@PaulHRosenberg @ZaidJilani Interesting bill summary: 1.) can kill any cop who doesn't knock. 2.) limited issue of "no knock" warrants.
— billmon (@billmon1) February 21, 2014
Help me out, Georgian Juicers. Is this some kind of prank? Or is Sam Moore a libertarian whose commitment to the ‘castle doctrine’ temporarily overrode his Big Brother leanings?
First Reader Summary
A BILL to be entitled an Act to amend Article 2 of Chapter 3 of Title 16 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to justification and excuse, so as to provide that a person has the right to use deadly force against law enforcement officers who attempt violent entry into such person’s home without first knocking and announcing their identity and purpose; to amend Article 2 of Chapter 5 of Title 17 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to searches with warrants, so as to change provisions relating to issuance of search warrants by judicial officers; to provide that no-knock warrants shall not be issued in this state except under limited circumstances; to provide for related matters; to provide for an effective date; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.
WereBear
Truly, as we approach the Wingularity, it appears to recede…
greennotGreen
So, Georgia’s out to give Florida a run for its money?
The trick is to be sure you kill the cops so there’s no one to testify that they DID knock. Difference between Zimmerman and Dunn; Zimmerman didn’t leave any witnesses.
kwAwk
I think I agree with it. Why shouldn’t I be able to shoot at a person, cop or otherwise, who forces their way into my home without identifying themselves and stating their purpose?
Jerzy Russian
@kwAwk: So we should have the death penalty for breaking and entering?
srv
What a country, where cops have to knock.
Baud
Um….maybe I’m a little dense, but how is the homeowner supposed to know whether the cop busting through the door has a valid no-knock warrant?
Yatsuno
This lasts as long as it takes for a blah person to gun down a cop. Then it will get repealed so fast it will make the moon spin.
kwAwk
@Jerzy Russian:
Cops generally come into homes gun first. And yes I think home invasion is a crime that could warrant a non-guilty via self defense.
Gene108
@Yatsuno:
Law will not apply to blacks and Latinos as a valid defense.
It is for God fearing Christian white men to protect their second amendment rights against jack booted ATF or local cop thugs.
There’s a strong anti-cop sentiment amongst gun nuts. They resent the fact law enforcement and the military gets better weapons than they do.
LeftCoastTom
@efgoldman: If it does, then between this and the “don’t arrest anyone for bringing guns to Hartsfield” bill, I’m starting to worry about an upcoming Delta reservation.
John Weiss
@Jerzy Russian: Oh, I think so. If someone breaks your door down, it’s pretty plain that they don’t have your best intrest at heart.
Poopyman
Was this prompted by a high-profile case of someone (cop or resident) getting shot during a raid? Or did it just drop out of a wingnut’s fevered imagination?
Corner Stone
I’m not sure why someone gets a free pass to kick in my door?
KG
eh, it’s fine, cops will just start laying siege to homes instead of breaking down the door… it’ll suck when you live in an apartment building and they’re sieging the entire building for one guy, but hey, them’s the breaks.
srv
You know, that John Cole of the Left and Glen Greenwald fan hasn’t been fist-bumping any Radley Balko lately.
Perhaps he can knock one out for us and we can have a FP’er Battle Royale Fridays.
Corner Stone
“Well, hell. We we’re supposed to kick in the door on 1324 Apple St., instead of 1234 Apple St.? Oh well, shit happens.”
Lurking Canadian
@Baud: or even is a cop in the first place.
Baud
So if the cops shoot back, are they committing a crime?
oldster
You know, I’m neither a gun-nut nor a libertarian, but I sympathize with this.
The police are entirely out of control in this country. Their over-use of force, and their immunity from any oversight, are just insane.
The problem with this law is not that it allows you to shoot the cop who busts in your door. The problem is that it does not allow you to shoot the other 12 cops who then show up, announce themselves, and pinion you while they put a bullet through your head. They routinely execute people, innocent people as well as criminals. They will certainly murder anyone who shoots a cop. And this law won’t help you in the least after you are dead.
LeftCoastTom
@Corner Stone: …with a warrant?!
I’d probably favor restrictions on circumstances under which ‘no-knock warrants’ can be issued, depending on what “restrictions” are contemplated in this case. If the same bill allows officers serving such warrants to be shot without legal consequence then…why the hell should anyone do anything but point and laugh at it?
John Weiss
@Baud: “So if the cops shoot back, are they committing a crime?”
Is self defense a crime where you live?
Baud
@John Weiss:
No. Why?
Amir Khalid
Very recently, Nikki Haley said she was in favour of a bill that would allow anyone at all in her state to invoke their Constitutional right to a gun — no more need for carry permits or safety training or any such nonsense. So a bill that would give Georgians the right to shoot at police officers executing a no-knock warrant, as utterly mad as it sounds, isn’t particularly surprising.
Incidentally, I see that the bill will still allow police and sheriff’s departments to obtain such warrants, in theory. But should this bill pass, I suspect it would mean the end of no-knock warrants in Georgia. Surely no law enforcement agency would be keen on conducting raids, however necessary, if the people being raided now had a right to shoot its officers.
Petorado
Why don’t the Georgia lawmaker just say the death penalty only applies to swarthy people and be done with it. Oh, and only white people can buy cop-killer bullets. At least those electeds would be speaking honestly for a change.
Citizen_X
You know, I’d prefer that the courts tell the cops, “No-knock raids? Er, no. Not any more.” But if this is what it takes to end the no-knock raids, I’ll take it.
John Weiss
@Baud: Well, if you shoot at a cop (or anyone else) whomever your target is would fear for their life and be entitled to defend themselves, right? How is a cop different from anyone else in this matter?
KG
@Corner Stone: no knock warrants are meant for situations where the police believe evidence can be destroyed before they are able to secure the premises. it’s basically intended to keep someone from flushing the drugs or sneaking out the back door, etc. but of course, it doesn’t really take into account SWAT tactics which are basically “yell (or whisper) police, kick down door.” In too many parts of the country, we’ve militarized the police – because, hey, we had to do something with that anti-terrorism money or the terrorists would win by us being more free or something – so intention and practical application have turned out to be a bit further apart than anticipated.
and in either case, when a cop has a warrant, they’ve at least made a showing to a judge that there is evidence of a potential crime.
NotMax
Really, really hate to say it, but this paints a target on police of the non-Aryan persuasion.
Baud
@John Weiss:
It’s not much of a right to use deadly force if the other party has an equal right to use deadly force.
KG
@Corner Stone: what’s the actual rate of warrants being executed at the wrong address? I get that it’s a shitty situation, but without reference to how often it actually occurs it’s hard to truly get upset. There are plenty of tort theories that people in those situations can apply in court to recover damages.
Corner Stone
@LeftCoastTom: I’m interested to know how you would differentiate a violent intruder from LEO when your door is coming down in the middle of the night?
And God forbid you have a 9 iron in your hand when they do, or a fucking Corgi in your residence.
rea
In the normal world you have the right to use deadly force to protect yourself if you reasonably fear death or great bodily harm.There is probably considrable practical overlap between that and someone actually violetnly breaking into your home, but there is no real need to tinker with the original formulation and considerable danger tht you will end up encouraging the shooting of people knocking on the front door–which happens quite enough as matters stand, thank you. As for having a special rule about polcie, its is either (a) useless, because you have the same right of self-defense agaisnt people you don’t know at the time to be police as you do against anyone else, or (b) is pernicious, because why should you get away with shooting a police oficer under circumstances in which, if your victim had been anyone else, you’d go to jail for murder?
The common law of self-defense was working just fine before these people starting tinkering with it.
John Weiss
@Baud: “It’s not much of a right to use deadly force if the other party has an equal right to use deadly force.”
What are you talking about? Of course the other party has an equal right. We both have equal rights to state and opinion, don’t we? That right is quite important.
Corner Stone
@KG: How many does it take?
LeftCoastTom
@Corner Stone: If you can’t distinguish what you’re shooting at, and would choose to shoot anyway, then you’re far removed from the alleged “responsible gun owner” we keep hearing about.
Corner Stone
@LeftCoastTom: What do you mean? Who would I be shooting at?
Baud
@John Weiss:
Not really. At least before stand your ground, one party is typically viewed as in the wrong in deadly force situations.
kwAwk
@Baud:
If a cop busts in your door with a gun without identifying themselves and you shoot them. That is justifiable homicide. If another cop steps through the door without identifying themselves, you have a right to shoot them too, and they do not have the right to shoot you.
