The difference between my post and yours is that I cited a case that supports the claim I am making.
There’s a slight difference between the two cases – a “rape-like cry” doesn’t seem like a description anyone would naturally use, and the 911 operator would almost certainly ask for more details. But if the clarification were that the phrase means the neighbor heard, “Help, I’m being raped!” then yes, such a call would justify warrantless entry. U.S. v. Turner; Welsh v. Wisconsin.
Acsenray, I really didn’t need to ask if you were being deliberately obtuse, it was patently obvious. I understand though, there’s quite a bit of that going on in this thread, and you just got caught up in the moment.
You still have to show that the cops did not have a duty to knock and annouce themselves before barging into the home. Until you do that, I will remain unmoved from my position.
Do you know the details of Currie’s 911 call? From the information reported in the press, all that was seemingly reported was that a black guy unknown to a neighbor was seen entering (not breaking and entering) a home. That is just as vague and subjective evidence for burglary as “rape-like” cry. For this cry, let’s say it’s described as an overly passionate wail suggestive of pain, belonging to a unknown female voice, possibly a juvenile, coming from a bedroom window for a period of 10 seconds. That is not apparent by the cops show up. You think the cops really could break into the house for such a flimsy sign?
First of all, the cops didn’t break into the house, so bringing that up is irrelevant to this. And second of all, yes, that would be enough evidence for the cops to investigate. If someone’s screaming in a house loud enough to be heard by the neighbours, of course the police should investigate. Either to stop them being attacked, or if they’re not being attacked, to stop them disturbing the neighbours.
Given the amount of burglaries that don’t get solved, and the amount of domestic violence that occurs, we need the police doing far more of this sort of investigating, not far less, and we need people like you who are enabling crime to fuck right off.
Don’t know if this is speaking legally or morally, but if morally, I wouldn’t agree. (If legally, I have no idea.)
Morally, a person might mistakenly but for good reasons think the cops are acting wrongfully, in which case the person is right (and morally speaking has the right) to resist, while the cops are also right (and morally speaking have the right) to insist.
Good, we have one scenario on which we agree. It should not be allowed to shoot at police officers who are acting in their official capacity, even though you think you’re in the right and they’re wrong.
Where do you draw the line on what is acceptable to do to police officers? I couldn’t help but notice that you didn’t answer the rest of my questions, so I’m having a hard time pinning down your exact position on resisting police officers in their official duties. Could you flush your position out a bit? Is violence OK? Hitting? Punching? Stabbing? Anything short of killing? And how much do you need to know before you’re allowed to do that. If you think you’re not guilty, do you get to? If you’re not sure, but you don’t think the police can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, can you physically resist? What if you’re wrong? How about the domestic abuse hypo I gave you?
I’m just curious, because the discussion of use of physical force to resist police action has been had in this country for awhile. And long ago, it was perfectly acceptable to use force to resist what you thought was an improper arrest. But things didn’t go well with that, and in the 50’s and 60’s, courts and legislatures started to realize that allowing that kind of violence in these situations caused much more harm than good, and limited the common law right by court rulings or enacting legislation in most of the states. And that’s the time period that seemingly had more race based police misconduct.
I don’t think there’s much extraordinary about my douchebagginess. I find that kind of perception of me may depend generally on when the beholder agrees or disagrees with my political position.
Plus, I don’t think I’ve been very douchey in this particular thread.
Because you were acting douchey. Hentor isn’t incorrect in his assessment.
If a cop is acting unlawfully, is abusing his power, and is physically assaulting an innocent person, I believe that person is justified in using violence. Most certainly. Self-defense is a thing in this country. I can think of few things more dangerous than a cop who thinks he has a pass to hurt another person without facing any real-time consequences for it.
I’m kind of surprised this is even a view point that needs defending. As Ascenray logically points out, if citizens didn’t have the right to resist abusive cops, then we have no rights period. It makes no sense to say cops must respect our constitutional protections, but if they don’t, citizens still are obligated to obey them.
