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Police Lives Matter. So Does My Life.
Matthew Walter suggests in The Week that the only proper response to the (very) questionable killing of Botham Jean by an off-duty Dallas police officer is to disarm the cops.
I think we should consider the possibility of a return to a style of policing in which officers do not, under ordinary circumstances, carry guns or wear black body armor. Bandying weapons around is not the best way to promote respect for the law.
I hate to give such obvious clickbait the clicks it was asking for, but some ideas are so egregious they need to be nipped in the bud before they can spread. There are so, so many things wrong with Mr. Walter’s arguments, it’s hard to know where to begin, but I would start with a quick perusal through the Active Self Protection YouTube channel, where there are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of examples of armed off-duty policemen saving lives because they were at the right place and the right time and had the right tools and skills to solve the problem as it happened.
And it’s not just policemen: The 2nd Amendment of the Constitution declares that Americans of all occupations have the right to carry a firearm for the defense of themselves and others, and Heller v. D.C. and McDonald v. Chicago only reinforced that common-sense gun law. I don’t get to decide when and where an emergency is going to happen and I will need to rely on my training and equipment to save a life, and neither do policemen.
Now, to be fair, there are a lot of questions surrounding the death of Botham Jean. It looks, by all accounts, to be a really, really bad shoot, and charges will probably be filed against Amber Guyger for her actions that horrible night. It’s also a lesson for those of us to carry a firearm on a regular basis to be absolutely sure your target represents an immediate deadly danger before we draw our guns. A bright flashlight (or better still, turning on a light switch) could have saved a life here. Let this be a lesson to us all.
In the end, it’s crying shame that we need to expend the time and effort to fight the idea that the cops should be unarmed, when a simple police ride-along would have cured Mr. Walter of his fevered wish for a disarmed police force. Once you realize that you don’t get to pick the time and place when you might need to defend your life with a gun, carrying a gun all the time makes a lot of sense, cop or not.
Published in Law
There’s a guy serving time in CA because the police broke into the wrong apartment, and he shot one.
I’m not quite sure what you’re saying here. If a thug attacks me, and I shoot him, I should beggar my family to pay for exercising my right to self defense?
The police officers that respond have no idea who you are. You will be investigated just as the thug you shot will be investigated. Until an investigation is completed, and you’re exonerated your liberty is at risk. Your decision to avoid having someone represent you that knows the law, and is not emotionally involved in the shooting incident is entirely up to you.
Only if you want to stay out of jail and keep your stuff. The lawsuits, both criminal and civil will wipe you out.
I am not a lawyer, so this is not legal advice, but I’m at, oh, 40 or so hours of use-of-force legal classes at this point in my life.
A claim of self defense starts off with “Ok, I did it, but here’s my reasons why,” and it’s up to the defense to lay out the reasons so that a jury can see what was going on inside your head when you used lethal force* and agree that a “reasonable man” (or woman in this case) who knew what you knew at that moment (important part) would act in the same manner as you did.
That means that part of her defense, if she needs one, is going to be laying out her mindset and training and exhaustion in front of the jury so that they can go “Yes, this was a tragedy, but a reasonable person with the same knowledge in that situation would have done the same thing.”
* See the bad news inherit in that plea? If you can’t convince the jury you did the right thing, you confessed up-front that you killed someone. Whoops.
Do they also test for menstrual cycle ?
YES! People complain about cops, but they should be complaining about their city council. The cops follow practices and procedures and use the equipment provided to them. They have immunity only when following procedure. It is the city councils, representing the voters, that write the practices and procedures and buy the guns. If voters don’t like the procedures cops follow, march on city hall.
I often send letters to my city council rep. demanding improvements. I like my cops to work in pairs (fewer escalations) and I for them to use shields. A shield is amazing at de-escalating encounters.
This. Here’s an absolute truth: A person who serves as his own lawyer has a fool for a client.
As far as begging my family, no, that’s why I do indeed carry insurance just for this particular reason. It’s actually not all that expensive.
Yeah. I’ve been meaning to get it. The NRA offers Carry Guard.
All great advice.
Do you relax at home at all? Are you ready for an armed police officer to enter your home and shoot you?
They are immune! They have Qualified Immunity.
I would agree with this, except, I don’t for one moment think it is not working to her advantage. That is how the world works.
Exactly! Exactly!
Come on, all you police defenders, defend that!
The police get to make all the mistakes and not be held to account. “ooops, we screwed up”.
This case is starting to look more and more like intentional homicide. This woman did not like her neighbor, had recently complained to management about noise from his apartment, and was hopped up on adrenaline from several violent arrests that day. She seems to have known where she was and what she was doing and lied several times about what happened. She appears to be the type of monster that needs to be in jail.
Regarding legal insurance: I dont’ know the details of the specific insurance policies being touted here, but as a lawyer, I’ll suggest that legal insurance policies are pretty crappy in general, don’t cover very many billable hours and serve mainly to generate clients for lawyers. The lawyer gets a paltry sum from the insurance company, but that is nowhere near enough to do the job and you’ll still be paying out the nose. You might as well just save your money and pay for the lawyer if you ever need one. In the meantime, don’t talk to the police without a lawyer.
Bryan, I tend to be a police defender, but I do like to look at the fact pattern. And then try to look at those facts with my less-than-Kate level of patience and fairness.