Think of it this way, if you can’t shoot that cop with a gun busting into your house without identifying themselves then you have lost all right of self defense because you can never know if a person busting into your house is a cop or not.
Console
I have zero problems with trying to fix the issue that this law is being made for. This law isn’t the way to do it though because it only increases the risk of shootouts and adds to the “he said she said”ness of the these situations.
If you think about the most famous case for this, where a guy (Cory Maye) was convicted of capital murder when he shot a cop serving a no-knock warrant, then this law would do nothing to fix that. The cops served the warrant on the wrong house in the duplex and when they kicked in the guy’s bedroom door, he fired at the first cop in. All the cops have to do is say that they announced their presence and you have a capital murder case with your word against a bunch of cops.
I’m all for raising the standards and protections for no-knock warrants though. A big part of this is the war on drugs though. God forbid we stop letting cops rely on their reliable drug addict informants to decide where they are going to kick in doors next.
Brendan in NC
Anne Laurie – It probably has something to do with the Georgia teen who was killed when he answered a knock at the door holding a Wii controller by a police officer serving a warrant.
John Weiss
@LeftCoastTom: “If you can’t distinguish what you’re shooting at, and would choose to shoot anyway, then you’re far removed from the alleged “responsible gun owner” we keep hearing about.”
Hmmm. Ever have your door kicked in in the middle of the night? That happened to me: I was fast asleep with my three month old and my cat. I shot at ’em but missed: no glasses and couldn’t see the front sight. Thank the gods, the perp ran off and I physically hurt no one.
Point is, if someone’s kicking your door in you probably won’t look first.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@KG:
It happens WAY more than you seem to think, especially in apartment complexes. There have been several cases here in So Cal of residents being shot dead by police who were at the wrong address.
This may be at least partially in response to the Kathryn Johnston shooting, where police falsified evidence after killing a 92 year old woman at the wrong address:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Johnston_shooting
guest
the perfectly diabolical thing about these psycho-NRA shoot anyone you feel laws is, as we found out with zimmerman, as long as you shoot and kill everyone involved there is no one to prove how threatened the NRA gun fetish psycho was. Kill all the cops and the killer goes free. What a sick system.
raven
I think this is what it is about.
Chris
@oldster:
You know, this is exactly why I laugh in the faces of every idiot who claims that his shotgun will totally stand between him and the fascist secret police when it comes for him in the middle of the night.
No it won’t, noob. The only “protection” that gun buys you is an execution on the spot in a hail of bullets instead of weeks of torture at the Lubyanka. State security forces have been handling armed clowns like you since time began. If Osama Bin Laden, Carlos the Jackal and Che Guevara couldn’t get away when they had the entire world to hide in and the support of more powerful people and organizations than you could ever dream of, I assure you they don’t stay up at night worrying about how to handle Citizen Joe Blogg whose address, license plates, place of employment and Social Security number are all in their computer. Now put the damn gun down before you hurt yourself.
Brendan in NC
i should add…the police knocked, but did not answer when the teen called out “Who’s there?”. He wasshot after he opened the door to see who it was. They were serving the warrant on his father….
p.a.
I don’t understand the issue. Historically, cops have been very forgiving of people shooting at them.
But seriously, cutting down on no-knock seems worthy. If concern about flight is an issue, bring enough force to cover all exits. As for disposing of (drug) evidence, if the possessors have such a small amount that a raid announcement would let them dispose of all of it in those few extra seconds, maybe the cops should figure out some other tactics.
Why some twisted version of ‘castle doctrine’ is seen as a solution to police overreach: to a hammer, all problems look like a nail. To a gun fetishist, all problems look like a chance to shoot someone/thing.
LeftCoastTom
@John Weiss: 1) No, I have not had someone kick in my door. I have had a midnight door knock…turned out to be a cop who was trying to re-unite a lost dog with its owner on New Years Eve. 2) How the hell can it possibly be “responsible” to shoot at an unidentified target?
Corner Stone
@Chris: I’m unclear on your position in this matter?
Corner Stone
@LeftCoastTom:
I’m curious how many valid entities you normally expect to see entering your home after the door gets kicked in?
Console
@LeftCoastTom:
I wanna say there is a case in Texas where a marine had his door kicked in (wrong address) and was subsequently shot. The initial report said the guy fired first but the investigation showed that the marine’s gun never fired. So even being responsible with your gun in the face of the police can get you killed.
Edit: Actually, I was wrong, it wasn’t the wrong house, but they still found no evidence of anything:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Guerena_shooting
LeftCoastTom
@Corner Stone: I don’t “normally expect” anyone, cop or robber, to be breaking in my door. That has nothing to do with the question of whether its responsible to shoot at a target you haven’t identified. For that matter, doesn’t “responsibility” include knowing what the hell is behind your identified target before you shoot? Just in case you miss?
Chris
@Corner Stone:
Oh, this law specifically? Against. It’ll do no good. Make more people feel they have a license to kill (cops, no less), which in turn will make the cops even more paranoid and their trigger fingers even itchier than they already are (not entirely unreasonably, this time…) Escalation, more shootouts, more dead people, more encouragement given to both gun nuts and thuggish cops. Screw that. Nothing good’ll come of this.
MRL
@John Weiss:
You’re not understanding what it means to exercise a right to self-defense. You can only protect yourself from an ILLEGAL use of force. You have no right of self-defense against a LEGAL exercise of force. For example, a criminal fleeing the scene of a mugging cannot invoke self-defense for subsequently shooting a cop by pointing out that the cop had a gun drawn and as such, the criminal reasonably feared imminent grave bodily harm.
If the bill gives the homeowner the right to legal exercise deadly force against a police officer who has just served a valid no-knock warrant, then the police officer will not be able to claim any sort of retaliatory self-defense in firing back, and 3rd party police officers cannot legally claim the right to defending their fallen colleague, because in such cases a 3rd party “steps into the shoes” of the attacked. Since the cop doesn’t have the right of self-defense, neither do his partners.
The problem with this bill is that it moves the country away from a system of government law enforcement and further towards a system of private violence as law enforcement. That’s a regression. The government’s near monopoly on violence is a bedrock of modern civilization, which is a big part of the duty-to-retreat that’s been under recent (successful) assault in Stand-Your-Ground. That underlies the alarm about SYG, and this is a piece of that. If you think the police get No-Knock Warrants too easily you can curb that by upping the standards without blessing vigilantism.
I imagine much of the reaction to this will be seen through one of two lenses: either “state overreach is a huge threat to our liberty!” or “gun nuts taking the law into their own hands is a huge threat to our liberty!”. I tend to lean towards the latter position, but regardless, my objection to the bill is less about that and more about the means/end problem. Even if you think police overreach is a problem, legal legitimizing vigilante retribution for that overreach is the WRONG response IMO, and that’s the problem with this bill at heart.
jl
I don’t understand the legal and law enforcement issues well enough to opine much about how to solve the problem of excessive police violence, and illegal police violence under the color of law.
I agree with a couple of commenters above the the law seems incoherent. First it says that you have the right to shoot at a cop who enters your home without knocking or announcing the purpose of entry. Then it says that there will still be some no-knock warrants that can be issued under restricted circumstances.
How is that supposed to work? Cops who do enter under no-knock warrants will be instructed to take care of themselves, since people will be more likely to shoot back? Suicidal gun nuts can take pot-shots at a cop who is entering with a valid no-knock warrant? Or the cops will send out letters informing targets that a no-knock warrant has been issued and they should not shoot the cops when that happens?
Maybe some one can explain it to me.
Corner Stone
@LeftCoastTom: It has everything to do with the question. Why would I ever expect my door to come crashing in? If said door did come crashing in, what expectations might I have? I think that is a responsible mental exercise.
Corner Stone
@MRL: I disagree with your characterization of “vigilante retribution” but I agree that nothing good is going to come from this law.
Alternatively, I further disagree that it’s as easy as upping the requirements for LEO to acquire a no-knock warrant. I personally believe that horse is well out of the barn.
Barry
@Yatsuno: “This lasts as long as it takes for a blah person to gun down a cop. Then it will get repealed so fast it will make the moon spin. ”
No, they’ll just convict him/her of murder, claiming that the police clearly announced themselves (whether or not they did, and whether it could be heard and understood at 3PM by people roused out of sleep by their door being knocked down).
