murders and are never brought to justice, don’t be surprised when people pushed to the limit react by ambushing police officers or firebombing police stations. What happened to abortion clinics WILL happen to police stations if you don’t stop tolerating criminal behavior on the part of police. This is not an attempt to justify terrorism, but rather an acknowledgement of the fact that people pushed to the limits of abuse will lash out violently. If a man is quite reasonably convinced that his act of self-defense landed him on a hit list, only God can stay his hand from acting preemptively by assassinating police officers or bombing police stations. What does he have to lose if he is convinced he will be murdered? His soul, perhaps, but if he does not fear incurring God’s wrath, what can stay his hand. I beg of you, do not put people into that position, because it will turn into a civil war.
Mythbuster 123:
You just described how the Black Panthers were founded as an Oakland self-defense group in the 1960’s. The Oakland PD was then like something out of the deep South – filled with brutal and racist police officers who LIKED to beat up black people, and worse.
Things got so bad they started taking sniper fire from residents of black neighborhoods. The Black Panthers were one of several black neighborhood groups founded to protect people from the Oakland PD.
Charles Gain was appointed chief of the OPD to fix this, and he did with policies requiring officers to write umpteen page reports for the most common offenses charged in instances of police beatings and wrongful shootings. He even required them to write 10-page reports concerning each instance in which an officer drew his weapon.
And failure to comply with the page length requirements of reports was deemed a disciplinary offense. Naturally these policies were selectively enforced against officers he wanted to get rid of, and the worst cops were generally only semi-literate.
It worked. Gain cleaned up the Oakland PD real fast this way. The Panthers turned to other endeavors which you might have heard of, but they really did start as a legitimate black neighborhood self-defense group against racist police.
Mr. Dunphy might recall a period about twenty years ago when the Los Angeles PD had a fortunately brief “F**k the hostages – KILL THEM ALL” policy in hostage situations. This did not end well for the LAPD for very predictable political reasons which Mr. Dunphy overlooks. Perhaps it was before his time.
Less excusably, Mr. Dunphy ignores the basic precepts of his profession enunciated by Robert Peel a hundred years ago, and repeated in Marbella Boy’s No. 53:
“… 2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions.
3. Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.
4. The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.
… 6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to be insufficient.”
Mr. Dunphy has overlooked the murder by cops in Tucson some months ago in which a young American veteran (I regret I don’t recall his full name) sat in his living room with his gun (AR-15) on safe to protect his wife and young son while some unidentified men (cops) readied themselves outside in the semi-darkness of early morning, yelled “Police” as they smashed in his front door, and proceeded to put over 40 rounds into him because he held a weapon. They refused EMT access for 40 minutes, until he was good and dead. These were deputies of Sheriff Clarence Dupnick of Pima County, AZ, he who claimed right away that Rep. Giffords was shot by a right-winger.
Oh, BTW, it was the wrong house. So sorry for your loss.
Didn’t read prior posts: Victim was Jose Guerena. Thanks to the other posters who’ve memorialized his murder by cop today.
Dunphy, you’re on the wrong side of this issue. Very, very wrong. About as wrong as one man can be.
“No one ever really wins a fight with the police, at least not for long…”
You are the very epitome of everything I fear in the police.
Is the purpose of the state constitution to protect the citizenry from the state, or to protect the state from the citizenry? It really comes down to that and nothing more.
Thank god for the second amendment.
When the state believes it can do no wrong, and guilt is automatically placed on the citizen, the Citizen has not only the right but MORAL OBLIGATION to stand and fight. This is the basis of our rights, no institution can decide for the individual without Due process under Laws that should apply equally to everyone. And when the state believes it is immune from responsibility, the Citizen has no choice but to tear the state down and rebuild
This seems to be going right over the Author’s grasp, the State is out of control and has placed burden of proof upon citizen instead of itself. There are also very defensive statements regarding Police and their apparent immunity ( in the authors eyes) and reproach above the law.
Thank god for the Second Amendment.
I don’t know where this guy gets his info from, but there are a good many of us military vets trained to a significantly higher level then the sad excuse’s for a special reaction team. Just watching some of the police cam videos has me scratching my head, a single grenade or bobby trap would of killed them all.
