Man defending home charged with murder

[Nightwing]

I HADN'T READ THIS, BUT WAS TALKING ABOUT THIS EXACT SITUATION YESTERDAY WITH A FRIEND.
I understand that if they're serving an important warrant that they gotta get in fast so the people inside can't go and get themselves armed becasue they have too much notice. But.... not knocking, or giving someone a chance to answer their door and surrender peacefully if they were innocent seems too dangerous too.
If I was sitting there and my front door came flying in.... you can bet I'd be firing like crazy. That doesn't make me a murderer. That makes me a guy that was sitting in his house when a group of people knocked at the same time they busted in my door and came after me.
Scary. So hard to draw a line on these situations.
If you were truly guilty of some felony crime they were serving a warrant on, I say you get stuck with the murder too. If you're a law abiding citizen that has no record and it was the cop's mistake (either due to bad information or just plain bad police work) then I say you shouldn't be at fault for defending yourself.
Hard one.... very hard one.

 

[Ithaca37]

I remember a time when there weren't cops and security guards in schools and malls, because they weren't needed. I remember a time when foreign terrorists weren't blowing up our buildings and people, or planes, or trains, or anything else. I remember when an event like Charles Whitman climbing up in a tower and sniping dozens of people was an astounding, incredible event that tied up TV for days on end.

Today, it's just another school massacre, just another mall massacre, just another church massacre, just another post office massacre, just another loony spraying bullets around his neighborhood. Ho hum, business as usual. Who's going to deal with all that? You?

Then there's the thousands of suicide bombers and commandos from sand land, and their activities aren't confined to sand land. They're all over the world blowing up folks who are only guilty of being Different From Them, guilty of Being Infidel On A Sunny Day. Who's going to deal with them? You?

In this country we've escaped the worst of it so far, only had several thousand murdered by terrorists, only lost a few billion dollars worth of property. Why do you think that is? Maybe, just maybe, it's because there's a lot of people with uniforms and badges eyeballing folks and occasionally checking out suspicious packages and behavior.

Fear mongering does nothing to help prove your point. There have been more people murdered by violent criminals here than the total number of US citizens EVER killed by terrorists. You have no real facts or number to back up your assertion that SWAT has done anything to reduce loss of life or property. Instead you offer the warm and fuzzy feelings of security that big men with big guns apparently give you.

Exactly what are the police doing to deal with school massacres and mall shootings? Nothing, they show up after the fact. That is their job. The police have no duty to render any form of assistance to you or any other individual. Look up Warren v. DC, and the dozen or so other cases and you will see.

This is not to say that a police force is not necessary, but it is not the guardian angel that you think it is.

If you want to challenge the claim that SWAT has done more harm than good, offer up some hard numbers and stop using your feelings to argue your side.

 

[NG VI]

This, among other things, is what I find particularly disturbing: "In the case where a citizen mistakenly (and allegedly) shot through his door at a raiding police officer, the citizen is facing a murder charge; in the case where a raiding police officer mistakenly shot through a door and killed a citizen, there were no criminal charges."

I understand that LEO's in particular and gov't officals in general need some level of legal protection to be able to work. Fine.

But I have a real problem with the total lack of accountability for wrongdoing that govt employees seem to be getting. There have been so many cases where an official of some sort has broken every single ethical boundary they could, and get nothing worse than fired for it. sometimes not even fired. it's sickening and not representative of American values.

 

[CraigJS]

LESSON #1 TO EVERYONE ON THE INTERNET...
DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ ON THE INTERNET!!! Most is wrong or BS or someone's slant on what is or has happened. Only time will tell the truth.

 

[NG VI]

Quote:
This appears to be a case where the thrill of humiliating another human being got the best of law enforcement.
Bull****.

Call it bull if you want, but I have known several officers who quite clearly got a thrill and got their kicks from humiliating people, cracking pretty unprofessional jokes on people, generally behaving like jackasses, like they were gangsters who'd caught one of their enemies and were toying with them before offing them.

It's hard to fully describe, but a large portion of police officers today really do act in ways highly unbecoming of their badge.