LeftCoastTom
@Corner Stone: You might reasonably expect that someone crashing your door in means no good. But, no, it has nothing to do with the question of whether your act of shooting at an unidentified target is responsible – it’s not. That’s the responsibility of wielding deadly force.
tybee
this bill stems from the ineptitude of multiple police departments around the state of georgia.
as raven pointed out, atlanta has had some highly publicized cases where the police were at the wrong address, broke down the doors and killed innocent people. and it’s been more than just once or twice.
unfortunately, atlanta is not the only city that has had that “issue”.
quite frankly, you break down the door of my house in the middle of the night and you will get at least dog bit and then you might get stabbed, cut, shot and bitten by the owner.
no knock warrants should be outlawed.
tybee
@LeftCoastTom:
fuck them.
they break down the door, they deserve what happens next.
they wielded deadly force first, they suffer the consequences.
Barry
@NotMax: “Really, really hate to say it, but this paints a target on police of the non-Aryan persuasion. ”
From the viewpoint of the people backing this bill, such people aren’t Real American Police, but rather Chicago thugs or Kenyan Islammofascist Storm Troopers.
LeftCoastTom
@tybee: What about the neighbors behind them, in case you miss?
Edit: and, no, they didn’t wield deadly force first. You did, if you shot first.
jl
@tybee:
” no knock warrants should be outlawed. ”
But this bill does not seem to do that. Seems like it makes them harder to get, but after the cops get one, it makes it legal for a homeowner to start a shootout.
In most cases, i guess the soon-to-be shot dead homeowner has the comfort of knowing his corpse will not be accused of the crime of resisting arrest or assaulting a police officer.
Maybe they need to ditch this bill and try a rewrite.
tybee
@LeftCoastTom:
mr. twelve gauge won’t kill the neighbors and even if it does, tough shit and blame it on the police/criminals.
the police/criminals that broke the door down should have thought about that first.
LeftCoastTom
@tybee: I don’t want to be your neighbor.
Corner Stone
@LeftCoastTom:
You’re really stretching here. If you do not believe someone has the right to use lethal force to defend their home or loved ones, then just say so.
LeftCoastTom
@Corner Stone: Defending your home and loved ones is not inconsistent with knowing what the hell you’re shooting at, and what’s behind your target, before you shoot.
Corner Stone
@LeftCoastTom: The person coming in your kicked in door, and anyone to his/her immediate rear?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
The Cory Maye case:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Maye
Short version: cops busted into the wrong duplex, he shot and killed one thinking it was a home invasion, and was originally given the DEATH PENALTY. Because the cops had the wrong unit number.
On appeal, Maye was allowed to plea down to manslaughter and was released with time served. All because the cops fucked up and kicked in the wrong door.
LeftCoastTom
@Corner Stone: You mean the officer with a warrant, which is the whole point of this thread? You don’t have a right to shoot him/her.
tybee
@jl:
in the middle of the night i’ll take what i can get to defend my family. if i die, i hope i take most or all of them with me.
in. the. middle.of.the.night.
someone kicks down your door.
so you just lay down and pray? pray for what?
tybee
@LeftCoastTom:
i suggest that if you’d lay down and cower under those circumstances, you don’t deserve to be any one’s neighbor.
tybee
@LeftCoastTom:
the no knock part of any warrant is what places the police in danger.
and whispering “police” and then kicking in the door is the same as a no knock
fuck them.
Corner Stone
@LeftCoastTom: I don’t know where you live, maybe the law is different there.
tybee
@LeftCoastTom:
if you kick down my door, you initiated the deadly force.
you may pay. dearly.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Let me see, the cops have their weapons loaded and at the ready. They’re wearing body armor and they’re full of adrenaline. Does anyone think that the cops would stop and negotiate if you fire at them?
Caravelle
Yeah, awful as no-knock warrants are, combining “you can shoot police officers acting on a no-knock warrant” with “we’ll still be issuing some no-knock warrants” is ridiculous. “I want to get shot at with impunity” warrants, more like.
And that kind of thing would worsen police violence, not reduce it. The police are shooting people all the time as is, how more likely do you think they’ll be to shoot first and ask questions later if they know the people whose house they’re (legally) breaking into have a legally protected right to shoot them ???
jl
@tybee:
If some people here want to talk about what they themselves would do if some unknown person or persons knocked their door down in the middle of the night and barged in, that is fine.
But that is a different issue from whether the law makes any sense or not, and whether it will do any good.
If some people barged into my house in the middle of the night, and I had a gun at my bedside, I would be tempted to shoot it in the general direction of the disturbance. But someone else might not. But that is a different issue.
tybee
so you’d just lay on the floor and hope it’s the police having just had your door kicked in with what “may” have been a no knock warrant or maybe just a “let’s see what they own that we want” kind of visit.
good choice. lay down. maybe they won’t hurt you. maybe. maybe you should cry, too.
LeftCoastTom
@tybee:
Someone else has already explained that this bill…you know…the topic of this thread?… doesn’t actually outlaw “no knock” warrants. It restricts the circumstances under which they can be issued, a point I conditionally agreed with above (conditioned on the actual circumstances, of course). Actually, the summary Anne quoted in the original post made the same point.
Of course, none of this makes it responsible to shoot at an unidentified target.
Amir Khalid
For all the side arguments here, it seems pretty clear that this is the same old story of reckless pro-gun legislation. It seems to me that this is where Americans on the left should concentrate their opposition.
ralphb
@Console: Guerena was killed in Arizona. Recently a drug defendant was no-billed by a grand jury in Texas for killing a cop during one of their lovely home raids. He was the correct guy and still got no-billed.
Gex
@KG: I feel like I’ve read about plenty of them. They may still be a small percentage, but it sure seems like there’s a lot of them. Had a no-knock raid on the wrong address in St. Paul a few years back. For bad checks. The cops ended up shooting and killing the family dog.
For bad checks written by someone who lived somewhere else. Not a lot can be done about getting the dog back.
LeftCoastTom
@Corner Stone: Given this bill hasn’t yet passed in GA, in which jurisdiction do you believe you have the legal right to shoot at a police officer who’s serving a legally valid warrant?
jl
@Caravelle: I see I not alone in wondering whether this bill is really that stupid.
And you make a good point about how law enforcement will amp up their firepower and tactics if they have to enter homes with a no-knock warrant, knowing that is more likely they will face deadly force.
tybee
knock on my door, even at 3am, (which has happened – and it was a wrong address situation and i didn’t kill anyone or even fire a shot), identify yourself as the police and i’ll open the door and we’ll talk.
but you kick in my door….
Corner Stone
@LeftCoastTom:
That’s an interesting question. What course of action would you suggest if some unidentified persons kicked in your door in the middle of the night?
For the sake of argument, let’s say you do own a firearm.
NotMax
There is a reason it is termed “castle doctrine” and not “fortress doctrine.”
Corner Stone
@Amir Khalid:
Could you please expound a little further on that thought?
tybee
not just kick in the door but kick it in and rush into the house….brandishing weapons….
jl
@tybee: Who are you talking to? I just said that if I had a gun by my side, I might shoot. And I do not see, how in the heat of the moment, I would give a rats ass about whether some idiot poorly written law gave me the right to shoot at the intruders if they were cops (which under this extreme heat of the moment scenario, is a fact that I would not know). If I were scared enough, I would shoot.
And if a gang of cops were going to barge into my house, I do not really think anyone could predict whether my chances of survival would better if I shoot first, of curled up in a ball and whimpered. Seems like chance would have the upper hand.
I certainly do have enough ‘authority problems’ in my guts that shooting to take a few of the intruders down, whoever they were, before they got me, would be a prefectly fine reason for me to shoot. But, in my mind that is a different issue than whether this is a good law or not.
LeftCoastTom
@Corner Stone: You haven’t answered my “interesting question”.
I already made clear that I think identifying one’s target should come before shooting at that target.
And I do not own a firearm. Is there anything about firearm ownership which would make it responsible to fire at a target before identifying it?
Corner Stone
@LeftCoastTom: It limits your ability to progress through the mental exercise in being a responsible gun owner.
tybee
@jl:
if you weren’t specifically addressed, i was not, necessarily, talking to you.
on a no knock, “if” it was the cops, you’d be better off curling up and praying that no other member of your household made anything vaguely resembling a hostile motion.
and if it wasn’t the local barney fife…
limiting no knocks is good. outlawing them entirely is better. you could even sneak up in the yard and cut the water off to prevent flushing much of anything if that was your concern.
relieving the innocents from a murder charge from defending their families from a home invasion from anyone is even better.
ya’ll work it out.
but do not kick down my door. :)
jl
@LeftCoastTom: I can imagine an extreme scenario where there the bust in was so violent everything was clouded in a dust, and all you saw was flashes of gunfire and battle axes spinning down the hallway. Or plain clothes police officers busting in, not identifying themselves after they busted in, and shooting up the place. I could see myself shooting at some blurry object in the dark under than scenario.
