A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
You know, I just don't know how I feel about this:
Republican Governor Mitch Daniels has signed Senate Enrolled Act 1 into law in Indiana. The new law allows citizens to use deadly force against police officers they think are illegally entering their homes. Earlier this month, Addicting Info reported that the bill had passed the Senate. Republicans say the bill is designed to keep police safe, but Democrats say the bill will lead to the wanton killing of police officers.
Rep. Craig Fry, a Democrat, says the bill “is going to cause people to die and it’s too late after somebody dies for a jury to sort it out. Somebody’s going to die, whether it’s a police officer or an individual who thinks a police officer is entering their home unlawfully. People are going to die.”
Fry’s colleague, Democratic Rep. Linda Lawson, a former police captain, says the bill would create an “open season on law enforcement,” and it is opposed by “1,250 state police officers and 14,000 men and women in blue, brown and green.”
Perhaps I'm not understanding this correctly. I understand allowing citizens to use deadly force against police officers who are illegally entering their homes--but against police officers who they think are illegally entering their homes?
Does anyone else get this?
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Comments:
Mar '11
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
George Savage: Isn't this law aimed at deterring paramilitary "no-knock" entries into citizens' homes?
There are chilling cases detailed at the Cato Institute of citizens who, after being raided by masked police providing no advance identification, are prosecuted for firing on the officers they reasonably took for dangerous home invaders. In some cases, resisting the unannounced assault was the only "crime" documented by the home-invasion/search. · 4 hours ago
No-Knocks are inherently unconstitutional. And Police that bust into innocent homes should face real consequences. Not a slap on the wrist. If civilians are hurt, jail time. For property damage, terrorizing the innocent, and violating their home, suspensions, fines, and reduction in rank. And not just for the officers involved. Their superiors in the chain of command, too.
The military holds their people to a high standard. The Navy has relieved over a dozen skippers of command in the past 12 months. That's the way it should be. I realize that the police's job is tough, but that's no excuse to take a slack attitude towards terrorizing the innocent (and what else would you call a violent, no-notice raid on someone's home?).
Nov '11
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
Gaby Charing
raycon
Nice to know that the bodies of my wife and I would get a formal review before the government concludes that they are right and I was wrong.
It's extremely rare here for anyone to be shot dead by police. When it happens it's headline news. Police officers have been charged with murder. And searches require a warrant. It sounds like you could do with a bit more of what we have, not less. · 5 minutes ago
We certainly need many fewer, if any, SWAT team entries, and much better protections of the type that this bill affords, but does not England have problems resulting from weak policing and sentencing? That can be just as bad, as evidenced by your exceptionally high crime rate.
Jul '11
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
If the police need to break in then they must, prudently, expect their entrance to be contested. If that is the case then I don't see how this law will materially affect their situation. I think it will do more than give the law a way to give persons who a truly protecting themselves a way to avoid the nightmares described above. The guy sitting on a pile of coke is not going to get to use this law...
Aug '11
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
raycon:
I don't remember that the Fourth Amendment has been further modified, but no knock raids and such are strictly forbidden.
Mr. Shotgun is my only recourse when a person breaks down my door. It takes me less than three seconds from my normal reading chair to have Mr. Shotgun in my hands and off the safety. Lacking a polite knock and a presentation of a warrant, that cop will be dead. As dead as if he were some lowlife punk who intended terrorizing my family and robbing us of our possessions and our lives.
Unfortunate if some cop were to die because he or his superiors did not consider the Constitutional consequences, but better him than me.
A tin badge in lieu of a proper warrant and clear identification does not suffice for me to sacrifice my family so some trial lawyer gets a win. · 3 hours ago
You may take the first officer through the door, but it's the other dozen or so that will offer you more of a serious challenge. Whereupon...they will not ask questions but, unfortunately, will complete their task.
Mar '11
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
This happened in Utah in 2010. The man shot was NOT the subject of the warrant, but he's dead nonetheless in his boxers in his own home. This cannot happen in a free society.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFEHlkr0lHs
Oh, and the police were found to have acted properly by the "independent board" discussed above.
