Indiana Gets It Right

This is too good not to post Denninger in full -

It's about damn time.

Every time police Sergeant Joseph Hubbard stops a speeder or serves a search warrant, he says he worries suspects assume they can open fire -- without breaking the law.
Hubbard, a 17-year veteran of the police department in Jeffersonville, Indiana, says his apprehension stems from a state law approved this year that allows residents to use deadly force in response to the “unlawful intrusion” by a “public servant” to protect themselves and others, or their property.

The solution this is simple: Don't undertake unlawful intrusions.

The issue arises because of a case in Indiana where the State Supreme Court held that you had no right to resist an unlawful entry by the police.

That's patent nonsense.  An unlawful act by the police is exactly the same, in terms of the law, as that of an armed criminal.

Young cited a hypothetical situation of a homeowner returning to see an officer raping his daughter or wife. Under the court’s ruling, the homeowner could not touch the officer and only file a lawsuit later, he said. Young said he devised the idea for the law after the court ruling.
“There are bad legislators,” Young said. “There are bad clergy, bad doctors, bad teachers, and it’s these officers that we’re concerned about that when they act outside their scope and duty that the individual ought to have a right to protect themselves.”

That's exactly correct.

Unfortunately "authority" positions tend to attract sociopaths.  This is a fact; the person who is mentally unstable and seeking to show how "macho" he is will be attracted to a position that gives him a badge, a gun, and the "right" to abuse both.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that in virtually no case are police officers held personally to account for violations of citizen rights.  The usual "recourse" is to sue, but then you're suing yourself if you live in the jurisdiction, as your taxes will pay the judgment!

This is a crock, yet it is rare that the pigs (not police officers) involved in such illegal acts are personally charged and imprisoned for the same offense an ordinary citizen would face if he or she engaged in identical conduct.  This is even true in "relatively mild" cases where disparate treatment is common; there is an officer here in our county who was caught twice operating under the influence.  He was finally arrested after he crashed -- his previous DUI was "overlooked" and in addition he was investigated for aggravated assault with a firearm also involving the use of alcohol off-duty.  

You or I would have been arrested and prosecuted for both of those previous events.  He wasn't.
Never mind that suing is difficult when you're dead, as was discovered in Louisiana after Katrina.
That, incidentally, was one of the rare incidents in which actual criminal sanction was (finally) handed out, with the pigs involved being prosecuted for not only killing an unarmed man but also planting a gun on him in an attempt to justify their act of murder.

Let me be clear: There's a hell of a difference between a pig and a police officer.  A police officer acts within The Constitution and The Law.  He obtains a warrant before he performs a search.  He confines the use of "no-notice, no-knock" warrants to legitimate circumstances where imminent risk of death or serious bodily harm to uninvolved and innocent parties exist, rather than using them as a "show of force."  He takes responsibility for his or her errors, including "accidentally" raiding the wrong house and understands that if he does that he's in the wrong and runs the risk of being shot as he's unlawfully entering private property -- he is in fact an armed felon committing a breaking and entering!  This in turn drives said officer to be damned sure he's raiding the right address and to restrict said "raids" to those circumstances where they are utterly unavoidable -- and that's very, very rare.

I fully support police officers and the rule of law.

I spit on the shoes of pigs and their testosterone-laden Rambo re-enactments along with the "special treatment" that is so-often handed out when they violate the rights of citizens or simply break the law.

I'd love to believe in the rule of law providing sufficient recourse against unlawful acts by the cops but the fact of the matter is that it isn't and never can be, because if you're dead suing is cold comfort for your next-of-kin and the officers involved are almost never held to personal criminal account when they storm the wrong address in search of drugs (for which shutting off the water and power and demanding the occupants come out with their hands up is more than sufficient to prevent destruction of evidence) or otherwise abuse their badge and hardware in their testosterone-loaded fantasy re-enactments of Rambo.

We don't demand that you stand back and then sue if someone breaks into your house and rapes your wife.  You have a well-recognized unalienable right to end that assault via the use of force right there, right now.

The same right exists when the bad actor who is assaulting you illegally is using the emblem and weapons of government as a means of enabling his felonious conduct.

Coincidentally Vox also comments on this -

Hey, the police and their propagandists are always telling us that if you don't do anything wrong, you've got nothing to fear. So deal with that, Mr. Law Enforcement Officer. Because, after all, it's the law!

Of course, let's present the type of officer this law should be used on -

Police in Aurora, Colo., searching for suspected bank robbers stopped every car at an intersection, handcuffed all the adults and searched the cars, one of which they believed was carrying the suspect.

Police said they had received what they called a “reliable” tip that the culprit in an armed robbery at a Wells Fargo bank committed earlier was stopped at the red light.
From there, the police went from car to car, removing the passengers and handcuffing the adults.

“Most of the adults were handcuffed, then were told what was going on and were asked for permission to search the car,” Fania said. “They all granted permission, and once nothing was found in their cars, they were un-handcuffed.”

The search lasted between an hour and a half and two hours, and it wasn’t until the final car was searched that police apprehended the suspect.

“Once officers got to his car, they found evidence that he was who they were looking for,” Fania said. “When they searched the car, they found two loaded firearms.”

The actions of the police have been met with some criticism, but Fania said this was a unique situation that required an unusual response.

“It’s hard to say what normal is in a situation like this when you haven’t dealt with a situation like this,” Fania said. “The result of the whole ordeal is that it paid off. We have arrested and charged a suspect.”

The other people who had been held at the intersection were allowed to leave once the suspect was apprehended.

This is exactly why this sort of thing continues. Police have a person or entity who's rights have been violated, in this case a bank. The police rightly attempt to apprehend the violator of the bank's rights in accordance with their mandate. But in the process of protecting the bank's rights, they often become the vehicle of oppression to the rights of others.

Now, in this particular case I'm sure there's some legal wiggling going on. (Like how many people were stopped because there was a specific tip about them? How many warrants?) I highly doubt all of those individuals 'consented' to being handcuffed in the fashion that the article is attempting to convey here as most people are tricked and bullied into waving their rights.

For the police, they got a suspect  and in the end, that's all they care about. They can crow about 'doing their job' and 'making a high impact on the community'. It doesn't matter if it was the right guy, that's a matter for the courts to make sure the guy the police think did it goes to jail to carry out justice. So the feedback is that they 'did a good job' and then they begin to see the public's rights as an obstacle to performing their duty not the sacred thing that they are entrusted to protect at all costs.

The very fact that the officer stated in the top article is opposed to a law that protects the citizens from unlawful police actions shows you just how far down the Nazi hole we've really come. This is what justice looks like.