If you saw this guy, would you shoot him?

[Kirk Freeman]

Oh, they're learning something alright.

They are learning the wrong things. The a-holes in the popular gun press who are saying that "come buy a franchise from me and I'll teach you to point guns at people because there are no consequences to it" and "hop out of your car and run back to the police officer" are teaching downright dangerous crap which will get people killed. The a-holes in the popular gun press who spout this nonsense are nice and safe in their beds and suffer no consequence to this horrific advice.

1. It's just a traffic violation.

2. Relax.

3. Don't point guns (YES, THAT F*****G INCLUDES BLUE GUNS, AIRSOFT GUNS, CANES, INTER ALIA) at people, but especially the police.

4. Don't get out of the boat. Stay in the car. Stop running around and stop looking guilty. "Meye rye-its", um, there are the right of others at issue as well. The police office has a right to life and a right to act in self-defense. Don't make him exercise it. Stay in the car and throw the Boston T. Party book in the fireplace.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

I know my reading isn't as broad as others'....but there are people in the "gun press" that are teaching people to exit their vehicles during a stop?

 

[45fan]

I have read a lot of arguments about how it is COMPLETELY normal to get out of your vehicle during a traffic stop. Not so sure that we are talking about horse and buggy days here. I remember watching Andy Grifith shows as a kid, and even THEN people stayed in the vehicle while Barney approached them. Talking about "in that guys time", I am pretty sure that even in his seventies, he would have been a youngster (at least mid 20's) in that time frame.

Those that are whining (yes WHINING) about police pulling people over being out of line, and on "fishing expeditions", just wait until you loose a loved one (assuming that you have anyone that you do actually care about besides yourself) due to a drunk driver that COULD have bee stopped prior to the incident because of a tail light, or erratic driving.

The police are there to protect and serve. Working the odds, and reaction on suspicious behavior gives them the ability to react BEFORE they have to get into the serve part, and actually protect the citizens.

What I have seen here is many who have basically asked for total anarchy as opposed to allowing someone to police the general public to ensure safety of all. These are the very same that have cried foul and said that the police are violating their rights by pulling them over for suspicious activities. Well, guess what, if your wishes did come true, and the world were to be reduced to total anarchy, YOU WOULDN'T HAVE ANY RIGHTS IN THE FIRST PLACE....

Just an observation I have made by reading some of the comments in this thread. Seems that there are many here that haven't quite learned the concept of not getting to have your cake, and eat it too.

 

[CathyInBlue]

Ok, I'll play. Give me an example where you "stumble upon a LEO," absent him/or her believing there is criminal activity/shenanigans afoot, and he "appears to threaten" your life with a gun in hand.

I'll do you one better. I'll reference a real-life case where the police were threatening the life of an innocent homeowner (not me) and it didn't work out well for the unarmed homeowner. The particulars (names, dates, places, etc.) elude me, but the details don't. Old man, retiree, hears something outside his urban residential home at night/late evening. Goes out to investigate. No flashing reds and blues. No sirens. No barking police dogs or shouted orders, just footsteps and knocked over trash cans. In the real incident, the old man didn't actually have a weapon, but for this "hypothetical", let's say he did, since we're inverting the OP's scenario.

Homeowner is one of those "I'm too slow to run and too frail to fight, so if you threaten me, especially in my own back yard in the dark, I'm just gonna shoot you till the threat stops" types. He quietly steps out his back door and proceds to pie the corners with flashlight and handgun in a crossed wrists support stance. There's nothing directly behind his house, but suddenly, he hears his side gate open and notices a flashlight beam coming from street-side around the side of his house. He turns off his flashlight and gets into a dark corner so he won't be immediately seen and waits.

The instant he sees a handgun come around the corner (not pieing it), he makes the decision to fire. No punk's gonna make him flee his own backyard. As soon as the cop holding the gun clears the corner, the old man puts two in his chest and one in his head. Another cop comes running to the first cop's aid, thinking the shooting came from the back of the yard, not next to the house, and the elderly homeowner drops him too.