Which brings me to something I was discussing with my coworkers (all prior service). What reason exists for any LEO to have an automatic weapon? They do not have more penetration, accuracy nor stopping power. If anything automatic weapons are less accurate after the first round due to the barrel jumping. Semi-automatic or at most a 3-round burst is all that’s required to put someone down. Kevlar does not make you immune to bullets, even if the vest is rated to stop a round it only means you won’t take life threatening injuries not that you’ll be standing. Someone wearing a vest gets shot with a 9mm their going down and staying down for awhile, bruised and cracked ribs tend to do that to you. Automatic weapons only help when someone has poor BRM skills and can’t aim. You just point, spray and hopefully you hit something.
Military use’s automatic weapons not for their lethality but to create suppressive fire for maneuvers, otherwise we learn to squeeze out 1s bursts of a couple rounds for maximum accuracy rather then just holding down the trigger and making lots of noise. This simply isn’t needed in an urban environment, your going to what, lay down suppressive fire in someone’s living room? Next thing they’ll be attempting to justify carrying around 203′s and just tossing M67′s into the house through the windows. No Knocking needed after all huh. What else, convince people that it’s ok for the police to carry around M2′s mounted on top their SWAT APC (laughable as they are) and just light a house up with those, make good and sure there aren’t any witness’s that survive.
During my service I’ve qualified on M9, M16, M249, M240B, M2, M203, M6, and the holy grandmother of them all the MK-19. Nothing speaks overkill like a crew served automatic grenade launcher. Coming to a SWAT near you!
Very good point on the automatic weapons.
The reason why cops have automatic weapons is because (in his heart), every cop thinks he’s some sort of high-speed, low-drag GreenBeretSEALRangerAirborne Super Duper “Operator”. Why do you think they refer to non-LE as “civilians”; they even refer to Soldiers as “civilians”. American cops are legends in their own minds, living out a movie fantasy where automatic fire goes exactly where they aim, and the barrels remain steady all day. “Spray and Pray” might as well be the new mantra for these yahoos. And it isn’t just the rifles — cops suck at pistol marksmanship, too. Have you ever seen a cop pistol up close? Those things are filthy! You can see the dust layers and lint balls all over the slide and action, and (I suspect) those pistols are dry as a bone. And people think cops can shoot well?
Soldiers in combat exercise more restraint, are held to a higher standard, and are much more accountable in battle against vicious enemies than are American cops policing American cities. If American Soldiers and Marines did on a regular basis what American cops do regularly, with impunity, the uproar would be deafening. However, since it’s only American men, women, and children being beaten, maimed, tazed, and killed, there is nary a peep from the boot-lickers amongst us.
This is the latest published mistaken address/SWAT team abuse of the public story I have found.
The victim was a US Army Reservist.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/13/lost-in-the-dc-jail/print/
The D.C. government’s refusal to recognize the full meaning of the Second Amendment has serious consequences for those who put their lives on the line to uphold the Constitution. First Sgt. Matthew Corrigan fought insurgents in Iraq with weapons provided by the U.S. Army, but the nation’s capital threw him in jail for two weeks because he had failed to register three personal guns and some ammunition.
The District found the guns after a Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) SWAT team raided Sgt. Corrigan’s home on Feb. 3, 2010. He was arrested without charges, according to court papers, and taken first to a Veterans Affairs hospital. When he was released on Feb. 5, police officers were waiting. They handcuffed Sgt. Corrigan and finally read the soldier his Miranda rights, according to court papers, charging him with three counts of unregistered guns and seven counts of possession of ammunition.
and at the end of the article:
He returned home 17 days after his arrest to an apartment that had been ransacked by the police and a paper saying that if he didn’t pick up his dog, Matrix, within three days, the canine could be “euthanized.” Thankfully, Ms. Lal rescued the soldier’s beloved dog just in time. Spokesmen for MPD and the D.C. attorney general’s office both declined to comment.
