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Because if you fight the police when you are innocent you may acquire some legitimate charges on your way to being "right" and possibly endanger your life and others along the way.
In our society police do not do the judging, and I feel this is good, they do the policing and judges decide. Police do not convict your nor do they declare your innocence so you are arguing with someone that cannot help you.
Yes, but either way you will end up fired from your job, the arrest in the paper for future employers to see (ruining chances of decent employment potentially in the future), and they sometimes beat and kill you even when you don't fight back.
Well, if police are supposed to ASSUME someone innocent, breaking down doors and dragging people off in handcuffs, BEFORE any court hearing, does not seem like they really are assuming innocence, if anything they are assuming guilt.
Police were responding to a 911 call. They were not judging or judging guilt, they were responding and at some level investigating.
You will serve yourself better if you do not make assumptions or create straw man arguments.
Quote:
Originally Posted by yspobo
Yes, but either way you will end up fired from your job, the arrest in the paper for future employers to see (ruining chances of decent employment potentially in the future), and they sometimes beat and kill you even when you don't fight back.
I think this could possibly happen in some sever cases but in general I do not think this does happen. You could get arrested for a DUI but not convicted and it may have little to no affect on your life. If you get arrested for child pornography and even if you are innocent and not found guilty you may have a hard time getting a job.
I am not sure how many employers do background checks but most applications state the question something like "Have you been convicted of a crime in the last 10 years?".
This isn't a case where officers had a warrant but hit the wrong house, or where they arbitrarily targeted a house for which they had no probable cause - both of which would be proactive law enforcement efforts, and that changes the fact pattern. This was a reactive case in which several uniformed officers responded to Mr. Motorola (their radio dispatch) who, it turned out, gave them the wrong address. They proceeded in a reactive fashion to a call for help, unaware they were responding to the wrong location for said call for help.
Has someone perhaps a tort against a police department? Perhaps. Depends on the facts of the case (and the facts don't look very strong in this one.)
But the basic concept is, can you shoot a policeman who is, in good faith and using proper judgement, acting to solve a problem to which he or she was dispatched? Nope - and there are several cases that say so. (Not in my office right now and I'm not going to look them up, but the Supremes started handing them down in the 1980s when the Court recognized that even cops - or dispatchers - make mistakes.)
The Chief Judge of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled in one of my cases, "First you comply. Then you contest [in court]." Opening fire on a uniformed officer based solely on the premise that you don't know why he or she is in your home acting in an official fashion is no longer justifiable homicide. Not in any jurisdiction I am aware of.
Again - a lawsuit? Again, perhaps. (Turns out the errant cops inadvertently hit a known felon's residence who had a bunch of dope in his house. Go figure.) But can you kill a cop in your house simply because you don't know what 's he's doing? Nope. Not anymore. Hasn't been that way for decades.
Oh, do tell us when was Bad Elk overturned, counselor?
And you should check out Barnes v Indiana.
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