…said an echoey voice from beneath the bridge.
No, I think they are both important. However, only one of them is risking that life on a daily basis to protect you, and they deserve respect not condemnation for that.
We actually were required to be sure that the manual was up to date, and if it wasn’t, and we got something wrong, we would face consequences that (if severe enough) could include jail time.
This is a fact.
It should be their job. It should also be their supervisors’ job, and the job of the court to get the warrant correct.
They should all be legally required to double-check before engaging in such a dangerous tactic.
We should demand high standards.
It’s not about “getting to shoot them”, it’s about whether in the heat of the moment, when identities are unknown (due to the darkness or the fact that criminals can pretend to be cops) a citizen can make a decision to defend their home even when there’s a tiny chance they might shoot a cop.
If we demanded high standards by cops, this might never happen at all.
That you can’t even consider this makes me suspect even more that you’re trolling. It’s just not reasonable to so easily dismiss a consideration that cops should double-check warrants. That’s a perfectly reasonable thing to consider.
So take the risk. If the jury believes you had reason to think they were not actually cops, or if they genuinely weren’t actually cops, you’ll be fine.
Or, you know, just don’t shoot cops. It’s safer for you, it’s safer for the police, and better for everyone all round.
I worked as a deputy sheriff. No, SWAT uniforms are not easily recognizable in the dark, when you have been frightened out of a deep sleep, have a myriad of flashlights shining in your eyes, have people screaming often contradictory orders at you, your family is screaming, and maybe a flash-bang has been deployed. I knew plenty of officers from various agencies who just LOVED them some SWAT action because it was a giant adrenaline rush. The raids were fun for them. **iiandyiiii **is spot on that we need to put the brakes on this whole no-knock warrant business and rethink when it is necessary or if it is necessary at all.
After being given numerous reasons by numerous people why this is not necessarily the case and ignoring them completely?
Yes. Yes it is.
That’s not what I actually said, though. Making sure the manual is up to date was your job, questioning officers giving routine orders wasn’t.
Shooting at unknown people in the dark is how spouses and children who’ve unexpectedly come home late or whatever get shot. If you can’t see well enough to recognise a police uniform, it’s vanishingly unlikely you can recognise an imminent threat.
You think cops should be able to instantly distinguish a real gun from an almost identical replica, but think other people shouldn’t even have to be able to recognise a uniform before defending themselves. You are the one with a double standard.
And you have it backwards. If a bunch of people dressed as police, following police procedure, break into your house there is a tiny chance they are not cops. Take the chance and shoot them if you like, but be willing to pay the consequences. You know, the same as you want cops to do. Drop the double standard.
Who is preventing these high standards? Who is forcing sacked cops to get their jobs back? It’s a union issue, like so many other issues.
They should carefully check that they are at the address on the warrant. It’s not up to the cops actually performing the raid to question whether there should be a warrant for that particular house, it will have gone through several stages before that point.
Oh, my mistake, I thought we were talking about when it was dark and the police didn’t announce themselves. Now, it’s impossible to recognise the police when they have lights and are shouting at you. It’s astonishing anyone has ever been able to accuse the police of anything, if they’re that well camouflaged :smack:
As for reducing or eliminating no-knock warrants, that’s a different issue, and it’s not up to the officers performing the raids to make that decision. I’d need to see actual evidence about how well they work in terms of preventing suspects from escaping or destroying evidence, and also actual evidence of how often they go wrong, before making an informed decision on that, but my instinct is to say that they shouldn’t be eliminated entirely.
And I don’t care if cops enjoy them or not, as long as they perform them properly. That should be the issue.
All I’m asking for is the equivalent – making sure the warrant is accurate and reflects the correct information is equivalent to me making sure the procedure is up to date and reflects any recent modifications.
I hold cops to a far higher standard because they’re professionals and trained for this. They should be held to a higher standard than non-cops.
You’re not accurately reflecting my positions in these paragraphs, but it’s not worth correcting you yet again since you seem uninterested in such details.
