http://beforeitsnews.com/story/364/5...Golf_Club.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_810420.html
Remember this? Thoughts on no-knock warrants?
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http://beforeitsnews.com/story/364/5...Golf_Club.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_810420.html
Remember this? Thoughts on no-knock warrants?
Cop was startled, opened fire.
Dude with a golf club hearing people breaking into his house is completely justified.
Shooting him from 20 feet away is not.
No-knock warrants have ZERO place in a free society outside of hostage rescue. PERIOD.Quote:
Originally Posted by MB888
This is one place where I part with my conservative brethren, we need to end this God-awful stupid war on drugs because a single dead man with a golf club in his hand is worse then 1,000,000 new pot heads.
Amen Bro! No knock raids have no place in any sort of free society. The (lost) war on drugs has led to all sorts of abuses of the constitution. I have never felt comfortable with people who proclaim themselves conservatives and are in favor of such activities. Putting heavily armed cops into no knock raids on what has too often been faulty info crosses the line int JBT territory.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zundfolge
Steve
Sad day.Quote:
Police tried to detain Blair so that he wouldn't be in the house when it was raided, but pulled over the wrong person. Despite that mistake, and despite the knowledge that the roommate had moved out, the raid on Blair was still carried out. It was hastily planned, reported the Tribune, diverting from protocol. Burnett, who shot Blair, told investigators that it is "absolutely not our standard" to carry out such a raid with as little planning as was done, according to the Tribune.
It was so hastily carried out, in fact, that police forgot the warrant. According to the Tribune, in the video it obtained an officer can be heard asking: "Did somebody grab a copy of the warrant off my desk?"
Burnett replies: "Oh, don't tell me that." He then complains to the other officers: "He doesn't have a copy of the warrant."
Minutes later, Blair would be dead.
So, they deviated from standard procedure, rushed, it was done in the knowledge that the person they were after did not live there anymore, AND they didn't have a copy of the warrant. Nah, no problems here.
I have no problems with police, in fact I have lots of them in my family.
I do have a huge problem with departments not adhering to policy, not using common sense, and acting in a cavalier fashion like this. I too think no-knock warrants need to be reined in, severely. Do I think police should take unnecessary risks? No. But it is by nature a dangerous job. And on a bad case like this, they should have taken extra care. Someone who was not the target of the warrant that they didn't even have with them died as a result of their cascade of errors. This was not an oops. It was a tragedy.
Even with the grainy video I could tell it was a club! Who the hell holds a rifle or pistol like a baseball bat? Cops overreacting. I know there must be a training scenario for this.
With a no knock entry I could see ANYONE, even a drug dealer, reacting like that! Someone barging into your home like that, even the police yelling and screaming. It is called home invasion and the yelling is to SCARE you and CONFUSE you! Seems like he was just defending his home.
It is your home and I know my Saiga12 would have have been making happy flashes regardless who it was.
Complete FUBAR.
Huffingtonpost and Beforeitsnews are unabashidely liberal news sources. Here is the post from the Salt Lake Tribune who posted the video. It appears to be more balanced.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/50...tml.csp?page=1#
From their report, the police didn't know the girlfriend was no longer living there. The house was the target of the search warrant; the reports don't mention if there were arrest warrants for either him or his girlfriend.
Having a copy of the warrant at the time of the execution isn't a fatal error. You are required to leave a copy of the signed warrant face at the place searched, along with an inventory of seized items. You don't have to be holding the warrant in hand when going through the door. Of course, it would be nice to have it in hand when executing, but things do happen and if you have to send someone back to the office to get it before you leave, then you do so.
Police do train for scenarios in which someone approaches them holding a club, bat or other blugeoning device. (Good) SWAT teams do practice dynamic entries where a situation like this might occur.
Terribly sad and wholey avoidable tragedy.
Well, for the poor golf club wielding resident it quite literally is.Quote:
Originally Posted by OneGuy67
Again... not the best nomenclature to be using to describe this sort of event...Quote:
Originally Posted by OneGuy67
(have what... a nine iron?)
Not to make light of this but... stop now if you are easily offended...
He should have shouted "FORE!"
Agreed.Quote:
Originally Posted by theGinsue
I'm a little torn on this. I watched the video and read the far more comprehensive version of events from the SLC Tribune.
There is no excuse for the sloppy police work that led up to the execution of the warrant.
I also disagree with the no-knock warrant in this instance, as I do in most instances. I have issues, myself, with the so-called "war on drugs", it's effectiveness and cost to society. So I'm disappointed a no-knock warrant was used in this particular case.
