Can anyone explain ...
Alan Cresswell
Admin
in Hell
... how three men can force their way into an apartment and shoot the young woman living there six times and face only the most minor charges.
Because, it makes no sense to me at all.
Because, it makes no sense to me at all.
Comments
If you unpick it you see lots of unconscious assumptions and prejudices at work.
No knock warrants? Well, they'll only be used on drug dealers...
Sensible academic lawyers always ask the question: what if the suspect is innocent and we enact this power?
Populists politicians say; it's them not you and we all know they're guilty of something...
This is what systemic racism looks like.
AFZ
The discussion I heard about on NPR confused me. It *sounded* like that cop shot into the other apartment from outside the door of Brehona's apartment. I can't even envision that, unless the cop went full berzerk crazy. It would make tragic sense if the cop shot from inside Brehonna's apartment, and some bullets went through the wall.
But not charging anyone for killing Brehonna--not even for some kind of lesser charge--makes no sense to me, either.
Same old, same old.
https://bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54210448
That does not make it even slightly better.
If someone breaks into your home in the night, and you are legally armed, that is going to be your moment to use your gun. Why else have it?
If you are an armed policeman on a raid and someone uses a gun on you, you are going to return fire. Why else be armed?
So to reduce public (our) outrage at the inevitable deaths and injuries, you have to make certain you only ever raid the address of the guilty (of something) - where the deaths and injuries get mushed in the minds of the public into some kind of just sentence on those untried, and the outrage diminishes. But that certainty is impossible, and anyway only hides a shocking extra-judicial maiming or murder.
The legislature made that happen - or at least more likely - when they decided to send the coppers in with a 'no-knock' scenario. If I were a copper, I would resign if I could afford to do so. Or perhaps (seriously) stand around with hands in pockets and wait to be shot. What else to do?
I suppose if you know if enough for a warrant you could plan your raid in advance. Maybe use surveillance to check the target is alone for example, maybe chuck tear gas through the window and wait for the person to come out or some other strategy that doesn't involve a really really obviously high risk of a shoot out.
In all the accounts I've seen it's been stated that the 'no-knock' warrant was granted on the basis of a suspicion that the ex-boyfriend was using the apartment as a place for drugs packages to be delivered to. Before smashing in the door in the middle of the night, where was the surveillance of the property to see if there were packages being delivered, or if people were leaving with packages to pass onto the ex-boyfriend? The police work investigating what was happening to get evidence to support the application for a warrant to enter and search the property. Or, why not wait until both people there were out at work to enter and search? No chance of anyone shooting back then.
Added to which, these were supposedly well trained, professional police officers. One shot is fired at them by someone with probably no training, who's only just woken up and isn't alert, hitting one of the intruders in the leg. The cops return fire, with 20 rounds - 6 hit the unarmed resident, some even get fired into the neighbours apartment and none hit the person shooting at them. As well as the cops who fired, there's basis there for charging those who'd trained them as their training was clearly inadequate if they're not as good with their guns as the man defending himself when rudely awakened in the middle of the night.
Banging on the door, shouting "Police!" and then smashing in the door is functionally identical to just smashing in the door.
The sense of it is racism. I'm not saying that that is a sensible doctrine, but if a police force is imbued with it, and encouraged by the government, killings like this seem inevitable, unless you have an enlightened police force, that is not structurally racist. Well, you can dream.
But the broad consensus was that the Met were mostly lying, and the civvies were mostly telling the truth as they experienced it.
During the BLM protests over Breonna Taylor's death, the National Guard killed another innocent person and the police shot two journalists with pepper bullets while they were reporting live on TV. When the mayor attended the police roll call to discuss making some reforms they walked out on him.
This is why people are talking about "defund the police" and "abolish the police" - because the harm to Black citizens, and the policy of treating all of them as criminals, is baked so deeply into the system that it can't be reformed away.
Did I say that makes it okay? No. I said all cops are bastards. But the problem is with the police, not three random men who broke into an apartment and killed someone, which is what the OP made it sound like. Focus on the police.
One thing that is very clear, if all of a group exactly agree, they are lying. It is as close to impossible for that to occur naturally as just about anything can be.
It can be prevented by not breaking in to people's homes in the middle of the night. Even if people are armed, it's quite possible to arrest them without provoking a shootout. "No-knock" warrants are very much more risky for the suspect and anyone they live with, and I'm not convinced they're less risky for the police, although that is their intention.
The OP did not refer to 'random' men.