From 2010 until the government dismissed all charges in May, Sgt. Corrigan was forced to abide by conditions of his court release. That meant checking into the courthouse weekly, attending mandatory mental health appointments and undergoing weekly urine testing for drugs.
The D.C. court also banned him from touching a firearm. “They basically took away my military career for two years,” he said. That is a recurring theme in Washington. The armed forces had trusted Sgt. Corrigan to carry deadly weapons, and still does, but the District does not.
The final part of the story tomorrow will detail the police cover-up of questionable actions during the SWAT raid.
Sgt. Corrigan was left without legal recourse for a mistaken address SWAT Team raid that jailed him for two weeks and barred him from reserve service for two years.
I dunno. I kinda like the idea.
Are you telling me that cops don’t know when they’re going too far? Or that criminals aren’t going to shoot them anyway? Either case calls for a remedy.
Let’s face it: there are too many police and too many police forces in this country, mostly harrassing honest citizens with lots of stupid laws which only help destroy lives and enrich government.
It needs to stop somewhere. Why not here?
I’d also like a law that says a cop needs probable cause to stop a vehicle. Pretending that we still live in 1900 with respect to motor vehicles is simply a way for them to skirt the constitution. I feel plenty safe without police running “safety checks” (actually moving toll booths) every two blocks. If you have enough cops for that, you have enough cops to lay some off.
Mr. Dunphy,
Here is the rest of the story on Sgt. Corrigan.
It turns out the SWAT team had the right address, they just didn’t have
1) A warrant,
2) They were forbidden entry by Sgt. Corrigan,
3) They entered anyway,
4) They destroyed Sgt. Corrigan’s life, and
5) They covered up their illegal actions afterwards.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/02/06/DCVet.pdf
(CN) – A depressed Army reservist who made a phone call for help says dozens of police responded by surrounding his home and arresting him, vandalizing and searching his place without a warrant, seizing his dog and killing his tropical fish.
Matthew Corrigan, who lives alone with his dog, sued the District of Columbia in D.C. Federal Court. Confronted with a massive police presence after his plea for help, Corrigan says, he denied officers permission to enter his house, but they entered and trashed it anyway, saying, “I don’t have time to play this constitutional bullshit!”
Corrigan says the debacle started on Feb. 2, 2010.
“Corrigan telephoned what he believed to be the ‘Military’s Emotional Support Hotline’ because he was depressed and had not slept for several days,” the complaint states.
“The number Corrigan called was in fact the National Suicide Hotline. When he stated that he was a veteran, he was asked if he had firearms, to which he said yes. He said nothing about being suicidal or using a firearm or threatening anyone. After a short conversation, Corrigan hung up, turned off the phone, took prescribed sleeping medication, and went to bed.
“At approximately 4 a.m. in the morning of Feb. 3, 2010, Corrigan awoke because he heard his name being called over a bullhorn. There were floodlights outside his front and back doors and an estimated 8 police officers in the back yard and 20 in the front yard.
“Corrigan turned on his phone and found that Officer Fischer of the 5th District was calling him, asking him to come out, which he did at about 4:50 a.m., locking the door behind him. He was handcuffed and put in the back of a SWAT truck.
“When Officer John Doe I (upon information and belief, Officer John Doe I is Lieutenant Robert Glover) asked Corrigan for the key to his apartment, he informed the officer: ‘There is no way I am giving you consent to enter my place.’ Officer John Doe I stated: ‘I don’t have time to play this constitutional bullshit!’ and ordered that Officers John Does II-V, members of the Emergency Response Team (ERT), enter the apartment.” (Parentheses in complaint).
Corrigan says police took him to a VA hospital, broke his front door and entered his apartment without a warrant, where they confiscated his guns, vandalized his place and took his dog to an animal shelter.
“Although the officers had no information that there were explosives in Corrigan’s home and the home had been secured, John Does VI-X, the Explosives Ordinance Disposal (EOD) team, entered Corrigan’s home without a warrant and searched for explosives,” the complaint states. “The EOD team opened closed containers and used X-ray equipment to search closed containers.
“After the initial warrantless search, the EOD team brought in a dog to search for firearms.