It seems like a very unlikely and extreme scenario to me. Apparently not so to others.
LeftCoastTom
@Corner Stone: Well, given you haven’t explained how it’s responsible to shoot when you don’t know who or what you’re shooting at, or what’s behind what you’re shooting at…I don’t think it’s my mental exercise progress that’s limited.
And you still haven’t answered my “interesting question”. Which jurisdiction do you believe currently (given this bill hasn’t passed yet in GA) allows you to shoot at a police officer who’s serving a legally valid warrant?
NonyNony
I don’t understand why the real problem isn’t being addressed here.
If the problem is “the cops are to reckless to check their facts before executing a warrant”, and if you want the cops to stop being so damn reckless, you don’t give the homeowners carte blanche to start a shootout with the cops. Because the cops can’t tell the difference between “broke into the wrong house and the homeowner is freaking out because home invasion” vs. “got the right house and the criminals are trying to shoot their way out”. It will be shoot first, ask questions later time.
What you need to do is set up real severe penalties after the fact for cops who screw up the warrant – everyone in charge of the SWAT team gets hit for criminal negligence, all the way up the chain of command right to the sheriff/chief of police (if you’re talking county/city/whatever).
You would see addresses on warrants checked, double checked and triple checked after the next incident where they got caught doing this shit. Hell the chief/sheriff might be a LOT more leery of signing off on no-knock warrants at all when he knows his force is full of yahoos who might get his ass put in jail.
But this shit being proposed to let homewowners go OK Corral on the police won’t solve anything – it’s just a way to say that the dead guy was in the right after the fact. Moral victory, I suppose.
jl
@tybee:
” but do not kick down my door. :) ”
I heard that loud and clear, sir. You’ll see no trouble from me.
If there were an extreme scenario like I outlined in my previous comment, I can understand shooting even if you don’t have a firm ID of the target, and probably should be some consideration of that scenario in the legal system, even if the targets turned out to be cops.
But, I think to find out whether this law will do any good has to look beyond that scenario.
LeftCoastTom
@jl: It seems very unlikely and extreme to me as well. And I’d happily oppose mandatory sentencing requirements on the grounds that judges need the ability to deal with a legitimate ‘hoocoodanode’ scenarios. But I don’t think we really disagree on the larger picture that this proposed bill is absurd…if you’re going to allow no-knock warrants as this bill does then you can’t really say people have a legal right to shoot officers serving those warrants.
MRL
@Corner Stone:
We probably aren’t that far apart. (1) I agree No-Knock Warrants are too common and problematic, and (2) I agree I probably understated the difficulty in curbing those abuses, and (3) I agree that nothing good will come of this bill.
As for objecting to my invocation of vigilantism, I would simply point you to every single post from tbyee in this thread.
My over-arching point of view is that the law enforcement machinery has grown too big and abuses are far too common, and that needs to be reigned in. I just don’t think the solution is greater access for civilians to legitimate exercises of violence. I think right, given the shape of self-defense law burden-shifting generally and SYG laws in particular, the citizen probably already has too much access to legal or near-legal exercises of violence.
By “near-legal” I mean technically illegal, but close enough that conviction becomes difficult (see: George Zimmerman)
MRL
@NonyNony: This 100% is what I was trying to get at. I agree about passing responsibility (criminal responsibility!) up the chain of command. Puts the incentives in the right places
jl
@LeftCoastTom:
I think we agree. I was amplifying your point not disagreeing with you.
Ken
I have no idea what effect this would have on police raids, but I’m predicting that – pass or fail – Rep. Moore will have a lot of tickets for broken taillights over the next year.
Corner Stone
@LeftCoastTom: In Texas a homeowner has the right to use lethal force to defend their domicile, with no duty of retreat, and their property after dark.
Individuals routinely receive a no bill even when LEO’s are the one’s doing the door kicking in.
I personally am a peaceful man, and abhor violence.
Corner Stone
@MRL: When I hear “vigilante” I think of a private citizen taking the law into their own hands to rectify a perceived wrong. In the case of no knock warrants IMO that isn’t the same thing.
Whatever tybee is saying, I do not believe he is saying, “Hey, kick in my door and I will follow you home from the grocery three days later to avenge my loss of sleep.”
Mnemosyne
@LeftCoastTom:
It is not uncommon for home-invasion robbers to shout, “Police!” as they break in to try and fool their victims into putting any weapons down. Now what?
mclaren
Actually, this bill seems reasonable to me.
Homeowners being indicted for murder when they grab a gun and start shooting after their front door gets smashed in is now a serious problem.
How the hell are you supposed to know that the masked guys who just kicked your door down are police if the goddamn police don’t announce themselves? They claim they do, but it’s clear that in many cases they don’t.
I think it’s a GREAT idea to legalize shooting these masked muggers with badges if they kick in the door and don’t announce themselves very loudly and very clearly as police beforehand.
Of course what we really need to do is ban no-knock warrants entirely. But short of that, a bill like this is great. Make it legal for terrified homeowners to start blasting away at masked goons who kick in a door without announcing themselves. You’ll see a dramatic decrease in no-knock raids.
Incidentally, do you people have any idea how often no-knock SWAT team raids break down the wrong door by mistake?
Take a look at this goddamn scandalous map of mistaken no-knock militarized SWAT team raids on innocent citizens and tell me a bill like this isn’t needed.
Corner Stone
@MRL:
I don’t think this point could be argued against by any rational individual.
LeftCoastTom
@Corner Stone: The first google hit tells me Texas doesn’t even have policies to deal with when ‘no knock’ should or shouldn’t occur.
Honus
@Gex: A no-knock raid for bad checks?
danielx
Hey, it happened here in my fair state first, and was signed into law by none other than Mitch Daniels. Law was passed in reaction to an Indiana Supreme Court decision that said, more or less, that any resistance to police was unlawful and the remedy for illegal police entry was in the courts. (Those would be the same courts in which police officers well known to judges and prosecutors testify and work every day, let it be noted, so you can imagine how much sympathy there is to be found there for ordinary citizens as opposed to the cops. Judges and prosecutors have to work with the cops every day.) It opened a huge can of worms with police nationwide, who somewhat hysterically proclaimed that it meant open season on cops. Hint: the law was passed in 2012 and to my knowledge hasn’t been used, successfully or not, as a defense for shooting police officers in the state. As a practical matter, if the person resisting an unlawful entry isn’t around any more, whatever happened is what the cops say happened and if they got the wrong address or something, well, sucks to be you. “Officer safety” above all other considerations under any circumstances whatsoever, and the “officer safety” cloak can be stretched a very long way.
It does open a can of worms in that a) how does one define ‘unlawful entry’, and b) how does one raise it as a defense after shooting a cop for ‘unlawful entry’ and then having been vaporized by the cop’s fellow officers, which is the usual course of events? Lawful or not, resistance to the cops generally ends up with the resister injured or dead. Considering the number of completely innocent, unarmed and unresisting people annually killed in police action shootings – a number which seems to be increasing every year – after which the cops investigate themselves and are found “to have acted completely lawfully and in accordance with departmental regulations and guidelines”, it doesn’t surprise me that such laws are receiving more attention, in Georgia or anywhere else. What’s happening is that the cops used to only shoot unarmed brown people, and now they’re shooting everybody. I’ve often wondered how many people at a time have to be killed before the cops are found to have committed outright murder – two? Three? Five? Ten?
Corner Stone
@LeftCoastTom: Definitive!
SatanicPanic
@raven: Just from a purely practical standpoint- isn’t a 90 year old owning a gun a pretty dumb idea?
To anyone else- do criminals normally knock down your front door? That’s poor crime work if you ask me.
LeftCoastTom
@Mnemosyne: Now what…what? You’re the one with the gun, do you need to know what you’re shooting at before you shoot? Back in the days of abusenet the talk.politics.guns folks at least liked to assure everyone that “responsible gun owners” did things like locking guns in a gun safe when not in use, identifying one’s target and whatever was behind it before shooting, and so on. My main objection was they refused the idea that any of these “responsible gun owner” ideas should be written into law.
mclaren
@LeftCoastTom:
Spoken like someone who has never been in a life-threatening situation.
