Posted on 02/26/2008 11:06:45 AM PST by brwnsuga
RYAN FREDERICK is no hero, no matter what they're saying about him on the Internet.
He's the 28-year-old Chesapeake man being held in the Jan. 17 shooting death of Detective Jarrod Shivers.
Shivers, 34, was executing a drug search warrant at Frederick's residence the night he was killed. According to police, the eight-year police veteran was hit in the arm and chest by a shot fired from inside the house.
In a jailhouse interview, Frederick said he was in bed when the police came to his door about 8:30 p.m. Awakened by his barking dogs, Frederick said, he thought his house was being invaded. He didn't know the police were the cause of the commotion, he said.
Even so, it's troubling that a man charged with first-degree murder - for allegedly killing a cop, no less - has generated an ardent fan club. If you Google "Ryan Frederick" and "Jarrod Shivers," you'll get more than 1,000 hits and an eye-opening lesson in wild Internet rumor-mongering and misplaced hero worship.
From his jail cell, Frederick has somehow morphed from an accused cop killer into an innocent victim.
Supporters of Frederick staged a demonstration outside the jail on Saturday. Some protesters carried "Free Ryan" signs.
Oh, please. Ryan Frederick is right where he belongs - in jail. Until the matter is adjudicated, anyway. Even so, some are begging the system to spring him, fueled by the half-truths and outright lies spreading through cyberspace that portray Frederick as a "drug war victim."
Unfortunately, this uninformed rush to judgment isn't confined to the blogosphere.
When was the last time you heard a defense lawyer, in a highly publicized murder case, no less, say that he does not want a change of venue?
"No, no, he has too much support here," said Frederick's attorney, James Broccoletti, when asked if he'd like the trial moved.
If it's unfair to have a jury pool skewed toward conviction, it should also be unfair to have one awash in sympathizers.
We can all agree that this is a sad and troubling case, one that raises serious questions about Chesapeake police procedures. Yet it raises equally vexing questions about the duties and responsibilities of private citizens who choose to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
The tragic part of this story is not that this young man is behind bars. He'll have his day in court. The true tragedy is that a young woman has been widowed. Three children are fatherless. And Chesapeake lost a cop in the line of duty.
Since the shooting, there's been a lot of grumbling about Virginia's drug laws and efforts to enforce them.
If you believe marijuana should be legal, call your state legislator and demand that it be decriminalized. Don't blame the cops for enforcing Virginia's laws.
I don't know if Ryan Frederick is guilty of murder or of anything else. Neither do you. None of us has all the facts.
So here's a thought: What do you say we all hold our fire until the defendant goes on trial?
As it stands, he is innocent, until proven guilty.
Was Detective Shivers executing a no-knock entry?
bump
Actually, that is the point of a jury trial. Think of the British, trying American colonists in England without a jury for manufactured "crimes"-- e.g. resisting British soldiers who invaded their homes and quartered there. Two cases are not the same, but the point of a jury trial is that if most people in your community feel that what you did is not criminal, then it makes it harder for tyranny to thrive.
Hmmm.
At the same time (according to the online matrial) this was a bad warrant based on information from a doper.
One interesting comment on the thread that sounded as self-assured and forthrightly honest as any I've seen here on anything said "No crook is going to break in the front door of a home at 8:30 PM ~ ". Of course we can all get a laugh at that since so many "home invasion" situations involve crooks breaking in while the family members are all still up and available to rape, or at least to get information from about where the valuables are located. Tearing through the cabinets to find this stuff is so hard doncha' know.
So, yeah, prime home breakin time and this single man is in the sack.
Yes, we must know more.
Wait a minute/... guilty of what again?
Defending his home? Was there any real evidence to suggest a warrant? Was it the right house even?
If I hear someone crashing into MY home in the middle of the night, there’s going to be shots fired and someone is going down. Maybe me, maybe a police officer, but there’d better be no ONE kicking my door in, in the middle of the night without at least coming to talk to me in the DAY time first (I’m not a criminal, and there wouldn’t be a reason for a warrant.... in the first place).... So, someone kicking in MY door is probably going to get shot too. Is that MURDER? No. It’s defending my home.