“During the search of Corrigan’s home, John Does II-XV seized three firearms and numerous rounds of ammunition for those firearms and others. The three firearms were a rifle, which was unloaded and trigger-locked in a locked hard-side container under his bed, a hand gun which was in a hard case in a drawer in the closet, and another handgun which was in a zipped bag on the shelf at the bottom of a clothes rack (pillows and blankets were on top and next to the bag). The locked cases were taken but the broken latches were left on the floor. The ammunition was stored in a sealed plastic crate and the rest was in boxes, in their original packing, in a milk crate, which was stored under a sleeping bag in a utility closet.
“Corrigan’s eyeglasses were broken and thrown in a corner.” (Parentheses in complaint).
Corrigan says he spent three days in the VA hospital, because “having weapons pointed at him upon leaving his apartment triggered his PTSD hyper-vigilance and caused irregular heartbeat.”
After he was released from the hospital and determined not to be a suicide risk, Corrigan says, police arrested him and put him in jail, where he remained for almost 2 weeks.
“When Corrigan returned to his apartment 16 days after being seized, he found that John Does I-XV had left the front door unlocked and unsecured, had left the electric stove on, had cut open every zipped bag, had dumped every box and drawer, had broken locked boxes from under the bed and the closet, and emptied shelves into piles in each room. All his tropical fish in his 150 gallon aquarium were dead.”
Corrigan seeks more than $500,000 in damages for constitutional violations.
He is represented by Richard Gardiner, of Fairfax, Va.
Outrageous. And damned lucky at that that they didn’t just shoot his dog.
And that, Mr Dunphy, is why police aren’t respected as they once were. Their contemptuous attitude to citizens, disregard of the law, wanton destruction of property and most of all, casual and routine shooting of family dogs that pose no threat to them make them a hostile force to be resisted with all means available.
A friend of mine has a son who, as a teenager, was very interested in a law enforcement career. He was a meember of a police support group and one week went away on a camp or conference attended by police and their friends. By the time he returned home he had lost all interest in police work. He said that he found the police were just criminals with badges. And they made no attempt to hide it, either.
Jack Dunphy,
If this hasn’t brought the message home to you and the rest of the police, I fear to think what it will actually take to do so. I’m as rock-ribbed a Republican as they come, BUT you boys in blue have been out of control for quite a while now. I know you would like to deny that but you cannot justifiably do so. There are too many examples to overlook.
End asset forfeiture and no-knock raids and maybe you’ll start winning those of us who used to admire you back again. Right now far too many people who should be instinctively on your side are thinking of Mick Jagger’s line–”Every cop is a criminal.”
It is all too common that at least daily, police raid the wrong home and at times, a homeowner has either been hurt, killed or jailed because of either the mistake or believing a criminal “informant.” It is unfortunate that it takes Indiana to write such a law to get some conversation going about these types of occurences.
Yes, mistakes DO happen. But unfortunately, criminally negligent, thuggish, arrogant and brutal cops ALSO happen. And this is happening more and more as police throughout the nation are being trained in and equipped for tactics of assault rather than law enforcement. Citizens have become the enemy to far too many police, an enemy with neither rights nor recourse. Homeland Security is training police departments in SWAT tactics across the nation while warning police that any citizen with a Gadsden flag or NRA bumper sticker is a likely domestic terrorist.
When it ceases being a government inspired game of us against them, perhaps citizens will no longer need to defend themselves against police. But right now, we need every right a police officer has, including the right of self defense.
We have a cop in Canton, OH who routinely harasses people, even threatening to blow their heads off, on videotape no less. Of course, the police union backs him up.
You just nailed a major part of the problem we’ve all been discussing here. It’s bad enough that teachers, bureaucrats, etc. have been allowed to unionize. We’ve seen the fiscal havoc they’ve wrought around the country and seen their vicious arrogance in Wisconsin. Unionized cops are flat-out dangerous to everyone. Their union cards give them even more protection than Kevlar vests. It’s difficult to discipline them, almost impossible to fire them, and (when they engage in criminal conduct) totally impossible to prosecute them. (You can also thank corrupt DAs for the latter.) Small wonder, then, that they consider themselves superior life forms exempt from all laws and standards of conduct.
