That’s bullshit! The cops were acting like prowlers so it HER fault she pulled a gun and not the cops that created the situation? I don’t advocate cop-killing but if one gets shot in the face while sneaking around a window, unannounced and unidentified, on a welfare check where the civilian has no clue the cops are out there - then that’s on him.
I can’t purposefully escalate a situation then shoot someone when they react and blame them for it.
I didn’t say it was her fault, I’m highlighting the sort of logic trap that I believe leads the police to these conclusions, where somehow a homeowner acting within their rights can be shot by police who believe they are acting within their rights. It’s a problem I have with police training, gun culture, and particularly with stand your ground and castle doctrine laws that relieve all parties of the obligation to even try to back down or de-escalate when they think they’re in the right, and increase the overall lethality of what may be honest mistakes of law or fact.
ETA: While I do lay blame at the feet of the officer who did the shooting, I also think there’s a lot to go around for both society as a whole and, yes, police administrators (the Chief’s self-serving protestations that this was totally not in keeping with departmental procedures notwithstanding).
Taking this comment out of the stream of the discussion, I think this is the root cause of many of the gun issues in the U.S. I saw a great video once of a police officer in England (who I believe was armed) faced with a man brandishing a knife and he calmly talked the guy down and under control, whereas in the U.S. most officers probably would have shot him, and the public would have applauded it, just like in the action movies. In fact there was a case in the U.S. where a suicidal man had a gun and the officer talked to him to calm him down, successfully, until another officer shot and killed the man. The first officer was fired for not following protocol. Tragically sad case all the way around.
A well-being check is not an emergency call; therefore, use of emergency lights was not justified. Even the original caller didn’t think it was an emergency because he went thru the extra effort of dialing the non-emergency line instead of 911. Besides, depending upon the layout of the house, one wouldn’t notice flashing lights out front if one was in the back, especially if there was much flashing from whatever video game was being played at the time.
There area some video games that have a gun controller (older Nintendo system?) for shooting games. Hell even a regular controller in her hand could look like a gun depending upon how she was holding it. IOW, her having something in her hand that looked like a gun doesn’t necessarily mean it was a real gun.
I’m not disagreeing with your post, just the blue lights comment.
Exactly. From what I can tell, this is going to pit the Texas Castle Doctrine up against the idea that this clown felt threatened for his life, despite being outside, not identifying himself and being trigger-happy.
Had he not been a cop, there would be NO question whatsoever that this was flat out murder. Even being a cop, that doesn’t IMO, get him off the hook for shooting her- she had every right to be armed within her home and even point her gun at nameless intruders skulking outside at 2 am.
It’s not like she went out after them, or she laid some kind of trap. Basically this guy snuck up, saw her pointing a gun, and shot her, despite her being inside the house, etc…
I keep thinking of that South Park episode where Jimbo and Ned were out hunting, and everything they shoot, they yell “It was coming right for us!” before they shoot it.
It’s not as surprising as you might think - Texas is in general a big believer in the right to self defense, including against police officers. It’s actually one of the few states that has specific wording in the law allowing the use of force (including deadly force) to resist a wrongful arrest. It’s still pretty surprising (especially given how racist the state is in general), but there is precedent for it.
The police should have to wait forever to fire on someone who is in their own home minding their own business and hasn’t even been informed that police are in the area. And also should have to wait forever if, instead of announcing themselves as police, they act as burglars, breaking both departmental policy and the law, and brandish a gun at an innocent person who they’re supposed to be doing a welfare check on. If the person has legitimate lethal intent in defending herself against an attacker and the cop is not doing all of announcing himself as a cop, following the law, and following departmental policy, then they don’t get to use some bogus ‘officer safety’ or ‘self defense’ claim to defend murdering someone.
It doesn’t have to be an emergency to use the lights. The lights do not signal an emergency, that’s what the siren is for. The lights signal that the police car is on official business. It increases visibility, and identifies them easily. The lights are very bright. I’ve had police pull up to the house down the street with their lights on (no siren), and even through my shades, the reflection off my back fence is enough to be very noticeable in my room.
From what I’ve been reading, one of the things that is in question is how dispatch relayed the call to the officers. Apparently officers generally don’t know if the call came in via 911 or some other means, and apparently the call was dispatched as an open structure call, not a welfare check.
That’s not to say this justifies the officer’s actions, but it was more than just him that was messed up.
The lack of intent to kill is the distinguishing feature of manslaughter in Canadian law.
The starting point is “Culpable homicide”, which is defined very broadly, and includes both murder and manslaughter. However, culpable homicide is not an offence in itself, it is the general category: Criminal Code, s. 222(5).. The general term is causing death by an unlawful act, or by criminal negligence.
Culpable homicide is then divided into three different offences: murder, manslaughter, and infanticide.
What makes a culpable homicide a murder? The intent to cause death, or the recklessness about an intentional act that is likely to cause death, as set out in s. 229:
So murder is killing someone by an unlawful act with the intention to cause death.
Manslaughter is then defined very simply bys. 234:
Manslaughter is defined as “not murder”. The definition of culpable homicide, for both murder and manslaughter, is causing death by an unlawful act.
The distinguishing feature between the two offences is that murder requires the additional mental element of intent to cause death. By defining manslaughter as “not murder”, the Code provides that causing death by an unlawful act or criminal negligence, but without an intention to cause death, is manslaughter.
