COMMENT,
Isn't entering a house illegally a criminal act,regardless of who it is, or are police above the law? As for the saying it's better to be judge by 12 than carried by six would also apply to law abiding citizens when defending themselves against unlawful conduct by police. As for Zimmerman, his 911 calls in this situation are IMO pretty damning. As for SWAT being held accountable, they should, Los Angeles County SWAT conducts surveillance(ground and air)of the target before hitting it, why is that? To make sure they have as much intel and to make sure they hit the actual house in question,and I find it hard to beleive the SWAT commander did his job when the address of the house they hit doesn't match the address on the warrant, it's just another excuse for shoddy work and then to compound the issue they want to charge the homeowner of the wrong house with murder for defending himself and his family against armed intruders who never announced themselves as the police.
Again we as leo's answer to the people, not the other way around and this law is just another step to make sure it stays that way. Since we will never agree, we will just leave it with the old saying we will have to agree to disagree.
Oh and by the way, as my last post I want to point out,it's been four days since this law was signed (which went into affect immediately)and we haven't seen the dire predictions come to pass, which would have made national news.
OFF THE WIRE
copblock.org
Tuesday night Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed the Right to Resist bill into law and the policemen of the United States went completely apeshit. There’s really nowhere better to go to write this article than the hangout site for cops called PoliceOne.com. Alot of people I know have changed their opinions of police after reading what the officers say on that page.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said Wednesday that he shares police groups’ concerns that some people might misinterpret a new law that lays out when residents could be legally justified in using force against police officers.Obviously Mitch wants to please both sides in this debate, but let’s just take a look at what the police are saying.
Daniels said he thought carefully before signing the bill Tuesday night. The legislation was passed by strong majorities in the House and Senate in response to public uproar after the state Supreme Court ruled last year that residents couldn”t resist officers even during an illegal entry.
Obviously Mitch wants to please both sides in this debate, but let’s just take a look at what the police are saying.
I think you see the point, police really think people are that evil, that they will now just play real life Grand Theft Auto and start killing at will. Which begs the question, if people are really that inherently evil, why give so many of them the power of the badge over everyone else? It always appears to me that the worst of the worst are in gangs, whether it be Blood, Crypts, or Thin Blue Line.
But will people really just start killing at will? I can give you one fact, the law and/or a guy in a funny costume with a badge doesn’t stop me from killing someone. I don’t kill or use violence because I believe it is wrong morally. Even if murder were legal I wouldn’t kill anyone and most people wouldn’t either.
This whole clamor that people will just start killing cops for sport because this law was signed is complete bullshit. People are good, not evil, and it’s not just because of cops and laws. Just look at this study done by the Institute for Science of Complex Systems.
Fundamentally people behave in a social and rather compassionate and “good” way rather than aggressively, even without specified rules. That is the result of a study from the Institute for Science of Complex Systems at the MedUni Vienna under the leadership of Stefan Thurner and Michael Szell. They analysed the behaviour of more than 400,000 participants of the “Virtual Life” game “Pardus” on the Internet. The findings are that only two percent of all actions are aggressive, even though the game would make it easy for war-like attacks with spaceships, for example.It takes alot of horrible circumstances to turn a person bad. Charles Manson was tormented growing up, the Unabomber was abused at a young age, John Wayne Gacy was beaten constantly by his alcoholic father and suffered serious head trauma. People are not born evil, they learn it or adopt it after a horrible circumstance warped their mind.
The report goes on to say
Millions of human interactions were assessed during the study which included actions such as communication, founding and ending friendships, trading goods, sleeping, moving, however also starting hostilities, attacks and punishment. The game does not suggest any rules and everyone can live with their avatar (i.e. with their “game character” in the virtual world) as they choose. “And the result of this is not anarchy”, says Thurner. “The participants organise themselves as a social group with good intents. Almost all the actions are positive.”All the claims that this new law, which took effect immediately, will lead to a bloodbath, is completely unfounded. Maybe the police are the ones pushing it, with all their drug war home invsasions in the middle of the night or early morning when people are sleeping. Alot of times people think they are being robbed when these raids happen and reach for their gun and point it at the officers and sometimes start shooting. And the response is always justified by the fact “They drew a weapon”
The interactions were fed into an “alphabet” by the researchers, “similar to how the genetic code of DNA was decoded 15 years ago”, says Thurner. “From this we get a pattern which reflects how people tick”. However, there is quite a high potential for aggression: so, for example, if a negative action is inflicted, the probability that the player will subsequently also act aggressively shoots up more than tenfold, even to about 30 percent.
