As opposed to people dying in a blitz break in?
Presumably anyone holing up in a house and shooting at police officers is fair game, while innocent people like this man get killed before a “WTF?” had the time to form in his head, by bungling, trigger happy police officers.
I fail to see how this antics jibe with protecting the citizenry.
Well, when a standoff happens, it’s almost always because the person is, in fact, an armed criminal. The people we are concerned about protecting with this change in tactics are the non-criminals who would open the door and let the police in. So your assertion that someone almost always dies might be true, but would tend to apply only to armed criminals prepared to resist – a class of persons already more-or-less doomed by no-knock SWAT incursions.
The Supreme Court’s recent “clarification” of the Second Amendment implies that the law should expect homes to be defended by people with guns. It should be a default assumption.
Couldn’t agree more except that that isn’t the whole problem. Part of the problem is that we create and fund SWAT teams in the first place. When you have such an expensive tool the temptation is to use it.
In this case one of the soldiers (yes, soldiers) over stepped and I suppose he should be punished. But, it was the people who ordered those soldiers to attack a person’s house who should be held responsible.
99% of all people? Sure.
99% of people involved in illicit drug operations. No.
Yes. The destruction of evidence is one of the primary reasons no-knock entries are approved. Knocking and waiting to see if the residents will open the door is simply an invitation to literally flush contraband down the commode.
Not sure how dogs got into this picture. The man had enough time to hear, “Police, search warrant,” and react accordingly. Dogs obviously would not be expected to react with surrender in those circumstances.
The search warrant was on a residence in which he lived.
And the requisite standard for a search warrant is probable cause. The fact that larger quantities of drugs were not found does not mean that warrant is somehow invalid. Indeed, the empty meth vial and paraphernalia suggests the warrant was not simply a shot in the dark, so to speak.
React accordingly? I guess standing still and doing nothing was not an accordable reaction. Imagine if the man had actually rushed at the police with that bat, they probably would not only have killed him, but also would have raped his firstborn and salted his vegtable garden.
I didnt know policemen serving a warrant had a shoot on sight policy, is this an American thing? One of those second amendment consequences you all talk about?
You know what I hate? Weasel words.
Here’s a paragraph form the Gawker link:
This account credulously prompts Ionizer to opine:
Nowhere does it say police lied. It says the warrant was served as part of an investigation on Chournous, and that police knew Chournous had moved out. So what? Probable cause can still exist to find the fruist of a crime in a residence that someone has moved out of. Where is the lie?
So what? What’s the relevance of this fact?
By “there was no a warrant” you don’t mean to say that a warrant didn’t exist, right? You mean to say that the physical paper was not in their hands as they entered the house, right?
So what? What is the relevance of that?
He was less than eight feet away from a man holding what appeared to be a sword. It would take someone in that position less than a second to lunge forward enough to slice the officer.
Five seconds of, “Police, search warrant,” should be enough warning to any adult with a working brain that standing with a menacing pose holding a weapon is a Very Bad Idea.
So what? What is the relevance of this?
So what? What is the relevance of this?
You feel that Sgt. Troy Burnett planned all along to kill Todd Blair, and conspired with his fellow officers to do so.
There is not one scintilla of evidence in the story to support such a bizarre conclusion.
And are there any statistics on how many arrests are lost this way versus how many arrests end in injury?
What you’re describing, ultimately, is a rationalization based on procedural correctness, rather than demonstrating an actual need for the procedure in the first place - contending that it was more important that the police follow their checklist than debate if they needed a checklist in the first place.
The first logical response when hearing “Police! Search warrant!” is to freeze. Making any other movement is strongly contra-indicated. This man did just what he was supposed to do, and was gunned down for doing so. The cop involved should be prosecuted for manslaughter at the very least, and all SWAT units should be prohibited from serving warrants of any kind.
I’m happy with my current means of earning a living, but if that ever changes and I decide to get a crew together to do home invasions, we’re gonna kick in doors and yell, “POLICE! SEARCH WARRANT!”. Unless that would be some sorta copyright problem.
Just sayin.
Other than kayaker’s obvious objection, imagine being startled in the middle of the night, by somebody trying to break down your freaking door. You awake in a panic, grab the nearest object with which to defend yourself, and are doing your best to process what in the holy fuck is going on. I’m sitting here, very much calm and watching at my leisure, and I can barely make out “Police, search warrant” in the video linked to above. In all honesty, I had no idea what they were shouting until your initial post on the matter. All I basically hear is a cacophony of noise, people shouting over each other, two gun shots, and then a clear “get on the ground.” I can’t imagine the guy, who is probably in a panic, had any better a grasp on the situation and time to process what in the living fuck was going on.
Absolutely sickening, disgusting video.
Is everyone in America supposed to just know the exact reaction that will save their life in the event of a police raid, otherwise too bad for them? It looks like we get 5 seconds to decide if the invaders are there legally or illegally and a poor choice could mean our lives. That’s just sad. I hope the police never suspect me of using drugs, I’m not sure I would be able to submit quickly enough.
Oh my god. What an appropriate and appropriately timely news article.
Phony police ransack Ajax home (yes, it’s from our criminal neighbors up north)
Well, they used to do drills on ducking and covering in the event of nuclear attack, but when this morphed into “being served with a no-knock warrant”, the funding for training evaporated as yet another short-sighted consequence of the end of the Cold War.
It seems as though the phrase “Drop your weapon!” has been removed from the U.S. police vocabulary.
Me too.
Oh no, not a Very Bad Idea! (Isn’t that the subtitle of one of the Winnie the Pooh books?) Of course, if it’s a Very Bad Idea, then the shooting is justified. Any man who acts on a Very bad Idea is fair game.
Funny thing, last week I went by a bar and grill where I used to go when I was younger. The place was full of skinheads, including one rather obnoxious 6’9" skinhead with a long beard. Puling that beard would have been a Very Bad Idea. Therefore, that skinhead would have been blameless if he’d killed me. Obviously.
I was thinking the same fucking thing.
Fallacy of the Excluded Middle.
Regarding the golf club. It’s clearly a weapon. It’s clearly a weapon that can cause great bodily injury or death if certain areas of the body are struck with it.
Whether a helmeted officer holding (presumably) an automatic weapon was in danger is another story. As much as I detest police violence, I detest violence on police officer.
This case is a tragedy. But I’m not convinced the officers were criminally culpable.
No, I think the point was that you hate “weasel words”, then used the weasel words “Very Bad Idea”. Did you mean that standing in your bedroom holding a golf club is a well-known way of committing suicide? What if it’s a five-year old holding a water pistol and saying “Don’t hurt my daddy!”?
Exactly! I have a small baseball bat under my bed (ZOMG deadly weapon!) and I’ve grabbed it on more than one occasion to investigate noises outside the house or my dog barking too much for no reason. If that had been my house (by mistake or whatever) I’m fairly certain that I would have been standing in the exact same place in the exact some pose, frozen in the exact same dumbfounded manner. I’m also fairly certain that my presence in my own home holding a bat would be of no real threat to any armed police officer. And yet my kids would grow up without a dad.
I know the odds of all that happening are astronomical, but I still got a little sick watching that video. Aside from the whole meth thing, that guy behaved no differently than I would have.