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Katygunnut wrote:

Excaliber wrote:

Katygunnut wrote:

gigag04 wrote:

Purplehood wrote: The Officer acted in good faith based on the information that he was given. If that is indeed the case, it is most likely that he would not suffer any liability.

I believe you are correct. I think this is the same standard that any individual will be held to if involved in a similar situation. Is this the case in Court Martial proceedings as well?

Based on the information available in this story, I would have to disagree. It sounds to me like the officer acted in an unnecesarily dangerous and unreasonable manner. If I were on the jury, I might conclude that a more prudent course of action would have been to announce that he was in fact a LEO, have the front desk clerk call the room, and possibly also to call for uniformed back-up.

This is assuming that there was no other way out of the room (so no worry about the suspect fleeing) and no suspicion of a violent crime currently being committed or evidence being destroyed, etc. If the real purpose was solely to question someone, then none of these factors would seem to have been present.

If we assume that the facts as presented are in fact accurate, then I am having a hard time understanding how the officer was acting in good faith by kicking in the door, which in turn led to a potential gunfight. That is even allowing for the possibility that he announced himself as a LEO (which the citizen in question may not have heard / understood).

Drawing useful conclusions from any first report press article is a dicey proposition at best. Initial articles very often contain major factual errors and omissions that are critical to understanding what really happened. These items often do not get sorted out until the third or fourth article several days later, if there are any follow on articles. If not, the initial misinformation never sees correction in print.

This article in this thread isn't exempt from this pattern, and it didn't provide enough facts to begin to make a valid judgment (e.g., it omitted information on the crime being investigated, whether the person being sought was believed to be an immediate danger to herself or others, whether critical evidence was believed to be in danger of being destroyed, etc.). It also did not include a statement of the facts from the officer's side.

Caution is advised in cases like this. Strong commitment to black and white conclusions drawn from shaky facts is a recipe for .

I agree completely. That is why I caveated my comments several times that the conclusion was based solely on the information presented in the story. I was trying to refute the specific conclusion that the officer acted reasonably / in good faith. He may very well have acted in a reasonable manner, but I don't think you can reach that conclusion based on the information presented.

With insufficient information available to either support or refute the reasonableness of the actions taken, the only valid conclusion we can reasonably draw is that there's insufficient information available to draw a valid conclusion.

Katygunnut wrote:

gigag04 wrote:

Purplehood wrote: The Officer acted in good faith based on the information that he was given. If that is indeed the case, it is most likely that he would not suffer any liability.

I believe you are correct. I think this is the same standard that any individual will be held to if involved in a similar situation. Is this the case in Court Martial proceedings as well?

Based on the information available in this story, I would have to disagree. It sounds to me like the officer acted in an unnecesarily dangerous and unreasonable manner. If I were on the jury, I might conclude that a more prudent course of action would have been to announce that he was in fact a LEO, have the front desk clerk call the room, and possibly also to call for uniformed back-up.

This is assuming that there was no other way out of the room (so no worry about the suspect fleeing) and no suspicion of a violent crime currently being committed or evidence being destroyed, etc. If the real purpose was solely to question someone, then none of these factors would seem to have been present.

If we assume that the facts as presented are in fact accurate, then I am having a hard time understanding how the officer was acting in good faith by kicking in the door, which in turn led to a potential gunfight. That is even allowing for the possibility that he announced himself as a LEO (which the citizen in question may not have heard / understood).

Drawing useful conclusions from any first report press article is a dicey proposition at best. Initial articles very often contain major factual errors and omissions that are critical to understanding what really happened. These items often do not get sorted out until the third or fourth article several days later, if there are any follow on articles. If not, the initial misinformation never sees correction in print.

This article in this thread isn't exempt from this pattern, and it didn't provide enough facts to begin to make a valid judgment (e.g., it omitted information on the crime being investigated, whether the person being sought was believed to be an immediate danger to herself or others, whether critical evidence was believed to be in danger of being destroyed, etc.). It also did not include a statement of the facts from the officer's side.

Caution is advised in cases like this. Strong commitment to black and white conclusions drawn from shaky facts is a recipe for .

baldeagle wrote:Wouldn't matter. He never announced he was law enforcement, never showed a badge and broke down the door. He's not just lucky he didn't get shot. It was a miracle that the guy in that room showed the restraint that he did.

It's a miracle that both of them held their fire and managed to figure out that each other wasn't a bad guy.

I'd be royally torqued too, and I hope he wins his suit.

The officer acted reasonably in relying on the hotel clerk to know which guest was in which room. There's too little info in the article to determine if an immediate forcible entry was justified by exigent circumstances surrounding whatever incident was being investigated.

I've had to untangle incidents where a citizen in a position of trust or special knowledge (e.g. store security officer with multiple police contacts regarding shoplifting incidents) wildly misinterprets something he or she comes across and fabricates surrounding facts that are presented as a life threatening emergency requiring direct and highly intrusive action.

They're no fun at all from the LEO standpoint, and I have testified in the civil suits filed against the folks who were responsible for those actions which were frightening and traumatic to people who were in fact doing nothing wrong. Our agency and officers were never sued in any of these circumstances because we took appropriate action based on the information and observations we had available at the time.