The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. ~4th Amendment, Constitution for the United States of America
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signs bill on residents resisting police
INDIANAPOLIS — Gov. Mitch Daniels has signed into law a bill laying out when Indiana residents might be legally justified in using force against police officers.
The governor’s office says that Daniels signed the bill aimed at giving people the right to defend their homes against illegal entry by police Tuesday evening.
The bill that was a response to a public uproar over a state Supreme Court ruling last year that residents couldn’t resist officers even during an illegal entry.
Supporters say the proposal strengthens the legal rights of people against government agents improperly entering their homes. But police groups worry about the measure giving people justification for attacking officers.
Daniels says in a statement he concluded the bill narrowed the legal conditions under which anyone could use force against police.
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20120321/NEWS02/303210055/Indiana-Governor-Mitch-Daniels-signs-bill-residents-resisting-police
Wow, what a completely novel idea. To pass a law that grants you the right to protect yourself in your own home. Who wouldda thunk such a thing would be possible in a country founded on liberty and restricting government control of the people?
Yes, that was sarcasm. The scary part is that even needs to be introduced as a "new" law in the first place. When did we LOSE the right to protect ourselves in our own homes? Sadly, in practice, we can see that it was quite some time ago now. As a result, we have seen many innocent people gunned down by police in their own homes, with no one being held accountable. Indeed in some cases, police were actually decorated with medals for raiding the and shooting up the wrong home!
I commend the governor for taking a stand against tyranny. It is so rare these days. What I find alarming now, is that I can only find negative commentary about the new law. Well, I am here to put the smackdown on the dumbsh*t. This is a fantastic law which reaffirms our Constitutional rights, and the ideals on which this nation was founded. If you are not free to protect yourself from harm and death in your own home, at the very least, then you are not free at all.
This really is a no-brainer that shouldn't require any further discussion or debate as to why we need to protect ourselves from government intrusion in the first place. It just goes to show how far we have strayed that we have to make up a new law to give us a piece of our Constitution back. Then we have folks like the guy in this video below who use flawed reasoning to justify the police-state and the oppression, even the murder of innocent citizens.
Watch the video and then read below as I tear him apart, pint by point.
Right off the bat he puts the police on a pedestal, as if they know everything and that citizens know nothing. Moreover, that citizens can't possibly know anything. Well I got some news for you sunshine. Cops aren't lawyers. They aren't exactly known for their superior intelligence either. In many departments, applicants are turned down for being too intelligent. The average intelligence of a police officer is lower than many other working-class professions. Now granted, with the number of laws out there it is impossible for anyone to keep up, no matter who you are. Cop, lawyer, judge, or average citizen. That is actually another whole problem in and of itself which is symptomatic of a tyrannical police-state regime. This still doesn't mean that police are somehow "better" than citizens though, or that our rights are granted simply at the discretion of the police officer standing in our living room. Police have no more right to come barging into my house and shoot at my family than the local gangbangers do. This law reaffirms right right to protect my home from invasion, whether it be gangbangers or the Gestapo.
6 Completely Legal Ways the Cops can Screw You
Next this YouTuber assumes that we citizens are all uneducated about the law, are completely lacking in common sense on top of that, and will now suddenly be inclined to freely shoot a police officer. Now I do reserve the RIGHT to protect my home from any invader, but that doesn't mean that I am going to go shooting every cop that show up at my door, or that I would even shoot at a cop who came into my home necessarily. Obviously if he comes bearing a warrant, he has a right to be there. This law in no way empowers me to shoot a police officer who enters my home legally. Even if I found an officer in my home illegally, I would not necessarily shoot him. I would still have to feel that my life was in immediate danger before I would respond with deadly force. Again, the same would go for any intruder. I reserve the right to protect myself in my own home, but that does not mean that I am necessarily going to shoot anyone who enters my home, even uninvited. On a few occasions I have even had people come into my home by accident. This happens sometimes living in apartments especially, and once it was a quite humorous drunk who was lost. Not once did I shoot any such person.
Next, this self proclaimed "masterofmanythings1" reinforces the bit that says the law allows people to use deadly force if they "think" police are in the home illegally. That is not actually what the law says, but for the sake of argument we will mention here the dangers of so called no-knock warrants, which should not even be considered to be Constitutional anyway. Police often contend that they must execute a warrant unannounced in order to preserve evidence or to otherwise surprise the suspect. Even if you could get me to agree that under the strictest of circumstances no-knock warrants should be allowed, perhaps in a case of a kidnapping victim being held in a home or something like that, you will never convince me that this type of warrant is not being regularly abused by law-enforcement. Even if you are suspected of having drugs in the house, there is no need to break into someone's home in the middle of the night without announcing who you are and that you have a warrant. The problems with no-knock warrants really deserves another whole article of its own, so I will just drop a few links here to cases of no-knock warrants or poorly announced raids, and how they can go terribly wrong, like in the video above where the police got the wrong address and shot at an innocent family.
