Posted on 12/24/2007 7:14:48 AM PST by LibWhacker
“It is fundamentally under Kentucky law that the power to exercise an honest discretion necessarily includes a power to make an honest mistake in judgement,” the judgment read.In the article "swatted" means malicious and intentional.
The police must have done something right. According to the article, out of hundreds of malicious calls, there were only a few non-serious injuries.
If committing a violent assault on someone's home, in the middle of the night, based on the unverified claim of one informant is an "honest mistake in judgement" then I have a bridge to sell you. There are cases, not necessarily the three I posted, in which that was the case. The informant seems never to be prosecuted, nor are the officers.
I'll ping to some cases as I find them; maybe you can find it in your heart to be as outraged as I am at the different treatment between citizens who swat others, vs. these "valuable" police informants.
Are those cases over yet? The third case took three years to make it through court. When there is criminal, civil or administrative punishment, does the press bother to report it? Of all the cases handled by SWAT, what percentage are bad?
It is often the case that the police clear themselves in a perfunctory way. One of the cases I posted is already over. “The police said, you clean up our mess.” In other words, not only will there be no criminal charges, the police won’t even afford the courtesy of civil help.
I think only the cases handled by SWAT involving imminent threat of death or harm to innocents (e.g. hostage situations, active shooters) are good. That is why SWAT teams were created, and that is what they should remain for. Even if only 1% of drug busts turn bad, that’s too high a price to pay for getting some white powders into the evidence room instead of down the toilet.
The worst I have ever seen for confidential informants is that one might be “no longer used” as a result of bad information. I have never seen criminal charged lodged against one. Have you?
What I don't like is people smearing all police work because of a minority of problems. Some want to do away with forced entry altogether (a practice that goes back for centuries and is supported by English common law). It would be nice to get an accurate percentage of entries that go wrong. Facts can't be beat.
You’re right, facts can’t be beat, but killing innocents in their beds because the officers show up at the wrong place is so bad that extreme scrutiny and restraint should be used. Soldiers are tasked “to kill and destroy” and police, “to serve and protect.” If they’re busting in someone’s door at 3AM - to “shift the risk to the occupants” you can be sure they’re not serving and protecting.
Almost every city and county has openings for police officers. The pay is very good for an entry level job. You should sign up and lead by example.
In a lot of cases, the officers arrange the situation to be such that their lives will be in danger, in which case any shoot would then be a good shoot. There are a lot of people who, if a gang burst into their bedroom in the middle of the night, the first thing they would do is grab a gun for self-defense. Presto! Officer's lives are in danger, and therefore automatic justification for "good shoots" according to your criterion. (Irrespective of the past criminal history of the shootee.)
If someone went into a black neighborhood, carrying a concealed handgun, and starting shouting racist epithets, several people might just want to come out and teach him a lesson. Suppose said someone gave verbal warning for the crowd not to advance, but they didn't back off. Well then, that's justification to shoot, right? He's heavily outnumbered, they have disregarded his demands to back off, and a reasonable person could reasonably believe that his life would then be in serious jeopardy.
But in my book, that kind of shoot is no more justifiable than cops busting in someone's door, and shooting them when, suddenly awakened, they reach for a gun. If the cops want to arrest someone, they can knock on the door, announce a warrant, and arrest the occupant at a time when the occupant is likely to be awake and to fully comprehend the situation unfolding around him. Except, as I said before, during active shooter or hostage situations, when the lives of other innocent people are placed in jeopardy by the person(s) the SWAT team is intending to act against.
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