Resistance must be decided on a case-by-case basis. That’s always been the the case, though. If a cop is giving me a hard time at a traffic stop, it is unlikely I’m going to do anything about it. Pepper-spraying me for no damn reason like that mall cop did and then trying to put me in handcuffs while my eyes are burning the fuck off? That’s a different ballgame. Give me a gun and I may shoot, and I defy anyone to judge me as the wrongdoer.
People who believe we must submit to cops no matter what are just asking to be taken advantage of. You know I’m black, right? If black people in the 50’s and 60’s drank that kind of “always comply with cops even if they are wrong” Kool Aid, I would probably be stuck in someone’s kitchen or wiping some white baby’s ass right now. Progress doesn’t come about through blind submission to authority, but rather the opposite.
Yes, that’s called self defense. You don’t lose that right because the aggressor was wearing a badge. However, you still have the problem of convincing the jury that you were right, and the officer was wrong, at a long and costly jury trial.
San Diego has had a couple of examples of cops taking unlawful liberties with women they had in custody. (the officers have since been fired - and at least one is in prison). The cops obviously had no right to do that, and they were nothing more than criminals for so doing. Self help would have been appropriate for those women under those circumstances. However, it should be noted that at least one of them received a 2 million dollar pay day from the city because of the cops action, and another has a civil claim pending.
I guess I’ll ask again. What do you consider “unlawfully” and who decides? I agree, if rogue police are beating on you because you’re black, you should have the right to defend yourself. But if the police are investigating a burglary, or trying to arrest you for domestic abuse, or trying to detain you for a Terry stop or to restrain you for officer safety, I don’t think it is wise to allow people to resist. Determinations on the legality of the police action are best made my courts after the fact and not in the heat of the moment by people with incomplete information.
Did you even check out Plummer and Bad Elk, the major cases cited? I don’t think we need to go through all the caselaw and legislation that has been decided or enacted since then. Instead, I’ll rely on easily accessible Wikipedia, which says: "The case has also been cited on various internet sites as giving citizens the authority to resist unlawful arrest. This claim is normally put forth in connection with a misquoted version of Plummer v. State.[38] T
he most commonly quoted version is:
“Citizens may resist unlawful arrest to the point of taking an arresting officer’s life if necessary.” Plummer v. State, 136 Ind. 306 [sic]. This premise was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case: John Bad Elk v. U.S., 177 U.S. 529. The Court stated: “Where the officer is killed in the course of the disorder which naturally accompanies an attempted arrest that is resisted, the law looks with very different eyes upon the transaction, when the officer had the right to make the arrest, from what it does if the officer had no right. What may be murder in the first case might be nothing more than manslaughter in the other, or the facts might show that no offense had been committed.”[39]
In fact, the opposite is true—all of the cases that cite Plummer and most that cite Bad Elk discuss the issue as defense against unlawful force, and most of the cases note that a person may not use force to resist an unlawful arrest.
You’re citing cases that are no longer good law to support a proposition that has been rejected in a great majority of the states in the US.
Can I point that out, or is pointing that out being “douchey”.
You keep using words like “illegal” and “abusive” to describe all the police, so I’ll ask, once again, how do you define illegal and who gets to decide? And there have been numerous posters who have pointed out the flaw in the “if you can’t fight back physically, then you have no right” logic.
You’re not getting the point. I’m asking what you think should be, not how you would act in a given situation. I even gave you hypotheticals to answer. But you don’t, you simply return to the rhetoric of how bad submission to authority is and using the Civil Rights struggles of the 60’s to raise the spectre of great injustice. I don’t think that’s getting us anywhere.
That’s a problematic position… the cops may have a 100% legitimate reason to detain you that you are not aware of. For instance, someone driving a car that is the same make/model/color as yours, and vaguely matching your description, might have just committed a crime and driven off. The cops head towards where that person drove off, and purely by chance, see you. At that point they have enough suspicion to stop and detain you pending identification, but to you it just seems like they’re stopping you because you’re black. If you believe they are exceeding their authority, so you pull out a gun and start shooting, I do not think things will go well for you, legally. Nor should they.
Was there part of the “I have a dream” speech about how black people who are getting sprayed with fire hoses in Birmingham should pull out guns and shoot the cops? I don’t seem to remember that section…
Either someone’s life is worth defending or not. “A long and costly jury trial” usually awaits anyone who shoots and fatally wounds someone. (See the George Zimmerman case). But most people are willing to accept these costs if it means saving their life.
