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[GlyphGryph]

I don't like this narrative of "they knew what they signed up for" as a way of handwaving off an occupational hazard. By the same logic, coal miners have no right to complain about black lung and cave-ins. 

A police officers job is to protect and serve the public. If a police officer can risk themselves to save a civilian, it is their job to try and save the civilian. This applies to firefighters, too - firefighting is risky job, but we still hail those who knowingly put themselves in danger to serve others and save lives.

We will do everything we can to make it easier for them so long as it doesn't compromise the entire purpose of their actions. We are not going to blow up houses with people inside to put out fires because it's easier for the firefighters, and we shouldn't let police pull this sort of shit because its easier for them. Once they have done that, we aren't dealing with an "occupational hazard", we are dealing with a threat that needs to be stopped.

And it's unfortunate that this reflects badly on and even endangers those who don't follow that philosophy, but its not the fault of those who would defend themselves against criminals if the criminals start dressing like another group or even infiltrating it. It's an occupational hazard we should try to minimize, but it's certainly not an easy one to do so. So we should definitely do everything we can to help them out - so long as doing so doesn't make innocent civilians more likely to get killed.

What a wonderful rationalization. Tell me, how does your virtuous action of killing someone differ from their virtuous action of trying to stop a suspected crime? I'm certain those "thugs" feel they're doing the right thing, even though they're not. As long as we're justifying violent actions as good and wholesome, why is your justification superior?

Becuase I'm not breaking into people's houses, without announcing myself, and shooting them and their pets, destroying their stuff, destroying any concept of meaningful law enforcement while spitting on the court system in the knowledge that my coworkers will cover it up, while making the job of my entire organization progressively more difficult by creating a situation where laws like this don't only make sense but are practically required to protect people who are making reasonable decisions considering the circumstances surrounding them.


Finally
I really would prefer this never be an issue, that a law like this wasn't needed. And I look forward to a day when it isn't. But until that day...

[Gantolandon]

It's not as bad as it sounds first. It's certainly better than the usual deal - that you may be attacked for no reason and still can't do anything about it. It's one thing to be arrested for something you did, other - to be pulled out from your house for completely no reason, then be charged for resisting arrest because you were to startled to remember that you are not allowed to even touch this particular brand of thugs.

This measure is a bit too drastic, because it will encourage the police to expect being attacked (and switch to lethal weapons faster). But seriously, it's better than the opposite - that you can't resist even an unlawful arrest.

[GlyphGryph]

And the police could always react by not breaking into people's homes unnannounced and go back to the old strategy of surrounding the home and announcing themself, and boom. Risk averted.

THAT is the way to reduce the occupational hazard.

[Neonivek]

I don't like this narrative of "they knew what they signed up for" as a way of handwaving off an occupational hazard. By the same logic, coal miners have no right to complain about black lung and cave-ins. 

Except that a lot of the time those are two problems that are caused simply because the company wants to make more money.

Not all the time mind you...

[Aqizzar]

I don't like this narrative of "they knew what they signed up for" as a way of handwaving off an occupational hazard. By the same logic, coal miners have no right to complain about black lung and cave-ins. 

There's a lot of ways I could try to approach this, but I'd like to think that a citizen's rights are a good enough one.  Coal miners are employed by a private company, and have every right to demand safety in their job of breaking rocks underground.

A police officer is given authority by the legal system to invade or confiscate property, use violent force and detainment against other people, and are given a frankly tremendous amount of very necessarily latitude in deciding how to use that authority.  But the logical extension is that when your job is to infringe upon a person's rights to uphold the general law, then your job safety comes at the expense of everyone else's expectation of well being.  Yes, police officers have every right to expect the power of legislation to try to protect them in doing their very important job.  But the public has a right to demand legislation to protect them from that same authority being used incorrectly.

I know I'm being patronizing, and I apologize to you especially for that, but it's inherent in the act of being a law enforcement officer that your life is at risk.  Yes, this law could give people who would otherwise not have resisted a perfectly legitimate police action a false belief that they now can.  When all is said and done, is that really a difference?  Every time an officer takes an action, there's the risk they could be attacked.  I don't see how the existence of this law makes that any more significantly likely, as demonstrated by the case that spawned it in which the attacker already thought he had this protection.

