old lady new shooter
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It would certainly be relevant if the 911 operator passed the information to the officer. Is that known yet?
Police kill homeowner who shot intruder to protect his family after seeing him holding a gun
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Actually my opinion is based on the information available at the time. You don't have anymore evidence than I do but you are staunchly in the actors corner. I don't really expect him to be found guilty of much. Cops will keep killing people wrongfully and keep getting off free and clear. You don't like to hear that but it is the truth.
Not relevant.
There was a naked attacker in the house.
There was a clothed man with gun in hand when the officer arrived.
The report that there was a naked man would not have changed things.
There was a case in Boulder, CO some gears ago in which police officers entering a house in hot pursuit of an intruder came upon an obviously different someone who was holding a gun. They took a risk in ordering him to drop it before firing. He did not, and they fired.
He was the homeowner. He was shot several times, but he recovered.
The usual suspects on this and other boards came out of the woodwork demanding "justice", but objective investigations at a couple of levels concluded that the police were not culpable,
But not on any real understanding of use of force law, criminal law, or tort law.
That comment is clear proof of your bias.
Suppose that the shooter had been plain ol' civilian you? How would that color your opinion here?
Before you answer, do realize that your intervention, as someone other than an officer sworn to uphold the law, might seriously weaken your defense of justification.
old lady new shooter
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I disagree with your first assertion, and the second is not on point.
We are always advised to describe our appearance when calling 911, precisely in order to avoid being confused for the BG.
If the responding officer was informed that the intruder was naked and the homeowner looked like such and such and was wearing xyz, and he shot the guy fitting the homeowner's description and wearing xyz, it could be rightfully argued that the officer was not being reasonable.
If I called 911 and said I just shot an intruder who is a 6' tall male wearing a hoodie, and I am a 5' tall old lady with gray hair wearing a bathrobe, and the dispatcher passed this information to the responding officer, would the responding officer be justified in shooting me? I don't think so.
Like I said before, I still see law enforcement officers as the good guys, until they prove otherwise.
Good.
Which is insufficient to form a worthwhile opinion. So you are looking at thing through the distorting lenses of confirmation bias, and that is a prejudice and emotion driven fallacy
And that is balderdash. I have never once said that is not liable. I have consistently pointed out that we don't have sufficient information to decide. Obviously you are too prejudiced to understand the difference.
Further evidence that you are prejudiced. You refuse to accept the possibility that your negative characterization of the conduct of the officers in those cases was incorrect. When an LEO is exonerated in connection with a use of force, the determination will be based on far more information than you could possible have.
What could you possibly know about truth? You jump to conclusions without evidence. You form opinions based on prejudice and emotion.
The reality is, as is apparent to many who have more experience on this board than you do, that I have a high regard for truth. However, it's clear that I can't accept what you say as truth, because I also have a high regard for evidence -- something you manifestly don't care about at all.
I'm not sure what classes you've had, but while we tell students that we also tell them that they can't rely on that completely to keep them safe. Things are often happening too fast. Lighting is often poor.
The description will be most helpful to responding officers once the scene has been secured and they start to try to sort out who is who and what happened.
What was the lighting like? How distinctive was the clothing? If the homeowner was described as wearing a dark shirt and blue pants, that could describe a lot of people, especially in the dark. And does everyone know for certain that there's only one intruder?
Even if you were coming out of the shadows with a gun, and you failed to stop and drop the gun when ordered to? And how does everyone know there's only one intruder.
Again, details count, and it's never just one factor. These decisions are based on the totality of the circumstances.
Of course it's my opinion.
But I have been demonstrating in detail exactly what my opinion is based on and how the facts, e. g., your statements, support my opinion. And I have been exhaustively detailing how your opinion is based on specious reasoning, prejudice and ignorance of the law.
Everyone here can, for himself, decide whether my opinions or yours are more useful.
Pudge
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"I'm not sure what classes you've had, but while we tell students that we also tell them that they can't rely on that completely to keep them safe."
Frank, I'm going to be honest here, if officers are going into the house after an intruder, their personal safety isn't the objective, or they'd wait outside, the safety of the occupants is a higher priority, otherwise wait outside. Killing an occupant because you were concerned for your own safety is a failure of duty from my perspective.
Frank, I'm going to be honest here, if officers are going into the house after an intruder, their personal safety isn't the objective, or they'd wait outside, the safety of the occupants is a higher priority, otherwise wait outside. Killing an occupant because you were concerned for your own safety is a failure of duty from my perspective.
old lady new shooter
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Of course I would drop the gun if ordered to. Did the responding officer in this case order the homeowner to drop the gun? And the homeowner failed to do so? (I'm asking seriously, I don't remember reading that in the writeup.)
The Supreme Court has ruled on when and how force can be lawfully employed in search and seizure.
I'm not at all sure that any of that is relevant here.
The Supreme Court has also ruled that a police officer is entitled to defend himself as necessary when performing his duty--and in any other circumstance that the same protection would be afforded to a civilian.
It is most certainly not an issue of "killing an occupant because you were concerned for your own safety." It is a very basic matter of self defense.
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I do remember seeing that.
But seriously, if you were involved in a situation involving gunfire and someone were facing you with gun in hand, would you tell him to drop the gun? That would entail a lot of risk, and it might well result in your demise.
I certainly wouldn't.
Pudge
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Every stressor the officer was dealing with can be applied to the homeowner, and increased because of the lack of training and the fact that his home and safety were just violated and he had just killed a man. Add to that the potential hearing damage due to firing a weapon indoors.
If what the officer did is justified, why call them?
If what the officer did is justified, why call them?
That seems to be one of the things we don’t know. So that’s one of the reasons we can’t decide whether there’s good reason to conclude that the cop acted improperly.
Absolutely!
Surely that is not a serous question.
If one has shot someone, one had better call the police, immediately.
Applies even if one has deterred an intruder, or the guy has run off on his own.
But especially, if there has been a shooting.
True enough, but that doesn’t automatically make the police officer wrong. Again the actions of the cop need to be assessed based on how a reasonable person would respond in like circumstances and knowing what the officer knew at the time.
And we don’t know if the cop was or wasn’t justified because we don’t yet have enough information.
And that’s all part of the lessons that we, as private citizens and gun owners, need to be learning from this. If nothing else, it should be reinforcing the importance of us getting training.
Pudge
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It is a serious question, because the police proved to be a more serious threat to the homeowner's safety than the intruder did. If what happened was justified, I cannot see what benefit there is to calling the police before you have secured your own safety, and can meet them in low stress setting.
Do you have any evidence to back that up?
Pudge
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The recommendation to get training for how to deal with law enforcement just like we get training to defend ourselves from violent intruders would indicate you agree to some extent with xds45's comment. Maybe you don't see the threat as equivalent, but you see it as a threat worth training for.
Training, especially force-on-force, and also including competition, helps inoculate one against stress induced errors of judgement. The point is not to defend oneself against police, but rather to be able to keep one’s head and act appropriately under the circumstances, e. g. not have a gun in your hand when the cops show up.
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