I don’t support people standing up to police officers just for the hell of it. But hell yeah, if they genuinely are afraid for their lives and resistance seems like the wisest course of action, then they should resist. Because we live in a world where any criminal can put on a uniform and a fake badge and present themselves as an “authority”. I really hope people wouldn’t be dumb enough to submit to just any thug who puts on convincing act.
If I came out of the bathroom to find two guys standing in my living room, screaming at me, no telling what I might say or do. And I’m almost a middle-aged woman. So I’m not going to pass judgment on a kid’s reaction just because it keeps my Fair World hypothesis intact.
For what it’s worth, I haven’t found your posts in this thread to be douchey, particularly if one evaluates the thread on a standard distribution bell curve. I could name at least one normally non-douchey moderator whose posts have been considerably more offensive.
But then, I do agree with your position (politically in general, but specifically regarding the subject of the thread), which I would summarize as: 1) on the evidence presented in the article this does not appear to be an incontrovertible case of abuse of power or excessive force, and the actions of the police can be separately considered on their own merits (or dis-merits), as may be shown by new information.
Upon further discussion, you developed your take on this incident by adding: 2) law enforcement entities have a positive obligation by charter to investigate, interrupt and seek to prevent violations of the criminal code; this sometimes requires the application of force, the rules for which are a legitimate subject for debate but which can’t be entirely avoided by LEO’s merely because force is neither a preferred nor optimal method of handling their duties.
I don’t see how either argument is objectionable on its face. Perhaps it’s your abrasive tone. You should probably respond more politely when delicately questioned by others.
Being pulled over and being asked to present ID and proof of vehicle registratation is not even in the same multiverse as being pepper-sprayed in the fucking face and hand-cuffed for absolutely no reason.
You quoted what she wrote. So address her point and stop with the tortuous distortions.
That’s funny, because I remember plenty of people resisting arrest. They were passive about it and totally non-violent. But they didn’t submit to the police’s authority, and in doing so, defended their civil rights.
But you get the distinction between the types of resistance, right? Civil disobedience is NOT THE SAME as forceful resistance.
The proposition has come up in the thread that citizens have (or should have; the legalities are sometimes being asserted and sometimes not) the right to resist unlawful police actions. And the obvious practical question that keeps being ducked is to what degree and in what form(s) should such resistance be offered?
So a response to the question which cites civil disobedience is a legitimate answer, but let’s not pretend all forms of resistance are equally lawful, ethical or socially desirable.
The other practical question being ignored is that you don’t necessarily know whether the police action is illegal. Witness all the idiots in this thread continuing to claim, despite having been shown legislation and case law to the contrary, that the police can’t enter your home and question you if they’ve received report of a crime.
But anyway, there’s usually no need to resist the police, as there exists a court system where one can get restitution on the rare occasions they do abuse their authority.
You might as well ask the cops that whenever they arrest someone.
Unlawfully means in contravention with the law, yes? Someone who is educated enough about the law can reasonably ascertain that when a cop tries to coerce you do something he has no right to do–like submit to a strip search in the middle of the street or enter your home without your permission or warrant and no extingent circumstance–he is acting unlawfully. A cop who is abridging your right to free speech and freedom to assemble is acting unlawfully too. I learned this in civics class during high school.
A reasonably educated person should also know that when a cop tasers you, pepper-sprays you, or applies a billy club to your head without any provocation on your part, this is unlawful behavior and all bets are off. A citizen can fight back.
There is no need to make this shit more difficult than it needs to be.
Answer me this then. If a cop (a REAL cop, to use your parlance) walked up to a pedestrian and pepper-sprayed them after telling them to stop doing something the pedestrian was lawfully able to do, do you think it is illegal for the pedestrian to defend themselves with force? Or do you think the pedestrian has a duty to submit as the cop arrests them?
I’ve politely tried explaining to you where I stand on these issues, so why don’t you establish where you stand? In the above, I believe the pedestrian is within his rights to resist with violence if need be. You seem to be saying otherwise.