Breaking and Entering.

[CivicFan]

Last week the Supreme Court of Indiana ruled that the police can break into one's home without a warrant or warning and takes away the citizen's common law right for reasonable self defense in their home. I find this ruling extremely disturbing and an indication of how Indiana is slowly sliding into oblivion (if you want to read on the latest shenanigans of our lawmakers and governor, it's easily available in national news).

Here is an example of the dangers:

Quote:
Tucson, Arizona (CNN) -- A U.S. Marine who died in a flurry of bullets during a drug raid near Tucson never fired on the SWAT team that stormed his house, a report by the Pima County Sheriff's Department shows.


Please do not turn this into a political thread.

 

[Trav]

I wonder if they will give the cops new black uniforms with some nice boots?

 

[Spyder7]

Originally Posted By: CivicFan
Last week the Supreme Court of Indiana ruled that the police can break into one's home without a warrant or warning and takes away the citizen's common law right for reasonable self defense in their home. I find this ruling extremely disturbing and an indication of how Indiana is slowly sliding into oblivion (if you want to read on the latest shenanigans of our lawmakers and governor, it's easily available in national news).

Here is an example of the dangers:

Quote:
Tucson, Arizona (CNN) -- A U.S. Marine who died in a flurry of bullets during a drug raid near Tucson never fired on the SWAT team that stormed his house, a report by the Pima County Sheriff's Department shows.


Please do not turn this into a political thread.


The devil is in the details. The state cannot be said to 'break and enter' when executing a forced entry where they are authorized (by way of warrant, probable cause, etc) to use such force to lawfully enter a dwelling. Exactly what constitutes sufficient cause to use that force, and without warning, is up to the state to decide.

That's not to say I agree with such tactics, only to point out that the use of the phrase 'break and enter' here is a misnomer. Its also a misconception to believe that there would be any grounds to base a 'self-defense' claim around (another false notion) as it pertains to lawful entry - forced and unannounced or otherwise - into one's dwelling by LE when they are within the bounds of whatever probable cause or other means that the state dictates as sufficient.

Don't like it - welcome to the law of unintended consequences as applicable when a citizenry invites police state tactics by deciding its a *good thing* to trade a little freedom for a little more security.

Or as Benjamin Franklin put it well more than two centuries ago: they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Franklin elaborated well what history has demonstrated time after time: once you willingly trade freedoms you have for promises of security, you wind up on the short end of the trade; and that genie, once unleashed, isn't very easy to put back into the bottle.

And I can cite too many examples as to how you've done exactly that, and have - as many warned when this tendency began - fallen prey to the very things those so willing to make that trade were deaf ears to the price tag it must come with.

Edit to add: your example all by itself serves as sufficient grounds for the assertion that despite the trend toward several new laws and measures brought in under the name of enhancing security, it well illustrates exactly how that trend in fact provides LESS security and LESS freedom. If a US marine can be gunned down in his home by agents of the state with no fear of consequences, then clearly you have less freedom and security and no further example should be required to clearly demonstrate this.

-Spyder

 

[John_K]

Like that old song "Indiana wants me, lord I can't go back there".

John

 

[rshaw125]

Originally Posted By: Spyder7
Originally Posted By: CivicFan
Last week the Supreme Court of Indiana ruled that the police can break into one's home without a warrant or warning and takes away the citizen's common law right for reasonable self defense in their home. I find this ruling extremely disturbing and an indication of how Indiana is slowly sliding into oblivion (if you want to read on the latest shenanigans of our lawmakers and governor, it's easily available in national news).

Here is an example of the dangers:

Quote:
Tucson, Arizona (CNN) -- A U.S. Marine who died in a flurry of bullets during a drug raid near Tucson never fired on the SWAT team that stormed his house, a report by the Pima County Sheriff's Department shows.


Please do not turn this into a political thread.


The devil is in the details. The state cannot be said to 'break and enter' when executing a forced entry where they are authorized (by way of warrant, probable cause, etc) to use such force to lawfully enter a dwelling. Exactly what constitutes sufficient cause to use that force, and without warning, is up to the state to decide.

That's not to say I agree with such tactics, only to point out that the use of the phrase 'break and enter' here is a misnomer. Its also a misconception to believe that there would be any grounds to base a 'self-defense' claim around (another false notion) as it pertains to lawful entry - forced and unannounced or otherwise - into one's dwelling by LE when they are within the bounds of whatever probable cause or other means that the state dictates as sufficient.

Don't like it - welcome to the law of unintended consequences as applicable when a citizenry invites police state tactics by deciding its a *good thing* to trade a little freedom for a little more security.

Or as Benjamin Franklin put it well more than two centuries ago: they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Franklin elaborated well what history has demonstrated time after time: once you willingly trade freedoms you have for promises of security, you wind up on the short end of the trade; and that genie, once unleashed, isn't very easy to put back into the bottle.

And I can cite too many examples as to how you've done exactly that, and have - as many warned when this tendency began - fallen prey to the very things those so willing to make that trade were deaf ears to the price tag it must come with.

