Hamlet’s on-line now, but still hasn’t answered. I guess you’re right about cognitive dissonance.
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Hahahaha. You’re a hoot. Are you suggesting that you aren’t up to the task and are now reduced to begging others to perform a castigation? :smack:
(Do you actually believe that you speak for “everyone” or is that just wishful thinking on your part?)
And don’t call me, surely. 
Answered what? That there is a difference between a police officer, granted powers to detain, arrest, search, and investigate by the government and some idiot security guard hired by a mall? I really didn’t think that needed to be explained. Again, I’m giving people too much credit.
Nor did I think it needed to be explained that, no, I don’t think it’s OK for security guards to pepper spray an innocent person. I don’t think it’s OK for the police to pepper spray the wrong person either.
So do you have a point?
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I think it’s swell that you obey Left Hand of Dorkness directives. If only the 18yr old had obeyed the requests of the police, it probably wouldn’t have been necessary to handcuff or to pepper spray him.
Some people can settle their differences without cussing at others, and some people can’t. Oh well, life goes on.
I’m still questioning what world YWTF is in where a burglary in progress and an open door isn’t exigent circumstances but hey - facts seem less important than unfounded rants. Fight the power!
“Exigent circumstances” isn’t an on-off switch. Does a “burglary in progress” justify a napalm attack on the neighborhood?
Cops should be obligated to use the least amount of force necessary to accomplish the ultimate goal of investigating a crime.
If the investigation could have been completed without forcible restraint of the kid, then that’s what we should expect of them.
Just because they got it into their heads that “We need this kid to sit down right now” doesn’t make that the legitimate goal of the operation.
If there’s any way to get through the situation without making him do something he doesn’t want to go, that should be their obligation.
If that means that there is some theoretical increase in risk to the safety of the cops, then so be it. It’s their job to expose themselves to risk of harm in service to the public.
Well in NC it’s not your right to do so to anyone, police or otherwise:
§ 14-288.4. Disorderly conduct. (a) Disorderly conduct is a public disturbance intentionally caused by any person who does any of the following:
NC General Statutes - Chapter 14 Article 36A 3
(1) Engages in fighting or other violent conduct or in conduct creating the threat of imminent fighting or other violence. (2) Makes or uses any utterance, gesture, display or abusive language which is intended and plainly likely to provoke violent retaliation and thereby cause a breach of the peace.
Pretty sure that threatening to beat someone ass falls under that.
Police have no obligation to be your verbal punching bag. Neither do firefighters, paramedics or any other emergency personnel. No one would take the damn job if they had to put up with that level of behavior. Hell we wouldn’t expect a barista at Starbucks to put up with that, WHY should we expect a cop to do so?
Regards,
-Bouncer-
When did they use napalm? I missed that. Was that reported by MSNBC or the dailykos?
It appears that the least amount of force necessary was employed.
If someone believes that they have some right to yell, scream, and curse at others, I say they should go for it. Eventually they will run into someone who disputes this alleged right and it may even produce a physical response. :eek: Hooboy, more fodder for the internet forums.
Personally, I wouldn’t spend my time screaming and cursing but I’m capable of having a civil conversation until a misunderstanding is cleared up.
Hypothetical: I’m at home, and cops knock on the door with a warrant and say “we’re searching your house for evidence of your connection to methamphetamine”, and they start ripping apart my house totally disrupting everything I own. I, needless to say, have never been anywhere near meth in my life. I get pissy with them. I call them names. Eventually I become physically violent, and get pepper sprayed.
Was the pepper spraying “facing the consequences of my actions”? I think it was. And I think it was, even if there was some massive fuckup with the warrant. Maybe the court clerk made a typo. Maybe some guy who owned my house 15 years ago was arrested recently and someone fucked up the paperwork. Or maybe I live on Beach street but the warrant was for Beech street. In any of those cases, the cops fucked up WAY worse than I did, but my violent attack of them still had the predictable response of my getting pepper sprayed (or, depending on the situation, worse).