There is a distinction between what the law defines in the abstract, and what the Crown is able to prove on the facts of a particular case. There may be cases where there is some evidence of intention to cause death, but the Crown may proceed with manslaughter charges because they do not think they have the evidence necessary to prove intent. That’s a judgment call the Crown has to make in difficult cases. Or it may be that the Crown leads evidence of intent to kill, but the court concludes that there is a reasonable doubt about intent and therefore convicts of manslaughter.
But what you won’t have is the Court saying that the Crown has proved intent to kill and yet convicts of manslaughter, absent factors such as provocation or alcohol/drugs.
In other words, in Canadian law, you can intend to kill someone, kill them, and be convicted of manslaughter because of mitigating factors. You said it yourself.
In Texas, you can’t, or shouldn’t. The “provocation” defense does not downgrade a charge of murder to manslaughter the way it would in Canada and many, many other jurisdictions. That’s the point I was making.
That is absolutely not true in this state; I’d like to know where you are that is true that cops flip on the whoop-dee-doos to respond to a routine, non-emergency call.
Absolutely correct. Where I live, there is no difference who you talk to if you call 911 or a 10-digit number; you speak to the exact same person. Here, the 911 operator takes the caller’s info & types it into the computer where the PD dispatcher reads it/sends it to the vehicle’s computer. I only know what I read in media reports, not listened to/seen transcripts of the actual call but I could see how, “Could you check on my neighbor’s house, the door is wide open at 2am” gets reported in the media as a welfare check.
And in a routine non-emergency call, they should surely ring the doorbell and alert the homeowner to their presence, not start prowling around private property in darkness, unidentified and prepared to shoot anyone who shows their face at a window to see what’s going on.
Do you call the lights “whoop-dee-doos”?
Anytime I see a cop pull up outside a house to go inside for official business, they have their lights on. The lights are on the entire time that they are outside the car, and do not get turned off until they are ready to pull out.
Are you trying to say that they would have broken protocol by using their lights in this situation? Is your understanding that in a “routine, non-emergency call”, the proper procedure is to park around the corner, and enter the side and backyard on foot? I’d like to know where you are, so that I can avoid the hell out of it.
Yes. actually it’s whoop-dee-whoops
Like I said before, where are you that does this?
Protocol, & I believe, state law.
It would be for something like a burglary in progress but not for a well being check but then a burglary in progress is considered an emergency call. dzeiger hints that the dispatch given to the officers was closer to that than a well-being check. I guess the voice recordings / transcripts will be made public at some point.
I’m also curious as to where you are, because I never seen this happen. When a cop car pulls up somewhere with the lights on, it’s an emergency or they’re blocking / directing traffic. If they just pull up to a home or business on official but non emergency business, the lights aren’t on.
Ah, sorry, I got the doo’s off of your quote, I didn’t know it was a technical term. I’ve never heard a light make a whoop noise, so I thought you were referring to the sirens.
Ohio. I’m not personally versed on police protocol, but my observations are that I see cop cars outside of houses with their police lights swinginging around all the time. I don’t know if it is for better visibility on the road, or for alerting the homeowner that a cop is outside, but I’ve never seen a cop parked in front of a house (other than when they take their cars home, I have a couple in my neighborhood) without its lights on.
The only time the cops ever knocked on my door (to tell me move my car after a snowfall), they had their lights on.
I’ve looked about a bit, and can’t find any specifics on when police are to use, and not to use lights. Do you have a reference handy?
So, are you saying that they thought that they were responding to an emergency, but didn’t use their lights as though they were responding to an emergency?
The interview I heard with the mayor, she said it was an “unsecured structure” call. And she said the police training in that type of call is to knock and announce, “Fort Worth Police.” It seems pretty clear that there is a specific term for this kind of call – it’s not a burglary in progress call. It’s a call where there may be a problem that is a police matter, or someone may just want to air out their house, or someone may have accidentally left their door open, and would be happy to be alerted to that fact. They should not be assuming burglary, let alone that it’s in progress. If there’s any evidence that it was dispatched as anything other than an unsecured structure call, I’d be interested in seeing that.
I had a very recent, somewhat similar experience as the person inside the house, but obviously with very different results. I woke to the sounds of someone moving around just outside my bedroom window. I woke my partner, and said, someone’s outside! I peeked out the curtain and realized it was police creeping around the gate to our backyard. After a moment or two, they headed back toward the street. My partner went out and asked what was going on, and it turned out they’d been chasing a home-invader who started running through backyards. A little later, a K9 unit came through trying to pick up the scent. I’m white. Ican’t imagine being in the position I was in when I woke up, and having to think, “there might be a prowler outside my window, but I’d better not look out or arm myself, because it might be the police out there.”
This is my experience as well, if the call is at night. They pull up, put on the lights, and go knock on the door. When they leave, they turn the lights off. It happens now and then in my neighbourhood.
Of course not. It’s crazy that we send people to prison at all for marijuana sales.
I think almost all our prison terms are too long. I’d save life imprisonment for people who I expect to be an ongoing danger to the community. Yes, the mass shooters mentioned above, serial murders, serial rapists, people who abuse children for the purpose of creating kiddie porn, that sort of thing. Not people who can be rendered safe to society by simply firing them from the police force and forbidding them to ever again own a gun.
I think she deserves prison time – just firing her WOULD be a slap on the wrist. But ten years seems fine. Anything more than twenty would seem outrageous to me.
Part of this is when a cop gets fired for any abuse of power or other behavior that shows they are unfit to be a cop, they just move on to the next law enforcement and pick up from where they left off. Imagine if it were similar to teacher where if you majorly fuck up you are out of the career forever?