Having said all that, when the officers entered, the officer who fired said he thought the object held by Blair may have been a sword. And they were only about 8' apart...not 20. The officer who fired was the first through the door and had moved to the right after advancing into the home. I can't really fault him for firing in this case.
Of course, without the warrant, whether or not he should have fired would've been a moot point.
It's very tragic anyway you look at it. But, given the circumstances, I agree the shooting itself (discounting all other factors) was justified. Judging the shooting in light of the totality of the circumstances is a different matter.
Ban Police!!! It's for teh childrens!!! .... "damnit Bear, get back to your corner...."
I think its a hell of a lot more than 8'. Its clear across a living room. Officer saw the guy standing there and shot. The guy didn't seem to make any sort of threatening move.
I have a feeling if he was standing there with nothing in his hands he would have been shot anyway. The officer's reaction upon seeing the guy was to fire.
I'm probably going to offend some LEOs, but I have an observation:
These "dynamic entry teams" and "drug task force" squads seem to attract the "cowboys" on the force. My impression from meeting a number of them (my stepkid is LEO) is that a lot of them are pretty cocky, and some are downright overconfident and condescending towards anyone that is not a part of the "team". Seriously, why would they have to make a no-knock entry, dressed like frickin ninjas, on a relatively minor drug warrant? It's not like they were assaulting the main stronghold of the Reynosa cartel. The fact that the officer involved had previously been involved in a (good) shoot also adds fuel to the fire in a civil trial, even if this shoot were entirely justified. Obviously, we don't have all of the facts, just what the news media wants us to have, so this shooting MAY have been justified, but it appears to me that a number of serious errors probably occurred.
Edit: Someone bouncing up the stairs in my house in the middle of the night dressed like a ninja and yelling, will probably go bouncing back down the stairs looking a lot like a ninja full of .45 caliber holes...
Sad. It could have possibly been any one of us here getting served like that. Who knows for what. The outcome would have been different with any other means than a golf club.
Terribly disturbing.
Obviously it was more than an arm's length. 8' doesn't seem unreasonable. If he (the shooting officer) thought it was a sword and the guy was inside of 21' he would've been facing a reasonably perceived deadly threat.Quote:
Originally Posted by SLC Tribune
+1Quote:
Originally Posted by Zundfolge
And there should be jail time for the shooter.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TFOGGER
You aren't offending me with your observations. There definitely is an "attitude" from those who volunteer for specifically the tactical unit. The narcotics unit, not necessarily, from my experience.
From what I gather from the SLC article, the actual warrant execution was conducted by their SWAT or tactical unit and not the narc unit, although from the video there appeared to be one narc in the stack that went in.
I've had the opportunity to observe Denver's full time SWAT unit execute warrants and they are fast, smooth and professional. Of course, they practice and train all the time and have no other work obligations other than SWAT. The rest of the agencies I've worked with have part time SWAT or tactical teams who train together when they can, from 8 hours a month to 8 hours a quarter. These are the teams I have concerns with and are the ones who usually have this issue.
A Libertarian magazine, http://reason.com/ has kept track of botched no knock raids. There have been too many with incorrect addresses and bad data.
Suppose this happened in Colorado. How many posters here keep loaded guns in the house? How many would use them to defend their family if intruders burst into the house?
I think the War on Drugs has been a actually a war on the constitution. It wasn't intended that way but it happened. I think a pretty good argument could be made that we have lost this war and should cut our losses.
Steve
I'm not convinced of that.Quote:
Originally Posted by CrufflerSteve
As for the officer that did the shooting, I think he should be at least on desk duty if not fired, but I'm not even going to go so far as to say he should be in jail ... the policy of conducting any form of no-knock raid put this officer in the position where he shot a man he claims he thought had a sword.
Except for a situation where someone's life is in immediate danger, there is just zero reason I can think of that a no-knock raid is called for.
Loss of evidence? Keeping someone from buying/selling/using drugs? Neither is worth the shredding of the 4th Amendment. Neither is worth turning our police into military style special forces operators (which violates the spirit of the Posse Comitatus Act if not the letter).
This HAS happened in Colorado, and it's cost 2 men their lives, and the citizens of Denver millions of dollars....Quote:
Originally Posted by CrufflerSteve
1st one I remember was a no knock on the wrong address, they shot the homeowner as he walked out of a bedroom, 2nd was when they shot a man with a coke can in his hand while he was lying in bed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TFOGGER
The first you refer to is Ismael Mena and was a wrong address on the warrant as the DPD officer took the word of his informant as to the address of the house and didn't check for himself, nor did he adequately describe the residence as required.