Edit to add: your example all by itself serves as sufficient grounds for the assertion that despite the trend toward several new laws and measures brought in under the name of enhancing security, it well illustrates exactly how that trend in fact provides LESS security and LESS freedom. If a US marine can be gunned down in his home by agents of the state with no fear of consequences, then clearly you have less freedom and security and no further example should be required to clearly demonstrate this.

-Spyder



Well put. Another good example is when freedom of speech was sacrificed in your fair country. Maybe your new government will see fit to resurrect it.

 

[Steve S]

If the little people would just wake up!!!.

 

[Al]

I think some worry too much.

All life has risk. Your chances of getting injured in an automobile accident are about 1,000,000 times this event. Your chances are probably higher getting hit by a bobsled in summer time than a police break-in event.

I wish I had the luxury of worrying about such picayune problems.

 

[CivicFan]

Originally Posted By: Al
I think some worry too much.

All life has risk. Your chances of getting injured in an automobile accident are about 1,000,000 times this event. Your chances are probably higher getting hit by a bobsled in summer time than a police break-in event.

I wish I had the luxury of worrying about such picayune problems.


If we do not try to control them, who is to say these incidents, which should not ever occur, will not become more frequent?

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I have seen way too many reports of the police harming innocent people.

 

[Spyder7]

Originally Posted By: rshaw125

Well put. Another good example is when freedom of speech was sacrificed in your fair country. Maybe your new government will see fit to resurrect it.


Freedom of Speech is protected under our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. There are only two exceptions to this right, both of which seem reasonable limitations to me: Inciting Genocide and Inciting Hatred (see Criminal Code of Canada, sections 318-9).

Freedom must always carry with it reasonable limitations and responsibilities. Democracy doesn't mean freedom as a blank check, and every democracy places limitations on all forms of freedom.

The line between freedom and security must be a balance: absolute freedom will entail no security, while absolute security will grant no freedom. The question is where to draw the line. And it is only reasonable to expect that enhanced security will entail having one's freedom curtailed to achieve it. The delusion comes when one believes they can gain more of one without giving up the other. The example posted by the OP demonstrates in black and white how this is clearly not the case.

-Spyder

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: CivicFan

If we do not try to control them, who is to say these incidents, which should not ever occur, will not become more frequent?

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I have seen way too many reports of the police harming innocent people.


Beiong in America for 65 years has shown me that we continue to enjoy more Freedom rather than less. I can concealed carry now where I couldn't in the past. The country bends over backwards to protect rights to the extent that the bad guys get away with far to much.

I know you haven't lived in this country that long but where have you lost any rights?

 

[IndyIan]

Originally Posted By: Al
I think some worry too much.

All life has risk. Your chances of getting injured in an automobile accident are about 1,000,000 times this event. Your chances are probably higher getting hit by a bobsled in summer time than a police break-in event.

I wish I had the luxury of worrying about such picayune problems.

Odds are I'll never have an issue with the police, but they do need to have a reasonably tight leash as they seem to be incapable/unwilling of policing themselves. We had a little lesson here with a couple bad cops attacking people filming during G20 protests and beating the tar out of them for no reason. Then, their fellow officers would refuse to identify the bad cops even though it was obvious that they should've been able too. Only public pressure is not letting the [censored] slide this time.

 

[Spyder7]

Originally Posted By: CivicFan

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.


Therein lies the root of the problem. The state's primary tool in enforcing the protection of its citizenry from threats both abroad and at home is in its armed forces and armed LE agencies. Both are the hammer. When the prescription for dealing with any ill is written by either agency, then the remedy will be the only one they are equipped to use. And that means the hammer will come down hard and often; and over time, the scope for it will broaden and people will grow accustomed to the sound of it.

And this in turn takes its own snowball effect as new problems generated by it are handled with the same remedy, and when it fails to deliver the intended result, people suggest the wrong nails are being pounded and point the finger at others that have sprung up and need to be pounded into place.

And so it goes.

-Spyder

 

[Spyder7]

Originally Posted By: Al

I can concealed carry now where I couldn't in the past.


And were LE to mistakenly observe what they thought were illicit plants growing in your back yard (or make any other mistaken identification which is far from lacking precedence), and execute a legally obtained warrant to forcibly enter your residence without warning, what do you suppose would happen should you exercise that right to carry a concealed weapon and draw it when you heard them crashing in.

The same right that grants you the privilege to carry a concealed weapon also grants you the right to defend your body and your dwelling. Yet exercise those rights under the mistaken assumption that the sound of breaking glass you hear in the dark of night is the bad guys breaking into your dwelling, and its not hard to guess how that ends.

If your lucky, you'll find those rights revoked in lieu of the many charges such an armed confrontation would result in. If you're not so lucky, well your imagination should be able to fill in the other possible endings.

