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Excaliber wrote:

nightmare69 wrote:

jmra wrote:

nightmare69 wrote:If everyone feels that strongly about the issue then may I ask what are you doing about it? Are you raising awareness to the right people or writing lawmakers to address your concerns? Or do you just enjoy the debate and won't bother taking it past a forum or Facebook?

I always hear good debates online but it seems people could careless about taking the fight to the right people who can do something about it.

Perhaps I will suggest that the constitution should be taught at the police academy.

If you only knew how deep we go into the consistution and the tons of Supreme Court cases that pertain to LE that we had to memorize. You have absolutely no idea what is and is not taught at the academy.

During my LE career, we were always prepared to use whatever level of force was needed to deal with suspects, but we had a clear understanding that it was dead wrong to use it preemptively when it wasn't needed. Marginal cases were heavily scrutinized, and deviations were not tolerated.

That understanding is what is missing in today's training of police officers, and nightmare's posts here are a case in point. I don't fault him personally because he has been surrounded by a culture that, prior to this discussion, he had no way of knowing is very recent and a huge change from the way police work has been done in this country since police departments were first formed.

Many police organizations now have a culture that holds that any excuse they can come up with for using high levels of force is good enough. That's why when we see officers shoot pets in their own yards (too many cases to cite), kill elderly men in their own garage in response to a false burglar alarm at a house across the street (Fort Worth) or terrorize an entire family with a middle of the night no knock raid on the wrong house (too many cases to cite), the only reaction from the agency is "oops". In other words, yeah, we screwed up, too bad on you.

My son encountered this about ten years ago and resigned his commission with a police agency in Florida because that agency required its officers to use excessive force on non-resisting suspects. He knows the constitution and wasn't having any of that.

The instances of excessive use of force are becoming so numerous that just the few that hit the news are being published nearly every day. Here's today's example of another incident. Note the comments and whether they indicate an improved or diminished respect for law enforcement resulted from this officer's actions.

There is indeed a problem here, and it's a big one.

EEllis wrote:

jmra wrote:

EEllis wrote:I think no knock warrants are way over used and I might add are woefully over approved by judges.

In this case I'm not sure I see a reason to believe that the shooting was caused by the no knock service. Unless the guy claims he didn't know they were cops, which since he started shooting whole they were still outside I doubt, there is every reason to believe that he would of started shooting if they just knocked on the door.

I would be very tempted to start shooting if I looked out my window and saw several guys running around on my porch in dark clothes with guns. The last thing I'm going to do is stick my head out and ask who they are.

But if you were a criminal would you believe the guys in full tac gear, including helmets, are police or some random home invaders? I wont argue that such things can lead to misidentification, but there has been no information that should lead anyone to draw that conclusion in this case. That also fails to address that the police may of asked for a no knock warrant because they had some belief that the suspect would shoot if given time to respond. It could be the guy will say he didn't know it was the cops but right now? Who knows.