It occurs to me that my parents routinely keep their interior garage door unlocked because the garage door is almost always down. It’s a stupid practice, by unlikely a rare one.
There really was no need for the cops to jump to conclusions about this door being unsecure.
Tell yourself this 100 more times and maybe you will start believing it. But this is only assuming you’re not as dogmatically stupid as your posting history suggests.
I think it is because most of the supporters of the police don’t really care about the 4th Amendment issues, they focus on Currie’s behavior when ordered to submit to handcuffing. A lot of the detractors of the police, ** LHOD** foremost, (I think he has the key point here) think that even if you accept Bricker’s position that Currie’s 4th Amendment rights weren’t violated, there is still something wrong when a man who is only yelling, standing, perhaps pacing back and forth, who refuses to sit down, and who swats away an attempt to handcuff him gets pepper sprayed in his own home.
But they can’t stop you without probable cause, and a stop sign isn’t valid without a search warrant. It says so in some random text pulled from wikihow!
You know, I bet as a lawyer you can speedread pretty well, and the police report was linked to several times in this thread. And this is fairly close to the top of it:
“The garage door was unlocked and open slightly as we made entry.”
Actually, most of the cop defenders’ argument hinges upon the lawfulness of the cops’ conduct. It is those who fault the police (me included) who see a problem with their conduct regardless of its legality. I just take it further by also arguing they acted unlawfully.
At any rate, it seems as though I’ve convinced Bricker to my view. He can’t find a case to prove I’m wrong about probable cause, and there’s evidence in the report the door was closed when the cops barged in.
Dumbass, read the last report by Stancil. He was the first officer on the scene. He reported trying the doorknob to see if it was unlocked. It wouldn’t make any sense to do this if the door was open. His failure to note that the door was ajar before he tested it should also smack you between the eyes. The damn thing was closed.
Why his report contradicts the others should concern you, but the most charitable explanation is that Stancil cracked it open before they entered and the other cops inferred it was ajar from the beginning.
I know it’s upsetting to realize you were wrong all along, but man up. You’ve been defending a bunch of law-breaking trespassers.
Near the bottom of the report, Officer Stancil’s version says:
This action caused the door to be opened slightly, and that’s what Officer Lane and Sgt. Taylor saw.
Obviously, police can’t open a door and then use the door being open as evidence of an on-going burglary.
you with the face is wrong in her understanding of probable cause predicate: she thinks if the door was open, the officers still would not have been able to legally enter. I disagree with that claim.
But here, the door being closed removes the factual predicate the officers were relying upon. A closed door and no indicia of a break-in does NOT support probable cause.
You disagree with that claim, which is your prerogative. But don’t declare I’m wrong until you can prove that. I’ve shown you that kind of respect and I expect it from you.
No, both Lane and Taylor reported that the door was open when they arrived on the scene, and Stancil reports turning the knob after they both arrived.
Stancil was turning the knob, not to open the door, but to check if it was “secured”, meaning locked, and thus whether or not it had been broken open, or had been left open.
There is a discrepancy then in the report. Both Lane and Taylor report the door as slightly open. Stancil claims that “Sgt. Taylor and Officer Lane arrived on the scene and approached the house along with me.” That’s before he writes that he twisted the door knob.