How about a link?
Not really, when someone knocks at my door when I’m not expecting visitors I tend to look out my front window to see who is there. If I see a police car, or more than one police car sitting in front of the house I don’t open the door holding a gun.
Safety tip.
Cute.
Is that what happened here? I have to say, I don’t walk through my darkened living room on guard for a police officer to have entered my home and start barking orders at me.
She invaded his home and shot him dead. That is 100% the fact. I should be safe in my home from the police barging in and shooting me dead.
Apparently, that is not a reasonable expectation.
https://the7thpwr.wordpress.com/accidental-police-shootings/
If this happens, the police in question should all face prison time. They should be liable for massive damages. Bankrupt their pensions. Make it so painful, so horrible, they don’t make the mistakes in the first place.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mississippi-police-fatally-shoot-man-wrong-house-while-serving-warrant-n786681
The punishment is never enough.
They are not immune. Don’t ignore the “qualified” part of that statement. They do not “get to make mistakes and not be held to account.” Read on.
Regarding so many of the other comments above – I’ve learned through over three decades of working as an investigator, private and otherwise, never to accept automatically what I hear and / or see from any source, least of all initial reports in newspapers or other major media. Even less the “peaceful protesters” who show up on cue, shouting the latest claim du jour. My response is ALWAYS: “Tell me more.” Because there always is more. How many times have you heard it said, “… now it turns out…” and that new information changes everything. Case in point:
And re: Carry Guard, CCW Safe, USCCA, Armed Citizen Legal Defense Network, and others, most liability – type insurance, usually wrapped with your homeowner’s policy, have exclusions that are not helpful. While my knowledge of the CCW / self-defense policies is not extensive, what I’ve seen of them has been positive. Whatever you decide, DO NOT go to court with out PROFESSIONAL legal representation. Ref: my comment at # 38.
38, eh? That’s weird…
If I mess up at work, and cause harm, I am liable. The Police are not. They get to make all the mistakes they wants, and never suffer from it.
QI needs to be removed. Police should be punished when they screw up and kill someone.
Indeed. Since this thread is not about our current President, it’s unlikely to go so long as a more manly comment 357. ;)
It’s been several years. I doubt I could find a link.
My take on the issue of off=duty cops is they should be required to follow the same law ordinary citizens have to.
So, if a citizen is required to get a concealed carry permit to carry, then an off-duty cop will have that same requirement. If they don’t want to go through the hassle, then they shouldn’t carry.
Off-duty cops should have no more, or less, law enforcement powers when off-duty. That also means they shoudn’t have a legal requirement to enforce the law when off duty (that’s the other side of the issue, many states hold law enforcement liable, including off-duty law enforcement personnel, if they don’t enforce a law and it results in death or injury).
Well then officers who find this onerous know where to go: Parkland, Florida. You don’t have to enforce the law while on duty while a shooter is assassinating children 200 feet from you!
For anyone still interested, I found a detailed article at the British paper The Daily Mail. Some of the things that caught my attention were:
— Guyger had been living in the South Side Flats apartment complex for just over a month prior to the incident.
— If this is true and if the officer’s explanation is true (still agnostic on that), this could help explain why she was so easily confused – she hadn’t lived there very long. I find it much easier to believe that someone could get his/her apartment mixed up with someone else’s under those circumstances than I can if they had lived there for a long time.
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— DailyMail.com can also reveal that Guyger had made noise complaints about Jean, 26, to the building management in the days before his death.
Her neighbor, a Hispanic man in his mid-20s, said she had been cross about him making noise early in the mornings.
He said: ‘She filed a noise complaint earlier on in the day which said that he had been making noise before she leaves for her shift.’
The family lawyer Merritt confirmed his account in an interview with CNN, telling the channel: ‘The only connection we have been able to make is that she was his immediate downstairs neighbor.
‘And there were noise complaints from the immediate downstairs neighbors about whoever was upstairs, and that would have been Botham.
‘In fact, there were noise complaints that very day about upstairs activity in Botham’s apartment. Botham received a phone call about noise coming from his apartment from the downstairs neighbor.’
According to Guyger’s neighbor, the building’s walls are soundproofed while the ceilings are not – a potential cause for conflict.
— And this is why the (new-to-me-at-least) fact that she had only lived there a month doesn’t automatically tip the scales in my mind to believe that she’s probably telling the truth. Assuming the above is correct, we could (I think) just as easily be looking at someone who came home exhausted from a tense day at work (15 hours; arrests in connection to a bank robbery, if I’m remembering correctly from other articles), heard noises from upstairs – after having complained about that very thing earlier in the day – and just plain snapped. I don’t know that that’s what happened, obviously; but it seems like a reasonable possibility to me.
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As I’ve said before, I’m hoping and praying that the investigation will uncover the truth about what happened that night and not leave any major unanswered questions.
The fact that he was her downstairs neighbor makes her story far less credible to me; I had assumed that he was in the next apartment over from her. She was supposedly so tired that she forgot that she lived on the second floor? Who knows, anything is possible, but her story is now far less credible.
If I see a police car or any police sitting in front of the house, I don’t open the door unless they have a warrant.
She parked on the wrong parking ramp level, for some reason. That’s how it started.
Maybe women shouldn’t be cops. In a physical situation, all they really have is a gun.