Posted on 02/24/2012 6:46:48 AM PST by Abathar
INDIANAPOLIS -- A bill that would allow property owners to use deadly force to resist police is facing increasing resistance of its own.
The proposed legislation would provide property owners the right to use deadly force to stop an illegal entry by law enforcement officers.
Current Indiana law gives homeowners the right to use whatever force they deem necessary to defend themselves and their property against unlawful entry. However, Senate Bill No. 1 is aimed directly at the police and would give property owners the same authority to use deadly force against officers perceived to have made unlawful entry.
The Marion County Prosecutor's Office opposes that bill, RTV6's Jack Rinehart reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at theindychannel.com ...
Why? The issue in this piece of legislation in Indiana started with a 911 call for help.
Good post. Your story should be required reading during police academy training, with emphasis on the last paragraph.
Well, I guess if you're an Indiana cop and you don't like this law, you shouldn't have gone to the Indiana Supremes and claimed homeowners had no right to resist you even if you were entering illegally (the court AGREED!!!!). Best be careful what you wish for. D'oh!
““Citizens may resist unlawful arrest to the point of taking an arresting officer’s life if necessary.” Plummer v. State, 136 Ind. 306. This premise was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case: John Bad Elk v. U.S., 177 U.S. 529. The Court stated: “Where the officer is killed in the course of the disorder which naturally accompanies an attempted arrest that is resisted, the law looks with very different eyes upon the transaction, when the officer had the right to make the arrest, from what it does if the officer had no right. What may be murder in the first case might be nothing more than manslaughter in the other, or the facts might show that no offense had been committed.””
If cops would stop doing no knock raids on the wrong address then this wouldn’t be an issue.
Given the frequency with which they get the wrong house not being a criminal doesn’t mean anything. Let’s not even get into the problems if you have allergies, could be you are a criminal and don’t know it.
“You don’t understand why this legislative initiative is in the legislature.”
It’s you who doesn’t understand. The reason the legislature took the initiative was because the SC came down with a stupid ruling that was wrong and could cause widespread problems. The only place to correct it was in the legislature.
It really had nothing to do with the case you sited.
I still don’t understand why the police don’t arrest more people outside of their homes instead of seeking potential confrontations inside structures that could house all sorts of surprises.
The court ruling that homeowners have no right to resist police entry at any time is what started the outcry .
All police need do is return to the good old days of only fully uniformed,identifiable officers who loudly and cleasrly identify themselves as police before attempting entry,and who attempt entry only with carefully vetted warrants unless immediate entry is necessary to prevent,not cause, the death or serious injury of a person.
Police SWAT units should be reviewed and procedures changed to eliminate the ninja military sniper mindset.
Most no-knock raids should never happen; they are just a chance for certain rogue cops to “play Army”.We know how that turned out at Ruby Ridge and Waco.
And if one of these (suspects) gets wind that they may have a defense saying, ‘I didn’t know it was a police officer,’ and can kill him, we don’t have any ramifications there.
***************************
Maybe if they dropped perceived from the wording? It would cause the police to make darn sure they had the correct address. I am tired of police getting the wrong address and shooting people, pets yada. Once is too many times and I’ve read or watched news reports of this all too much.
Maybe that would be bad law but something needs to change because the police are getting it wrong too much. That isn’t acceptable.
That, per se, is the sort of thing Legislative bodies should deal with FIRST by REMOVING the judges.
For reasons not widely known the legislature decided they might as well keep the pukes on the bench and jigger with the law.
The law was fine. The judges weren't.
The cops didn’t make that argument. That is an invention of the judge who wrote the decision. The cops were INVITED ~ and did not make an unlawful entry.
You're right, I was overgeneralizing between two different sets of state agents. The court really screwed the pooch in issuing a ruling on a question that wasn't even at issue. They must have really had some kind of extreme statist hard-on that they actually went outside the parameters of the case at hand just to write such a ludicrous ruling. Any who voted for this need a good impeaching, possibly followed by some tar and feathers.
As a firmly law-abiding citizen, I retain all rights I am endowed with by my Creator-namely the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness-and to bear arms in defense of same. If a LEO wants to discuss something with me, I am available during normal operating hours.
If a police raid gone wrong happened upon my residence (unbeknownst to me), I retain the stated rights. Since the raid would be patently illegal, not just a “mistake” (unreasonable or negligent attempt at search/seizure for whatever reason), I am under no obligation to wait and see who the raiders are or are not.
There is no reasonable restriction incumbent on a law-abiding person under such circumstance (when awakened at zero-dark-thirty by the sound of a door being broken down-even if some announcement was allegedly made 15 seconds before the ram was applied); I will reasonably assume as a law-abiding man, that the actors represent grave harm to myself and to those I am entrusted to protect, as well as an affront to essentail liberty which should never be tolerated.
To be required to assume that a door being broken down is being done so by honest but mistaken officers of the law is a silly notion, devoid of reason.
Now, If I was a criminal, then I would not be justified morally or legally in defending against a warranted and legal assault.
The burden is on the actors initiating such an assault to be 100% correct in thier actions, not on me. I know, I may fail and even die, but I will not sacrifce essential liberty while hopefully awaiting for confirmation that the lethal assault in progress is indeed just wayward stooges of the state that have misread my house number or whatever and will stop short of grave injury or death of innocent housemembers. I know that my survival in an active assault depends on me gaining the upper hand as quickly as possible, rather than awaiting for some flash of recognition to cross some adrenaline-pumped officers “oh, poo, wrong house guys, stand down and lock wepoans he’s a good guy”.
That burden is on them, not me.
To think otherwise would require the sacrifice of all essential liberty in deferment to the noble but perhaps misguided efforts of the state.
All this said, I would risk my life to assist an officer of the law in time of hazard, as any other American capable of rendering such assistance should be morally apt to do.
The main problem with all of these cases where the cops, DA’s and courts are doing things that hurt (physically and mentally) citizens is that there is no personal responsibility for them. If any action is deemed bad then the tax payers pay and not the individuals involved. Until we remove this protection of public officials, it is a losing game for the citizens.
Part of the problem here is that the geek who wrote the decision had been appointed by Governor Daniels.
Daniels continues to have friends in the state legislature. Still, I think he should have asked that judge to step down because it's pretty obvious he was not mentally prepared to work within the framework of a Western legal system ~ just too much time screwing around with Moslems.
Getting the decision overruled should be a trivial problem. This particular law by not addressing first factors is probably not going to do the job.
Nonsense. She called 911. There's a recording. The cops responded.
That's all it took.
Like I said, if she'd asked the cops to just shoot him and they did so, this case would have been over and you'd never heard more about it.
Well said, and I agree completely.
What's not to like with this one.
If she'd said "He won't let me" they could have dropped him right there because that's kidnapping!
End of story.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.