Okay, well what about this situation out of Vermont? Subject is wanted for burglary and possibly a robbery and runs from the police. He is known to have had weapons in the past. When finally confronted, he ignores the officers orders and reaches behind his back. Is he just believed to be a threat or is he a threat? Does the officer need to wait for him to produce the weapon, at which time it would probably be too late to react to it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zhOYHYxz18
I promised to get to the rest of your post:
That is a good shoot. Believed to be armed, hand behind his back like he is concealing a weapon and making aggressive and threatening movement towards the officer. Honestly it looked like suicide by cop. OTOH if he was standing calmly I would expect the officer to show a bit more restraint, in this case the officer showed exactly as much restraint as I would expect, maybe even a second or so more restraint.
My point is simple, not obeying commands does put you in the "believed to be a threat" category but that in and of itself does not justify the use of deadly force. In the above situation there are all kinds of other factors that went into the use of deadly force besides simply refusing to comply with orders. It's very easy to make an argument that everyone an officer encounters could potentially be believed to be a threat.
Sorry, missed that...
I think it is a tricky situation. There are some states that say that using force against an unlawful order or unlawful force from law enforcement is legal.
Lets take the hypothetical to the extreme. Let's assume that you know all of the facts at the time and you know for a fact that the officer is about to shoot an innocent person who poses no threat to anyone. Do
YOU think that it would be ok to shoot and kill the officer in order to prevent that from happening, law be damned, your own opinion.
Absolutely not. I'm saying that many deaths are absolutely preventable and should not have happened either due to something the victim did or something someone else did, be it negligence or an accident. In the case of law enforcement, half of the deaths are intentional. Let me ask you this, if half of the deaths in your business were intentional, how many people would actually continue to come to work knowing that if someone is killed, it is because someone else intentionally wanted to cause it?
And you saying that police work is not a dangerous job is not accurate either. While it is not in the top 10 of what are considered to be dangerous jobs, last I checked, it is still in the top 15 or so. I'd say that's still pretty darn dangerous considering all the other occupations people can have. And I'll go back to again that of the jobs that are more dangerous, many of those deaths are preventable, which makes it a tragedy in itself.
Again, dead is dead. And yes, they would still keep coming to work assuming that the risk of death was exactly the same. And I don't mean to imply that they don't have a dangerous job at all simply that it's not nearly as dangerous as they say that it is.
I did some research on this event. Due to the negligence of the officers responsible for the search warrant, I think the County/Department should have ponied up for the medical bills, which it appears they did eventually as part of a settlement. The officer that wrote the affidavit for the warrant is no longer working there. I couldn't find out if this case is why she left though.
Oh lets delve into that situation a bit.
First of all, the female officer who obtained the warrant resigned while the child was still in a coma. All evidence supports that she obtained the warrant by lying and using false information. She was even indicted but we all know how trials against cops go. The officer who threw the flashbang itself was still on the job a year later, I can't find anything on him more current but he damn sure wasn't terminated for throwing munitions into an area in which he had no knowledge of what was there leading to the severe and lifelong injuries to a sleeping baby.
The Sherrif's office initially refused to pay just the
medical bills. They finally settled after it was found that the person who obtained the warrant did so absurdly negligently and even their own grand jury said the SWAT team conducted the raid "hurriedly and sloppily". They damn sure didn't want the suit to go to court so after fighting for quite a long time not to pay, they eventually settled.
Also please note that the settlement was at least $60,000 LESS than the medical bills and included nothing to help the poor child with injuries and severe scarring that he will have to deal with for the entirety of his life which has barely just begun.
EVERYTHING about this situation was wrong and fucked up, from the warrant itself which should have never been sought nor should it have been signed (the judge that signed it also resigned) to the execution and tactics of the raid. It should also be noted that the person they were after was later apprehended in a different residence and they didn't require the use of a flashbang to apprehend him.
So I will ask one more time,
where exactly is the accountability??? The family wasn't even made whole financially, no one was terminated, no one went to jail, the person who put munitions into a home without knowing a child was sleeping exactly where it was thrown was not disciplined and kept his job and the only people who didn't remain employed willfully resigned.