The homeowner hears shouts now coming from street-side and figures it's an entire gang coming through his neighborhood. Now, figuring he's well outnumbered, he manages to retreat inside his home back through the backdoor before anymore come to see their fellow bangers laying dead in his side/back yard, and he calls 911.

Now, what do you think is gonna stop the rest of the police force responding to two officers down from tearing this guy's house down with their bare hands to put a bullet to him? What's gonna stop the prosecutor from pressing two counts of premeditated cop killing (he did lay in wait, after all), and stop the judge from greasing the skids to a hot shot on death row?

In real life, it was the old man who came lumbering around the corner to get turned into a greasy spot on his own grass by a small group of cops looking for some fugitive or other they thought might be in the neighborhood. The cops might have gotten some additional training on shoot/no-shoot scenarios and put right back on the street. I doubt they got much more.

Lots of scenarios can be crafted which fit tidily within IC 35-41-3-2(k)

A person is not justified in using deadly force against a public servant whom the person knows or reasonably should know is a public servant unless:
(1) the person reasonably believes that the public servant is:
(A) acting unlawfully; or
(B) not engaged in the execution of the public servant's official duties; and
(2) the force is reasonably necessary to prevent serious bodily injury to the person or a third person.

even if the surviving cops testify in court on a stack of Bibles that their lights and sirens were going (even if they were not) and that they were shouting, "Police, come out with your hands up!" (even if they were not), or even if the prosecution makes some farcical claim that the home owner's belief that these were gangbangers and not cops is not a reasonable belief, that he reasonably should have known that it was the police skulking about in his backyard at 8 in the evening.

Hell, let's even admit to all of that. Once the old man was armed in his own backyard at night and the police were coming through his side gate (trespassing on his curtilage), shouldn't it then have been a reasonable belief that once their flashlights landed on him with his gun in hand that they'd instantly identify him as a threat and blow him away, as, indeed, they did in the real world scenario with an innocuous object in hand? Why would it not be reasonable for him to deny the police the chance to exercise their knee-jerk self-defense response to encountering a lawfully armed resident on their own property by employing his own knee-jerk self-defense response to encountering police with gun in extended hand performing what the police thought were their lawful police duties?

 

[dcary7]

I don't see how the scenario you described would require the old man to realize the first person is a LEO which is a valid defense in court (especially when you describe all of the LEOs clearly being corrupt enough to all get on stand and lie their @$$ off under oath) - not a biased interjection there at all....

My argument to your story is:

1) Assumming papi didn't illuminate his target before firing...or after to verify the threat was ended....

2) i can assure you that any responding officers are gonna light up the area - including the fallen officer..so for papi to shoot the second officer STILL without realizing who or what he was shooting at... first off seems very irresponsible of the shooter .... i could buy the story until the second officer came running in and got mowed down without being known. Also you stated he put two to the chest and one in the head on a moving target .....low light .....without being able to recognize the person was a cop .......

Questionable in my opinion....first shot.... I could sorta believe...after that I feel he was being negligent to not identify his target. After first shots fired... there will be police commands being given and leo identifying themselves.

Also im not walking around gun drawn searching for someone unless i have GOOD reason to believe he is there....also when i have searched for subjects in a neighborhood ..i have knocked on doors..asked people if they saw or heard anything...to lock up their house and stay inside.. so...could your scenario happen...sure....but easily avoided

Good scenario though...definitely thought provoking

I would say the defense starts to wain when the multiple officers are getting shot.

dcary7

 

[MT60]

Tragic all the way around. I will say that as a guy with two hearing aids who still struggles to get it right in noisy conditions and a guy who sometimes uses a cane, I'll be a little more cognizant when dealing with LEOs. Right or wrong stuff like this happens and whether or not it was ok or not to get out of my truck and grab my cane from the bed, which I have done, would likely be small consolation to my family or the LEO.

