Posted on 04/22/2013 6:31:08 PM PDT by grundle
How would you recommend they should have conducted their ongoing search?
By operating under the strict bounds of the Constitution.
In any city in this country, there are currently on the loose murderers who have brutally attacked others, who have left a trail of destruction in their wake. Some are overrun by gangs.
So in any city, the police could use the same argument you are making to go door-to-door through every neighborhood, looking for any one of these currently at-large killers.
Unless the police had some indication that the perpetrator had entered one of those houses, without a warrant they had no business clearing the houses with force, overwhelming or not. They could knock, and politely ask if they could look around. If they were told no, they had to move on unless they had a clear indication that there was an imminent danger within the house.
In the end, this particular terrorist hadn't even killed as many people as the DC Sniper.
But we have seen that police love to use excessive force when one of their own is killed. Which is fine if they use it on the murderer, but not when they take it out on innocent civilians.
Look at what happened in California -- cops shooting up cars with innocent people in them. "But there was a brutal killer on the loose". Yep, always is, always will be.
And yes, if you lock everybody in their houses, and then send a platoon of military folks to roust everybody out of their houses and search them, one at a time, you will eventually find every known suspect that is hiding in a city. You could well round up thousands of miscreants, and even stop some murders, rapes, and brutal beatings in the process.
But that's not how our country works. We'd rather let some people die so we can be left a peace in our own homes, and be free to leave them whenever we want. That is why it is written in the constitution. We aren't the safest country. But we should be the freest.
The Constitution is a suicide pact, then?
Since you used that socialist argument, it’s clear you are rather willing to don the chains of slavery in exchange for “security”.
Seems to me Benjamin Franklin had something to say about that.
Don’t worry, The State will take care of you, from cradle to grave, now.
Careful, you wouldn’t want your Masters to know where you post.
>> “ But what was the alternative?” <<
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Do you really need it spelled out?
>> “Agreed. The alarmists on FreeRepublic don’t ever have an answer for this question though.” <<
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Spoken like the true statist brown shirt shill that you are.
The answer is known by all, and need not be spelled out.
You need the zot for trying to goad anyone into making such a post.
>> “Are you saying that all those LEO agencies, with all their training, equipment, experience and so forth at their disposal the best they could come up with was a plan that required for them to break from their primary duty that they are swore to that is to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States?” <<
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Check brent13a’s posting history and you will find that he thinks this is really cool.
We have a bunch of these lurking among us.
Is asking that they preform their duties while maintaining their fidelity to their first and primary oath to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States to much to ask. Yes many are the times following the letter and the spirit of the Constitution makes a LEO’s job harder and sometimes even more dangerous, but they know that going in. The problem start when they start bending and twisting it. It usually always starts for the ‘good’reasons, but once it starts it never ends there.
Where does this end?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3013260/posts
The Constitution is more than a set of slogans like yours There have to be really good reasons to set aside any amendments and the courts have come up with a decent set (e.g. emergencies, hot pursuit, evidence in plain site, a hunch by a cop). Note that all of the exceptions are almost always applied to specific houses. The cops cannot say they "have a hunch" about 20 blocks, nor even about 2 houses. A hunch about a house has to be articulable.
Another option is for all the homeowners to consent to searches without any pressure. That did not appear to be the case here either.
So, if a terrorist goes into a house, holds a family hostage under gunpoint, he can shelter in place until the heat is fine? Is this how it should work? Please educate me.
Or how about a murderer. Or a bank robber? Or a tax protester? As long as the media issues the panic order on behalf of the government there is just cause to engage in police state actions.
You need to read about police states before you accuse Boston PD of operating a police state. We already have a police state media, but the Boston area PD is not the problem.
That's a simple case, the terrorist is seen going in (hot pursuit), the terrorist is suspected of being in the house (cop sees something suspicious through a window), the terrorist is tracked to the house by a dog, the house has a broken door lock, etc.
There are thousands of court cases where evidence gathering is upheld for such reasons. The ones that get tossed are when the cop cannot articulate a reason for going into a house. A house to house search makes it clear that none of those cases apply and so evidence would be tossed. The cases are about disallowing evidence to protect criminals or overturn their convictions, not about protecting innocent civilians from illegal searches. But that's mainly because organizations like the ACLU are made up of liberals and could care less about individual rights of law abiding citizens (e.g. they don't recognize the second amendment).
Actions speak loudly.
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