I understand why Gov. Walker didn’t include cops and firefighters in his reform program. It was a political ploy to drive a wedge between them and the other govt. employees. But it will be counterproductive in the long run. Bringing police unions to heel (or better yet, doing away with them altogether) is even more imperative than reining in the bureaucrats and teachers.
The officer’s perspective neglects the reason for the law, reducing innocent victims of police mistakes or over reaction. It is not the intent of the law to make police work more dangerous, it should motivate police to work more carefully and LAWFULLY.
It is the 4th Amendment that the State of Indiana re-emphasized just as the founding fathers stated it should be and for the same conclusions they came to that protect our freedoms today. An officer of the law needs a judge to grant them a search warrant and law abiding citizens should not fear due process. What the Indiana Supreme Court did was to remove the 4th Amendment just for law enforcement. If you want law enforcement to be protected for doing wrong if by mistake or a degenerated vendetta we all should be prepared to live without the U.S. Constitution. And I see commenters above that are all too willing to give up small parts of the Bill of Rights for this false sense of security. Mr. Dunphy may be the last person to fall to the tyranny, but he will.
Mr. Dunphy —
I hope you are reading all these comments. If so, they may come as a surprise since most of your articles are met with approval.
I encourage you to respond. I likely write for most of us when I note that your past comments have garnered you a measure of respect that this article has placed in jeopardy. Please tell us that you have read our responses and reconsidered your initial position – or not.
I believe our past approval has earned us that small measure of respect.
“I hope you are reading all these comments. If so, they may come as a surprise since most of your articles are met with approval.
I encourage you to respond.”
It’s been quite some time since Jack has posted. I hope he’s taking this time to digest the overwhelmingly negative response to his article and is seriously reconsidering his position on the issue.
I also hope that Mr. Dunphy reads and contemplates the comments here. I’m over sixty and still remember when the police in general were looked upon with respect as important members of society. People would call the police for help and to help the police with criminal problems in society. I believe that those are the days that Mr. Dunphy too holds as still being the position of police in our society.
But the police have driven a large wedge between themselves and the public they now pretend to be protecting. Now a great deal of police effort is to actually control the citizenry rather than protect them. The absurd militarization of the force utilizing SWAT teams — with mini-tanks! — for almost routine procedures; the criminal, but politically blessed practice of asset forfeiture; the emphasis on revenue generation rather than code enforcement; no-knock warrants, killing of both civilians and/or family pets while destroying private property “in error” with impunity or political forgiveness of such actions, trumped up charges to cover police abuse and the turning of a blind eye to almost daily corruption on both large and small scales have turned the relationship between police and public from being of mutual benefit to an adversarial standoff.
It’s been the action of police all across the country that has led to Indiana putting their foot down and limiting the universal immunity given police departments. Our soldiers in combat are held to a higher standard of rules of engagement than are our domestic police departments. Citizens don’t get a pass or a “do over” if they violate the rights of another, especially if they kill someone. Yet you have argued in your article that police should be given a pass when they kill or brutalize someone in error because “their intentions were good” and they face a lot of stress in dangerous situations.
I submit that police could relieve a lot of their stress if they demilitarized and dropped the attitude that it’s “us against them” and the blatant superiority attitude when dealing with the public. By following the same laws regular citizens have to follow would be a great step forward in relieving the tension between cops and ordinary citizens.
I find myself giving KUDOS those who legislated this law and the governor who signed it into law.
There are far too many abuses made by law enforcement that totally go unpunished due to being able to lie concerning these abuses and having a friendly investigators and judges.
I do not live in Indiana, but do believe that this law is just and correct.
Even though my state is a “retreat” state, should someone knock down my door in the middle of the night, THEY ARE NOT INVITED, therefore, will be met by a hail of bullets. It matters not whether they are friend or foe. Anyone kicking in my door is no friend.
Should law enforcement once again treat the citizens of this country as human beings instead of treating all as though they were the world’s worst cop killers, there would be a respect earned by them.