There might be mitigating circumstances which make it more understandable for me to react with violence, but it’s still a pretty clear cause and effect from my initiation of violence to pepper spray.
About the only case in which I’d argue that violence is actually JUSTIFIED, and I still think it would be stupid unless I was some kind of ninja, is a case in which I somehow knew that the cops were not just being incompetent but outright malicious. For instance, if corrupt cops had earlier blackmailed me and said they were going to burn my house down if I didn’t pay them protection money, and then later on they showed up with a “warrant”, or something like that.
(a) I don’t think I’m doing anything of the sort
(b) there’s a HUGE difference between suggesting that someone never act with anything but robotic calm; and suggesting that someone not resist legal police actions with violence. If Currie’s response to being told to sit in the chair was to sit in the chair with his hands in plain view and say “you stupid morons, I live here. This is because I’m black, isn’t it? You fucking racists. I’m going to sue the living shit out of you”, and then he got pepper sprayed more or less out of the blue, my sympathy would be 99% with him.
There’s a big excluded middle between violent resistance and “yes massa” submission.
Only in the third case did the cops (or at least, the ones actually conducting the search) fuck up. In the other two cases they had a warrant for your property. Yes, it sucks, but getting angry at the people who didn’t make the screw-up is only going to make things worse. That applies in any circumstances, but it applies even more so with people who are able to detain you, and use force to do so.
So, let them get on with it, then sue whoever’s responsible and live well for the rest of your life.
I don’t know how many times I have to say this to get this through your head. There were no objective facts supportive of a burglary in progress. If the threshold for extingent circumstance is as low as “I saw a unknown guy entering my neighbor’s house” then we might as well treat warrants as optional things. There was no imminent harm to anyone (the neighbor claimed the house was empty, no evidence in danger of being destroyed, and no risk of imminent escape.
Every time I see a service person enter my neighbor’s apartment and leave the door slightly cracked behind them, I could claim a burglary is happening. The cops should have considered more possibilities than just the least likeliest one.
And, as I keep saying repeatedly as well, none of this justifies barging into a person’s home without knocking. Even if we assume the cops were well within their rights to storm the house, they should have given Currie the opportunity to respond to their presence like a normal person. He hadn’t given them any reason to think that he wasn’t a normal person. By raiding the house, they put him in a defensive position no person should find themselves when they hadn’t done anything wrong or unusual.
Are you arguing what you believe the law should be, or what you believe the law is? If it’s the former, I think it’s a very reasonable argument. If it’s the latter, I think you’re factually in error, for reasons cited by others earlier.
And I think the first step to making change is recognizing the way things currently are, which means in this case recognizing that the cops probably did not break current law in this incident, which means that laws need to change.
The cites cited earlier are different from Currie’s case, and I have repeatedly asked for better evidence. None have been forthcoming.
The reason I have for my position is simple. I imagine what would have happened if the cops had knocked and engaged Currie under the assumption he was a lawful resident. If Currie came to the door to inform them that he lived there and promptly showed them his ID (and a background search revealed no relevant priors), then are yall really saying the cops would have had the grounds to barge in without his consent and interrogate him? I don’t see how this would be legally possible. Without probable cause that a burglary was in progress (reasonable suspicion is not probable cause), the cops would’ve needed to stay put unless Currie invited them in.
So from this I conclude that if forced entry was not indicated in the above situation, a knockless invasion was not indicated in the situation that happened.
I’m not arguing that a burglary in progress is insufficient for cops to enter a home. I’m saying in Currie’s case, more evidence was needed to support a burglary in progress.