-Spyder

 

[Spyder7]

Originally Posted By: IndyIan
We had a little lesson here with a couple bad cops attacking people filming during G20 protests and beating the tar out of them for no reason. Then, their fellow officers would refuse to identify the bad cops even though it was obvious that they should've been able too. Only public pressure is not letting the [censored] slide this time.


That was one of the most public abuses, though not the worst I can think of. In our own country, that dubious honor - IMHO - rests with the police who used excessive force and excessive use of the taser to subdue an agitated and unarmed visitor to the country in Vancouver airport who did not speak or understand the language, and the use of which was linked (though never directly) to his death. And which the excuse of an inquiry into afterward resulted in absolutely nothing by way of real consequences or any real measures to prevent a future repetition of the event.

It did result in our own provincial police force voluntarily invoking a prohibition on carrying or usage of the device by the police force here that still remains in effect today. They still manage somehow with training, their police issue sidearm, baton, and pepper spray and seem none the worse off for the prohibition on the taser - go figure.

-Spyder

 

[Al]

I doubt that any here have read the exact multi-page ruling.

Firs of all it doesn't invalidate the 4th Amendment. That hasn't bee repealed and it trumps any state law. 40 other states give officers the right to enter a home with out a warrant in the persuit of their duity. For instance if you are being attacked in your house..do you want the Police to wait for a warrant so they can enter and save you??

As pointed out there is a fine line betwen Anarchy and unlimited freedom.

"Ivan Bodensteiner, a professor at the Valparaiso University School of Law, said that the decision brings Indiana law in line with that of about 40 other states that don't recognize the common-law right to resist illegal police entry. Although he acknowledged the ruling was broad, Bodensteiner said it really didn't conflict with the Constitution.

"It's not a license for police to enter homes in violation of the Fourth Amendment," he said.

Bodensteiner said the decision doesn't really give police the power to enter anyone's home illegally -- it simply states that if they do, the resident must turn to the courts for relief.

 

[Spyder7]

Originally Posted By: Al

Bodensteiner said the decision doesn't really give police the power to enter anyone's home illegally -- it simply states that if they do, the resident must turn to the courts for relief.


In the example given in the OP, for reasons that should be clear, I think that form of relief is of cold comfort to the US Marine he gave as example.

-Spyder

 

[CivicFan]

Originally Posted By: Al
I doubt that any here have read the exact multi-page ruling.

Firs of all it doesn't invalidate the 4th Amendment. That hasn't bee repealed and it trumps any state law. 40 other states give officers the right to enter a home with out a warrant in the persuit of their duity. For instance if you are being attacked in your house..do you want the Police to wait for a warrant so they can enter and save you??

As pointed out there is a fine line betwen Anarchy and unlimited freedom.

"Ivan Bodensteiner, a professor at the Valparaiso University School of Law, said that the decision brings Indiana law in line with that of about 40 other states that don't recognize the common-law right to resist illegal police entry. Although he acknowledged the ruling was broad, Bodensteiner said it really didn't conflict with the Constitution.

"It's not a license for police to enter homes in violation of the Fourth Amendment," he said.

Bodensteiner said the decision doesn't really give police the power to enter anyone's home illegally -- it simply states that if they do, the resident must turn to the courts for relief.


If the resident survives...

You eluded to your freedoms by projecting your right to carry a firearm. Yes, it is a freedom but why do you carry it? For self defense and protections.

And when someone bursts in your house, your first reaction will be to try to defend yourself. Just like the marine in the story from Arizona. Will you survive the incident to challenge in the court?

 

[ArrestMeRedZ]

Some of what the newspapers called "Asian Gangs" came from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to do home invasion robberies. These groups were very well equipped (guns, body armor, etc.), dressed in black, and broke into houses en masse while shouting "Police!".

A uniform or badge does not a police officer make, nor does shouting the word "Police" while making what I consider an illegal entry, in accordance with my interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. If anybody makes hostile entry into my house without first showing a warrant and acceptable ID, I do not relinquish my right to self-defense.

 

[Tempest]

Quote:
Bodensteiner said the decision doesn't really give police the power to enter anyone's home illegally -- it simply states that if they do, the resident must turn to the courts for relief.

Then you don't really own your property or have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

But who cares? The government only exists to make the lives of people better right? I mean, it has full access to your medical records on a database for your own good, why should entering your house without a warrant be any different?

 

[Win]

Originally Posted By: Spyder7
Yet exercise those rights under the mistaken assumption that the sound of breaking glass you hear in the dark of night is the bad guys breaking into your dwelling, and its not hard to guess how that ends.


This is precisely why these raiding parties should be illegal, period.

Paramilitary groups masquerading as cops is an affront to the Bill of Rights and all these groups should be disbanded immediately. When the "cops" are as dangerous as the criminals, I can't see how the public benefits in any way.

The Arizona murder referenced by the OP is outrageous and despicable, the ongoing cover up makes it even worse (if that could be possible), and everybody involved in it from the law enforcement side should be charged with murder. You can bet everything you have that if that Marine had defended his home and killed one of those thugs, he would be charged with capital murder.

If he lived to get a trial.