Thurner and his team were also able to present by means of the pattern that the whole game is a reflection of reality. “For example, we could adopt measured values one for one for communication networks. A further measurement is that almost no one has more than 150 friends, the so-called Dunbar’s number, regardless of whether in the real or the virtual world.” The study has now been published in the specialist journal PLoS One.
The long-term aim is to detect “phase transitions in societies” early on using these measurements and the behavioural patterns researched in the virtual world in order to be able to forecast group dynamic social processes and to be able to react in the event of these cases in good time. “It is possible, for example, that through certain conditions the aggression level, that has increased tenfold, remains extensively in place and therefore systemically for a longer time, which bears comparison with a drastic radicalisation in societies. Consequently, we could react to it in good time.” A current example for such a phase transition in society has been the relatively surprising “Arab Spring” with its many protests, uprisings and revolutions, which, as is well known, were targeted against the ruling totalitarian regimes in many countries.
Human psychology and history shows no indication that violence against police will escalate because alot of people will always be afraid. But police and government history shows every indication that violence against citizens will always escalate.
Just remain vigilante, peaceful, and always stick up for your rights. Violence always begets violence, just remember that. Time to see now which side will be proven right, and I hope it’s our side, not the police
NEXT STORY, BELOW
Gov. says law protects police by narrowing circumstances where force can be used against them..
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| AIndiana Gov. Mitch Daniels speaks with reporters during the National Governors Association winter meeting in Washington, Saturday, Feb. 25, 2012. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen) |
Daniels said he thought carefully before signing the bill Tuesday night. The legislation was passed by strong majorities in the House and Senate in response to public uproar after the state Supreme Court ruled last year that residents couldn''t resist officers even during an illegal entry.
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The law took immediate effect.
The measure specifies that people are protected by the state''s self-defense law if they reasonably believe force is necessary to protect themselves, someone else or their own property from unlawful actions by a public servant.
Supporters have said the proposal strengthens the legal rights of people against government agents improperly entering their homes. But police groups worried about the measure giving people justification for attacking officers.
"For those who don''t take the time to read the law, it is going to be devastating for someone to think they have a right to resist if they only think an officer is acting illegally," said William Owensby, president of the Indianapolis chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police.
"Our fear all along was that it''s going to put citizens and officers into grave danger," he said. "I don''t want to have to bury another police officer."
A blizzard of emails to officials, a Statehouse protest and threats against judges ensued when the Indiana Supreme Court ruled last May that homeowners couldn''t use force to resist police officers'' entry into their homes, whether those entries were legal or not. The justices later clarified that the ruling didn''t abridge homeowner''s Fourth Amendment rights.
The ruling came in a Vanderburgh County case in which a man scuffled with an officer who tried to enter his house without a warrant while investigating a report of a domestic disturbance. The man, Richard Barnes, was convicted of resisting law enforcement and other charges.
The court declined comment on the law through a spokesman.
At least one supporter said the law didn''t accomplish what it was supposed to do because it didn''t affect situations like that covered by the Supreme Court decision.
"I think it was a feel-good measure on their part but it really didn''t achieve anything," said Greg Fettig of the tea party group America Refocused. "Police could still go in without any probable cause whatsoever."
Fettig added: "As far as I''m concerned as a private citizen, I will not let them in without a search warrant."
The bill''s primary author, Republican Sen. Michael Young of Indianapolis, said he believes the new law does a good job of balancing police power with individual rights.
"I think the governor took his time and deliberated on the issue just like we did in the General Assembly. It''s a tough issue," Young said.
