Didn’t the Supreme Court already rule that flaf desecration laws are unconstutional? How is it possible that th state of North Carolina is not only still trying to enforce this chrade of a law but allowing law enforcement to break into people’s homes and attack them for it?
While using the flag in odd ways to send a political message may be constitutionally protected, assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest (even a wrongful arrest) are not.
Why do you think that the actions of a Buncombe County Deputy Sheriff represent the will of the state of North Carolina? Sure, it’s state statute, but there are a lot of dumbass laws out there. As well as dumbass law enforcement officers. That doesn’t meant that there is de facto imperative to break into someone’s home.
We even disbar rogue prosecutors 'round here.
I’m really curious as to why you would automatically believe the homeowners’ verison of events and not the officer’s? It looks like according to the officer, the homeowner slammed the door on his hand (which is an assault on an officer) and then later the wife hit the officer in the face. How does that amount to “breaking into their house to attack them for it”, “it” being flag descecration?
Assault on a government employee and resisting arrest are misdemeanours?
It was self defense. They have a right to close their own door of their own home. The deputy had no right to prevent them from closing their own door. If he he illegally had his hand in the door, that’s his problem. He certainly had no right to then smash open the door and attack the family (which is when the wife justifiably hit him in the face). If an armed thug smashes into the house and attacks the occupants, do they not have a right to defend themselves? I think they would have been within their rights to blow his head off.
I say that because the state is (so far) defending all the actions of the deputy. Even defending the statute is asinine, unconstitutional, fascistic and anti-American.
For a little more on the Sheriff’s Office’s perspective, listen to the very brief interview with Lt. Randy Sorrells, linked on the same page with the story in the link in the OP.
I don’t really have an opinion on what actually happened, since there’s no way we’d know, but I do find it really interesting how quickly the OP’er assumes the true version is not law enforcement’s.
Because police are taught what to say to get a conviction. They are professional liars when it is called for. People are very unlikely to start trouble with a cop. It does not pay. They usually just accept the injustice and hope it goes away.
The officer does not have the authority to determine whether the law is constitutional or not. There is a law on the books in North Carolina that makes desecrating a flag illegal. That law has not been repealed or held unconstitutional by a court. He received a complaint; he went to issue a citation. He got his hand slammed in the door. You can certainly spin that as the acme of fascism if you want, but that’s a damn silly argument, IMO. And to say that by his actions he was “defending the statute” is factually inaccurate.
The sheriff’s office is defending the actions of the deputy. They’re not taking a position on the constitutionality of the statute. They are not even the legal entity that would have charged the homeowners; that would be done by the prosecutor’s office.
I find it interesting how some people always automatically assume that cops never lie.
This is not a family of desperate criminals. They aren’t gangabangers or drug dealers. Their version sounds credible to me, the deputy’s doesn’t.
Oh, and by the way, the Deputy has the burden of proof, not them. I am asssuming they’re innocent until proven guilty.
This is complete and utter bullshit. I have worked with law enforcement for years now, including reviewing at length the training they receive. I have never yet met one who was “taught what to say to get a conviction” or who was a “professional liar.” You can slag off the whole field with that broad brush of yours, but that doesn’t mean they are as a class without personal integrity or professionalism. So enjoy your delusions of persecution by jack-booted thugs, but unless you’ve got some cite to back this up, it’s nothing but crap.
Again, the actions of a single officer, or prosecutor, is not indicative of the will of the state. The only people “defending” the actions of the deputy are members of the Buncombe County Sherrif’s Department, which, AFAIK, is not an arm of the State of North Carolina.
What would you have them do? Every time someone is arrested, just go ahead and taken his word for it that he didn’t do it?
As to whether the actions of the deputy were legitimate, that’s what trials are for, right? If the Kuhn’s story is true, then he was being a jerk and should be fired. If his story is true, that changes things. I think he overstepped his bounds to even get involved. I know for a fact that law enforcement officers do not respond to every complaint about possible violations of law. But now that the shit has hit the fan, due process must take it’s course.
I never made that assumption. Point out to me one post – in this thread or anywhere – where I ever have. I’ll wait here. You, OTOH, have decided the homeowner is telling the truth and the officer is lying, but you have NO BASIS for that conclusion. There’s no evidence either way, yet you are completely comfortable deciding, based on one article, that they are credible and the officer is not, and posting a thread that erroneously recounts as known fact something that is at best one side of the story.
The deputy doesn’t have the burden of proof; the state does. And their innocence of the charges, if they are found so, does not translate to the deputy having broken into their house, much less that he did so to “attack” them.
Yes it has. All such laws have been found unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.
He asked them to take down the flag. they did. He then demanded that they give him ID. He had no right to do that. He refused to let them close their own door (according even to his own version). They did not asault him. They were not stopping him from writing a citation. If he wanted to write a citation, he still could have written it and stuck it in the mailbox. He was NOT entitled to stand in their doorway without a warrant and prevent them from closing their own door.