 

[CathyInBlue]

Lots of scenarioes happen that are easily avoided. In the real life scenario where grandpa coming around the side of his house got mowed down by the cops, the cops in question could have done as you said. They chose not to. In the OP's scenario, the cop could have identified the object as a cane/walking stick. I believe he either chose not to, or he chose not to seek out the kind of training that would have imparted the idea that old men driving pickups like to leave their walking sticks in the bed, or someone responsible for setting that officer's training curriculum chose to omit dealing with suspects with canes.

Virtually every bad resident/LEO interaction can be tracked back to someone making a bad choice. The ones trained to make good choices in such circumstances, and paid from taxpayer funds to do so, are not the average residents.

In my scenario, the officer made a bad choice not to pie the corner as he came around. I assure you I've never, ever seen a LEO walk out from around the corner of a house without pieing it while walking into a known bad situation. I added the second officer down as creative license to just insure the idea was hammered home that the oldster was capable of defending himself one on one and to insure against counter scenarioes claiming, "Maybe the other police didn't realize they had an officer down." If you like, delete the second officer down. My scenario would still stand.

 

[dcary7]

I'm not disputing your scenario or your logic on the matter. I was just pointing out what I saw. What seems to be the theme though is human error. No two encounters are identical. Everyone does things differently both LEOs and regular citizens. There is no cookie cutter mold of how things will always play out ...if you do A and B you always get C. Just not the case. There is human error inherent in everything we do. Some handle stress better than others. That is a hard thing to measure when employing people.

If you are an armed off duty officer...witness an armed robbery and draw your gun and stop the threat...detaining the person at gun point till LEOs arrive...theres a good chance you will get shot if your gun is out when police get on scene. Happened before...police shoot plain clothes off duty police. Thats why were trained to holster weapon before police arrive...and we know we are likely gonna be cuffed and our gun secured as uniformed police secure the scene. So here is a cop on cop scenario.....in my opinion...just as tragic

You can't train proof human error. I'm not sure what response everyone is looking for... we make mistakes just like everyone else. Ours can impact people just as negatively as a person taking their eyes off the road to text and hit a pedestrian.

I really don't know what everyone is looking for. Do we make mistakes..yes...are we remorseful about it...definitely.

Dcary7

 

[CathyInBlue]

... we make mistakes just like everyone else. Ours can impact people just as negatively as a person taking their eyes off the road to text and hit a pedestrian.

Difference: The latter is pretty much universally criminal in nature. The former, almost never treated as a criminal lapse in judgement. At most, it's treated as a "teachable moment" or a revelation of a need for additional training in the future. Without a signed confession, multiple witnesses that can't be impeached, or recorded conduct so egregious it bursts right through the thin blue line, a LEO with a serious lapse in judgement almost never sees blowback from such lapses.

 

[Denny347]

I never tire of the "I would do it better". This crowd does not disappoint. I was stopped plenty of times, had my share of run ins with LE, before I ever became a cop. I understand BOTH sides and understand what both were thinking. Both sides could be thinking rationally and the outcome is still tragic. Its this same ability to understand both sides that allows me to be a fair LEO, I have not forgotten from where it is I come or who I am. I wish I could instill my viewpoint as an LEO and make you see my side of it. Some of my fellow LEOs have indeed forgotten where they have come from but far more are fellow citizens just trying to do the best job they can. Striving to share my vantage point is the only reason a continue to frequent this site and put up with the BS. My passion for understanding/teaching outweighs the rest. Sadly, there are many here who will never see anything but their viewpoint and their ignorance is obvious.

 

[dcary7]

Difference: The latter is pretty much universally criminal in nature. The former, almost never treated as a criminal lapse in judgement. At most, it's treated as a "teachable moment" or a revelation of a need for additional training in the future. Without a signed confession, multiple witnesses that can't be impeached, or recorded conduct so egregious it bursts right through the thin blue line, a LEO with a serious lapse in judgement almost never sees blowback from such lapses.