The second wasn't a warrant intrusion. The officer gained entry into the residence through an upstairs window and surprised/was surprised by the shooting victim, Frank Lobato. The call was a domestic violence call and Lobato was not the suspect.
AGREED!Quote:
Originally Posted by Zundfolge
personally I think this whole business is really pushing the limits of the law, and not for search and seizure reasons.
I am/was friends with more than a few cops and I feel that a lot of PDs and most importantly SWAT is becoming very militaristic, taking ranking, equipment, sharing in training, many don't even refer to themselves as civilians anymore. Its much too close to US military acting on US soil.
No knock raids have no reason to exist outside of hostage situations, period, if you can't nail a jerk with the drugs, more police work, get him later, turn off the water, I don't care, but one dead innocent man is unacceptable and at this point there is a lot of blood on the wrong hands. It is not just hurting innocents, it is hurting PDs because perfectly law abiding citizens don't trust police anymore, that is terrible.
you have GOT to be kidding me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bailey Guns
here's hoping they don't mess up and no-knock my address.
Another American unjustly executed...whats new? Too bad it wasn't a federal judge or a congress member, that is the only way this thuggery is going to stop.
Makes me want to build a bomb proof bunker and stay inside where it is safe from the government!
I also don't think the cop should be off the hook for something like this! In any other career, if you do something that takes another persons life or even just breaks the law, you are responsible.
As an EMT and now nursing student if I screw up and give meds, even in they are prescribed by a doc, but poorly or in error, its my ass too, end of story. Maybe not jail, but I for sure am not a nurse anymore and beyond a shadow of a doubt I am getting tagged with a big old law suit. If I chrashed my box into someone, code three call or not, I could promise you I was in trouble.
If you are going to carry a gun you are responsible for where the bullets land, that is a choice you make. The law should apply equally to all in this country, that is a big part of what keeps us free.
maybe the backlash has already started
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41235743...ime_and_courts
I Honestly do not feel that the illegal execution of an unlawful entry can be followed by a justified shooting.
So what you are saying is, if at 2am a bunch of storm troopers confused your address with a meth lab and raided your house, you wouldn't try to protect your home as a law abiding citizen?
So your Widow and Orphans will just fend for themselves in the streets?
Because if you are killed by police in a "Clean Shoot" you do know most life insurances will not pay as obviously you had committed an act that voluntarily perpetuated your own death.
I believe the common term is "PD Suicide."
Unless you have a warrant and present it upon entry, you are in violation of the fourth. Thus your illegal entry will be seen as a threat to the safety and welfare of my family and you will be fired upon with extreme prejudice.
CHP/CCW regardless
Come take the guns and I will stab you in the damned neck with a butter knife. I am really sick of the Gestapo tactics and double standards by the Police.
Just my two cents
Byte, what was illegal? They had a search warrant signed by a judge. Even if they had it on scene at the time, they aren't going to wave it around while executing a rapid entry. It is usually something handed to the resident once the residence and its occupants are secured.Quote:
Originally Posted by Byte Stryke
Quote:
Originally Posted by OneGuy67
ugh. I'm done here. I don't want to argue.
well hell lets just search now and worry about the warrant later... I'll take your word for it.
what if you were the shooter? Knowing you had taken the life of an innocent man startled from his sleep by a wrongful entry? he wasn't a drug dealer... he was an innocent man facing a breach of his home.
warrant? yeah we will get that later... trust me.
Show me in a single term how a "no knock raid" doesn't violate reasonable search and seizure.
Justify to me the reasoning why you cannot knock on the door with the building surrounded. whats he going to do? take his family hostage? weigh that against some gestapo ass-clowns killing a little kid and me paying higher taxes for it for the next 80 years when the PD gets sued into bankruptcy
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
take your "Oh, its totally legal" Attitude and check it against the civil rights.
No knock raids have NO PLACE in a civil and constitutional country.