Edited on March 25, 2012 at 12:56amDec '10
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
You sure about that officer?
The cases that call that into question in recent years are legion.
EDIT:
Add to that the fact that redress in court costs great gobs of money and years of your life. Both things which you will never recover, even if you eventually "win".
The state has both an infinite supply of manhours and money (taken from you as taxes) to expend on its defense. They also have multitudes of other levers of power to use against you.
Own a construction company and get into a court beef with LE, and suddenly it's impossible to get any building permits approved, and then magically all the previous work you've done is found the be in non-compliance and fines are to be levied, your truck is parked illegally and towed no matter where you actually park it, etc, ad infinitum.
The idea that citizens still possess the ability to extract redress from LE is a joke.
Edited on March 25, 2012 at 1:32amMay '10
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
Gaby Charing
See above. It's you who have a problem with trigger-happy police, not us. · 3 hours ago
I totally agree. This law should mitigate that, at least in Indiana.
Oct '10
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
Gaby Charing
raycon
Nice to know that the bodies of my wife and I would get a formal review before the government concludes that they are right and I was wrong.
It's extremely rare here for anyone to be shot dead by police. When it happens it's headline news. Police officers have been charged with murder. And searches require a warrant. It sounds like you could do with a bit more of what we have, not less. · 7 hours ago
Oh... lucky you. In good ol' civilized England you don't kill innocent civilized citizens. Wow... how neat. I wish the rest of the world were as civilized as the UK is nowadays.
When we rebelled against you, it was not so. When did you so civilize, or is it the citizens who have turned into such a bunch of sheep?
Oct '10
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
HeartofAmerica
raycon:
I don't remember that the Fourth Amendment has been further modified, but no knock raids and such are strictly forbidden.
Mr. Shotgun is my only recourse when a person breaks down my door. It takes me less than three seconds from my normal reading chair to have Mr. Shotgun in my hands and off the safety. Lacking a polite knock and a presentation of a warrant, that cop will be dead. As dead as if he were some lowlife punk who intended terrorizing my family and robbing us of our possessions and our lives.
Unfortunate if some cop were to die because he or his superiors did not consider the Constitutional consequences, but better him than me.
· 3 hours ago
You may take the first officer through the door, but it's the other dozen or so that will offer you more of a serious challenge. Whereupon...they will not ask questions but, unfortunately, will complete their task. · 5 hours ago
Wow... that makes me feel better. Might makes right. Let's hear it for the guys with the guns.
Jun '10
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
This is a legislative response to a ruling last year by the Indiana Supreme Court that stated that the police could enter your home with any reason or no reason at all and you were absolutely prohibited in trying to prevent them from doing so. This legislation only clarifies that you still have the right to defend your home against intruders. The responsibility for the intrusion is on the police, not the unwitting citizen. If you don't shoot, you could be killed by the intruder. If it turns out to be a cop kicking down the wrong door, the citizen would face criminal charges just because it was a cop. The constitution is supposed to protect the citizen from the state and not the other way around.
Sep '11
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
In the UK if you brandish something that looks like a gun (e.g. a kid's toy gun), the police are entitled to assume it is a gun unless it's quite obvious that it isn't, and if you get shot, that's down to you. As you probably know, our police don't routinely carry firearms (a routine neighbourhood police patrol would never be armed) but guns are issued, and used, when necessary, and patrols can call for armed backup to an incident involving firearms. Every case where a gun is fired is investigated internally by the police, and if anyone is injured, even slightly, externally as well. We don't have armed cops knocking down doors and firing wildly, but if you show a gun, you may well get shot. Your gun will be held illegally - police know if guns are licensed.
Sep '11
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
I don't accept we have weak policing or sentencing and I don't want to get into that discussion. This thread is about the police raiding people's homes, and people getting shot. I'm saying that in the UK the problem of innocent people getting shot by the police is far smaller. The reason, I surmise, is that your law enforcement agencies are out of control in a way that ours are not; and because so many Americans (citizens and police) have guns, more people get shot. I accept some (many?) of you believe the police have no right to raid your home in any circumstances and you have a right to shoot them if they do. I'm just saying that that means a lot of people get killed. Here, we prefer to do it differently. That's all.