So you would rather see police who are scared to take any enforcement action at all because an honest mistake where they were trying to do right and protect people would cost them their job/freedom/livelihood/ etc... all for the modest pay and daily risk they take. With no support from their agency and reasonable protection if they were genuinely trying to do right....no one would take the job. If you think we would be better off with no police you are sadly mistaken. If they were acting in complete disregard for public safety or malice .....they get hung out to dry. Even if not criminally charged an honest mistake can cost the officer in civil....

So I don't know what the answer is you want.

We don't get paid extra for the number of tickets or convictions. So a lazy officer or one who is avoiding responding to calls gets paid the same. Penalyzing honest mistakes would cause the officer to not try. What's the incentive if you're only gonna get punished?

Just a thought. Like i

 

[CathyInBlue]

dcary7, let me introduce you to the standard for LEO conduct as expressed by the Indiana Court of Appeals in the case of Gunn V State (2011).

The State recognizes Indiana decisions determining that an officer's mistake of law can never be reasonable but nevertheless asks us to hold that there are certain situations when an officer's good faith belief, later found incorrect, may be objectively reasonable at the time of the officer's assessment and sufficient to justify an investigatory stop. We decline this invitation.

I don't care what you do in your official capacity as a law enforcement officer, but I, and the ICA as well, insist that all official actions actually be supported by black letter law. If you do something unlawful, there's no excuse for it. Period. It's not a teachable moment. It's a criminal charge. The idea of "good faith mistake" has poisonned the minds of too many cops into thinking that whatever they believe the law to be is what they have carte blanch to enforce. Tis manifestly not the case. The law is what the GA has written. If any given LEO cannot be arsed to comport himself with the law as written, they are most heartily invited to leave the profession of law enforcement for one more conducive for their utter disdain for lawful authority.

We don't get paid extra for the number of tickets or convictions.

You do realize that you undercut any argument you may make when you make blanket statements like this. Every time whistle blowers come forward with evidence of pressure being applied from above to get their number of citations up, it makes honest cops, as I assume you to be, look like fools for making such claims.

 

[Denny347]

Difference: The latter is pretty much universally criminal in nature. The former, almost never treated as a criminal lapse in judgement. At most, it's treated as a "teachable moment" or a revelation of a need for additional training in the future. Without a signed confession, multiple witnesses that can't be impeached, or recorded conduct so egregious it bursts right through the thin blue line, a LEO with a serious lapse in judgement almost never sees blowback from such lapses.

BS. I've worked far too many fatal crashes/people struck to remember them all. However none resulted in a single criminal charge. They were tragic mistakes...nothing more. NOTHING is "universal" in this world...NOTHING. I could build a city in the empty space between what you think you know about this and what is REAL.

 

[dcary7]

Ok Cathy, let me rephrase that, I have never seen a regular police officer make extra money from writing extra tickets or getting convictions. Im not talking about being paid overtime for additional enforcement, but I have no knowledge of what you are inferring. If I write 1 ticket or 1000 tickets this year, it doesn't increase my chance of promotion or my set salary.../shrug

Haha well thank you for the "free education/introduction" to the ICA. Had I known before that I could receive it here for free, I would not have paid for my degree in criminal justice from Indiana. That is just a complete failure on my part...

With that being said, I am familiar with Indiana Law as well as the Gunn vs State case. That is basically saying that an officer cannot charge for whatever he wants/believes to be a violation of the law. If he is mistaken, then the stop is not valid. However, it still supports the Terry v. Ohio allowing the officer to make a preliminary stop/detention for investigative purposes so long as he can articulate the totality of circumstances which support his belief that a violation has/is about to occur. I understand completely that the law is concrete, and cannot be bent to the officer's will to allow him to enforce the law as he deems fit. I don't recall ever indicating that. If I did, it was without a doubt not my intention.

