Right to defend your home?

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this is why 'no-knock' warrants are a horrible idea.....


....do a search, there are plenty of people( and pets) who have been killed by swat teams in the middle of the night.
 
M-Cameron said it, horrible idea. If a group of guys were breaking in (one broke a window in the article) I would defend my family with my AR to say the least.

Even if they are police officers, there is no reason that they should be allowed to break in without knocking and showing you their warrant first (although there may be a few extreme situations). The reason I say this is because so what if they are LEO's if they don't have probable cause or a warrant they have NO LEGAL RIGHT to enter my home.

But it's ok, as long as everyone has their beer and facebook who needs rights?
Sorry, /end rant.
 
(although there may be a few extreme situations)
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Nope. Better nine and ninety criminals escape justice than one innocent man be harmed by the law.

The nation's cops and police chief sincerely believe trampling upon a few minor civil liberties is an unavoidable necessity, since it's so hard to catch criminals. I don't doubt it is hard to catch criminals. Some of them actually are clever and cunning, and many and probably even most wouldn't hesitate an instant before committing additional crimes to elude capture.

So?

Nobody ever said law enforcement is as easy as bolting widgets together in a factory. It's not an easy job. It's not a fun job. It's not a safe job, and it never has been, and it never will be.

None of that justifies throwing away our civil rights for the sake of making police work easier and/or less frustrating and/or safer and/or anything else. If we don't still have our civil rights, the rest of what's called "law" isn't law, but a despicable, loathsome sham. Breaking the law to enforce it made and always will make perfect sense to tyrants such as Lenin and Stalin and Mao, but it's anti-American!

If it breaks into my house, I'm going to shoot it.
 
I don't like the extremist view the article takes. Sometimes LE must do things in such ways. However, this doesn't seem to be one of those times.

If I were faced with a similar situation, I would have probably done similar and met a similar fate. I would hope there was a chance for some yelling of ID'd before hand though. It could get very bloody with 4 armed people in my house three of them female and two of them kids. That would never work out well for anyone and I actually think I would be glad not to be alive afterwards.
 
I doubt that any other law-abiliding citizen or resident alien would have done anything different than the marine did. And would fare about as well.

"Love my country, fear my government" used to be my sig line. That was long before the Gadsen got co-opted.

This is as political as I will get here.
 
i think we would all agree that an illegal arrest is wrong, and that you have a right to defend yourself against it: http://www.constitution.org/uslaw/defunlaw.htm

however, like GG's cartoon indictates, just because you are in the right, doesnt mean you'll not be just as dead. my concern is, what can you as an individual do to prevent this from happening?
 
what can you as an individual do to prevent this from happening?
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As an individual, not a whole heck of a lot. Mistakes with lethal consequences do happen as a matter of chance, whether from confused law enforcement officers or from a slip with a power tool, or an inattentive driver. Most of the things that endanger our lives are orders of magnitude more common than these kinds of mistaken entries.

What can you do to reduce your chances of this specific problem?

Don't do "stupid" things with "stupid" people which helps you avoid tangential associations that could bring you this kind of attention.

Make your home reasonably "hardened" and alarmed so that you aren't caught completely unaware by intruders -- whomever they turn out to be. (Get a dog -- even if they are quickly neutralized, they will make noise and alert you before the first thump on the door.)

Work out good lighting for your home that can be activated remotely, so that once you know someone's attempting entry you can see who it appears to be.

Have a plan to respond in an effective way to any unexpected entry. This shouldn't probably be kicking open the bedroom door and opening fire with a shotgun. More along the lines of hunkering down behind cover, making intruders come to you through a choke point you control, having someone contacting 911 as fast as possible.

None of this might have saved this man's life, but the shoot/no-shoot decision is made extremely quickly. Explosive confrontation is generally the worst way to proceed. (Even if you take down the first intruder you see, you aren't going to prevail against a whole SWAT team and once the shooting starts it probably won't stop until you're no longer in a position to care). A single second more for all parties to evaluate their next move might have made the difference. The earlier in the event you are awake and thinking the more chance you have of making yourself known as an innocent, and making wise choices about how/when to show yourself and/or who to shoot or not shoot.
 
what can you as an individual do to prevent this from happening?
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In this case, maybe not be part of a crew that commits a series of home invasion robberies of drug dealers.

In this case LEOs conducted an investigation and established enough probable cause to convince a judge to issue a series of warrants for the entries. Also bear in mind that this legal warrant service was during the day and not at night. While the officers were mistaken, in hoping that the wife and child would be out of the home, the objective was to arrest all the home invasion members before they could warn the other gang members
 
I don't have an issue with no-knock warrants because I know how crafty criminals can be in avoiding justice.

But if the cops serving said warrant screw up by getting the wrong address, then they should be held accountable to the higher degree, along with the DA and the judge who signed off on the warrant. Do your homework, get the facts right and if you have the slightest modicum of doubt, try again tomorrow instead of busting down the wrong door today.