 

[zxcvbob]

I am amazed that a "small amount of marijuana" is always found after a violent raid on a suspected big time dope dealer/grower

Kind of reminds me of Dave Chappelle's routine where after a questionable police shoot [involving a certain race in his bit], the body is always found sprinkled with crack cocaine.

 

[benEzra]

Yes, I would have a serious problem giving up my 4th Amendment rights and being subjected to a midnight raid. By publicly displaying such weapons I am forced by circumstances to accepting the risk of it happening, though. By driving a car down the street I have to accept the possibility of a (controversial) random stop, or being mistaken for a be-on-the-lookout-for. I wish life was perfect, but it's not, and I deeply resent folks who make it worse. Just sayin' - act right, look right, and you should be good to go.

The problem in this case appears to be that a BURGLAR told the police the man was growing pot (based on grow lights and Japanese maple), which apparently he wasn't.

How is that different from the same burglar telling police you have "machineguns" in your house because the burglar saw pictures of you shooting your AR-15 or AK, and the police using that to justify a no-knock warrant on the burglary victim? This guy wasn't snorting coke on the street; he was burglarized by a crook who couldn't tell the difference between pot and Japanese maple. I surely hope the police/BATFE wouldn't take that as justification for a no-knock raid only days after the burglary.

 

[geophysicishooter]

Quote:
It looks like there's plenty of blame to go around but the only one paying any price for it is the one who had is domecile violated by law enforcement.

You're forgetting the guy who got smoked, and any family he may have had.

Having mentioned earlier in my post the life that was taken and the pain and anguish of the family potnetially left behind, I still concede the point.

However, I was speaking in the sense that the only one paying a price from a legal perspective was the shooter.

-------------------------

As far as the arguement that one should avoid growing plant material in the privacy of their own home that might get mistaken for pot or poppies or coca plant for that matter.. That is BULL!!

No one has any business what I do in the privacy of my own dwelling but me and those whom I choose to make it their business. From the libertarian perspective, I should be able to grow pot in my house smoke it all dad-gum day if I want and it not be considered a crime untill I take it out of the house and start peddling it on the street. As long as I don't make it anyone else's business, it should remain that way. No one has any business spying on me, not the police, not the CIA, the FBI, the ATF.. no one, up to the point that no one else is affected by what it is I'm doing.

Innocent people in a free country shouldn't have to worry about getting their door kicked in by a paramilitary police force in the night. Once that becomes accepted as part and parcel of being an American, then we're no longer "Americans". Not as we've known it to be and not as the Framers of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers meant it to be.

And this guy was/is innocent, certainly anyways ofthe crime he was being served on. If he had a growing operation going on there would be some evidence to that effect. All that was found was general gardening equipment.

What I think would lend some perspective on the case would be to know waht kind of relationship existed between the informant and the shooter prior to the break-in.. I think that might tell us what we need to know as far as how it is this guy came to be informed on in the first place.

 

[Jdoc]

I'm not saying all........

cops are bad but come on. This makes me sick . I think the home owner was in the rite but there be more to the story than what was reveled in the article so I may change my mind. Gonna have to see how it pans out.

 

[moe.ron]

I have one of these trees in my yard and it looks NOTHING like pot and never once sported a single green leaf.

I want to know some more details because this just smells...

 

[Harley Quinn]

Not a good thing for either sides of the fence, it will come out more in the trial and then most will not even be aware or care of their remarks made Just playing with the keyboard and being ignorant is no excuse, THR NOT...

HQ

 

[Sindawe]

I have one of these trees in my yard and it looks NOTHING like pot and never once sported a single green leaf.

Some cultivars of Acer palmatum do indeed resemble cultivars of Cannabis sativa.



Acer Palmatum

Cannabis sativa

In today's environment maybe it's not wise to dabble in plants that look sorta kinda look like marijuana, no matter how innocent the intent. Unintended Consequences.

In today's environment maybe it's not wise to dabble in firearms/chemistry sets/plumbing supplies that look sorta kinda look like machine guns/meth labs/pipe bombs, no matter how innocent the intent. Unintended Consequences.

I guess that since our governments and their hired hands are too frelling lazy and/or stupid to understand the differences between that which is legal and that which is not, we'd all best be sheep and do nothing which may be misinterpreted by the incompetent.

