I meant add to ignore list.
WTF?
I’m not sure which is worse. The circular reasoning or the epic stupidity.
Neither do I:
Douche.
I see you’ve opted for both, just to be on the safe side :).
You do realize that entering the house of another without their permission is a crime right? The fact that they saw him in the house was sufficient, in view of the neighbors report, to establish the need for further investigation.
That’s factually incorrect. See the police report: http://dig.abclocal.go.com/wtvd/docs/141009121613_0001.pdf
Mr. Howerton [the neighbor] stated that he had been sitting in his truck in his driveway when he observed a black male walk around the side of 308 England Avenue. Mr. Howerton stated that there have been a number of break-ins in the area and he did not recognize the subject who walked into the residence. Mr. Howerton did state that the residents had only just recently moved in, and that he knew that a white family with small children lived there. Mr. Howerton did state that he had never observed a black male at that residence.
I did, actually.
They asked for ID. Reasonable. Kid says he lives there, but ID doesn’t match.
They look at the wall. Photos of family members, but none of the kid. Still nothing that says the kid belongs there.
It just occurred to me that there was no mention of a key. Did the kid have a key?
If he did, that would take the cops several steps closer to believing he belonged there, or at least it should have. If he has no key? He lost it? Forgot it? Well, that kid is having a bad day.
Keep in mind that what we’re looking at here is a case in which the people responsible for keeping the peace took actions that resulted in severe pain and humiliation to someone, when if they’d taken other actions, the peace would have been kept. If those cops had gone to play golf that day, they would have been more successful at their job. This was a fuckup, and it’s astonishing the lengths folks will go to to not admit white cops fucked up when they humiliated and tormented a black guy.
For all the knee-jerkers on this thread: here is the police report.
The pepper-spraying was completely justified. The kid is lucky that’s all that he got.
Er, yes? Obviously…
I mean, it wouldn’t be the most sensible thing to do, the best thing to do would be to contact the owner and check. You know, like they tried to in the case we’re discussing, when the guy refused to wait calmly while they did that. But expecting the police not to investigate reports of crime is absurd.
Ah. Another one more interested in being an asshole for the fun of it instead of actually engaging in conversation.
But, that’s ok. I’ll pretend like you said something like, “Hey, what you posted doesn’t make any sense to me. How can you say that if the officers had no choice but to use pepper spray that they were somehow wrong to use pepper spray?” And now I will respond to that, pretending it’s why you disagree with my last post.
Ahem:
If I follow training/procedures/protocol that leads to a sub-optimal outcome (innocent person getting pepper sprayed inside his own home), then maybe there are ways to adjust those procedures/protocols to prevent that sub-optimal outcome from occurring. Based on current protocol maybe that outcome was inevitable (ie, after a string of many choices, pepper spray was the only option available at that moment), but since no one is happy with that outcome, let’s address the whole chain of decisions so that officers are not going to be left having to make that choice.
Does this clarify the confusion that you expressed so eloquently about my post?
Didn’t the cops do the same thing, though? I’m going to keep hammering this point until someone other than me sees the irony. The cops entered a house to pursue a kid that was its lawful resident. Maybe they didn’t know the kid belonged in the house, but it should been a consideration strong enough slow their hand.
They didn’t have a search warrant, so even if the kid had invited them in (which there is no evidence for), they were legally required to leave when asked unless they had a valid reason to arrest the kid. A reason it turns out they did not have.
But instead of leaving, they pepper sprayed the lawful resident. Not in self defense but because of “belligerence”.
I guess I should be amazed the cops are being defended in this thread. But I’m not.
Sorry, don’t know how that happened.
Except that’s not what happened, the guy became violent and needed to be subdued.
There was evidence. There was a phone call from the neighbour saying that someone had entered the house, and they were not aware that they were a resident. That, combined with aggressive behaviour when questioned on why he was in the house, is more than enough for an arrest. However, that’s not what happened. The police, using their judgement and considering his story plausible, did not arrest him but waited until the owner could confirm he was entitled to be there. This should be being presented as a case of good policing despite dealing with an unstable, violent person.
I appreciate the police report, and I withdraw the claim that the investigation was based on a neighbor who didn’t know who lived in the house. I’ll still point out that the entire basis of the claim was that it was a white family, and a black dude went into the house. I’m wholly unconvinced that’s a basis for entering a house with guns drawn, as the police report shows.