But yes - the problem is indeed with the *police*.
However, you said: They were three cops who poorly executed a bad search warrant and killed a woman after her boyfriend justifiably fired upon them.
To me, that sounds as though you are making excuses for them.
I prefaced what I said by saying all cops are bastards and that I think cops are bad. How you then arrive I could defend the cops in extra-judicial murder is beyond me.
People who have never been in a stressful situation such as having one's door forcefully broken in with no warning might think it is as simple as the police announcing themselves. It is not.
In the stress and adrenaline siltation such as that, what you hear and your brain process in the moment are different things. A no-knock warrant amplifies the probability of error.
I think the point of "random men" is that they were in plainclothes. That is, there was no way for the boyfriend to know they were cops when they smashed in his door when he was sleeping. Being a licensed gun owner, it was his legal right to shoot at home invaders. If the police had been in uniform and maybe not smashed in the door in the middle of the night he would have known not to shoot at them.
Ask Philando Castile how much good it does you to be a licensed gun owner if your skin is the wrong color...
They would indeed have seemed like any common-or-garden felon, bent on murder or robbery, to someone suddenly woken from sleep by having his door bashed down...
Doesn't make the ghastly situation any better, of course.
When crashing into a property in the middle of the night, first change into your uniform and add as much hi-vis identifies that you're police that you can find.
One of the things that has received less coverage is that the no-knock warrant was (allegedly) issued based upon deliberately false information.
If true, that sounds like perjury and, if the detective discussed this with other officers, conspiracy. But apparently no one is willing to open that particular can of worms for fear of discovering that a lot of drug-related warrants are issued based on knowingly false statements.
A can of worms, indeed...
This CNN account describes the three officers as "plainclothes narcotics officers".
It's possible that they weren't in plainclothes when they served that warrant, but if the excuse for them not wearing body cameras that night is that they were plainclothes officers, that implies they were in plainclothes during the shooting.
Of course, photos taken that day show them wearing at least some police identifiers. They also show one officer wearing a body camera and another wearing a body camera mount which leads to a couple of unpleasant possibilities:
To be clear, the police usually assume there is the possibility of illegal activity. The problem is that the assumptions will more likely be made for people of colour and that during the action, animus will be more likely assumed if the person has a surfeit of melanin. Also the police operates under the assumption that they will be supported in their actions if the victims are not white.
Or just don't raid homes at all. Hostage situation, sure. Raid away. Home of some one person accused of some crime? No. There are other ways to apprehend suspects.
Agreed. Especially in the case of a drug bust. Like, really, is blowing into a home at midnight going to solve any problems that suddenly seizing the person during the day wouldn't? Absurd. The police should act in the open with the powers they, supposedly, legally possess. Not shove them down people's throats in the middle of the night.
If they had the right person, who really was dangerous, and really had done something awful, that might have worked. Other than the no-knock warrant and (possible) plain clothes.
Agreed. It is, perhaps, less obvious how much blame accrues to the individual officers executing the warrant / breaking down the door vs how much accrues to the officer(s) involved in deciding that that was the correct course of action. They might, of course, be the same people.
Said journalists are simply doing their jobs, and are explicitly protected under the First Amendment. But that doesn't stop thugs from using them for target practice.
"Rogue"? Whatever makes you think they're rogue? This is business as usual, as black people have been trying to tell us for 60+ years.
Probably a typo. Ross no doubt meant "cop rogues."
The community college where I teach includes my state's Police Training Academy. While various student cops are often fine upstanding individuals, as a group it's student cops in my experience who present the bulk of the disciplinary issues in the classroom.
Let me guess, based on school, field trips, long interstate bus trips, etc.:
They (of whatever age) sit in a group in the back of the class, or the bus (no racial factor, in this case); chuckle at jokes, make a lot of smart-ass remarks, and/or sit depressed and angry? Possibly even targeting the teacher?
I know that a lot of kids go through that phase and come out ok. Maybe a lot of grownups do, too. But, IME, bullying behavior doesn't always go away.
"Shocking Video Shows Seattle Cop Rolling Bike Over Fallen Breonna Taylor Protester’s Head and Neck" (Daily Beast, via Yahoo).
https://openargs.com/oa424-no-charges-for-breonnas-killer/
Highly recommended.
AFZ
In the case of de Menezes, you had the PR unit of the Met put out the story that he had been run into the station and vaulted over the ticket barrier and seemed to be trailing wires, all lies.