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[Leafsnail]

And I'm asking a) what the relevance of the question is and b) why you're trying to play down the badness of a murder.

[GlyphGryph]

I'd like to point out that its not murder in this situation anyway.

[Leafsnail]

It is everywhere except Indiana.  I guess if you need me to change that statement for Indiana it'd read "killing of an innocent".

[GlyphGryph]

I think an armed intruder breaking into your house in the middle of the night without announcing themselves is a biiiiit shy of what is normally considered an "innocent", but okay.

All this law does is simply put them on par with other criminals legally. If you're opposed to shooting armed invaders in general, sure, understood, no problem.

If you're just opposed to police officers in particular getting shot, that's a different issue.

I assume you are the first, correct? I think you've mentioned before that you don't think people should be able to shoot armed invaders at all, I just want to make sure.

[Mephisto]

And I'm asking a) what the relevance of the question is and b) why you're trying to play down the badness of a murder.

There are two sides that most people seem to take in regard to this law.
A) "good" officer busts into "bad" guy's apartment, who then shoots and uses this law as an excuse.
B) "bad" officer busts into "good" guy's apartment for whatever reason and the guy ends up dead. Nothing happens to the officer.

Don't take these scenarios literally. I assign no particular meaning to good and bad. Everyone has their own interpretation. The outcomes of each scenario are arbitrary, but when people argue, scenario A always goes bad for the officer and scenario B always goes bad for the citizen.

It's about choice to me. Everyone in the two scenarios has choice, except for the dead guy in scenario B. The "good" officer in scenario A chooses to uphold the law to the best of his ability. The "bad" guy in the same scenario chooses to shoot. The officer in B chooses to break into a house on unlawful grounds.

The guy who dies in scenario B gets no choice. He dies. Without this law, if he responds by shooting the threat, he gets life in prison or the death penalty, both much more than if he, for instance, shot some stranger on the street. He still dies. Why is that more okay than scenario A to anyone? It doesn't need to be repeated that killing is bad, but why is it that it's more okay when innocent citizens get killed? If you can't see how this question is relevant, I'm done explaining. Believe whatever you want, not like it matters to me.

As for why I'm trying to play down the badness of a murder, where did I do that? I said that I'm willing to do it to keep some jackass who's high on power out of my house. Here's a question for you, then. Cop busts into your house unannounced. He refuses to identify himself or produce legal documentation. Your little anklebiter of a dog yips a little bit at the intruder and is shot in front of your kids (it's okay, it was a vicious animal that was obviously going to attack him). You can either A) get beat up (Who's to say you weren't resisting? The court will believe him over you, your wife, or your children) , drug out to his car, and charged with whatever, or B) shoot him. What do?

It's happened before. It will happen again. You haven't heard about it? Take a look at the news. To me, the choice is obvious.

[Moghjubar]

Hopefully, this entire thing leads to far less 'Oh YEAAAAH' (with guns) police raids and more 'civilized' raids upon homes.

[Cthulhu]

It's kind of a disturbing law (More in the "Disturbing that they had to draft a whole law to affirm your right to resist abuse of authority" way when I think about it), but if force isn't allowed when dealing with a cop who's abusing his authority (An important question here would be how often does that actually happen?  Bay12 has a new "Corrupt Cop breaks into home, shoots puppy, pees in grandma's urn" thread every two weeks, but I'm wondering really how prevalent abuse is, considering there are probably hundreds or thousands of routine arrests every day in the US.  Big tangent, sorry) then the only other course of action is taking it to court and good luck with that.  Given that, I don't see a huge problem with it.  If he's exercising his authority properly, then he only has the normal occupational hazards of being a cop to contend with.

If a cop broke into my home and I didn't feel threatened, I'd probably just comply.  A guy with a gun is a guy with a gun.  If I did feel threatened, I don't know.  I certainly have the hardware to do something rash if the situation calls for it.

[Leafsnail]

Hopefully, this entire thing leads to far less 'Oh YEAAAAH' (with guns) police raids and more 'civilized' raids upon homes.

Of course it will.  Nothing makes a police officer calmer and more rational than knowing that someone can shoot him without it being murder.