There’s no evidence that the police de-escalated, in that report. Rather, this guy has come home, and suddenly police are in his house with guns drawn patting him down looking for weapons in his own house. Thee’s no evidence that they treated the guy with recognition that he might live there and that it was a terible mistake they might be making. There’s no sign of deference police ought to give to someone in their own residence, or even recognition that they own the resident of the house deference. There’s no sign that they asked him how they could verify his claim that he was in the house–instead, when patting him down for weapons, they took out his wallet and looked at the ID.
At no point did they de-escalate. They operated entirely on the assumption that it was a violent crime in progress, guns drawn.
Deshawn isn’t lucky he didn’t get shot, the cops are. Imagine if Deshawn were a Tea Party guy, what would have phappened. This makes Ruby Ridge look like Sesame Street.
For what seems like the millionth time. I am not suggesting that the police don’t investigate.
But the neighbors don’t know that anyone entered the house of another without their permission. Neither do the police. The only “evidence” is from the neighbors, who don’t even really know the owners of the house or who exactly lives there. The police, baring any other suspicious or obviously illegal behavior should be as polite and deferential to the person in the house as they can when they go and knock on the door.
They did have that reason. A neighbour reported someone unknown to them entering the house, and upon being questioned about why he was there, that someone abused and attacked them.
Have you read the police report?
The rest of LHOD post was how he thought the police should respond. Which was what they did. They investigated, they asked the kid for his ID, and the ID showed an address that didn’t match the address of the house. So they investigate further, by asking him questions. He doesn’t answer their questions, and instead escalates the confrontation and threatens physical violence to the police officer. The police officer attempts to calm the kid down … kid doesn’t comply. The police officer asks the kid to sit down. Kid refuses. Police officer asks again. Kid refuses. Police officer now has a person who is angry, confrontational, unwilling to calm down, won’t follow orders, won’t allow de-escalation to occur, and threatened them with physical violence.
In an ideal world, the police would then have 10 police officers there to watch the kid every second so that he doesn’t follow through on what he threatened to do. In an ideal world, they wouldn’t have to subdue the kid to make sure he doesn’t harm anyone in his agitated state. In an ideal world, they could brew him a cup of tea, draw him a warm bath, and talk about his feelings.
Also, in an ideal world, the kid wouldn’t have yelled, ignored their requests to calm down, and threatened them with physical violence. In an ideal world, the kid would have calmed down, they would have tracked down the parents, and it all would have been over with without too much hassle at all. That opportunity never arose because the kid didn’t allow it to.
But I, most courts, and I think most people, would agree that the police should not be required to actually suffer violence before they can secure a situation. It’s not a perfect solution, it’s not preferable, but that’s the way reality works. We don’t make police officers be hurt before they can secure someone.
People can disagree with that. People can think that police should have to be subjected to actual violence to suffer actual harm, before they can do anything to anyone. I think they’re wrong.
Duh. I just recently moved into my house. Some of my neighbors probably only know who lives in the house by glimpsing me/my wife/kids in the car as we drive out of the garage. Thus, they know it is a white family with small kids. If they saw a black guy walk into an open door of the house (without some kind of service van parked out front), I’d be very appreciative if they called the police. I would be as appreciative if they did it seeing a white dude they did not recognize walking in. And no, I would not consider it racism. I would consider it civic responsibility.
Is there another link to the story? The one in the OP is badly written.
I just reread. They do not mention recent break ins, but ‘recent criminal activity’. Vague. I misread that originally.
There is no mention that the cops asked for ID. I guess I assumed that.
There is no mention of whether the kid had a key, or was asked to present a key.
Later links says:
Okay, after all of this, the kid demands that the cops leave after staying consistent in his story that he’s a foster kid in the home.
What should the cops have done at that point? Here are some choices:
-
Continued to pester and harass the kid, making him feeling increasingly upset and violated and scared.
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Pull out the pepper spray because the kid is getting pissed and using some choice words…and look at there, he just touched my arm!! SPISSHHHHHHH
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Tip their hats and exit the premises and either wait until owner the comes home or look to make sure the kid doesn’t jump out of the back window carrying a TV.
Pick which one of these seems like the legally and ethically best course of action.