Buddy, when you get awakened at 4:00 am in the morning by the sound of your door smashing in and you grab your gun and huddle beside your bed and the first thing you see silhouetted in your bedroom doorway is a masked goon holding an automatic weapon, try and explain to me how you’re going to hesitate and make sure of what’s behind that masked goon or exactly who that fucking masked goon is.
Just try.
That’s bullshit. Shout out? You’re giving that masked goon a target. Shine a flashlight at that masked goon. Oh, great idea, genius — now you’ve given them an even better target. And as Mnemosyne has pointed out, it’s now becoming common for home invaders to identify themselves as police in order to deter the homeowners long enough to kill ’em or disarm ’em.
No, at that point, if you don’t fire at the center mass of that heavily-armed masked goon and keep firing until you put him down, you’re stupid. Or soon to be very very dead.
All this hippy liberal chitchat about being “responsible” and “reasonable” goes out the fuckin’ window when your andrenaline starts pumping and three masked thugs have just kicked in your front door and start to approach you with automatic weapons threateningly aimed. Any human being is going to be scared out of hi/r goddamn mind and can be expected to act accordingly.
Don’t like that normal human reaction?
Fine. Let’s stop the goddamn no-knock raids at zero fucking dark thirty in the a.m. Otherwise, the police can expect to get blown away.
Corner Stone
@mclaren: He’s not making any attempt at a valid argument, he just wants to get someone on record as saying they would never shoot a target unless they positively identified it first.
“Well, if you identified it, then you’d know it was a police officer! How could you justify firing at an LEO? Huh!? Wull, how could ya!? Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck! Woooo woooo woooo! Homina homina homina!”
dww44
@NonyNony: The Georgia legislature, like many other legislatures (to wit Steve Kornacki’s piece tonight on the RM show on what’s been happening in Arizona, where the Dem State Congress person said the problem was the far right winning in the primaries and controlling the state legislature and enacting laws that the people don’t actually support) is under the thumb of the far right and, in our case, all permutations of gun rights expansionists of the “Guns everywhere, anywhere, and at all times” advocacy groups. They are running the table at this legislative session and it seems as though the Governor is gonna sign off on a bill that had been mostly rejected for the last two sessions. Everyone’s up for re-election and all of them, repeat, all of them, are running scared of a primary challenge from the right, including the Governor who was never a moderate in the accepted sense of the word, but who does have some sense. Many of the legislators have no sense.
This is what happens when the national Democratic party cedes the states over to the GOP and the GOP cedes its party to its extremist wing and with each passing year of Obama’s Presidency the laws being passed get more extreme and in the case of my state and many others, there is no countervailing force from the left. The center does not hold. Tis a bad time.
Having said all this, you are right about this being the altogether wrong way to attack the problem of police acting badly and stupidly. Chris weighed in in much the same way and in no uncertain terms upthread a bit.
Laertes
@oldster:
The way the Pearl River Basin Narcotics Task Force summarily executed Cory Maye after he shot and killed one of their officers during a raid?
Is it possible you’re confusing your cynical fantasies with reality?
Mnemosyne
From last year in Tennessee: Man Dies in Police Raid on Wrong House
This law may not be the right way to go about it, but there needs to be some kind of consequences for cops who break into the wrong house and kill people who think they’re acting in self-defense. A couple months of suspension and a stern talking-to — if they even get that much — doesn’t cut it.
Corner Stone
@SatanicPanic:
Not so much anymore.
danielx
Also, too – it was in none other than the great state of Texas where a grand jury returned a “no bill” in an incident where a resident shot and killed a police officer during the execution of a no-knock warrant on the grounds that the resident was legitimately exercising his right to self-defense. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the shooter’s lawyer was none other than Dick DeGuerin. What initially surprised me in reading about this case was that the shooter made it to jail at all, considering the propensity of Texas law enforcement officers to shoot at considerably less than the drop of a hat.
LeftCoastTom
@Mnemosyne: Here we agree.
SatanicPanic
@Corner Stone: Seriously though, how common is that? Home invasions are already extremely rare. I’m not going to lose sleep worrying about it.
dww44
@SatanicPanic: Not if you’re a 90 year old Black woman living in the sort of neighborhoods she did and had previously lived in.
Corner Stone
@danielx: He went to jail for the pot he was growing.
Mnemosyne
@LeftCoastTom:
If someone kicks in your front door at 2:00 a.m., is your first thought, It must be police officers serving a lawful no-knock warrant on the wrong house?
Again, we’re not talking about shooting people who knock at the front door, or shooting unidentified people wandering through the dark house. We’re talking about people who are actively breaking into your house. And your first reaction would be that they’re probably cops?
Corner Stone
@SatanicPanic: White people problems, amirite?
SatanicPanic
@dww44: You don’t think her chances would have been improved if she hadn’t shot at the cops?
Laertes
@SatanicPanic:
Me neither. Home invasions are extremely rare in my neighborhood. And I guess if I only gave a shit about people who enjoy the same luxuries I do, that’d be the end of it. (And I’d be a conservative.) But not everyone is as lucky as me. Cory Maye, for instance, lived in a dangerous neighborhood. He lived next door to a drug dealer ferchrissakes. He had every reason to believe that a person kicking down his door in the middle of the night was a criminal, and to open fire in defense of himself and his young daughter.
Lots of people live in rough neighborhoods and are at far greater risk of a home invasion than me. Why should they get locked up if some cowboy police officers screw up? How hard is it to fucking knock and announce anyway? These people are trained professionals. The burden ought to be on them to have their procedures straight, rather than on some panicked homeowner.
SatanicPanic
@Corner Stone: I was actually asking a serious question- how common is that? Is it significantly more common than cops breaking in to the wrong house? And what are your odds of survival if you fire at a group of attackers anyway? I want it broken down by firing at cops vs firing at criminals. I’m seriously skeptical that shooting at someone who breaks down your door is often the way to go.
LeftCoastTom
@Mnemosyne:
Didn’t say that. In fact, I agreed with the ‘restrict the circumstances when no-knock is allowed’ idea.
This law proposes, in addition, that one can shoot at an officer who’s serving a valid no-knock warrant. Which is insane.
I also said some stuff about knowing what one is shooting at before shooting, which seems like it should be far less controversial than it has proved to be.
mclaren
@danielx:
No, more is happening that just that. A lot more. You may have read about the mayor of a town in Prince George’s County, Maryland, whose door was smashed in without warning by a heavily armed SWAT team, whose two dogs were shot, and whose family was terrorized by masked goons, handcuffed, and threatened with automatic weapons for more than an hour.
That sort of thing just didn’t used to happen. It didn’t. Period. Black of white, that kind of thing just never happened before the rise of SWAT teams in the 1970s.
What we’re really talking about here is the massive militarization of the police. Small town police departments are now buying SWAT tanks. Tiny little Mayberry police departments are now putting officers on the streets who are armed and armored with such heavy military weaponry that the only difference between these police officers and army platoons in Afghanistan is the color of their uniforms.
The people who are out of their minds are the servile lickspittle balloon-juice commenters who seem to think it’s in any way remotely reasonable for squads of masked goons with military automatic weapons to smash in a homeowner’s front door at three in the morning and not expect to be met with deadly force by said homeowners.
If the founders of this country were around right now, they’d kick your pudgy cowardly little bully-worshiping asses.
SatanicPanic
@Laertes: I’ll say it, I would assume it’s the cops, because despite Mnemosyne’s link, I just don’t think there are that many criminals pretending to be cops busting down doors. And if I lived next to a drug dealer I’d be even more likely to assume it was the cops with the wrong address. Maye might have got a raw deal, but it doesn’t make sense to plan your life or policy around one guy or one old lady in Atlanta.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
Yep.
And the lawmakers, being the direct superiors of these cops, are in exactly the position to bring them under control. But no, God forbid the fucking douchebags take responsibility for the agencies under their control. Let’s just throw more oil on the fire by continuing to give the cops a free hand on the one hand, and telling the citizens it’s all on them to see to their own defense, when the obvious solution is staring them right in the face.
Spineless fucking toolbags.
Laertes
@LeftCoastTom:
“This law proposes, in addition, that one can shoot at an officer who’s serving a valid no-knock warrant. Which is insane.”
