>> Which is the correct place for a Marine to point his weapon when his door flies open? <<
Uh, down?
Don’t give me any nonsense about him not knowing they were the cops. When you hear a siren, a knock, then a fifteen second wait, THEN your door gets broken into, I suppose there’s a slight chance someone is doing a VERY thorough job of impersonating the police, but your best bet is yes, that’s the police.
So, are you saying that the police have to wait first for one of them to get shot each and every time they break a door down, even when they have a warrant, have announced themselves, and ran the siren for several seconds?
How do you know his weapon wasn't pointed down....dufus. It was still safe after they pumped him, and the neighborhood full of lead. I can't believe a FReeper of you age and stature can defend what you just saw in those videos. I'm sorry, go argue with someone else....I'll just get mean, ugly and mad if you reply to me again.
“Don’t give me any nonsense about him not knowing they were the cops. When you hear a siren, a knock, then a fifteen second wait, THEN your door gets broken into, I suppose there’s a slight chance someone is doing a VERY thorough job of impersonating the police, but your best bet is yes, that’s the police.”
NOt these days. THe villain of this piece is the no-knock warrant. The whole concept needs to go, with no excptions whatever. IF this interferes with drug enforcement, so be it. I would rather have junkies living on my street than give law enforcement monster powers like this.
The timeline below was taken from a different video, but it covers the points if you combine the video and the wife’s statements:
Guy in bed.
0+6 Siren or car alarm goes off for 8 seconds.
0+14 Doesn’t pay much attention, but wife shows up saying she’s scared.
0+20 Rolls out of bed. Grabs rifle and tells the wife to hide.
0+28 Leaves bedroom.
0+30 End of hall, looking at the door.
Between 0+20 & 0+30, the police are saying something...identifying themselves, but hard to understand from the guy standing outdoors & 20 feet away. During this time, the guy is probably in his bedroom & talking with his wife. He’s probably been up for 10 seconds or so. Odds of hearing the cops? Not great.
0+33 Door opens from kicks.
0+40 Cops open fire.
What was the guy doing between 0+33 & 0+40? Well, he’s probably been awake for under 30 seconds. He probably been out of the bedroom for 10 seconds. The safety is on.
At 0+40, the cops open fire. The guy has not shot, but they see a man with a gun and the cops react.
Now for the sake of argument, let’s suppose this happened to me. The wife wakes me and tells me someone is at the door trying to get in. There was a car alarm or siren - don’t know which. I’d grab my 44 and go to look, and would probably get to the door about the time the cops came thru.
I would probably start to raise my gun, realize they were cops, and be lowering it at the same time the bullets start hitting me. Dead over a warrant served by incompetents.
Should it be legal to serve a warrant in a way that practically guarantees the death of the person inside, assuming the person was surprised and predisposed to protect his home and family?
Could a reasonable person, with 30 seconds of thinking, figure out a way of serving the warrant with less danger to all involved?
I don’t care if this ex-Marine was guilty as sin - was this the way a reasonable person serves a warrant?
Does firing 71 shots indicate a well trained unit? When I was in Afghanistan, we were told to use 3 round bursts, not full auto. The Army told us that if you didn’t hit with the first three, continued spraying was just a waste of ammo.
Once the cops were in the door and saw him with a gun, they were bound to shoot - but why did it have to reach that point to begin with? In the same circumstances, the cops would almost certainly find me with a revolver still in my hand and shoot me, and I’m very law abiding - so how can those procedures be right?