MN: Minneapolis Police shoot and kill CHL at 7 am who seconds before had been asleep

[srothstein]

It is a cops job to risk their lives. It is not the publics job to sacrifice constitutional freedom for them to be safe. They knew the job when they signed up for it. There are no words that disgust me more than, "for officers safety". They use those words right before violating the constitution of the united states. The one they swore to uphold in their oath they took. Too many never took that oath seriously. most probably don't even remember that they swore to this as they violate free Americans rights.

It seems to me that the big problem with "no-knock" warrants is that far to often they are used when not called for and then they are used at wrong addresses. This is the United States of America. The "good guys" are only the "good guys' when they work within the guidelines laid out by our constitution. Violating Americans rights in the name of enforcing the law is not acceptable.

I have heard this question asked. If the risk of getting injured or killed is part of the job of being a cop, why is everyone upset when a criminal gets hurt or killed? Is it not also a risk of their job that they knew when they started on their criminal career?

But on a less confrontational note, yes, it is a police officer's job to risk his life and he knew that when he signed up for the job. But it is not his job to risk his life unnecessarily. It is not his job to commit suicide by allowing a criminal to shoot him when it could be prevented. And doing something for officer safety is completely justifiable to me. I do not agree that you only hear that when an officer is about to violate someone's constitutional rights. And along with that, I will point out that a no-knock warrant is specifically allowed in the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment does not prohibit all searches, only unreasonable ones and it specifically says warrants are allowable.

As for the claim that they are used far too often, for the wrong crimes, and at the wrong addresses, I agree in part. From the insider's viewpoint, I think police have used no-knock warrants too much and also used the SWAT or tactical teams to serve warrants too much. But I do not believe it goes bad nearly as often as many people think. Unless you work in law enforcement or know someone really well who does, you have no idea how many warrants are served by the police. What you hear of are the ones the news media decides to tell you about. And there is a known problem with the news media where you hear the same thing repeated so much that you tend to think it is much more common than it really is.

How often do you think cops really hit the wrong house? And by wrong house, I mean one that is not described in the warrant. For example, in this case how many people are thinking the cops hit the wrong house? The media is playing up the fact that the person who was shot was not the target of the search or arrest warrant. By saying that, they are deliberately misleading you into thinking the cops were wrong but, in fact, the cops did hit the right house and no one ever said otherwise. Did anyone who thought the cops screwed up stop to think that just maybe, the bad guy had a friend staying over at his house? And did anyone say the person shot was not a bad guy also? Or did they just say he was not the target of the search warrant?

And now we are back to my other question. Did the guy who was shot knowingly embark on a dangerous activity? Did he know the owner of the house was doing something wrong? Was he actually trying to help the criminal by acting as a guard against other criminals coming in? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I will present one fact that everyone needs to think about. The person shot was sleeping with a gun in his hand. Not just readily available but actually in his hand at the time. Everyone (or almost everyone) in this group likes guns and believes in them for self-defense. How many of us sleep with a gun IN OUR HAND? I have one close to me, and I am sure others may even have them closer than I do. But the only people I have ever seen sleep with a weapon physically in their hand were soldiers who dozed off while on guard duty. Even while I give him kudos for maintaining trigger discipline in his sleep, I find this behavior somewhat odd if not outright suspicious.

[03Lightningrocks]

I completely understand your bias. Unfortunately, law enforcement has become so corrupt, from the top all the way to the bottom, the line is stepped over more often than not. In this particular case, just like at Waco, all they had to do was wait for the person they had a warrant for to exit the house. If they had the resources to storm the home like Nazi storm troopers, they had the resources to watch for the person they wanted to show up.

I am not sure why you went off on what criminals signed up for. I said nothing about criminals and the risk they take. As a matter of fact, I feel that anyone breaking the law or resisting arrest deserves what they get. I said that police officers know what they signed up for. Violating the constitution in the name of officer safety is unacceptable.

What I am completely against is no-knock warrants. "The War on Drugs" lead to this abuse and has become pretty profitable for law enforcement agencies. So profitable, I believe the main goal is to find as much cash as they can. These agencies know they can't stop drugs and they have found a way to profit from it. I believe there are many officers with their heart in the right place but the leadership wants that money.

We don't know if the guy was sleeping with a gun in his hand and it is not against the law to do this. That is the wording of the folks who shot the wrong guy. Maybe it was laying on the floor or table near him and he had grabbed it when he heard them fidgeting with the lock on the door. Like any one of us would do if we heard someone messing around at our front door in the middle of the night.

[srothstein]

I completely understand your bias. Unfortunately, law enforcement has become so corrupt, from the top all the way to the bottom, the line is stepped over more often than not. In this particular case, just like at Waco, all they had to do was wait for the person they had a warrant for to exit the house. If they had the resources to storm the home like Nazi storm troopers, they had the resources to watch for the person they wanted to show up.

Sorry, but, as in Waco, they could not just wait for the guy to be walking down the street. It is my understanding that they were serving a search warrant, not an arrest warrant. I know that was the case in Waco, though this little difference has been glossed over. A search warrant is for a specific location and must be served at that location. It may contain an arrest warrant in it, but the primary purpose is still the search.

I am not sure why you went off on what criminals signed up for. I said nothing about criminals and the risk they take. As a matter of fact, I feel that anyone breaking the law or resisting arrest deserves what they get. I said that police officers know what they signed up for. Violating the constitution in the name of officer safety is unacceptable.

Sorry to have jumped off on that point, but the media and many others have been memorializing the criminals who got hurt. I am suspicious that this is what is happening here too. The attitude of cops know the risk but then getting upset when criminals get hurt is one of my trigger points.

What I am completely against is no-knock warrants. "The War on Drugs" lead to this abuse and has become pretty profitable for law enforcement agencies. So profitable, I believe the main goal is to find as much cash as they can. These agencies know they can't stop drugs and they have found a way to profit from it. I believe there are many officers with their heart in the right place but the leadership wants that money.

We don't know if the guy was sleeping with a gun in his hand and it is not against the law to do this. That is the wording of the folks who shot the wrong guy. Maybe it was laying on the floor or table near him and he had grabbed it when he heard them fidgeting with the lock on the door. Like any one of us would do if we heard someone messing around at our front door in the middle of the night.

I agree that it is not illegal to sleep with a gun in your hand. I do believe that it was there though, because he was still asleep after the police entered until they kicked the sofa to wake him up. His first movements included the gun in his hand. It is seen on the body camera footage as he moves the blankets waking up. And that was my whole point about this. Most of us keep the pistol near us and would grab it off the table or somewhere. For your scenario to be true, it would mean he was not really asleep but had grabbed the gun and then went back under the covers until the sofa was kicked.

So, I think this case is being blown up by the media with their general anti-police bias. I am suspicious of the way it is generating anti-police sentiment when, from the facts presented so far, I do not see that the police did anything wrong. I do want to see the use of no knock warrants restricted because I see them as overused. But one of the reasons I would allow them is if there is reasonable evidence that there would be some extreme danger to the officers. I do not know how the police justified it in this case, but it seems like having an armed guard at the scene might have been enough to justify it for me.