That is an interesting point. The summary quoted here says that the law forbids no-knock warrants “except under limited circumstances”. I’m curious about what those circumstances are, and how the law applies to shooters who defend themselves against invaders serving such warrants.
Corner Stone
@SatanicPanic: I honestly have no interest in doing statistical work for you.
I will tell you this anecdote, however. In my middle-middle class neighborhood we recently had 6 kick in break-ins in 2 weeks. Very decent neighborhood, no complaints from me in the 10 years I’ve been living here.
Turned out it was a group of high school kids, who were possibly bored.
Long story about the rest of it, no cops involved.
LeftCoastTom
@Laertes: Well, I assumed the “except under limited circumstances” part (which seems promising depending on the “circumstances”) was separate from the “can shoot” part. I’m definitely interested in what the circumstances are.
SatanicPanic
@Corner Stone: Uh, cool story bro?
mclaren
@LeftCoastTom:
No, that’s perfectly sensible — provided that the masked goon who breaks in your door at three in the morning does not identify himself very clearly and very loudly as a police officer.
And you know what?
Even then it’s seriously problematic. The new trend among home invasions is for the home invaders to falsely identify themselves as police. So a reasonable homeowner shouldn’t trust a group of heavily armed thugs who break in his front door and then announce they’re police.
You sound like you’re either drunk, brain-damaged, or on hard drugs.
Baltimore crime beat: “Third Home Invasion by Fake Police,” 5 July 2011.
27 September 2013, HOUSTON: “The search continues for a pair of home invasion suspects who shot a police officer at his home. That officer is expected to be OK. (..)
According to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, two men who identified themselves as police kicked in the front door and entered the officer’s home.
“As they entered the home, he exchanged gunfire with one of the suspects,” said HCSO Deputy Thomas Gilliland.
Or how about this one?
Tacoma Washington, 28 June 2012: Home invaders identify themselves as police, but throw a hatchet at homeowner; homeowner fires back with his shotgun
Or try this one:
Des Plaines police searching for two in home invasion — Suspects claimed to be cops
August 09, 2013 By Jonathan Bullington, Chicago Tribune reporter
Des Plaines police are searching for two men who allegedly claimed to be police officers and entered a man’s home before handcuffing him and making off with money and other items.
The 35-year-old Des Plaines resident told police that two men dressed in “navy blue uniforms” knocked on his front door around 2 p.m. Thursday. The men, armed with a handgun and Taser, identified themselves as police officers and said they had a search warrant, police said.
Someone is saying things that sound insane here. And that person is you.
SatanicPanic
@mclaren: dude, that’s just a bunch of anecdotes
mclaren
@SatanicPanic:
Shorter SatanicPanic: “Don’t confuse me with the facts!”
You’d make a good Republican. Just warm up your global warming denial spiel “despite the links to scientific research, I just don’t think there are that many hot summers nowadays” and you’re good to go.
Corner Stone
@SatanicPanic: Sure, it’s just an anecdote, as I said.
Unfortunately, I have been the victim of gun violence on a number of occasions. So, I don’t take as lightly as some here may. But that’s neither here nor there.
I am against no knock raids unless there’s an imminent threat to life, such as a kidnapping. For drug raids or other applications I believe there are better ways to do this.
I don’t want anyone to shoot an LEO, nor do I want people to die in these raids, for any reason. I’m sure there are better alternatives, in all directions.
Mnemosyne
@SatanicPanic:
Let me guess, you live in a low-crime suburb where the last big robbery was someone’s bicycle getting stolen out of their garage after they left it open.
Because drug dealers never try to kill each other?
Caravelle
@Mnemosyne: Uh, if that’s what you want that law is ABSOLUTELY AFFIRMATIVELY OBVIOUSLY NOT the way to do it. I mean, I’m pretty sure that saying homeowners have a legal right to shoot policemen coming in by a no-knock raid just means said homeowner (if they survive) won’t go to prison for shooting the cops, it doesn’t mean the policemen aren’t allowed to shoot back. I mean, surely the police have a legal right to shoot at people who are shooting at them. Otherwise, “I want to get shot at with impunity” warrants indeed ! It sounds like the kind of warrant a judge who really, really hates the cops would sign off on as a prank.
Or maybe a judge who wants to sleep with that cop’s wife.
@LeftCoastTom : would I be correct in thinking your point is that handguns in the home is a bad idea, period, precisely because the adrenaline and uncertainty associated with the self-defence scenarios the handgun would be useful in also make the rate of accidental killings of non-home-invaders too high ?
Laertes
@SatanicPanic:
I’d assume they were cops too! Twinsies! Further, it wouldn’t make any difference if I did because I don’t own a gun, and I wouldn’t shoot a home invader even if I did.
But if some guy were to bust into your house in the middle of the night and you were to shoot him, under circumstances such that you had little time to analyze the situation before having to make that life-or-death decision, there’s just no way I’d vote to convict you. Just because I’d have chosen differently doesn’t mean you’re a murderer.
Dynamic entry should be used for extremely dangerous situations like, say, hostages in the custody of an armed invader. These days they’re routinely used just to preserve evidence. That’s bullshit.
mclaren
@Corner Stone:
Since the vast majority of these mistaken SWAT team raids on innocent homeowners involve searches for goddamn marijuana cigarettes or a handful of marijuana plants, I’d say that “better alternative” involves ending the misnamed War on Drugs and legalizing marijuana.
But since that’s not gonna happen, this law sounds like the next best response.
Marijuana has been proven to cause confusion, paranoia and hallucinations in the people who make laws against it and in the police who enforce those laws.
dww44
@SatanicPanic: Did you read Raven’s post? @raven:
I did and it’s the police’s word against hers and they engaged in a massive cover-up . She wasn’t there to defend herself after the fact. The report says that she fired once over the door and they fired at her 39 times. Who’s to say it would have been different if she didn’t have a gun? But then that’s the whole problem with this gun crazed society we have anyways. Particularly here in the state that she lived in.
Corner Stone
@SatanicPanic: Documented news reports?
LeftCoastTom
@Caravelle:
That wasn’t my point, I’m familiar with that argument but haven’t really drilled into it enough. The outraged responses I’m getting to the idea of knowing what one is shooting at before shooting, however, are making me think of the argument you’re citing.
mclaren
@Laertes:
And you know what the “evidence” boils down to in most cases?
Half a doobie on some guy’s bedside table.
Two marijuana plants growing in a cancer patient’s bedroom.
Explain to me why a SWAT team armed with AR15s with grenade launchers need to break down the front door of a goddamn cancer patient who’s growing a couple of marijuana plants to control the nausea from her chemotherapy.
danielx
@Corner Stone:
Indeed he did, and it’s true you can get a lot of time in Texas for simple possession. On the other he’s not on death row, which is where people who shoot cops in Texas usually end up
@Mnemosyne:
Paid suspension at that in most cases at that. Unless the cops do something really gross and egregious and unless there are independent witnesses and preferably a video record*, whatever happened is what the cops say happened and even if a cop is found to be at fault there usually are no real consequences. The BART cop who ended up going to prison for shooting the handcuffed and seated guy in the Oakland BART station was an aberration – there was video and a hundred witnesses standing right there. Again, gross and egregious. But usually there are no legal consequences, civil or criminal, for officers who shoot people. Cops don’t give a shot about civil penalties, since they don’t get hurt in the pocket themselves.
*Note: this is why cops really, truly hate being recorded on video. When you read about civil rights violations – okay, alleged – by the cops, it’s totally amazing how frequently municipal security cams or dashboard cams are found (by other cops, naturally) to have malfunctioned during the time and at the place where the alleged violation occurred.
Laertes
@mclaren:
Right?
How hard is it to walk up to someone’s door in uniform in broad daylight and knock like a civilized human being? Sal Culosi wasn’t Tony Montana, and he’s dead because the the police wanted to play cowboy.
If I was the judge, every time a cop asked me for a warrant to be served after dark, I’d first ask her to convince me that she’s got a reasonable belief that someone inside the house is going to open fire (on officers or hostages) at the sight of a uniform. Otherwise, go to hell.
gian
@NotMax:
I once went to a training where the subject was risk management, and the trainer was a high level state management type for police.
his candid advice for African American cops – always wear the uniform, never work undercover.
that said, this is a rather stupid statute. either limit the use of a no-knock warrant, or outlaw it. but this law is fucking stupid. oops wrong address, owner goes bang bang. cops with body armor and the advantage of numbers do what – run away like bunny rabbits?
sounds more like a way for more non-police-people to get killed when the warrant is served. Wait until court to argue with cops. in the street, they have guns, radios and mutual aid, you will lose.