Yes. Additionally, no drugs were found.
Maybe he's deaf ~ cops kill deaf people all the time and you never hear them complain.
Yeah, we do need to know more, but offhand it sounds like a bad warrant. That means the man was defending his home. And yes, we’ve had a bunch of of evening home invasions around here in Colorado lately... and none of them were at 2 am. I think most occurred in the early evening, to as late as 11 or 12....
Is it unreasonable to make the police give suspected drug dealers ten minutes notice of a raid, allowing the suspected drug dealers time to flush any drugs down the toilet or grab their guns and get ready to shoot it out? Unreasonable, right?
Is is reasonable to give then 30 seconds warning? Probably, you can do a lot of mischief in 30 seconds, but if you disagree, what’s a reasonable amount of time? I’ll tell you that, if you knock on my door a 6:30 in the evening while I’m watching TV in my living room, it will take me about at least 15 seconds to open the front door. If I’m in the basement or upstairs, it’s going to take longer.
How about a child pornographer who you think is going to format their hard drive when the police ID themselves?
What about the times you aren’t worried about a suspect destroying evidence or arming themselves? Then the courts shouldn’t be issuing the no-knock warrants, but how many of these no-knock warrants get issued for non-drug searches?
At the same time, you have a couple of very different practices in how you dress the guys conducting no-knock warrants. Some places might have officers wearing street clothes and badges on chains around their neck, I don’t know for sure. I’ve seen guys on TV and even a city police department in my neck of the woods turn their forced entry teams out in woodland camouflage, sometimes even with subdued-color patches. (Urban police in woodland camo?)
I’ve seen other police departments where the word POLICE is printed in big contrasting-color print on the front and back of the entry team vests, and on a hand shield sometimes used by the first guy through the door. They go through the door yelling POLICE, and you can say you didn’t believe they were police, but you can’t say you didn’t have fair warning. In that case, what’s the difference between you not believing them when they knocked versus not believing them when they can in yelling?
(BTW, from a common sense standpoint, if four guys with guns rush in on you yelling POLICE, give up; because if they are lying, they are still going to win any fight you start).
However, this guy is described as "single" and there seems to have not been anyone else in the house.
They do this to keep drugs from being flushed don’t they? Why not turn off the plumbing and electricity and knock on the door?
Something wrong with going to be at 8:30 then?
I go to bed between 7:30 and 8 pm usually and I’m asleep by then for sure. If I’m asleep, I don’t know what people are saying around me even if I’m awakened by yelling (trust me, I had my daughter, her husband and their three kids living with me the last few months, and was awakened several times by arguments between them without having a CLUE as to what was said).
Here’s an article posted/discussed at the time of the original incident:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1956090/posts
Good question. My first thing would be to kill power and water (if possible) before going in. /shrug.
Hopefully, Kerry Dougherty will be the victim of a no knock raid where he and his family are gunned down by stupid law enforcement officers who had the wrong house. It would be poetic justice.
Is it unreasonable to make the police give suspected drug dealers ten minutes notice of a raid, allowing the suspected drug dealers time to flush any drugs down the toilet or grab their guns and get ready to shoot it out? Unreasonable, right?
Is is reasonable to give then 30 seconds warning? Probably, you can do a lot of mischief in 30 seconds, but if you disagree, what’s a reasonable amount of time? I’ll tell you that, if you knock on my door a 6:30 in the evening while I’m watching TV in my living room, it will take me about at least 15 seconds to open the front door. If I’m in the basement or upstairs, it’s going to take longer.
How about a child pornographer who you think is going to format their hard drive when the police ID themselves?
I'd rather that the crook get away with it, than set the precedent of allowing the police to bust somebody's door down and announce themselves only AFTER they illegally failed to show warrant to the property owner.
Remember when the police were actually capable of conducting real investigations that didn't involve the use of questionable "tips" from dopeheads? Remember when they could actually conduct sting operations and catch real criminals in the act of doing real crimes? Back when you didn't have to worry about a drug dealer flushing the evidence since the drug deal was in no position to do so?
Save your sob stories about crooks getting away for someone who doesn't care about property rights and freedom.
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