The way I read your post, it sounds like you feel officers bend and contort the Good Faith Doctrine to suit their needs for illegal detentions and searches. Which is a LONG WAY off of the point I am trying to make. You still have yet to answer me as to "What are you wanting to see done to an officer who makes a decision to the best of his ability to try and do good, but is later found to be wrong?" String him up? Hang him out to dry? You realize officers can be held just as responsible for NOT ACTING when they should? Failure to act will get you in hot water, acting and being wrong will get you in hot water.... so you are asking officers to be proactive, aggressive when warranted, and NEVER make a mistake in a 25-30 year career.

I understand what you are saying... I agree an officer cannot act outside the law or conform the law to his liking. That's not what I'm getting at. If someone walks up behind you at the ATM and tries to rob you with a spray painted water gun or a air soft gun, you shoot and kill him, turns out he couldn't have really harmed you anyway... how do you justify lethal force? You would've got a welt or sprayed in the face. You know that if you walk into a bank and pass a note to the clerk saying you will kill everyone in there if she doesn't give you the money, whether you are armed or not. The penalty is pretty well the same. You are instilling the fear of a life threatening situation. So if you can articulate that you believed the gun was real... its justified... if he can articulate he thought the cane was a shotgun, its justified. Google - Single Shot Cane Gun... guess what... it could've been his cane and shotgun... not saying that is justification to shoot him... it would be easier to know all the facts before making a decision, but that's never the case. You can make the handle bars of a motorcycle a single shot shotgun...

So what do you propose? What happens? You didn't answer any of the questions I have asked... you provided a link to law I am familiar with. I'm not saying you are wrong.... that's what is funny to me. You act like I am defending crooked police work.. or justifying all actions so long as it produces results... far from it. But nowhere in the hundreds of responses has anyone provided a valid or logical solution.

- dcary7

 

[Denny347]

WTF? Not all mistakes=crimes. This rule applies to ALL citizens of this fine State. Believing otherwise is a fallacy.

 

[Sarge470]

Here's another video that was probably on the first officer's mind as he made his stop. Remember folks, virtually every lesson we learn in tactical/survival training was paid for in blood at one point or another. To ignore the lesson is to render the officer's sacrifice worthless.

Police shootout - Trooper Randall Wade Vetter - Texas Department of Public Safety - YouTube

 

[KG1]

I don't doubt that those types of videos could very well have played a part in the officer's reaction to a perceived threat.

On the other hand, I could be wrong but somehow I don't get the impression that grandpa in the op watches youtube videos of cops being shot at to know enough about tactically surviving an encounter with a police officer.

I'm sure it was the furthest thing from his mind when he stepped out of the vehicle. Again, two very different perspectives at play.

 

[dcary7]

WTF? Not all mistakes=crimes. This rule applies to ALL citizens of this fine State. Believing otherwise is a fallacy.

Agreed.

 

[CathyInBlue]

The way I read your post, it sounds like you feel officers bend and contort the Good Faith Doctrine to suit their needs for illegal detentions and searches. Which is a LONG WAY off of the point I am trying to make.
I understand what you are saying... I agree an officer cannot act outside the law or conform the law to his liking.

You still have yet to answer me as to "What are you wanting to see done to an officer who makes a decision to the best of his ability to try and do good, but is later found to be wrong?" String him up? Hang him out to dry?

I will answer your direct question directly and in response, I hope you will answer mine. What do you think should happen to officers who perform illegal detentions/searches claiming good faith or who act outside of the law, of which they evince profound ignorance? Keep in mind, I am myself the victim of just such LEO behaviour and am still being punished while they (plural) have experienced no punishment of which I am cognizant.