Corner Stone
@danielx: Sure thing. Just making sure the follow through was stated. He got no billed for the shooting, but went to jail for the pot.
Chris
@dww44:
Why, thank you. :D
danielx
@SatanicPanic:
Actually they’re becoming more and more common in my neck of the woods, unfortunately – maybe they’re trendy at the moment. True also that home invasions attract a lot of attention precisely because they’re usually so violent. It’s also all too true that home invasions in poor neighborhoods attract less attention than those in rich neighborhoods, but even the former get some serious media attention.
Corner Stone
Personally, if my door gets kicked in my first, second or following thoughts are not going to be that it’s the police mistakenly executing a no knock warrant.
gian
@danielx:
the “BART” incident involed the shooting victim being face down on the ground, the officer (meserle?) was over him and the cops were supposedly trying to handcuff him, and he was supposedly struggling.
the officer pulled his gun, fired one shot into the guy’s back which was fatal he was charged and convicted of a lesser charge by the jury, which probably bought his defense that he thought he was using a taser.
on the other hand an orange county California jury recently flat walked cops who beat a mentally ill homeless dude to death.
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?id=9392045
this is what Kelly looked like after the beating before he died. be warned, it’s horrific and awful and heart wrenching. I mean really don’t look without being ready direct link to photo didn’t work. photo at link, which is probably better.
http://www.fullertonsfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Kelly-Thomas-Police-Beating-500×299.jpg
Caravelle
@mclaren:
The militarization of the police and its behaviour in the US is an outrage, but making it so that more people shoot at them only makes it worse. What do you expect, that your military-grade SWAT team will go “oh dear those homeowners have a gun and might shoot at us, better knock before coming in” ?
The very fact that they’re militarized guarantees that they’ll do the exact opposite.
I might even hazard that one reason they’re outrageously militarized, in rationale if not in reality, is because they expect to be met with deadly force by the homeowners/assumed criminals.
You can call that bully-worshipping all you like it won’t make it so. When the bully is the legitimate authority their capacity for violence will always outstrip yours, and they have no incentive not to respond to violence with even more violence. What you need to do is separate the bully from the legitimate authority. Good luck with that. I guess since actually fixing the problem is hard you might as well go for the feel-good solution that actually makes things worse.
Corner Stone
@Caravelle:
Say what now?
Caravelle
@Corner Stone: I don’t know what reasons the decision-makers gave for creating SWAT teams and militarizing the police, but I’m guessing that “we need to outgun and outmaneuver those heavily-armed criminals” figured on a slide somewhere.
Am I wrong ?
Omnes Omnibus
@p.a.:
This was ironic or sarcastic or something, right?
SatanicPanic
@Laertes: I wouldn’t vote to convict either.
@Mnemosyne: I do happen to live in a fairly safe neighborhood at the moment, after several years of living in a not so safe neighborhood, but that’s neither here nor there. My response would be the same 5 years ago as it is now. And if I lived next door to a drug dealer I would expect the cops to eventually figure out what was going on next to me.
@dww44: Yeah, I mean that’s what I am getting at- if you fire at one intruder, you might have even odds. If you have multiple intruders, it makes sense to me to not shoot and hope they’re the cops and/or that they don’t want to kill you for some reason. Unless you’re so good you can be sure to kill/incapacitate every last one of them.
danielx
@mclaren:
Dude – chill.
Hey, you’re right, no question about it. Police departments are becoming more and more militarized, and increasingly view all “civilians” as potential enemies and treat them accordingly. Leaving aside the minor point that cops are civilians themselves (they’re not on active service in the US military, QED), they are even in relatively small towns becoming paramilitary in nature, and I tend to associate ‘paramilitary’ with South American/Balkan/third world shithole death squads. If masked thugs breaking into one’s home at three am isn’t terroristic in nature, I can’t imagine what would be. It’s stupid policy and in many many cases a total violation of constitutional rights, or what’s left of them after forty years of the War on Americans – er, War on Drugs, War on Drugs!
All that being stipulated, you do come across as a troll or being in need of medication and/or being a total shithead. Insulting people isn’t generally persuasive or productive either one.
Laertes
@Caravelle:
“I guess since actually fixing the problem is hard you might as well go for the feel-good solution that actually makes things worse.”
I’m not convinced that it’ll make things worse. Militarization of police is a complicated phenomenon and there are lots of things driving it. When they’re making the decision about whether to deploy a tactical team to make a given arrest, one of the elements of that calculation is officer safety. This law seems to advance two worthwhile goals: First, it reduces the use of no-knock warrants. That right there is a huge win. Second, it places people who shoot at home invaders who turn out to be cops who screwed up on firmer legal footing. It’s reasonable to suppose that, in general, it makes people more likely to shoot at home invaders, and therefore more likely to shoot at cops who are carrying out no-knock raids. Which means that a decision-maker concerned with officer safety is going to be less likely to opt for the no-knock raid outside of hostage situations or suspects known to be armed and likely to open fire at the sight of a cop.
Sounds good to me.
gian
@Corner Stone:
the crack cocaine turf wars of the late 1980s spurred this along, you had people getting automatic weapons and doing drive by shootings
then you had the infamous LA area bank robbery – the paragraph is from CNN back before they gave up on fact checking:
Police borrow guns, ammo from a gun shop
Officers who initially responded to Friday’s robbery, carrying standard-issue 9 millimeter Baretta handguns, were in trouble.
“Tactically, the first officers that arrived were at a severe disadvantage,” weapons expert and former LAPD officer Dave Butler said. “Police carry 15 rounds. They would need to re-load.”
Stunned officers were out-gunned to such a degree that at one point they burst into a gun store, and walked out with more powerful guns and ammunition.
Police “came in a panic because their weapons weren’t good enough to fight these people,” said the store’s president, who would identify himself only as Bob.
“These people had body armor and they needed something that would break body armor,” he said. “We supplied them with slugs that would at least break bones on someone wearing body armor.”
Added the LAPD’s McBride: “We have many suspects who have multiple guns, and they continue to out-gun us and fire at us at will.”
http://www.cnn.com/US/9702/28/shootout.update/index.html?_s=PM:US
cops have families and they want to go home and see them at the end of shift. If you were a boss, and your employees came to you afraid they would die on the job for lack of proper tools… at some point this is really the fault of the NRA and it’s ilk if you think about why the guns are out there
Laertes
@SatanicPanic:
“And if I lived next door to a drug dealer I would expect the cops to eventually figure out what was going on next to me.”
That’s probably true. You’d expect cops to eventually break down the door next door. But if you’re a law-abiding citizen you’ve got no reason to expect them to break down your door. Anyone who kicks down YOUR door in the middle of the night is most likely some idiot junkie who’s trying to raise the money for his next fix.
Omnes Omnibus
@danielx: Have you never met mclaren before?
Caravelle
@Laertes: I’m not convinced. As many here have pointed out, if you’ve got a handgun and are ready to shoot at home invaders you’re unlikely to wait and check to see if it’s the police, and this isn’t affected by the law. As many here have also pointed out, beyond the legalities the clear and present danger of shooting at police officers is that they’ll shoot back. This also isn’t affected by the law, or at least I highly doubt it is.
I guess that rationale is that this makes an erroneous no-knock raid more risky for the police, since it presumably doesn’t affect the propensity to shoot or legality of doing so of “criminals” (does this apply in the doobie-on-the-bedside-table scenario ?). As I said I’m not convinced this would work, or would work enough to make the additional deaths on either side worth it. I think banning/restricting no-knock raids and actually punishing police violence and abuses is the way to go. And I think increasing the amount of violence and distrust between the police and the people they’re supposed to be serving and protecting actually makes this more difficult.
karen
And the cops in Georgia decide that to save their own lives, they won’t come to homes to aid or assist victims anymore since they have no idea who has a gun and who does not. Parents’ children can resume being raped by their daddies and beaten up by their mommies since you know those will be the first ones shooting the cop for busting in.
Then as crime goes up as the word goes around that there are no cops, there will be a crime free for all. I suggest Georgians get guns ASAP because if you don’t have one, that’s where the criminals are going to hit.
