I don’t think this has beeen covered here, I came across it while doing some research.
This law was passed in response to the Indiana SC ruling in 2011 that said a person can be arrested for even trying to stop an officer from entering your home illegally.
Why should police be any different??
Top Stories - Indiana First State to Allow Citizens to Shoot Law Enforcement Officers - AllGov - News
The obvious problem I see with it is that police may get shot when the home owner is unclear on what is illegal entry.
A better law would be the ability to make a citizens arrest while surrendering so as to be able to sue the officer into the stone-age down the road. I don’t understand the lack of repercussions for the high-profile antics that have made the news.
Wonder what they would do with a ‘Rapunzel Tower’ - house where the entry is hidden a bit of a distance away from the tower, and the only windows are like 30 or 40 feet in the air, and the walls are pretty smooth and impervious molded rebar reinforced concrete.
I always though it would be fun to live in an old missile silo bunker. Hard to bash through 18 inches of hardened armor door and guarded air supply with its own generation system.
Sure, you can shoot at an officer who enters your home illegally.
… and you can enjoy your victory from beyond the grave, as I doubt other police officers are going to wait for a court ruling to fire back.
Why doesn’t Castle Doctrine apply? What if you are afraid for your life and you don’t even know it’s the police breaking in?
That’s essentially the Cory Maye case.
Because they’re law enforcement. If they’re acting in their law enforcement capacity as representatives of the people, they should be afforded extra protection under the law. We (speaking for the majority of people, not everyone on this board, of course) don’t want police officers shot while they’re doing their job. And we have decided, as a society, that we prefer that the tough decisions about law enforcement be left up to the police, judges, and prosecutors rather than any old person who decides they should be allowed to kill the police.
The Indiana law is typical reactionary bullshit which replaces reasoned consideration with emotional hyperbole, and is a stupid, stupid law. The law enforcement community has enough problems finding intelligent, quick thinking, well educated, emotionally stable, and patient people to be police officers. It will get that much harder to do when you let people decide for themselves when they get to shoot police officers.
Or, ya know, they could just say, not break into peoples homes in violation of their constitutional rights. Fuck the war on drugs. Cory Maye (linked above) was given a death sentance and lost 10 years of his life in prison becuase the cops heard that his neighbor was smoking a joint. Un-fucking real.
Who do you want making the decision and what do you want to put on the line on the determination of whether or not a police entry is in violation of constitutional rights? Society, and I, have decided that the police, prosecutors, and judges should make that decision and that the stakes should be the loss of money in a civil suit and potential job loss for those people. Do you advocate that the decision should be made left to the home owner in the few seconds of entry and that the stakes should be the life of the police officers and the homeowner? Because I think that kind of position would lead to more deaths, both police and home owners, and less justice.
Ah, the enlightened debate about law enforcement I can expect on the SDMB.
We, and that would be the vast majority of people, do not want their doors battered in with warrant-less searches by police with guns drawn. We had a guy shot dead in my area about 5 years ago because of this. Because they’re law enforcement they should be held to a higher standard as representatives of the people. Sorry we made a mistake doesn’t cut it.
I would say it’s expressly because of the immunity police operate under that we don’t have sufficiently intelligent, quick thinking, well educated, emotionally stable, and patient people in the police force.
The Castle Doctrine should expressly apply to anyone without a warrant. Even with a warrant there should be a damn good reason for breaking down a door.
add me to the list of un-fucking real. The person who made the decision to raid the house should have been the one in jail for manslaughter. That is the person responsible for what happened.
And the cop lost his life, too. The ‘War on Drugs’ is also getting (presumably) good cops killed from having them bust in on innocent people who have no reason to believe cops might be busting in on them, and no good way of knowing they’re cops, until it’s too late.
ETA: To amplify, if I have 10 kilos of coke in my house, and am dealing, yeah, I expect cops could be busting in on me at any time. But if I don’t have or use drugs, and just moved in a few weeks ago? Why would I even dream the cops might be busting in?
sorry but that’s a bullshit response. Corey’s house was attacked without cause in what was nothing but a third world response to activity that wasn’t directly threatening anyone at the time. There is no justification for this. They don’t get a pass for violating his civil rights. We are not AT WAR with drug dealers.
Chances are it’s not the dealer’s house that is being trashed. I don’t see where the state gets to destroy property and then tell the owner it’s their problem because someone was dealing drugs.
I’m going to go out on a huge limb here and say that I agree that police shouldn’t be breaking into to people’s houses with guns drawn without a warrant.
You’re conflating two different things. The issue isn’t “should police be allowed to enter houses without warrants and shoot homeowners”; I think we all pretty much agree that that is wrong. The issue is “should homeowners be allowed to shoot police if they think they’re rights are being violated”. The answer to that one should be a resounding no.
Why in the world would you conclude that and what is this immunity you speak of?
In a vast majority of cases, police who break into houses have warrants. In those extreme and rare circumstances where they don’t (think exigent circumstances), the question is, once again, who do you want to decide if whether an exception to the warrant requirement applies (the homeowner with a gun or police officers) and what do you want the stakes to be (dead people or a civil case with job firings).
It was a substanceless response to a substance-less sentence.
I understand you want to make this into a debate on the war on drugs, but it’s not. It’s a debate of who, how, and when we, as a society, want the decision of the constitutionality of a police action to take place.
Someone really ought to make a list of those persons who are representatives of we the people, and enumerate what especial privileges they are entitled to.
Representatives obviously includes those clowns who are elected by other clowns, mostly in the interests of certain clown-groups; here it includes those hired by them to enforce their laws; and I have no doubt some would include members of the armed forces, who continue those rulers’ policies by other means. What of the honest postal workers, either in post offices or out delivering mail ? What of city sanitation workers, keeping the mean streets safe to walk in ? What of DMV clerks and a whole slew of different national/federal professions ? Do not they equally serve who only stand and wait ?
I favour giving them all guns.
The fact that he shot and killed a cop probably also had something to do with it.
Most states have. Police, for example. Or emergency personnel like firemen or EMT’s. Teachers. Jurors and Judges. Postal Workers. Most states have the very thing you want. Contact your local attorney for more enumeration if you’re interested.