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Texas Size 11 wrote:

VMI77 wrote:

Excaliber wrote:Don't take this sorry series of events as typical of what you can expect from your local police. It is the exception rather than the rule.

Keep in mind that this happened in what is probably the most dysfunctional city in America. Nothing works to the benefit of the public in DC.

These kinds of police procedures seem to go hand-in-hand with aggressive anti-gun and anti-selfdefense political domains . I have to wonder why any cop would continue to work under policies that produce results like this? Really, if you have to stand outside a door for an hour waiting for permission from a superior to enter while people are obviously being murdered inside, what's the point of being a police officer?

I couldn't do it...I'd would hvae been getting fired for not waiting.

Under the circumstances as reported here, any officer I worked with would have acted without hesitation to protect innocent life.

Teamless wrote:

ELB wrote:the police have no duty to protect you,

I always thought the motto was "To Protect and Serve".

While I do understand that it is my job to protect myself and the cops to figure out what happened later, and whodunnit, but come on, honestly? The cops are at the door and cant bust it down?
is this ONLY in DC? or is this standard practice everywhere?

Under the exigent circumstances exception to the search warrant requirement, any police officer who encounters the circumstances described in the original post would be within the law to immediately breach the door and stop what any reasonable person would perceive as a violent crime in progress where any delay would lead to serious injury or death to innocents.

The policy, procedures, and permissions which reportedly are additional requirements before such protective action can be taken in Washington DC are imposed by the agency, not the law. Their effect on protection of the public is clearly illustrated by the incident under discussion here. Things like this are not put in place to protect the public - they are there to protect the agency from the actions of officers who might otherwise make unlawful entries in less than exigent circumstances.

In many agencies this balancing act is handled either by thoroughly training line officers in proper decision making in what constitutes an exigent circumstance (as was the case in my agency), or by empowering first line supervisors to make a rapid breaching decision based on information from officers at the scene. The first line supervisor would only kick it up to a higher rank if the circumstances were marginal. It doesn't sound like that was the case here.

Don't take this sorry series of events as typical of what you can expect from your local police. It is the exception rather than the rule.

Keep in mind that this happened in what is probably the most dysfunctional city in America. Nothing works to the benefit of the public in DC.