Now, to your question. How about bringing every homicide at the hands of LEOs before a grand jury, and every incident involving the discharge of a LEO's firearm as well. But not a grand jury within the jurisdiction which the LEOs directly serve. It must be from another part of the state, and the grand jury is to judge the actions of the LEOs, not as LEOs, but as ordinary citizens. Denny says he's always cognizant of his status as an ordinary citizen when he's doing police work. This is good. Let all police actions that put the public at risk be judged co-equally as would be those same actions if performed by a non-LEO. If non-LEOs would be no-billed and cut loose by a grand jury, then it is well and proper that LEOs would be granted the same dispensation. But, if an act would be viewed by a grand jury as a criminal assault/homicide if committed by a non-LEO, then they should be given the opportunity to pass such a judgement on a LEO without their status as a LEO (read: super citizen) clouding said judgement.

I do not like law enforcement agencies that investigate themselves or their own. That is transparency indistinguishable from opacity. Even civilian review boards are indistinguishable from any other organ of the LE agency. Any cop who goes before a grand jury, for being what I would judge to be too quick on the trigger, and gets no-billed, I can accept that he was justified because 18 of my fellows heard more evidence than I had and said so. If that same cop is cleared by an IAD investigation, I have no such satisfaction of impartiality.

You realize officers can be held just as responsible for NOT ACTING when they should? Failure to act will get you in hot water, acting and being wrong will get you in hot water.... so you are asking officers to be proactive, aggressive when warranted, and NEVER make a mistake in a 25-30 year career.

What I demand of my LEOs is nothing less than they demand of everyone else. Behave lawfully. But as paid, sworn officers of the law, you do have greater demands placed on you. Price of privilege. If the law changes, as it can any day of the year, you have an affirmative requirement to change with it. If a non-LEO can be brought up on charges stemming from a law that went into effect yesterday, so too should a LEO be for attempting to enforce a law that was repealed yesterday. If you disagree, then you think the good faith doctrine is a license to kidnap through false arrest.

And not just enrolled acts of the legislature, but every decision of the ICA and ISC which does not directly reinforce prior precedent or merely reiterate EAs. If such continual reeducation is too much for LEOs to manage individually, then let each agency dedicate a paralegal employee to do so and issue periodic memoranda to each and every sworn officer for them to read, and probably photocopy; sign, denoting acceptance of their responsibility to enforce any new law as law and to cease enforcing any superceded law as law; and return to the department for record keeping of same.

I have to wonder, but for a system such as this, how many LEOs out there still think the ISC's Barnes decision is the law of the land. I know my city prosecutor still did, over 6 months after it had been superceded by statute.

I have no idea what we taxpayers pay such legal professionals for if they are unwilling or unable to maintain themselves and their legal understanding in an up-to-date fashion.

 

[Denny347]

I will answer your direct question directly and in response, I hope you will answer mine. What do you think should happen to officers who perform illegal detentions/searches claiming good faith or who act outside of the law, of which they evince profound ignorance? Keep in mind, I am myself the victim of just such LEO behaviour and am still being punished while they (plural) have experienced no punishment of which I am cognizant.

They go to jail, as they should. File a federal civil rights violation suit. DOJ will investigate. If IA, prosecutors office, and DOJ won't touch it, maybe there isn't anything there.

Now, to your question. How about bringing every homicide at the hands of LEOs before a grand jury, and every incident involving the discharge of a LEO's firearm as well. But not a grand jury within the jurisdiction which the LEOs directly serve. It must be from another part of the state, and the grand jury is to judge the actions of the LEOs, not as LEOs, but as ordinary citizens. Denny says he's always cognizant of his status as an ordinary citizen when he's doing police work. This is good. Let all police actions that put the public at risk be judged co-equally as would be those same actions if performed by a non-LEO. If non-LEOs would be no-billed and cut loose by a grand jury, then it is well and proper that LEOs would be granted the same dispensation. But, if an act would be viewed by a grand jury as a criminal assault/homicide if committed by a non-LEO, then they should be given the opportunity to pass such a judgement on a LEO without their status as a LEO (read: super citizen) clouding said judgement.

Indy sends ALL LE shootings resulting in death to the Grand Jury. I see no advantage to going to a different city for this and see a greater expense in doing so. Indy's Grand Jurty is quite capable of doing the job that Indy's citizens expect of them.