That's the real problem I have with it - it's nothing to do with these black and white scenarios which are presented as if it's a choice between one and the other (my first issue is that firing on police officers makes you more likely to be killed in the first place - in other words scenario A and B are linked in the first place).  It's that this law encourages people to be violent against police officers (and how are you meant to know if one's coming in legally or not?  Ask for his warrant before shooting?  I guess it depends to some extent on the wording of the law but the article and OP make it sound terrible) and in turn police officers are encouraged to be more violent back.  It's a terrible non-solution to a serious problem.

[GlyphGryph]

No knock warrants (armed people breaking into your house with no notice) occur somewhere around 70,000 times a year in the US last I looked.

[GlyphGryph]

That's the real problem I have with it - it's nothing to do with these black and white scenarios which are presented as if it's a choice between one and the other (my first issue is that firing on police officers makes you more likely to be killed in the first place - in other words scenario A and B are linked in the first place).  It's that this law encourages people to be violent against police officers (and how are you meant to know if one's coming in legally or not?  Ask for his warrant before shooting?  I guess it depends to some extent on the wording of the law but the article and OP make it sound terrible) and in turn police officers are encouraged to be more violent back.  It's a terrible non-solution to a serious problem.

He'll know they're coming in legally because, yes, they will announce that they are entering and have a warrant first. If they don't, and leave absolutely no way for a person to tell the difference between them and any other armed home intruder, WHY should the CIVILIAN be punished for their mistake? That's the question at issue here.

Like I said before, if you've got a problem with civilians being able to shoot any sort of home invader, fine. But punishing people for things they couldn't have known for behaving in the same way a great many reasonable people would in response to an armed invader breaking in to their house is fucked up, and that is something this law remedies.

As you mention yourself, it's not like there's any way for a person to tell, on their own, whether he's a police officer or not, unless he does something to let them know he's a police officer and not a criminal. This law just means he has to do something to let them know that first or he runs the risk of getting shot.

It's not even a fucking occupational hazard, it's a "if you fuck up at your dangerous job in way thats really easy to avoid fucking up hazard"

[Leafsnail]

I guess if that's the entire extent of the law it makes sense.  Although that's not the impression I got from either the article or the OP.  According to the secondary article you need to be in danger of "serious bodily injury" which seems more reasonable (although with threads like this suggesting it's a blanket permission to shoot police entering your house it still seems like it could cause problems if the actual nature of the law isn't spelled out).

[Nadaka]

I don't have a problem with this.

When an officer of the law is in violation of the law, he is no longer its representative, and the protection he receives as an representative of the law is null and void.

[Mephisto]

Maybe it's a deficiency with how I explained things. In fact, that's probably exactly the issue. I didn't mean to imply any of that.

My $deity, I'm coming off just as sensationalist as those journalist hacks who wrote the article to begin with. Someone give me a good punch. I won't shoot, despite the potential for serious bodily injury.

[GlyphGryph]

Following legal standards, the police officer would have to be engaging in an activity that could reasonably be construed as the activities of an unlawful actor. Announcing his presence and presenting a warrant would completely preclude that and pretty much invalidate any defense. The article is... not the greatest.

It simply means that if a police officer is acting in all means like a criminal, it is the police officers duty to make sure civilians realize he is an agent of the law acting in the name of the law. If he does not, civilians who engage in self defense are to be treated as they would be treated if reacting to any perceived non-police-officer-involving threat. Basically reducing it to the condition: if it would be justified against a non-police officer, it would be justified against a police officer.

Yes, this can result in innocents getting harmed - just like the homeless drifter who thought the house was empty and just wanted to sleep on the couch for the night, there will be people who get shot that probably don't deserve it.

But I think it's better that the system treat people and police officers equally as best it can, and this is a step in the right direction on that front.

[Cthulhu]

Assuming it falls under normal self defense, and I don't see why it wouldn't, there's probably provisions that say you can't just start shooting holes in your floor if you hear someone walking around downstairs.  Unless Indiana has some kind of Stand Your Ground thing going on I'd imagine you need to be able to prove you were in danger to justify your actions.

If there hadn't been a hubbub about a law like this and the court decision that got people wanting it, I probably would've assumed the right to defend yourself against illegal police behavior was a given.

Faux-edit:  Yeah, what GlyphGryph said.