I said the STATE was defending the statute simply by allowing this family to be formally charged with violating it.
Which makes him a fascistic scumbag.
That still does not give them the right to break into the homes of citizens and attack them.
Regardless of how they’re trained, they still do lie and shade the truth and back each other up. Cops lie all the time. Everybody knows that. It’s not a secret
Wrongo Bucko, wrongfull arrest is no different than assault and you may lawfully defend yourself. I’m am not addressing whether this was a wrongfull arrest but specifically whether we are at the mercy of dishonest cops.
No, the officer’s own version does not support the claim that he refused to let them close the door. And he doesn’t need a warrant if there is probably cause, which apparently there was. We also don’t know if the guy invited the cop into his house at first or not.
I don’t see how you can just assume that the home owner’s version is correct. Maybe the cop is lying, maybe not.
I find a hard time believing it was self defense. They were told they were being issued citations, at that point, while the officer doesn’t have a right to enter your home, I find it highly dubious that you have a right to slam your door shut on the officer’s hand.
Take another example, if I did the same thing to a pushy door-to-door salesman, while I think some people would agree I was justified, I think there is a very good chance that under the law I could be convicted of assault and even forced to pay damages in a civil suit. I don’t believe you can slam someone’s hand shut in a door for no reason at all.
Do we know that the family told the officer to leave? Do we know that the officer was actually trying to force his way into the house when they slammed the door shut on his hand? We don’t know that.
In any case, he was issuing them a citation, so at the very least he had a right to be in the area in front of their door. Once they assaulted him, they had committed a serious crime and he then had every right to go into the house to arrest them. Prior to that, just for the flag statute, no, he didn’t have a right to enter the house. He did have the authority to write a citation, though. That’s part of his authority as a peace officer, maybe the statute is unconstitutional, so what? That’s not a concern of law enforcement. Law enforcement has to enforce the laws as they are, not as they should be, I’d honestly not expect or want a Sheriff’s deputy to be making decisions about whether or not he should enforce the law based on how he feels about the law’s constitutionality. If the law is unconstitutional, the time to protest that is in court when you go to argue about your minor fine. You don’t have the right to assault anyone (especially a law enforcement officer) simply because you disagree with a given law’s constitutionality.
A lot of people in this country seem to have intentionally tuned out the manner in which civil rights leaders used to protest laws. They didn’t do it by getting in fist fights with law enforcement officers that were just doing their job, they passively accepted being arrested and then they fought the law in court, sometimes it turned out for the best, and sometimes they lost. It would have been a lot worse for all of them if their de facto response to what they viewed as an unconstitutional law was to assault a police officer.
The idea that you can slam your door shut on someone’s hand at any time, and “tough luck” for that guy, is ludicrous. What if a girl scout is in the threshold of your door selling cookies, you suddenly decide you don’t want to buy them, so you slam the door shut, breaking her hand and knocking her down? That’s assault, period. You don’t have the right to do that just because you suddenly decide you don’t want someone there. As a homeowner, if a law enforcement officer is within the threshold of your front door and doesn’t have a valid search warrant or other compelling reason to enter your home, you can say, “please step out of my house.” Or something like that, while it’d probably antagonize the officer, that is fully within your legal rights, at least I think–and that seems to be the advice the ACLU gives in one of their informational videos that I’ve seen.
For the homeowner here to remotely be in the right, I’d need to believe he at least told the officer before he slammed the door shut, “you need to move away from my door and take your hand out of my house.” I think the property owner is justified in that request, but not justified in summarily slamming his door shut on anyone’s hand he wants at any time he wants. Even still, I’m not entirely sure you are allowed to barricade yourself in your home to prevent an officer from issuing you a misdemeanor citation. Nor am I sure that in the state of North Carolina you are allowed to refuse to present identification to an officer when you are being issued a citation. I know that you can’t be compelled to “present your papers” just because an officer wants to know who you are, but I think the situation is materially different when they are trying to issue you a citation. The power of the police to issue citations is largely dependent on the ability of the police to accurately attach the citation to a given person’s legal identity.
This is incorrect. The case you want is Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989). It did NOT serve to strike down every flag desecration statute in the nation. It would be more accurate to say that it indicates that such statutes will be found unconstitutional, but it did not declare that they are. As I said, the statute is still on the books, has never been repealed, and has never been found unconstitutional.
Cite?
So they closed it on his hand, intentionally injuring him? That’s okay in your book?
The Buncombe County Prosecutor’s Office begs to differ.
They then could have claimed they did not receive it.
Cite? And cite for even if he does so erroneously, they can then force it closed in a way that injures him?
The fact that his employer defends his actions makes him a fascist scumbag? That’s a pretty low bar for fascism.
You begin to repeat yourself, but you still haven’t shown that that’s what actually happened.