Actually, you wouldn't be charged in that case. The person that caused you to defend yourself would be charged in that child's death.
The real world begs to differ. A Miami man was arrested and charged with murder when a stray bullet killed an innocent bystander while he was legally defending himself. After sitting in jail for quite a while and a ton of legal fees a judge finally dropped the charges based on Florida's controversial "stand your ground" law.
I spoke to someone I know that does this work. He stated that flashbangs should be deployed by hand only and that they will try to deploy them in the entrance to a room. If there are people in the room, they are supposed to make sure that the area it is deployed in is clear of people.
I would say that throwing it into a rather large playpen would imply that he didn't ensure the area was clear of people.
I don't think it is unreasonable either. I amazed to hear when a search warrant is on the wrong location (compared to what the search warrant says). If a briefing is done correctly, especially if a SWAT team is executing it, they should know exactly what the house looks like from the outside (if not the inside as well) as well as the address and any specific things that make the house stand out.
I would think it reasonable that at least one or two of the people that will be conducting the raid, preferably the ones in charge, do a minimum of due diligence and inspect the area/home to the best of their ability before the raid is carried out. I'm not asking them to do anything that might blow their cover but in the above case there was a car with
four freaking car seats in it parked right next to the door. The absolute smallest amount of "detective" work should have told them that there were children present and as such incendiary devices should not be used. Again, officer safety before the safety of innocent civilians.
Things are little different between law enforcement and the general public though. In law enforcement, the idea that you might need to use deadly force is actually part of your job. So, yes they will be treated differently.
They also have much higher training and are given a gun and badge by the state. They should be held to a higher standard, not a lower one.
And I won't assume that they spend those few days calling their friends and talking about the shooting. And they won't be back at work. Immediately after the shooting, they are put on restricted duty, so at first they are stuck at home until they are allowed to come back and do office work.
So you refuse to assume that a person will do what is in their best interests when given the chance to do so in a way that it is virtually impossible for them to get caught despite it being basic human nature? That's interesting, do you assume similar things about other professions or is it just cops that you think are able to suppress desire to avoid repercussions for their mistakes? There is a mountain of evidence that says you are wrong about that even though I know there are a few anecdotal stories in all fields that you could present.
I realize there is the whole idea of holding people responsible for their actions. And I do agree with that, but in law enforcement, you cannot say that every mistake a police officer makes should lead to criminal charges. While someone innocent being killed is tragic, at what level do you say that a mistake is not criminal? An officer is trying to subdue a subject and in the process takes what might be considered an extra swing with a baton. Is that an assault that the officer should be charged with?
- Merg
While what we consider levels of responsibilities\accountability will probably never be the same I think that even you can agree that there is some sort of middle ground between the current state of virtually no accountability and what people on the other side want. Personally I would be happy with non-invested 3rd parties investigating police versus internal investigations and special prosecutors that do not rely on the cooperation of cops to do their day to day jobs. Imagine the absurdity of disbanding OSHA and allowing a construction company to investigate a workplace death and police themselves on safety policies 95% of the time.
How about a basic starting point. If you raid the wrong house, especially if you raid the wrong address and therefore do
not have the legal authority to enter said house and someone dies because of it then it is considered felony murder? The felonies are breaking and entering, kidnapping, destruction of property and a slew of other charges since you had absolutely zero legal right to break into the home and hold the occupants at gunpoint. How does that sound for accountability? I bet if that happened just once we would see search warrants executed on the wrong house drop to virtually zero over night as it is usually absurdly easy to verify an address and in cases that you can't be 100% sure other tactics can be used in order to protect innocent civilians.
I am awarded contracts for properties that I have not visited all the time. Do you think I can go out, get the wrong property, rip half the roof off and then say "ooops, wrong house" and leave? Hell no, I am held accountable for getting it wrong and the property owner just got a brand new roof for free and I am hoping that they are satisfied with just that. They can easily and rightfully demand that I pay them even more for any and all interruptions and just the aggravation of having an unwanted construction project and my guys can even be arrested for trespassing.