And those “several stages” can have mistakes made, as many incidents have demonstrated. Why is it so unreasonable to you to provide another check? Wouldn’t it be better if fewer mistakes were made?
Cops (and supervisors) should carefully check that they’re at the correct address, and that the warrant is accurate. They can and should do so in advance. You’ve provided no reason why they shouldn’t. Checking this information would harm no one and cost nothing except a small amount of time before a risky tactic is used.
Professionally, that’s reasonable, but not legally. In that cops should be able to be sacked for carelessness that isn’t reckless, but there should be no more criminal culpability than there would be for someone else.
Unfortunately you seem not to be willing to meet your own standard of clearly explaining your positions. I’m basing my understanding of them on what you’ve actually written, and what you have written is contradictory.
Not if fewer mistakes are made because nothing actually gets done. Everything is a compromise between safety and practicality. In the specific situation where speed and surprise are the whole point of the action, too many checks would make the whole thing pointless.
Of course they should be checked in advance, but that’s irrelevant to any argument I’ve made. Once the required amount of checks have been made, it is the job of the officers to conduct the raid even if the warrant is still wrong, and they are in no way at fault for doing so.
If the cops didn’t check, then they should be held accountable, just like sailors are if they don’t make sure the procedure is up to date and accurate.
You’ve presented no reason to believe that cops and supervisors don’t ever have minutes or hours in advance to make sure warrants are accurate.
Why are you so certain there can’t be improvements to the current process? Why do you resist any such suggestions? Maybe an improvement would mean fewer mistakes.
That’s correct, I specifically said they should be checked in advance to make sure they’e accurate.
Quite possibly, my point is that the time for those improvements is before the warrant is given to the team performing the raid. Their job is to ensure that they find the right house and follow procedures, not to second guess the warrant itself.
You, however, think that if the warrant happens to be illegitimate despite all the checks, the responsibility falls on the cops performing the raid and that it’s reasonable to shoot them, rather than challenging, later in court, the cops and judges who actually prepared the warrant. That’s just silly.
Case in point about a year ago when a mayor decided to execute a dangerous no-knock warrant on a teenager for the crime of making a parody twitter account!
For fucks sake, NO ONE in the chain of command even thought for a second that this might be a bad idea. Not the imbecile swat team, little boys playing at pretend soldiers, nor their commanders, nor the idiot mayor’s staff, NO ONE, thought gee, this seems like a dangerous and disproportionate step to take here…
The problem isn’t that there are bad or incompetent cops, its that there are are so fucking MANY of them at ALL levels, AND that the system protects them instead of doing what it should be doing: getting rid of the fuckers so that the cops doing their jobs well, can continue to protect and serve.
Who gets to challenge them in court? Your grieving relatives?
+1
Cite?
And mayors can’t issue warrants. What evidence was there that convinced a judge to not only issue the warrant, but make it a no-knock warrant?
So now you agree that the cops should take a little time to make sure the warrant is for the right house and suspect?
That’s progress. Good for you - it’s a reasonable idea that you have reasonably considered.
I’d never suggest shooting cops on purpose, just that in the extreme confusion, a home defender might choose reasonably to shoot an unknown invader, and if the unknown invader is a cop who broke down the wrong door, then the cop is at fault.
If, as we both agree, the cops make sure to check to make sure that the warrant is for the correct house and suspect, then this will be much, much less likely to occur.
I’m guessing Peoria.
While looking for that, I came across this about a drug raid on the home of Cheye Calvo, mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland.
There’s information missing from this story.
I have a hard time believing a court would approve a warrant simply based on a twitter account.
Added to that is the fact that the roommate was arrested for felony marijuana possession. This means that he possessed an amount that displays an intent to distribute. The fact that the judge issued a no-knock warrant tells me that the warrant was all about the drugs, and likely had info that corroborated the info from the twitter account.
Not a good incident to hang your hat on, cop-haters.