Whoa! Gettin' some attitude. I asked simply what was illegal. They had a legal warrant at the time of the execution, not after. They had a judges permission to search the home. There was no search now and get a warrant later. His innocence? According to the reports, he wasn't innocent, although he may not have been a dealer. He may have been simply a user, but drugs were dealt out of the house, either by him or his girlfriend who lived with him.Quote:
Originally Posted by Byte Stryke
My "Oh, its totally legal" attitude as you state is pretty misguided. Where in the what, three posts I put on this did I say anything at all about it being "totally legal" or that I agreed with the no-knock premise? During the two years I was assigned to the DEA drug task force, we never did a no-knock warrant. They are difficult to get and you have to provide a lot of good reasons why the judge should allow one.
Everything that needs to be said has been covered already.
There is a HUGE disconnect here though. Warrants are for search and seizure right? Or is the killing of people some where in the small print?
Didn't a lady shot at some officers that were conducting a no-knock raid on the wrong house get charged? While every time a person is killed in botched no-knock didn't get any charges at all? Ever?
There isn't a disconnect. SEARCH warrants are for the search of items that are stolen or embezzled, are designed or intended for use as a means of committing a criminal offense or have been used for committing a criminal offense, are illegal to possess, would be material evidence in a subsequent criminal prosecution or is a person, property or thing the seizure of which is expressly required, authorized or permitted by statute of the State of Colorado or is kept, stored, transported, sold, dispensed or possessed in violation of a statute of of the State of Colorado under circumstances involving a serious threat to public safety, or order, or to the public health. These are the things that can authorize a search warrant by a judge, here in Colorado.Quote:
Originally Posted by Irving
You are associating the two together into one issue and it isn't. An officer may use deadly force if he feels there is a threat to himself or to others. Executing a search warrant is one thing. Being threatened and defending yourself is another. The issue presented here is whether or not the officer was being threatened or felt threatened and had a right of self defense to use deadly force. Lots and lots of search warrants are executed without any issues daily that you don't hear about. Some are as Byte describes and asks about, some are more dynamic, some are extremely mundane.
I can't speak for your first example as I've not heard of any such circumstances here in Colorado, but the second one, there were officers charged, I believe in Atlanta, over a botched no-knock. Although I get a number of police related periodicals, magazines, and emails relating to these out of state events, I don't really follow them too closely because they don't have an effect here in Colorado for Colorado law enforcment.
Why don't you try actually understanding the point I was trying to make.Quote:
Originally Posted by Elhuero
I was referring to only the circumstances in which the shooting took place. Not the circumstances that lead to the shooting. You have a:And apparently the DA agrees.
- dynamic entry
- in low light
- with unknown person rushing into view
- and holding unknown shiny item that appeared to the shooter to possibly be a deadly weapon
- which it potentially was
- and he was in dangerously close proximity to the officer
Now, the whole thing, no-knock warrant and all that BS that lead up to the above circumstances...different story.
And that's why I wrote I agree the shooting itself (discounting all other factors) was justified.(Emphasis yours)
Exactly. Given ONLY the issue of self-defense in this case, with the circumstances presented to the officer I believe he was justified in shooting to protect himself and others.Quote:
Originally Posted by OneGuy67
A civil court will decide on whether or not they should have been there in the first place and whether the resulting death was justified or not in light of the sloppy police work that lead to the shooting.
In my opinion they shouldn't have been there under those circumstances.
One question for OneGuy67:
If someone kicks your door in at 2 AM, and comes into the house shouting unintelligibly, how would you respond?
I know for damn sure my first response would not be to fall face first on the floor and put my hands on the back of my head.
No knock warrants SHOULD be all but impossible to obtain. Execution of them presents an extreme level of danger for both the officers and the subjects, particularly when the intel used to issue them is suspect (Israel Mena).
I know full well that I'm mixing the two issues. I'm purposely doing it because they are intermingled in real life. No-knock raids are kind of like that quantum theory analogy about the cat inside the box.
You have a car inside a sealed box. You want to know if it is dead or alive. You can't observe the cat without directly affecting the experiment. Is the cat dead, or is the cat alive? The answer is "Yes."
You are about to kick down the door on an unsuspecting person. Do they have a gun they are going to threaten you with? Are they asleep and not immediately endangering anyone? The answer is "Yes."
All lame attempts at connecting quantum theories with no-knock raids, your life is ALWAYS threatened if you are invading another person's property/personal space. Police officers have the right to kill anyone they perceive as a threat, at all times, under any circumstances, with little to no consequences. With that set-up, disaster is inevitable and it shouldn't be.
I actually agree with Bailey that given just the situation that the cop was put in, I'm not surprised that he shot. Put a guy in a shitty situation, don't be surprised when you get a shitty outcome. I'd lay the blame more on the person who allowed this situation to take place at all.