Tracy Ingle: Another Drug War Outrage
Cops Murder Innocent Man in Drug Raid
After two tours in Iraq, Marine murdered at home by SWAT in front of family
Bronx Boy Killed After Warrantless Search for Small Bag of Weed
Cops Munch Pot Brownies After Warrantless Search
The YouTuber then quotes from an outside article that mentions how this law will keep police safe. I have to give him a little credit here. I don't see how this law is meant to keep police safe, but I also don't see why that should even be considered as the purpose here. The law is meant to keep citizens safe from police officers, not the other way around. Now if this law causes police to think twice, to gather more intelligence, to plan operations better before entering someone's home, that's great. So in that sense, maybe it will keep police officers safer, by doing their job to the standard we would rightly expect of them in the first place, while cutting down on frivolous and unnecessary raids.
Then our video-commenter goes right back off the rails again though, with a red-herring argument about the mentality of the bully cop. I really don't care what a bully cop has on his mind, or if this law will or will not deter him from breaking the law and violating my rights. The simple fact of the matter is that I don't have to be a victim of such a rogue, and this law reaffirms that right for folks in Indiana. A dirty cop is more loathsome and dangerous than any gang-banger you will ever come across on the street, so why should I not be allowed to defend myself against someone like that?
Police misconduct report from Injustice Everywhere
He then "stress(es) that people not act on this law." Well that's a very dangerous precedent mister "masterofmanythings1" is setting there by telling people to not defend themselves in their own homes. A home invasion, someone trying to break into your house in the middle of the night, a stranger knocking down your door, more often than not that is not the police. Keep in mind here, that this law is not necessarily intended to protect residents who knowingly shoot at a police officer. It is also there to protect residents who defend themselves against an intruder, not knowing until after the fact that the intruder was a police officer, which happens all too often where police fail to properly identify themselves or otherwise act in accordance with the law. He tells us to not risk flipping the justice coin in front of the jury, but instead expects us to gamble with our lives that he is right. "It is better to be judged by 12 than carried by six." That quote is more than just a clever NRA slogan, it is a reality of life in America.
Now our YouTuber gets into the issue of what is known as "probable cause" which is a legal precedent in which police may enter your home without a warrant in hand. It basically gives the police the right to enter a building or residence upon reasonable suspicion that a crime is taking place. Traditionally, that standard could be expected to be enough probable cause that a judge would issue a warrant but can't because of the time-sensitive nature of the events and/or evidence, and will instead issue that warrant retroactively based on the observations and testimony of the officer, in good faith. But as with all expanded police powers, this too has become a practice abused to the point of ridiculousness, as in the case of the pot-brownie munching cops linked above.
He goes on to give us an anecdote about a hypothetical woman-beater who decides this law will suddenly empower him to shoot police when they enter the home, after the girlfriend has called for help. In such a case, the police do in fact have probable cause to enter the home, and this law in no way gives the woman-beater the right to shoot cops entering his home. Masterofmanythings1 rants about this example character's psychotic state of mind, forgetting his own example from just a minute earlier of the bully cop. Neither one of them could care less about the law. A psychotic woman beater with a grudge against cops is just as likely to take a shot at cops with or without this law, as the bully cop is likely to still enter someone's home illegally. After all, as he started out saying, citizens are too stupid to keep up with the law anyway.
Masterofmanythings1 then goes on to advocate for the police while telling us he is not a police advocate. He says that we need the police on our side. Well I got some more news for you sunshine, the police are not on your side, and the police are not there to protect you. This isn't about calling open season on cops and killing cops, it is about defending yourself and your home despite the fact that there are cops out there, good or bad. This is about protecting the Constitution despite the trend to veer so far away form the ideals of the Founding Fathers of this nation.
Now he rants about this "illegal Obama regime" and how we are going to need the police to side with us against Obama. Another newsflash Masterofmanythings1... the problems with this country are much bigger than the White House, and have been going on for a lot longer than Obama has been sitting in it. Meanwhile, your buddies in the police have been there every step of the way to enforce the crimes being perpetrated against the people, constantly becoming more militarized while acting against the interests of the people. This is not just about the old good cop bad cop routine. I am sure there were "good" cops in the Gestapo too.
Not shooting anyone unless your life is in danger is a given, and this law doesn't change that. So I will agree with him there, don't shoot anyone if you don't have to. But then he turns right around again and tells you to roll over for the police-state, to take notes, to take them to court, all the while assuming again that you will live to tell the tale when the police raid your home. Not to mention the fact that even when a citizen is murdered in cold blood cops are not held accountable. So really, how much protection or relief from injustice can we expect from the courts for a simple matter of police trespassing into your home?
Wisdom of where to put the gunfire? Downrange to anyone who seeks to harm me and family, cop or not.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. ~Thomas Jefferson