Honest cops complaining that citizens have an extended right to defend themselves against bent cops strikes me as incredibly hollow.  This law should be a call to them to put a better effort into keeping their fellow officers in line, not being more suspicious of the average citizen when they already have every right and reason to be suspicious every time they approach someone.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I can't get this article to load.

[Mephisto]

I can't get this article to load.

It takes quite a while (I'm talking minutes here) to load for me. Surely they're not running this on some ancient C64 in a closet that got wrecked by 200 views in a few hours.

Did I cause some of our resident Bay Watchers to comment on the article itself? My bad. I bet it gets taken down soon.

Ohai, 503 errors ahoy.

[DJ]

And the police could always react by not breaking into people's homes unnannounced and go back to the old strategy of surrounding the home and announcing themself, and boom. Risk averted.

So very much this. The main reason why cops are gung ho thugs is that they've been given waaay too much legal protection in recent years. Power corrupts, and they're getting pretty close to absolute power (no knock raids are getting eerily similar to death squads, what with ever flimsier excuses for shooting the suspect).

[Sergius]

There was this one case where a bunch of police guys broke into someone's house, quietly (except for the breaking noises, of course), never announced themselves, and got shot while trying to sneak on the house's owner. Turns out they had a search warrant (not sure if failing to identify themselves as police was an oversight or if it was some sort of "stealth warrant"), but they were investigating the wrong house.

Not sure if the warrant was for another house, or if they simply asked a warrant on the wrong house. But basically the guy wasn't the person they were looking for.

Long story short, the guy in the house went to prison. I don't think even using deadly force was illegal there, simply that because the guns of the invaders were owned by the PD and they had a piece of paper somewhere in their pocket, the guy was suddenly a horrible cop killer.

That ruling really upsets me.

EDIT: Reading DJ's post, I think it was some sort of "no-knock" search warrant.

[RedKing]

I will say that there are entirely too many "we kicked in the wrong door" incidents. 

[GlyphGryph]

Especially ones that result in shots being fire despite no resistance.

That's what always gets to me - the fallback that the appropriate response to a situation not going well is to open up.

[Leafsnail]

Well I guess I'll swallow this spider, that'll really show that fly who's boss.

What's worse? A good police officer getting shot in the line of duty (he willingly sought out to become a police officer - he should know that getting shot is a possibility)

Murder apologia.

[GlyphGryph]

Except that he explcitly said it was a bad thing so that's not really much in the way of apologia? He just said that a police officer killing an innocent civilian is worse, and pointed out the discrepancy in how we treat the two situations.

Basically that killing a police officer is, as you said, murder, but a police officer killing an unarmed civilian in their own home is not.

[Leafsnail]

He didn't explicitly say it was a bad thing anywhere so I'm not sure where you got that from.  Rather I see him saying two things (that person's risking their life therefore it's ok to kill them!) to try and justify that murder.  Hence apologia.

I'm not sure how the two are linked.  Apparently shooting police officers is a good way to not get shot?

[Mephisto]

Except that he explcitly said it was a bad thing so that's not really much in the way of apologia? He just said that a police officer killing an innocent civilian is worse, and pointed out the discrepancy in how we treat the two situations.

Basically that killing a police officer is, as you said, murder, but a police officer killing an unarmed civilian in their own home is not.

I may not have actually said that it was a bad thing, but I think it is. Blame that on me not proofreading anything before posting. Both are bad circumstances.

I know this isn't the law we need, but it's the one my state has at the moment. I would like that it not be necessary to be explicitly told that it's okay to defend myself against injustice. I would like even more that that injustice not exist in the first place. Until the perfect solution is reached, which probably won't be in my lifetime and most likely won't ever happen, I'm glad that I actually have something that I can do about it if it happens to me.

He didn't explicitly say it was a bad thing anywhere so I'm not sure where you got that from.  Rather I see him saying two things (that person's risking their life therefore it's ok to kill them!) to try and justify that murder.  Hence apologia.

I'm not sure how the two are linked.  Apparently shooting police officers is a good way to not get shot?

Thanks for shoveling words into my mouth. I'm asking, in a roundabout way, why the death of someone who accepted the risk is so much worse to everyone's eyes than the death of someone who did nothing wrong.

Leafsnail is just being an insecure troll. Any more of that and the thread gets locked.