Of course not on both counts.

I am glad that I not in the muscle end of the business as well. Some decisions you have .1 seconds to make and the rest of your life to live with the consequences of.

I had friends that made the wrong decision, and the rest of their lives was a very short time.

Visualizing Schwarzenegger holding a kitty cat. :D:D

An old picture of her. Sadly the dog is the wife's, I belong to the cat.
http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/m...5/STA70913.jpg

that's a pretty grainy video and I can tell that's a golf club. The cop saw something jump out at him and he fired. Imagine if it was a kid or something.

100% correct based on what has been fed to us by youtube and the media.

What we don't know is what the cops knew or thought they knew before entering the property.

I have been at several incidents, one in particular where I was one of six people in our mobile command post (so I know there was nobody from the press present) and listened to the press tell a complete fiction about what happened after the fact.

I still have to say that the video, and the evidence that we have been given lead me to the conclusion that the police had no business there. The fourth amendment is a sacred right, and a judge had to sign off on that warrant. That means that either there was more going on then reported, or that somebody royally screwed up.

Yes you're right, and I agree that the media likes to exaggerate. However, these media reports (from which I paraphrased) seem to be taken from transcripts of the post-shooting investigation, and the testimony of the shooting officer himself.

All good...

The shooting officer will have to deal with what he has done for a very long time.

Agree 100%

Where is the outrage?

...and there lies the conundrum.

We can accept that a decision made in a tenth of a second was a kill-or-be-killed decision by an officer, but at the very same time we cannot accept the loss of a life due to a series of failures by those employed to serve and protect.

Of course, we will account for human error, but at the very same time a person or a series of persons still need to be strongly held accountable otherwise next time you look out your window it will look like an all-out computer on-line wargame out there no matter where you live.

Seriously, if procedural failures and accidental deaths become too forgivable, everyone will sleep with one eye open and their gun at hand. I'm happy I don't have to.

The guy who lived there screwed up even worse by being home. Used to live there I mean.

How is that guy going to hurt anyone from across the room, even if it were a samurai sword?

I hope the guy killed had some family who can at least get millions and millions of dollars for that.
Yeah, and the victim had to deal with it the rest of his life, a very, very short time.

This happened months ago and this is the first that any of us have heard of it. Can anyone guess how many times that similar things happened since this did?





I can tell you, too many.


This should outrage everyone who learns about it. Sadly, it will continue to happen.

Why are "no knock" warrants ever issued for non-violent suspects? It seems like an enormously risky situation for police and citizens.

Seems appropriate only for cases where public safety is in immediate danger.

Yeah, but he was . . . . smoking weed!!!!!!! And he knew a girl who may or may not have sold it to him! Won't somebody think of the children?

Nevermind that in Colorado you can legally drive to the dispensary, eat a tray of pot brownies in the store, and drive away.

Because "these pot-heads" are a menace to our society who will go out and do nasty things to your kitten if they aren't stopped. This will turn you into a murderer during your act of revenge. So to stop you becoming a murderer, they have to stop the pot-head in the first place with all force necessary.

Or at least, that is how it was explained to me...

Murder.

It's not as simple as that... I'm not sure of the legal term. Maybe unlawful killing.

The cops didn't go there to kill him. They reacted to a perceived threat the way they are trained to do so.
As it turns out it was an inappropriate response based on the facts surrounding the shooting. But those facts only came to light after the raid.

The whole incident was extremely regrettable.

I read through quite a few of the replies here. I must say I agree with Jeff Higgins 100%.

In response to sc_rufctr: We should stop militarizing our Police departments and maybe we should also stop training them to kill people. Last I read, life, liberty and property shall not be taken [by the government] without due process. Police entering a house absent a warrant is a gross 4A violation, not to mention execution without due process.

True dat. But part of the uproar seems to be that--in this case--the officers of the law seemed to have created a great deal of this "environment."

Yep, a "no knock" entry (with or without a warrant) would be a death sentence for many on this board (myself included). Think about it...

I agree 100%.

I've been scared schitless MANY times when serving search warrants, ESPECIALLY when "assisting" the DEA. (How is it that I'm "assisting" when I'm the first cowardly bastard through the door??????)

For what??? A dope arrest???? A money seizure????? Who gives a F-ck about drugs in these schitty neighborhoods???? Its not my neighborhood, why shoud I care? Besides, the people who live next door are watching and HOPING that I get shot in the face the split second that I go through that door. The entire F-cking thing is BS.

Ive been a cop for many years and I have never seen how it has EVER been my responsibility to make a dynamic entry into a dope house to arrest some drug dealer or Felon with a dope warrant who BAILED OUT or was RELEASED because the A-hole taxpayers are too cheap to pay for jail space. So let me get this straight, I arrested him once and you let him out pending trial. I arrested him again and you let him out pending trial. And now I am being ordered to go into a house, that is possibly fortified, possibly occupied by heavily armed career criminals or possibly has kids sleeping on the living room floor, directly adjacent to my point of entry, AFTER YOU LET HIM OUT????

Point me toward a house where a psychotic father is holding his kid hostage and ask me to confront the father and save the kid. No problem. Thats what I signed up for. But send me into a a F-king dope house that the FEDS have done half ass surveillance on and have written a F-king search warrant based on a F-king three month old utility bill that was found in the glovebox of a seized drug seizure vehicle or was found in "prisoners property" the last time that the dealer got booked????

Finally, how about this??? If you don't want to live in a drug infested, crime ridden neighborhood, why not consider getting a F-cking job or two, or three, get your priorities straight, and move your family the F-ck out???

I'm with Jeff Higgins on this one. F-ck these elected officials who task police officers to go into these hell-holes and try to clean up these areas that don't want to be cleaned up. F-ck these poor people in these poor neighborhoods.

Equal protection under the law should not be guaranteed for every American citizen. Equal protection should only be for the people who can afford it.