Feb '12
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
No-knock raids are perfectly constitutional, if the proper warrant is obtained. Does anybody object to them if otherwise the criminals would destroy the evidence, kill the hostage, etc.?
Note also that the police do not and should not need a search warrant to enter a house where a crime is being committed or in hot pursuit of a criminal.
What is outrageous is when the police break into the wrong house and the citizen is (a) not compensated for the damage, or (b) arrested if he resists. If the police go to the wrong house, even reasonably, the police deaths from resistance are not the fault of the homeowner.
Jul '10
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
I'm torn on this one. If every barroom Constitutional scholar who ever incorrectly accused me of violating their rights were to take a shot at me, I would have more holes in me than an Obama energy initiative. I don't think I'd be happy with a law that appears on the surface to encourage it.
That of course isn't the purpose of the law, but Governor Daniels had a point when he said:
Overall, I doubt this is going to do much to change the state of play. The (potential) perception of the law is more problematic than the law itself (we have a similar statute already on the books in South Carolina). The fact that the law isn't designed to offer dope dealers who kill cops a built-in defense strategy, doesn't mean they won't try. Hopefully, the courts won't buy it.
---cont'd---
Edited on March 25, 2012 at 8:05pmJul '10
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
---cont'd---
While there have been troubling reports about cops doing stupid or malicious things on entries, it's almost impossible to imagine a scenario where gunfire would have improved the situation, for anyone involved.
None of this would have been necessary, of course, if the Supreme Court hadn't issued an overbroad rule in the first place. Hard cases make bad law, which then generate more hard cases.
Dec '11
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
No knock warrants should be done away with and it would be a non-issue.
Mar '11
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
Police don't need a warrant if it's a hostage situation. As for destroying evidence, either the perp has a dime bag that can be flushed, or they've got bricks of pot, coke, or hash that cannot be quickly disposed of. If it's the former, then it's absolutely a case of police-state overkill to send in a paramilitary unit. If it's the latter, then as I said, he can't get rid of it anyway, so what's the problem with a knock on the door?
Even with a warrant, police SHOULD NOT be able to enter your house unannounced unless there's a reasonable suspicion of innocent life in danger. It's still your house after all.
Jul '10
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
Douglas
Even with a warrant, police SHOULD NOT be able to enter your house unannounced unless there's a reasonable suspicion of innocent life in danger. It's still your house after all.
Would you agree that this is a situation where a no-knock approach would have been not only Constitutional, but appropriate?
A knock-and-announce approach was used, and two police officers' families will never see their loved ones again. Cases like this don't get the press that botched raids do, but it doesn't mean they don't happen.
No-knocks are dangerous, and should be used judiciously, but it seems too much to just declare them out of bounds entirely.
Edited on March 26, 2012 at 3:07amJun '10
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
Wylee Coyote
Would you agree that this is a situation where a no-knock approach would have been not only Constitutional, but appropriate?
A knock-and-announce approach was used, and two police officers' families will never see their loved ones again. Cases like this don't get the press that botched raids do, but it doesn't mean they don't happen.
No-knocks are dangerous, and should be used judiciously, but it seems too much to just declare them out of bounds entirely. · 2 hours ago
Edited 2 hours ago
Bad Guy: 2
Good Guys: 1.
The math doesn't work out too well in this situation, so you may be on to something. But why didn't they just watch the guy until they could snatch him? It's not an either/or situation, there are options in between sending in SRT and going British.
Edited on March 26, 2012 at 4:58amJun '10
Re: A Man's Home is His Castle--or Open Season on Cops?
Don't need a "triple check system." Need a requirement for the police to be financially responsible for the damage they cause, with the total set by our law-suit happy public. Hitting them where it hurts, in the wallet, would rein in some of the more egregious abuses of police power.