As no one in law enforcement seems to concern themselves with anything except protecting the the politicians for which they work. This fact ensures job security for cops and above the law status for those who wear the tin star.
Whether it be illegal search and seizure, beating confessions out of innocents, shooting unarmed citizens in the back, or gang beatings of citizens, the truth has finally come to light and I submit that cops get back what they put out.
Should one or two be killed by citizens defending their home or person I believe that a lot of these so called “mistakes” would come to an end. Although I do not wish harm on any person, the time has come to say “ENOUGH” and defend yourself from the largest street gang in America.
If you can give one reason why I should allow anyone to break down my door and stand there to become a target of these cops without firing a shot, I tell you:
COME TRY MY DOOR IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND SEE HOW YOU ARE GREETED.
REMEMBER: UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE THE TRUTH REMAINS…COPS ARE NOT YOUR FRIEND!!!
Well, Jack, judging from the changing legal landscape and the comments to your article, you and your police cronies throughout the nation have lost the support of the working, literate, activist, moderate-to-conservative middle class due to your corrupt and violent excesses across the board. This group has been your traditional ally and staunchest support. You should take this very, very seriously – and reform yourself – of we will do it for you.
Alcohol Prohibition did that as well. Now what program currently running is producing similar results. Uh. Jack, could you give me a hand here? I’m kinda at a loss.
What happens when individuals are not held accountable for their anti-social behavior? Anarchy, and not the fun, utopian, libertarian kind, either. What happens when state actors are not held accountable for their anti-social behavior? Tyranny! Genocide! Holocaust! In the 20th Century, state actors killed more people for state purposes, than individuals killed for individuals purposes. Because of the monopoly state actors possess over the initiation of force, state actors are more dangerous to society than criminals or terrorists have the capacity to be. Breaking law enforcement’s inappropriate monopoly on the initiation of force is a necessary bulwark against tyranny. This law is a good baby step in the right direction, and to a freer and safer world.
The overriding purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to insure that state actors do not possess a monopoly on the initiation of force. The Founders knew that tyranny could come to these shores despite their best efforts, and that a well-armed populace at least had a fighting chance of overthrowing said tyranny.
As far as I can tell, the only other nation with such a strong commitment to RKBA is Switzerland, whose people last year defeated a gun-grab referendum.
Record, record, record.
Carry a digital voice recorder at all times (they are quite inexpensive these days), have one in your vehicle and, if possible, a video camera as well. Definitely have your house wired for sound.
Somethings going off the rails here in the comments sections. I joined in it too and and posted why I don’t agree with the article.
but.
On the other hand from time to time when I go to the beach I see the cops have to come and scare the thugs off the boardwalks or at least calm them down so people can enjoy the beach. We want those nannies on that (surf) wall. We need those nannies on that wall acting like very tall kindergarden monitors keeping brain damaged gansgsters out of trouble.
Unless your home is under the boardwalk your example is nonsense. There is a hell of a big gap between having citizen’s homes broken into with impunity and “Libertarian anarchy”. Has anyone here in comments called for the dissolution of police forces?
If you can’t tell the difference then you, might very well need a nanny, the rest of us are fine without one though.
Why is it cops hate when people are allowed to protect themselves from cops?
Why were these cops not arrested for breaking into the wrong house? As usual this article stinks of police elitism and their belief they are above the law.
As for surviving the encounter most home protection weapons are tr
ained with unlike the street thug who tries to shoot it out with cops. Follow the same rules and laws you make us follow…then we will talk
As a young man, I experienced some years in law enforcement, and I kicked in a few doors to apprehend wanted persons, almost always correctly, successfully, and without injuries. Even if it turned out that our information was wrong and an innocent was unnecessarily disturbed, or even terrified, it was shrugged off and forgiven within the profession, with appropriate apologies to the objects of our misplaced enthusiasm. Looking back on those events in my retirement, I am less forgiving of those aggressive methods. A man’s home is his castle, and it isn’t enough to be “sure”; cops need to be “damn sure,” and fully aware that good citizens may be armed and dangerous if surprised and provoked.