 

[moe.ron]

I had no idea, mine looks nothing like those

 

[cassandrasdaddy]

Remeber the guy was smaller than most females (under 100 pounds) and if the cop was anything other than tiny he was probably thinking that he had no chance if he made it through the door.


darn guy keeps getting smaller and smaller. his aunt says hes 120. where you guys getting his size from?

 

[LawBot5000]

The cops should have done their homework on this. I think it is unfair that he is being punished for their sloppiness.

 

[stubbicatt]

The cops are NOT your friends. Never were. They will hurt you, they will charge you without probable cause, they will do whatever they think they need to do to hang you out to dry. The ends always justify the means.

When they commit the same acts that send your sorry backside to prison, you meet the "blue wall."

Endorse any candidate for City Council who will pledge to cut your police department. Endorse all pro self defense candidates. Put the bullies out of business.

 

[RP88]

I view LE agencies the same way I view insurance companies: necessary, but unethical and abusive in their practices.

this is nothing different than what we heard before. However, without hard evidence that the trees were indeed pot, or if the evidence was indeed acquired by an unauthorized entry (i.e. break-in) without a warrant, then he'll get out of spending the rest of his life in jail.

 

[Crunker1337]

Screaming police, search warrant is a pathetic idea for cops to identify themselves. What's to prevent a criminal or aggressor from doing the same thing? Worse yet, cops can point guns at you for no reason at all... so if you've got a criminal that screams police, search warrant coming into your house with a gun leveled at you, you'd probably want to hold your fired, since it's probably a cop.

I think paramilitary raids should only take place AFTER negotiation fails. Means... call the guy up and tell him that they're going to enter if he doesn't surrender.

 

[siglite]

Just sayin' - act right, look right, and you should be good to go.

Conform or die, comrade.

 

[Baba Louie]

Just another senseless tragedy in the war on drugs in the US today.

(Ironic half truths follow)
Ryan Frederick should have just let them bust through his door, shot at whoever he thought it was once he could clearly identify the threat and die in a barrage of Police gunfire (in this particular case).

How dare he shoot through a door and put whoever was outside that crumbling splintered door at risk! Does not matter if they were criminals or Police Officers, he had no business firing into the unknown, he might have shot a criminal, a passerby or the neighbor across the street.

In any case his life is pretty much ruined, financially and emotionally, as is the life of Detective Jarrod Shivers and his family. Should he be cleared of criminal charges (I'm sure there is at least three of four charges he could be found guilty of), he's toast on the Civil wrongful death case that will follow I'd suspect.

The Prosecutor is stuck because if he does not follow up to defend the Police and enforce the law, how will he ever expect them to work together in the future? His client (Cheasepeake Virginia) has much deeper pockets than Mr Frederick and most taxpayers and politicians could care less about one gardener who admittedly smokes evil weed. Why... Mr. Frederick might or might not have been affecting Interstate Commerce by growing or NOT growing cannabis, a Federal thing (somewhat along the lines of Gonzales v Raich).

Guns, weed, Japanese Maple, Police informant, a death, lawyers... burnt toast.

Meanwhile another 200 tons of Cocaine and/or Heroin slip over our border... Coca from Columbia (an ally?), Opium poppies from Afghanistan (another ally?) help keep their economies robust...

(Ironic half truths off)

Prayers for Shivers family, Frederick's sanity and our future.

 

[poor_richard]

In today's environment maybe it's not wise to dabble in plants that look sorta kinda look like marijuana, no matter how innocent the intent. Unintended Consequences.

This was not an Unintended Consequence of growing Japanese Maples, it was an Unintended Consequence of the police’s shoddy investigative work.

…
Many have the paraphernalia for indoor growing, but most do not grow plants that are, or sorta look like, marijuana. Unintended Consequences.

Says who? I see Japanese Maples all over the place. Checkers, the local Bank One, my old apartment complex. Etc… They are extremely popular. Don‘t look now, but there‘s a bonsai festival every spring at the Chicago Botanical Gardens. Hope the police don‘t raid them.

People also mistake some cultivars of Scented Geraniums for pot plants. When I first put out Mosquito Plants, some of the local dope smokers came around asking about them also. Didn’t know I had so many friends.