Better nine and ninety criminals escape justice than one innocent man be harmed by the law.
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In this case, maybe not be part of a crew that commits a series of home invasion robberies of drug dealers.
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Don't do "stupid" things with "stupid" people which helps you avoid tangential associations that could bring you this kind of attention.
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Lemme get this straight- is this another way of saying, "he deserved it"?

#1- we have a right to freedom of association. people with which we associate do lots of things that others dont approve of, i.e. just owning firearms. that doesnt make you guilty.

#2- we have a right to due process. the courts have the burden to prove guilt. the victim was never convicted of any crime- the initial investigation was about marijuanna-the sheriff fabricated the home invasion story afterward to cover his tracks

#3- we have the the right not to be searched without authority of law. the warrant was not legitimate. it didnt meet the law's requirement to state particularly the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized; it was open ended.

these police raids could easily happen to anyone of us, regardless of guilt. we have the constitution to protect our rights from government infringement. I thought this was "The High Road"... To rationalize egregious violations of these rights as the fault of the victim is frankly shocking to me.
 
Can you point me to a link to the facts that the warrant was based on, that you are basing points 2 and 3 on?

I haven't been able to find it to read the actually documents and was unaware that they had been released
 
My first and foremost thought is what a shame.
What a shame that a husband and father who was only trying to protect his own died.
What a shame that a former defender of our country was killed.
Just a shame.

My second thought is, I should not say because it will be deleted and I will most likely be reprimanded in some sort. But you get my drift.

Just an absolute shame.
 
here's another article by same author that has links
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I've read the bog entry and it doesn't have any links to the warrant or affidavits to support or refute your assertions in post #14...it does however have the commentary you have repeated there...as a matter of fact, the blog says that the documents are not available to be examined for content.

Wouldn't it seem more reasonable to wait until they are available before asserting that "the warrant was not legitimate"
 
i think we would all agree that an illegal arrest is wrong, and that you have a right to defend yourself against it:
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Well, yes and no. I do believe an illegal arrest is wrong. However, if you know the guys busting into your house are cops, you gotta meet them with open hands held high. Even if they have no right or reason to be there.

First, no matter how well trained and well armed you may be, you are going to lose a gunfight with the SWAT team.

Second, if you were innocent when they broke down your door, you aren't anymore after you put a round into one of the boys in blue. That may not be right or fair or even Constitutional, but that's how it's going to play out in court most of the time.

Third, the time to press your case is in the calm environment of the police station or courtroom, not screaming through a splintering door at a team of amped up police officers there for a fight.

Having said all that... "No knock" warrant service has to stop. It's just too dangerous for folks on both side of the door.

(While we're at it let's stop the "War on Drugs" that make judges and prosecutors think these warrants are needed, but that's another story.)
 
Wouldn't it seem more reasonable to wait until they are available before asserting that "the warrant was not legitimate"
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Wouldn't it seem more reasonable to wait until he was charged with a crime before assassinating him? Nobody seemed worried about facts before asserting him guilty. You really think the government would release the documents that implicate themselves? please. suppose the warrant was clean. suppose they found even one shred of evidence to charge him with a crime. he should've been able to defend himself in court. they've taken away that right forever.

forget the warrant. suppose he was guilty of home invasion and selling drugs. does that deserve the death penalty? does that give the police the power to disregard the constitution and dispense capital punishment however they please? does that justify the institution of martial law and collateral damage? do the ends justify the means?

The details of the warrant aren't really the point here. constitutional protections are being blatently and criminally disregarded by the police. Dont rationalize this away; if this tragedy can happen to Guerena, it can happen to any one of us. the bill of rights is there to protect us from an out of control government. its funny how this site is full of people ready to defend the second amendment, but, who needs the others?
 
swagner89 said:
forget the warrant....

...The details of the warrant aren't really the point here.
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I'm pretty sure it was you who made them the point in post #14, are you conceding those points now that we know that you have based them on nothing more than speculation.

Wouldn't it seem more reasonable to wait until he was charged with a crime before assassinating him? Nobody seemed worried about facts before asserting him guilty.
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Are you saying that LEOs should wait until someone is charged before they can take enforcement action? So if a rape victim were pointing out their attacker, as they were walking away, you would have the officers take no action to detain them until they had been charged?

A couple of little points:
1. I don't think killing him before he was charged or after would qualify the killing as an assassination.
2. LEOs don't assert guilt, they don't find/attach/determine guilt...a person's guilt doesn't play into the actions they take. Their actions, as codified, are based on belief established through their investigation
 
I was kind of lukewarm and indifferent about this whole thing until you put it like that, Swagner. You're absolutely right. To trample on constitutional rights to make it easier to serve a warrant? It's just not worth it.
 
Legally for the swat teams what are the ramifications of breaking into the wrong home? If they came into my house could I press charges against them? Would they fix what they damaged?

My girlfriends apartment complex had firefighters breaking down doors that they ordered locked to make sure no one was still in apartments that they had just evacuated. Guess who had to foot the bill for a new door and for a hotel room for the week that it took to put the doors in. It definitely wasn't the fire department.

Would they just say we did it in the interest of your safety and let themselves off like they did to my gf?
 
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