Here also is a relevant passage from [449 F. 3d 741 - United States v. Brown:](Let’s see, there’s 449 F. 3d 741 - United States v. Brown:)
The content of the 911 call supports “suspicion”, if that. There was no allegation of breaking and entering. No claim that a masked man was scaling a fence, peering through windows, or trying out multiple doors. Just a unknown person entering the house. In the absence of a triggered alarm, a barking guard dog, signs of broken glass or jimmied lock, a chain-locked door pried open, I’m really struggling to see what objective facts there were that support a home invasion.
Here’s a better hypothetical that is comparable to Currie’s situation: You’re at home, about to kick back and relax in front of the XBox, when cops storm through the door with guns raised, bellowing at you to put your hands against the wall. As you suddenly find yourself being frisked, you ask them to explain themselves. Instead of answering your question, they subject you to an interrogation. Then they start looking for holes in your “story” in a way that imply you’re a burglar pretending to be a lawful resident. They refuse to explain why they think you’re a burglar in the first place.
You get pissy as they search through the house. They order you to sit down and shut up. You get even pissier. One of them tries to grab you (Currie was heard saying Get off me!) and you get very upset because this seems 100% wrong to you from start to finish. Then cops spray you with pepper spray because your belligerence is ruining their day.
If the cops hadn’t unnecessarily set off a chain of events that almost guaranteed some kind of physical conflict, then none of this would have happened. This is why implying that Currie deserved these consequences is wrong.
And all of this presumes anyway that the cops didn’t lie about what happened. My gut tells me Currie was pepper sprayed simply because the cop was sick of him hearing his angry diatribe. They knew he was unarmed and unlikely to act on his teenage posturing.
Here’s the problem. What the police did should not have guaranteed a physical conflict, and anyone who has the appropriate level of respect for them wouldn’t respond violently to them. Look, the police simply don’t burst into houses at random, they have reasons for doing so. Reasons that they don’t have to share with you the exact second they encounter you, as they have more important things to do. Such as looking for dangers, to them or to you.
If the police ask you to identify yourself, do so. You’re legally required to do it. If they tell you to sit down, shut up, and let them investigate, do so. Again, you’re legally required to do so - in your home or anywhere else, unless you know for certain they are in fact there illegally. And, you don’t. You can’t know whether they’ve received a call that there’s a crime happening there, and unless you live alone you can’t know that someone else hasn’t been committing crime there.
As for politeness, the police don’t owe you that. They owe you a basic level of respect as long as you cooperate with them, but that’s it. I don’t them to be polite, I want them to be efficient and professional.
MaxtheVool, in the omnibus police thread weren’t you among several posters who expressed outrage at the knockless raid that resulted in the death of the Georgia grandfather? A tip from a meth head was all it took to sign off on this warrant, just like a neighbor’s tip was all it took to get Currie’s house raided.
Barging into a person’s residence unannounced on the basis of flimsy evidence is not a necessary evil in the vast majority of cases. It doesn’t take a genius to see how this elevates the chance of conflict 100 fold.
Whether we’re talking about Currie or the Georgia grandfather, both men were put in a vulnerable position. Neither had any clue why they were being ambushed with guns in their face and neither was allowed the opportunity to present their side of the issue without inviting violence upon their heads. They were both treated like criminal scum on the basis of weak information.
If you took one glance at the Georgia situation and was outraged over the turn of events, then it makes no sense for you to side with the cops when it comes to Currie. The cops in both situations have an incentive to lie and stretch the truth.
No, they weren’t. They were treated as “criminal scum” because they threatened the police.
Again I’ll point out that there’s a difference between existing Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and what you’re saying. A tip can sustain probable cause. When probable cause exists, police can seize someone without a warrant.
I agree with you that the best, wisest, most desirable course of action is to focus on not escalating the situation. And as long as your comments are focused on how police should act, I’m right there with you.
Where I am moved to step in and argue with you, though, is when you leave the realm of “should” and start claiming that Currie’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated. That claim isn’t sustainable.
So: what you said above, I endorse: police should not have treated Currie (or the subject in the other case) as they did.