I try to avoid talking down to people, by you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, and your spouting off misinformation.

…He made an unwise choice in his hobby and in his lifestyle, and a number of lives were ruined as a result.

Wrong. The police made a mistake in not verifying that the plants were pot. What happened was an Unintended Consequence of them doing a poor/no investigative work. The lives ruined were caused by actions based on bad information, not the actions of the home owner.

…
The Unintended Consequences of dabbling in home growing something that sorta kinda looks like marijuana. Maybe something else would have been a better choice to grow, or maybe growing his stuff in a more conventional manner inside his residence would have been a better choice. Whatever the guy was actually doing, or intending to do, he inadvertently exposed himself to unwanted attention by choosing to do something that looked questionable to others. He set himself up.

No, the police should have performed a better investigation. It is ridicules and sick to blame the victim for this because he should act like a sheep. This whole thing started with bad information. That is: someone said they saw what they thought looked like pot plants. Lots of people who are from the streets can’t tell the difference between a Japanese Maple and a pot plant. The police should have investigated it further before the raid. I’m more curious to hear why they were able to obtain the warrant on such flimsy information or, if that is actually the case.

I have one of these trees in my yard and it looks NOTHING like pot and never once sported a single green leaf.

I want to know some more details because this just smells...

Some cultivars of Acer palmatum do indeed resemble cultivars of Cannabis sativa.

That’s right, and there are over 170 cultivars of Japanese Maple. Lots of people have Japanese Maples. They are one of the more popular ornamental trees, and are a very common plant used for bonsai.

 

[jaholder1971]

There are more than a few posts on here that seem to prove my theory that Libertarians are nothing more than closet anarchists angry that they're not the ones doing the oppressing.

Every pistol and defense class I've ever taken has made this point perfectly clear: If you are required to do harm or take a life in defense of yourself or someone else you should be prepared to also defend yourself in a court of law. Right or wrong, that's what happening here.

You will rightly offer the homeowner innocence until proven guilty yet convict the cops in the court of public opinion before any real trial has begun. That's pretty hypocritical and pathetic behavior from a bunch of alleged freedom loving Libertarians!

 

[cassandrasdaddy]

"The Prosecutor is stuck because if he does not follow up to defend the Police and enforce the law, how will he ever expect them to work together in the future? "

sounds good... unless you let the reality that they brought in a nother prosecutor from 50 miles away to avoid just what you fantasize about. but hey like charlene drew jarvis said "it coulda happened that way" it just didn't

 

[Strings]

>You will rightly offer the homeowner innocence until proven guilty yet convict the cops in the court of public opinion before any real trial has begun. That's pretty hypocritical and pathetic behavior from a bunch of alleged freedom loving Libertarians!<

Not this ol' boy.

i convict all who use no-knock raids for minor stuff that isn't needed. That engage in basically military assualt without doing some form of recon, to verify (at least a lil' bit) their target and the necessity of such force.

Isn't it normal, in drug cases, to have an undercover officer preform a "buy" to verify that the "person of interest" is actually involved in dealing? Even THAT, to me, would have shown some due diligence. Sadly, I haven't read anything mentioning such reconnaissance...

 

[bwavec]

Just to throw a little more fuel on the fire:

If you woke up to the sounds of someone bashing in your front door and picked up your HD weapon to investigate, and as you approached the door, it was flung open by armed SWAT officers, you would likely not survive the encounter.

You would likely be shot, as that is how an entry team would typically be trained to deal with someone who would confront them and was armed.

While I certainly advocate officers using necessary amounts of force to help ensure their safety, it seems the idea of no knock warrants and dynamic entry in anything other than a situation where innocent lives are endangered by a slower, more controlled, wait them out type response, put officers lives at unnecessary risk.

In this case it seems that the PD took the word of a snitch as the only basis for a high risk entry warrant......the officers in charge and the judge who issued the warrant should be harshly taken to task for their actions (or lack there of by the investigative officers in the case). Because it was THEIR actions that resulted in the unnecessary death of a brave law enforcement officer, NOT the homeowner.

If the slain officer's family is looking for someone to sue in a wrongful death suit.....it is to those people (and their employers-who have much deeper pockets) that I would look to rest the blame on. I feel for their loss.