If the cops always got the right door this would not have been an issue. They don’t.
When the Police become part of the problem, instead of the solution, these sort of thing happen.
Even the example in the story. If the police received the wrong information. Yet they kicked in the door. Or after an officer is injured/killed for breaking into the wrong house and being legally shot by the homeowner, the other police want to get even??? Sounds to me that the police are out of control.
The solution is to control the police, not their employer, the homeowner. Many bad guys should be taken on the street, not at their homes, with their families present anyway. Exceptions, of course.
But the officer writing the story only wants exceptions for LEO’s, not “the people”.
Sounds to me that this law isn’t the problem, the Police are.
Go figure.
“The smallest minority on Earth is the individual. Who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.” — Ayn Rand
No, the new Law is not an ass. The asses are the people, LEOs included, who find no problem with the practice of “No-Knock” warrants. Yelling “police” in the middle of the night while you are already kicking in someone’s door is NOT adequate notification to the citizen inside that you are making a “lawful” entry into that person’s home. You have made a JOKE of the 4th amendment. And now you are worried that one of the Gestapo Thugs kicking in the door at an innocent citizen’s door might get shot and killed and the citizen might “get away with with it”. Get away with what, sir? Protecting himself and his family from ILLEGAL police terrosist tactics? Follow the LAW, sir. And by the Law, I MEAN THE U.S. Constitution, not some BS “judicial precedent” that has granted you the illegal right to invade a citizens home on the some vague suspicion of illegal activities. Police make mistakes you say? Well, from now on you better make damned sure that you get it right, or other unpleasant “mistakes” may be made blowing your gestapo thug ass away. Protect and Serve, sir. The Jack-booted BS needs to STOP!
Mr. Dunphy:
There you go, again. Keeping up the threats, intimidation and bully tactics. You very strongly imply that the coppers would have a testosterone revenge killing on an innocent citizen that shot an intruding cop on accident. — You underline that with the implications that cops are better at killing than non-cops, that they are more of them, and that they are better armed. YES, you directly implied everyone of those things. All I can say about that part, is, FU.
Now to the thinking and principled part:
Your home is your castle. It is NOT the citizen’s fault that cops adopted no-knock and very-little knock bully tactics. Would you EVER put up with that crap from ME at YOUR home??? NO WAY!
Warrants are to be served for examination. If you don’t like it, tough crap. Do a better situational analysis ahead of time–And start talking to PEOPLE as if they are as good as, and have the same rights as, cops. You come busting in my door, this innocent citizen is half-likely to clip you in the head with his favorite .45 before he wakes-up. Who’s better?
Boil it down: You have NO FREAKING BUSINESS endangering yourself or intimidating others. Quit pretending that you are special–’Cause when you make threats like you did in your article, you are better than VERY FEW of the people I’ve met in my rather long life.
When the police goes in the wrong house and kills the wrong person no charges are ever put on the police officer. This is why the law abiding citizens have to know the state laws more than police officers because we will get charged. We are accountable for every bullet than leaves our gun, with police it is an honest mistake and not held accountable for their wrong.
All police departments swat teams want to play Army with flash bank grenades and guns blazing just to serve a warrant on some guy that smokes a joint every now and then, while some innocent 12 year old girl down the street is getting raped and murdered. I think the police should be held to a higher standard than the lawful concealed carry citizen but they are not. 9 out of 10 leo’s shooting never go to court, 9 out 10 law abiding citizens does go to court. This is why we have to train and study the laws more than any police officer.
Wonder how far this law extends to booby trapping ones home. Would take very little effort to rig det cord around the front door with an ignitor setup to go off should the door be forcibly opened.
At the least one should be able to install a half inch thick steel cage that comes down four feet from the door should it be violently opened. Could serve as a hindrance to slow down unwanted intruders and remove their advantage of surprise. Could think of a few other relatively cheap modifications that would make intruding into a home nearly impossible. As long as the citizen in question is doing nothing illegal, there should never be a reason to violate their home. And should police brutality “get the wrong address” or otherwise falsely intrude into the home, these would limit their options and blunt the effectiveness of their assault.