Criminals walk free in Georgia, yahoo!
karen
@mclaren:
Ok. Once it becomes legal to shoot cops for “busting in,” I hope you’re happy to have no cops that will help you and when your house is robbed and family members are hurt, just remember, it was YOUR idea.
Laertes
Sure. That’s one way it could go–an escalating cycle of violence, a public who can’t tell the difference between cops and criminals, cops who are unwilling to respond to calls for fear of being mistaken for criminals and shot at…
Or the police could, you know, stop using no-knock raids at the drop of any old goddamn hat. It’s really a very simple solution, and I think a lot of people are just flatly incapable of imagining such a thing. That’s how far militarization has gone–we literally can’t imagine it any other way. The idea that police could just stop using SWAT teams to serve arrest warrants on bookies can’t penetrate.
Churchill said “Democracy means that when there’s a knock in the door at 3 am, it’s probably the milkman.” Americans today would simply have no idea what point he was trying to make. The response would be a blank stare.
Omnes Omnibus
@karen: mclaren already believes we live in shithole America where anyone can be disappeared and tortured at anytime. Any point s/he makes should be viewed through that lens.
danielx
@Omnes Omnibus:
Actually, I’ve tried to avoid it. Guy makes some valid points, but it’s hard to see them what with all the spittle and invective.
karen
@mclaren:
You’d rather make killing cops legal. I can see you provoking a situation purposely to make sure you can shoot cops. Never mind the cops that actually do help people, the only good cop is a dead cop, amirite?
I think SWAT teams and cops should be held accountable for what they do. But you just want them dead.
Call me a lickspittle Balloon Juicer but I don’t believe all cops are evil. Some have actually helped me. You’re probably a survivalist with a bomb shelter filled with canteens and canned goods.
karen
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thanks for the heads up.
And I thought I was the conspiracy theorist.
Mnemosyne
@karen:
How often do cops “bust in” with a no-knock warrant at 2:00 am on child molestation allegations?
They do it all the time with drug warrants, which is how you end up having a 92-year-old woman shot by the cops in her own home because she thought she was about to be the victim of a home invasion robbery.
ETA: I may be more cynical than most here because the first time I heard about cops busting into (and busting up) the wrong address was a few months after I arrived in Los Angeles in 1988, and there’s been no dearth of similar stories since then.
Laertes
And several more examples of the utterly baffling belief that, should a law pass forbidding most no-knock warrants and permitting homeowners to open fire on police officers executing no-knock warrants, cops will simply ignore the law and keep doing it.
Seems kind of crazy, really.
Caravelle
@Laertes: Um, I’ve suggested stopping using no-knock raids at the drop of a hat. It is a simple solution. So simple it does not require making it easier for people to shoot at each other to implement.
That is sad. Even if we don’t have milkmen anymore.
Omnes Omnibus
@karen: Don’t trust me. mclaren has accused me masturbating to Holocaust pr0n. I apparently have no room to comment. I am apparently just that degenerate.
Caravelle
@Laertes: Who said anything about cops ignoring the law ? The issue is the no-knock warrants that are still allowed under it. If the law had banned no-knock warrants entirely it would at least be consistent.
karen
@Omnes Omnibus:
People who use the Holocaust like that are scum.
Mnemosyne
@Laertes:
For this Georgia law in particular, I think we have yet another example of conservatives’ one-size-fits-all approach to lawmaking. The answer is always either “more tax cuts” or “more guns,” and tax cuts won’t do much, so therefore “more guns” must be the solution.
I’m still horrified that Cory Maye was sentenced to death because the cops broke into the wrong house. Yes, he managed to squeak out of it after “only” 10 years in jail, but how on earth is that an equitable solution to the problem of cops busting into the wrong houses with no-knock warrants?
Omnes Omnibus
@Caravelle: Oh for fuck’s sake, how many of you are really in danger of a no knock raid? How many of you have a 9mm pistol with a round in the chamber lying right next to your bed or under your pillow?
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Speaking for myself, I’m probably at slightly higher risk of a home invasion robbery right now than a no knock police raid since we’ve kind of had a rash of such robberies. Which doesn’t really make me feel that much better.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Geez, I forgot about this one — our assemblyman’s father was murdered in an apparent home invasion late last year. So, yes, still much more likely around here than a no-knock police raid.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: So, do you lie awake with a pistol in your hand waiting for it? Or do you just go to bed?
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I just go to bed and assume they probably won’t bother with us since we’re in an apartment complex on a street full of apartment complexes. But if someone did kick the door in at 2 am, my first thought would be Home invasion! and not Wrong address!
(And, since we don’t have a gun, my first instinct would be to try and hide under the bed and hope that they break an ankle trying to negotiate through the various books, shoes, sweaters, balls of yarn, and cats scattered on the floor.)
Caravelle
@Mnemosyne: I agree that’s wrong. So I guess I ought to agree with you on the law. Assuming everyone is shooting at each other anyway… But it still feels wrong to me.
(depressing story : I was wondering whether there was more to the Cory Maye story that justified the sentence, like maybe he’d been obviously negligent or trigger-happy in some way, so I googled him, and the results page included a photo and I went “oh that explains it”)
(actually if anything that makes things more complicated, because aside from the law itself there’s the question of how it would be enforced when the wrong races are involved)
From reading the Wikipedia page though I’m not sure the law would have helped much. For one thing, the police claimed they knocked and identified themselves. For another it seems that Mississippi law allowed self-defence, and killing a police officer wasn’t a capital offence if you didn’t know they were police officers. That he got sentenced to death suggests the jury didn’t believe or didn’t care that he didn’t know it was the police, so I don’t see how a law justifying killing police officers in a no-knock raid would have helped.
Mnemosyne
@Caravelle:
I don’t actually agree with the “shooting cops” part of the law — putting major restrictions on no-knock warrants will do a heck of a lot more good than the gun parts. But I do think it’s a fascinating example of the wingnut mindset that More Guns Are Always Good.
But I do understand why the Georgia legislature thought something should be done (even if they chose the wrong solution) because it really is a seriously fucked-up situation that’s a major problem.
Caravelle
@Mnemosyne: That’s interesting. I looked up the law at the link given in the OP because I wondered under what circumstance no-knock warrants would still be allowed. On the one hand it clearly states that the law allows deadly force even if the people announce they’re the police, as long as they didn’t do so before entry. Which seems even more extreme than what I’d thought, though I suppose it could be useful as a clarifying mechanism; it’s easy to the police to claim they said “police” after the fact. Then again it’s also easy for them to claim they knocked. And then there’s the issue of home invaders claiming to be the police, as you mentioned…
More interesting is that, as far as I can tell in the 3-page PDF, it bans no-knock warrants entirely. “No search warrant shall be issued which contains a no-knock provision.”, and I don’t see this statement being softened or caveated anywhere. I don’t know where the “under limited circumstances” comes from then.
MattR
@Caravelle: It looks like this only affects warrants issued under Section 17-5-22 of the Georgia Code. I am definitely not an expert, but I think that section deals with warrants related to searches only. Arrest warrants are covered in section 17-4 so there may be a provision to issue a no knock warrant under that (or some other) section.
GySgt213
You are not dense. They don’t have any way of knowing and that’s the point. It is however, a very risky tactic that may be necessary at times, but not every time. There is so much room for error and mistakes we should be able to depend on law enforcement to use this tactic only when no other options are available. But to make this tactic even more risky than it already is which is was this proposed law would do is dense.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Amir Khalid:
Wait, but those raids are done to keep those people (as in hippies and other non older white protestant males) in line,… This sounds more like the marijuana growers there managed to do some legislative judo with the tea tard gun fetishists.
celticdragonchick
@rea:
Actually…no, it hasn’t, at least with respect to police entering the wrong home or busting down the door at the right address but the person they want hasn’t lived there in years. You end up with dead civilians, occasionally a dead cop and someone on trial (and almost always convicted) for the dead cop and even the dead roommate/spouse whatever that the police shot on a bad raid in the first place.
Citizen Alan
@LeftCoastTom:
In the scenario we’re describing “who or what you’re shooting at” is an intruder in your home that kicked in the door at 3 a.m. You seem to be under the misapprehension that the homeowner is under an absolute obligation to verify that it is not a police officer who came to the wrong address prior to exercising self-defense. I don’t think that there’s any state in the Union that limits the Castle Doctrine to that extent.
Corner Stone
@Citizen Alan: IMO, he’s just playing Gotcha, and doesn’t want to give in to the reality that identifying the threat does not have to include looking for a badge number first.