Posted on 05/16/2013 10:18:37 AM PDT by edcoil
You are full of crap, and always have been. The Supreme Court has ruled that the police have NO responsibility for protecting any individual.
/johnny
It’s not a police state for officers to make sure all parties are safe when they respond to a domestic disturbance call.
They have probable cause to think a felony is in progress.
You’re an officer. You get a call. You show up at a home where there has been a terrible commotion. Three different calls have come in. A wife and children have been heard by the callers.
You go to the home. The man says everything is okay. He refuses to open the door. The officers give up.
As they walk back to their cruiser, four shots ring out. Inside a mother, two children ages 2 and 5, and the husband are all dead.
Is that better than the officers demanding proof everyone is okay?
You’re welcome to your opinion. My wife thinks the same thing if it’s any comfort.
I know. That was on my mind too. In that case though, I wish they had sought a warrant. They may not have realized the full potential of what was going on there. I don’t know all the particulars.
“One morning I got up and started to do some things while I was still half asleep. I needed to get a phone number and I accidently dialed 911 instead of 411. Stupid mistake, but hey...”
This has happened twice in our home. People need to know that any time you call 911, even by mistake, the cops come, and they refuse to leave even when your wife assures them everything is all right. The only thing that gets the to leve is permission to search your home. It’s a disgrace!
I’m not so hot on the home search. I do believe it’s reasoned for them to ask to see all family members.
If there are no kids, it’s not okay to demand access to the home after everyone is accounted for.
That’s my take on it.
Or how about this. The cops in San Ramon, CA get a call from the friend of a resident who tells them she’s suicidal and asks them to check on her. So they show up and are admitted buy the diminutive Asian woman who goes to her kitchen and gets a butcher knife, “they feel threatened” so these big brave cops shoot her to death. Then to make matters worse, the DA determines that the killing was “justified.” Cops: men with size 44 coveralls and size 4 hats, who just love to “help” people! Oh how far we have fallen as a society!
“By refusing to respond, he forced the police to enter his property.”
BS. The police do not magically gain probable cause to kick a door down just because they have a “policy”.
You really should watch the video and read the accompanying story before commenting. In the video, both husband and wife are heard telling the police that there was no disturbance and neither had called the police. The police were able to look through the window and see them. Yet because the couple declined to come outside, the police broke in anyway.
The police admitted on camera that they had no warrant, and they had no probable cause to enter the house at that point according to the USSC. (An anonymous tip does not constitute probable cause for a warrantless entry into a residence). Best guess, the cops and city get sued for violation of civil rights under color of authority (federal civil rights violations).
Dunno. It sucks, but the cops got a “domestic disturbance” call and that could be considered a “probable cause” situation. There could be someone hurt and those two could have been concealing that by denying the cops entry. The law does NOT require a warrant for that.
Lesson is, don’t call the cops unless you’re ready to have your world turned upside down.
The police could see the wife through the window, and she can be heard on the video assuring the police that there was no domestic violence. If the police were so worried about her safety, why was she the first one tazed when she had her hands in the air even as they came in through the door?
Vette6387, how would you like people across the country to decide who is right when your wife and you argue based on press reports?
We see the press game us all the time, but when it comes to the police we take as gospel any story they trot out.
Sometimes the police are definitely wrong. Other times, I’m not convinced.
Dial 911 and see what happens if you hang up.
The Supreme Court is living in an alternate universe on this one.
If officers did as they say, departments across this nation would be dishing out million plus settlements on a daily basis, for having left the scene of a domestic disturbance after a death(s) followed.
I saw the video. How easy is it to look in from a lighted background into a dark room? They couldn’t see those people very well. She’s a good eight feet from the window.
Not according to the Supreme Court. Just a phone call alleging domestic disturbance is not enough - there has to be some other evidence to support the claim to meet the probable cause standard.
Perhaps it went beyond just an alleged domestic disturbance call? Maybe the cops probably wanted to see someone (the wife?) and couldn’t? They aren’t allowed to respond to domestic disturbance call and then just walk away without making sure everybody is okay.
If the cops kicked in the door and tazed people after confirming there was no threat to anyone inside, then they need to be fired and charged like civilians would be. But I’ll wait until I understand all the circumstances before completely condemning them.
Apparently this was not an “anonymous” tip. The story said a neighbor had called.
In the first instance, my wife spilled some water on the bedside telephone and wiped it off. This was at 2 a.m. and I had fallen asleep in my office.
She tried unsuccessfully to tell them what had happened and that she didn’t want to wake me. That didn’t matter. It was only when she invited them in that they just left. The other time our daughter called 911when my wife experienced a fall after a knee replacement. I called and cancelled the call because I was in touch directly with her doctor.
Since cops have no legal responsibility for our safety, there needs to be some common sense applied in these situations so that our Constitutional Rights are not abridged, and we are not abused under color of authority.
They generally come down on the side of “exercising their authority” rather than applying some common sense. Come to think of it, that applies to all government agencies. Can you say public schools!
I agree that there needs to be some common sense. And I will admit that seems to be less frequently the case.
In the instance today, there were admittedly young kids in and outside the home. The officers weren’t just concerned about the mom and dad.
This discussion is a healthy one, because there are concerns on both sides. At least that’s my take. There should be a robust discussion on this. We do want to come down somewhere in the middle.
I’m sure there are bogus 911 calls all the time.
Frankly, you couldn’t pay me enough to be a police officer. We hire these people and then fault them all too often. And then there are the bad apples that always seem to slip through, no matter what.
Today we also have the militarization of the police departments. It’s just strange how our society has changed in the last 25 or so years.
Look at the man with a gun incidents today as compared to a few years back. Today they closed one college campus and nine other local schools because of a threat. At the same time they shut down another school twenty miles away, due to another threat.
What the hell?
Is it our media? Is it the hectic pace of today’s society? Is it the fruit of too many people out of work? Is it because more and more people are medicating?
We have always had a lot of guns in the hands of the public, but the public didn’t go postal like this, with this frequency.
This is beginning to look like Revelation type stuff here. I can only imagine what our society is going to look like in ten to fifteen more years. It’s chilling...
I agree with you that you need to take with a grain of salt what any press account says. After all, most “reporters” usually don’t understand a situation, have personal biases that color what they write, and don’t have the vocabulary to accurate describe the situation. But just spend a day reading stuff on FR together with comments from Freepers who are close to the situation, and you get a fully developed picture that paints a lot of the actions of LEOs in an unfavorable light. Today, their overriding principle is that “they are going home tonight,” even if that means a citizen doesn’t, and if your family pet is anywhere to be found, they are likely to be killed as a “precaution.”
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