Seems like Mr. “Dunphy” has abandoned his post.
Either that, or he’s quietly taking names, and making a list of doors to “accidentally” knock down. If it’s the wrong door, and he killed you incorrectly, oh well. Honest mistake. If you manage to get one or two shots out, his good buddies will make sure your family and pets pay the price for your insolence.
Seriously – we owe LEO’s respect, due *explicitly and solely* to their willingness to shoulder the dangers in society, in order to protect the public. Any cop who starts making b.s. noises about “police safety” is a coward and a pissant. No cop interested in his own safety, to the detriment of the public, deserves respect.
No knock raids are the home and haven of cowardly pissant cops.
“Jack”… you still there, good buddy?
I thought I’d add a bookend to this post and comment thread with yet another example of unnecessary tragedy, followed by just a few of the non-anonymous comments it generated on a news site. Note Lt. John Herrell’s “bottom line” and then note how many of the news site’s comments reflect those made here already.
Deputies shoot, kill man after knocking on wrong door
FDLE looking into deputy-involved shooting
UPDATED 9:34 AM EDT Jul 16, 2012
LAKE COUNTY, Fla. – Lake County Sheriff’s Office deputies shot and killed a man they assumed was an attempted murder suspect on Sunday, but they now know they shot the wrong man.
In the early morning hours, deputies knocked on 26-year-old Andrew Lee Scott’s door without identifying themselves as law enforcement officers. Scott answered the door with a gun in his hand.
“When we knocked on the door, the door opened and the occupant of that apartment was pointing a gun at deputies and that’s when we opened fire and killed him,” Lt. John Herrell said.
Deputies thought they were confronting Jonathan Brown, a man accused of attempted murder. Brown was spotted at the Blueberry Hills Apartment complex and his motorcycle was parked across from Andrew Scott’s front door.
“It’s just a bizarre set of circumstances. The bottom line is, you point a gun at a deputy sheriff or police office, you’re going to get shot,” Herrell said.
Residents said the unannounced knock at the door at 1:30 a.m. may be the reason why the tragedy happened.
“He was the wrong guy and he got shot and killed anyway. There’s fault on both sides. I think more so on the county,” Ryan Perry said. “I can understand why he [the deputy] did it, but it should have never gone down like that,” Perry said.
Brown was arrested near the same building where Scott was shot. Brown and another suspect in the same case, Anthony Rodriguez, were booked into the Lake County Jail over the weekend.
Sample comments:
Steve White ·
Remove legal immunity from police and prosecutors in these situations. Show up at the wrong door, fail to identify yourself and then shoot someone? Mr. Officer, sir, you are now on the hook for manslaughter.
Do that a couple times and every single police department in the country will get the message. SWAT teams and midnight raids will become much more careful.
Law and order starts with the police obeying the law. If they can’t do that, they’re useless.
Bobbie Jo Justice · Columbus, Ohio
if police had done that to one of my relatives, there wouldn’t be any police left in that county when I finished shooting. QUIT BEING SHEEP PEOPLE, start firing back. execute thugs with badges.
LA DeVall ·
Yea, of course, he was pointing a gun at them. If you believe that sh! t I’ve got some prime waterfront property to sell you in the Arizona dessert. The trigger happy gunman flat out shot the wrong man and are trying to cover their a$$es.
Don Meaker ·· Maywood, California
Police malpractice. This guy’s family should own the municipality. The police officer and his family should be impoverished. When police officers are personally liable for this kind of error, then they will be on the side of the victims to work extra hard to avoid this error.
James Rardon · Amarillo, Texas
Why do we give cops immunity when they do stuff like this? Yet when a citizen makes an honest mistake, the prosecution will double down on the citizen if a cop is involved. How do we even know he pointed the gun at the police? I am tired of the excuse that cops want to make sure they go home at the end of their shift. How about making sure you don’t accidentally murder citizens your top priority?
http://www.wesh.com/news/central-florida/Deputies-shoot-kill-man-after-knocking-on-wrong-door/-/11788162/15527202/-/euk6tg/-/index.html#ixzz20nasd14x